The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - April, 1998


This newsletter will never appear on CUCUG.ORG before the monthly CUCUG meeting it is intended to announce. This is in deference to actual CUCUG members. They get each edition hot off the presses. If you'd like to join our group, you can get the pertinent facts by looking in the "Information About CUCUG" page. If you'd care to look at prior editions of the newsletter, they may be found via the Status Register Newsletter page.

April 1998


To move quickly to an article of your choice, use the search feature of your reader or the hypertext directory above. Enjoy.

April News:

The April Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, April 16th, at 7:00 pm, at the Bresnan Community Center. Direction to the Bresnan are on the back of this newsletter.

The April 16 meeting will be one of CUCUG's split SIG meetings. Edwin Hadley will demo Photoshop for the Macintosh SIG. Mike Latinovich and Dave Witt will be showing UAE (Unix Amiga Emulator) and MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulation) in the Amiga SIG. Several other emulators will probably make it into the mix as well. Art and Transformation - Sounds like a good recipe for an interesting time.

ToC

Welcome New Members

We'd like to welcome to our newest members, joining us in the last month: Martin Baute (C128, A600/1200), Sam Dunham ( C64, A500/4000, CD32), Corky Engel (A4000, CD32, ClonePC), Mark Holdgrafer (A500/2000/3000/4000), David B. Hydock (A500/1200/3000, Mac Clone, ClonePC), Kapryan Kennedy (A500/2000, ClonePC), Rodolfo Leal (C64/128, A500/1200, ClonePC), Brian K. Snyder (A500/4000, ClonePC), Bob St. George (A2000, Mac 68K, ClonePC), Alexander M Tucker (C64/128, A500/2000, CD32), Patrick Becker (C64, A1000/4000), Jack Falzarano (C64, A1000/2000/4000, Mac 68K, PowerBook, PowerMac), Gerald B. Gibbons (A500/2500), Michael Goodrich (A500/1000/1200/2000/4000, CD32, Mac 68K, ClonePC), John LaSalle (C64, A1000/1200), Aldo Vinattieri (A1200), Roger L. Gullans (C64/128, A500/1000/3000, CD32, ClonePC), Rodney Schulze (A500/2000/3000/4000, ClonePC), Alma J. Wetzker (A500/3000, ClonePC), Don Slane (Amiga), R. T. Perkins III (A3000), Stanley Johnson (Amiga), Glenn T. Layer (Amiga), Bob Forsythe (C64, A500/600/2000/4000T, ClonePC), Ron Daigle (A4000T), Stephen P. Mounts (Amiga), Donald Ramon McCuiston IV (Amiga), David Simpson (Amiga), James Frazier (Amiga), Daniel Mayrand (A2000/3000), Sandy Leeney (Amiga), Panagiotis Govotsos (All C=, Amigas, Macs, ClonePCs), William Trenary (Amiga), Dave Bartz (C64, A500, Amiga Clone, Mac 68K, ClonePC), Jason Radford (C64, A500/2000/3000/4000, Mac 68K, ClonePC), John Grant (C64/128, A500,600/2000, CD32), James D. Miller (Pet, C64/128, A4000, CDTV), Jonathan Ballard (A1200/3000), Ken Bethards (CD32, ClonePC), Joel Charles (A1200, ClonePC), Richard E. Crislip (C64, A500/2000/3000), Jim Nelson (C64/128), James Weber (A2000, ClonePC), Alan Surrette (A500/2000/3000), Warrick Burgess (A500/4000, ClonePC), Virgil M. Leisure (C128, A500), Kenneth J. McCormick (A500/1200), Frans van Egmond (C64/128, A500/12/20/4000, CD32, Mac 68K, ClonePC), Tom Linsmeier (PowerMac 8100/80), Vaclav Misek (A1200), Eric Giguere (A500/1200/2000/4000, Mac 68K, ClonePC), Mark Correia (C64/128, A500/4000, ClonePC), Bruce W. Hammond (A500/600/2000, ClonePC), Richard A. Stranberg (C64, A500/600), Mike Veroukis (A500/1200, ClonePC), David Aschbrenner (C64, A500/1200, ClonePC), Denver Thomas (C64, A500/1000/1200, Clone PC).

We'd also like to welcome returning members Patsy Pratt, Doug Venable, John Grinnell, Massimiliano Tretene, Gerald (Jerry) C. Gentes, Frank G. Salvatini, Timothy W. Wilson, and Diann Lock.

We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the best.

ToC

CUCUGers Go To Int. Amiga 98 For Half Price

April 4, 1998 - The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group (CUCUG) and The International Amiga 98 Show have announced an exclusive savings opportunity for CUCUG members who wish to attend the upcoming Amiga show in Toronto.

By special arrangement, CUCUG members who pre-register with the show will receive admittance at half the normal price. A two-day passport which normally costs $10.00CDN for people who pre-register will only cost CUCUG members $5.00CDN. To receive the special price, members must pre-register and show their current 1998 CUCUG membership at the registration center at the show. Pre-registration is easy and may be done via the WWW on the pre-registration web page.

Admission to the show is $15.00CDN at the door without pre-registration.

"This is just another in the long list of great benefits available to CUCUG members," said Kevin Hisel, CUCUG's web master.

The show, which will be held on May 29 and 30 in Toronto, Canada, promises to be a good one and is gaining steam as more vendors sign up and more activities, meetings and classes are announced. Just to show they are not all business and no play, the IA98 "gang" are planning a night out at the local "Medieval Times" restaurant to witness some knightly jousting and other horseplay.

To join CUCUG, Amiga users are invited to use the membership form found at the CUCUG web site at http://www.cucug.org/ supportawd98.html. CUCUG membership is only $20US and is good through December. The club offers many other benefits to members. Details are available at that web address.

[Source: Amiga News Index of the Amiga Web Directory]

ToC

U.S. West Coast Amiwest 98 Show Announced

We are proud to announce The Amiga West Coast show, AmiWest98.

Join us at the Ramada Inn in Sacramento, California on July 11th and 12th, 1998. This showcase of Amiga talent is being jointly sponsored by the Sacramento Amiga Computer Club, the Redwood Empire Amiga Users Group, and other West Coast user groups and is officially sanctioned by Amiga, Inc. and the Industry Council Open Amiga (ICOA).

AmiWest98 is the first Amiga show to be produced on the West Coast in over four years. We expect attendance from all over the Western United States with special guests from throughout the world. Come see the newest in Amiga improvements; see and speak with the developers during two full days of show exhibits from major Amiga companies.

ICOA, the official developer arm for the Amiga, will also be hosting a four day Developer's Conference at the show. The main events will be held on July 11th and 12th with seminars and developer sessions spanning the four days between Friday, July 10th and Monday, July 13th.

Space is available for rent to companies, clubs, organizations, and individuals producing Amiga related products and services. This four day weekend event will showcase the progress that IS the Amiga Community. Booth pricing is available on our web page:

http://www.sacc.org/amiwest/

Admission to the event is as follows:

$8 (One day Pass - Paid by July 1, 1998)
$10 (One day Pass - Paid at the door)

$12 (Two day pass - Paid by July 1, 1998)
$15 (Two day pass - Paid at the door)

There will also be a banquet on Saturday evening, July 11th, with guest speaker to be announced. Banquet tickets are $25 per plate and MUST be paid in advance. Seating is limited and tickets for the banquet are available on a first come, first served basis.

For more information contact either Alan Crandall at alanwall@sonic.net or John Zacharias at jzachar@calweb.com or write to us at:

AmiWest98
c/o Sacramento Amiga Computer Club
P.O. Box 19784
Sacramento, CA 95819-0784

"Come visit us at our web site!1998 is going to be a fun ride!" AmiWest98, get in, strap in, hang on!

Alan Crandall (alanwall@sonic.net - CUCUG Member)
John Zacharias (jzachar@calweb.com)

[Source: Amiga News Index of the Amiga Web Directory]

ToC

A1200 Special for Usergroups in North America

At the Amiga '98 show held in St.Louis on March 13th to 15th, Petro Tyschtschenko, AMIGA International, Inc., announced the appointment of COMPUQUICK Media Center of Columbus, Ohio, and National AMIGA of Canada, exclusive distributors for the sale of AMIGA 1200 and A1200-HDD for userclub members for the United States and Canada respectively. This scheme is available only up to April 30th, 1998.

Usergroups of US and Canada or its members may directly approach these two distributors for pricing!

Compuquick Fax 614-235-1180 Phone 614-235-3601
http://www.infinet.com:80/~comquick/html/special_a1200_offer_for_usergroups_in_north_america.html

* A1200 w/2Mb RAM, Floppy Drive with Magic Bundle $299.00 (Plus shipping)
* A1200 w/2Mb RAM, 170 Mb Hard Drive, Floppy Drive with Magic Bundle $349.00 (Plus Shipping)

National AMIGA Fax 519-858-8762 Phone 519-858-8760
http://www.nationalamiga.com/a1200-special.html

* Amiga 1200 with MagicBundle     $419 Canadian Dollars
* Add a 170 Meg Hard-Drive         $70 Canadian Dollars
* Add a 2.1 GIG Hard-Drive        $319 Canadian Dollars
* Add a 3.2 GIG Hard-Drive        $419 Canadian Dollars
* Add a 4.0 GIG Hard-Drive        $659 Canadian Dollars
* Add a Blizzard 1260 060-50MHz   $679 Canadian Dollars  

The MagicBundle software includes 8 great titles: Personal Paint 6.4, WordWorth 4SE, Organizer, DataStore, TurboCalc, Photogenics, Whizz and Pinball Mania.

[Source: http://www.amiga.de/diary/1998/980323-e.html and respective distributor sites.]

ToC

Vulcan America Extends Discount to CUCUG

Hello CUCUG Members:

Vulcan America has now dropped its prices even further. We would still like to show our appreciation of the Amiga Web Directory. Although our prices have been reduced we want to offer Members of CUCUG a 10 % discount off all Vulcan titles. Just type in (CUCUG Member) after your name on the site's order form and we will take 10 % off your software cost. This offer is good through May '98 for those who order from one of our sites.

We regret the delay in Genetic Species, but you can bet it will have been worth the long wait. Three years in the making of this great game by Vulcan. It will require an AGA Amiga with 10 megs of ram. We will start taking your pre-orders for Genetic Species May 10. At last word, we should have it in stock before the end of May.

If you are not a CUCUG Member ... sorry but you could be saving yourself money on software! Just fill out the handy membership form.

Manager - Vulcan America
Terry L. Fike (TurtleGuy@Apex2000.net - CUCUG Member)

[Source: Amiga News Index of the Amiga Web Directory ]

ToC

Very Special Offer by Paxtron for Amiga UGs

This time of year normally sales of Amiga computers, accelerators, accessories, etc. slows down. In order to ward off this yearly occurrence Paxtron is repeating an existing offer made to USER GROUPS a couple of years ago. For a limited time, Paxtron will give any Amiga USER GROUP member very substantial discounts on popular items such as:

   * Phase 5 - accelerators              * floppy drives
   * Apollo - accelerators               * parts
   * Micronik - classic towers           * Amiga service/repairs
   * integrated circuits 

This offer will even include a discount on Amiga repairs. For details to gain access to our USER GROUP web pages fax Paxtron at (914) 578-6550 on your user group letterhead or call (800) 595-5534.

This is a very serious offer involving large discounts and we encourage every Amiga USER GROUP to inquire.

Paxtron Corporation
Web Page: http://www.paxtron.com/
E-mail: paxtron@cyburban.compaxtron@cyburban.com

[Source: Amiga News Index of the Amiga Web Directory ]

ToC

NewTek Announces Video Toaster and Video Toaster Flyer Promotional Pricing

Save Up to Five Thousand Dollars on Production Systems

SAN ANTONIO, April 1 -- NewTek, manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video production products, announced today a complete line of specially priced Video Toaster and Video Toaster Flyer Promo Packs designed to save video production professionals thousands of dollars.

The Video Toaster and Video Toaster Flyer promo packs are a combination of hardware and software that provide all the tools necessary to produce broadcast-quality video with one convenient desktop video production system. Since the inception of these products, NewTek has offered the Video Toaster and Video Toaster Flyer at an extremely competitive price, these new discounted prices make the system even more affordable to home users and professional video producers who need to maximize production quality within fixed budgets.

"The Video Toaster and Video Toaster Flyer products have always been flagship products for NewTek," said Don Smith, vice president of Sales for NewTek. "Our bundles are designed to put this powerful system in the hands of as many video producers, animators, and broadcast professionals as possible."

The NewTek Video Toaster and Video Toaster Flyer Promo Packs are available through authorized dealers throughout the United States and Canada and direct* from NewTek inside sales. Dealer locations are available from NewTek at 800-862-7837. In addition to these special prices, NewTek will offer directly an extended warranty and replacement IC cards at tremendous savings.

    Package:            Includes:                    MSRP:        Savings:

Promo Pack A       * Video Toaster 4000            $3495.00       $3895.00
                   * Video Toaster Flyer 4000
                   * VT 3.5 + 4.2 Software
                   * LightWave 3D Software

Promo Pack B       * Video Toaster 4000            $4995.00       $5044.00
                   * Video Toaster Flyer 4000
                   * VT 3.5 + 4.2 Software
                   * LightWave 3D Software
                   * Amiga 4000 Tower Computer

Flyer Special      * Video Toaster Flyer 4000      $2795.00       $2200.00
                   * 4.2 Software

Promo Pack C       * Video Toaster 4000            $3495.00       $1549.00
                   * VT 3.5 + 4.1 Software
                   * LightWave 3D Software
                   * Amiga 4000 Tower Computer
Toaster Special    * Video Toaster 4000            $995.00        $1400.00
                   * VT 3.5 + 4.1 Software
                   * LightWave 3D Software

    * Plus shipping charges

Video Toaster:

The Video Toaster offers the broadest range of video production tools available in a single product, including video switching, character generation, and 2D and 3D graphics tools. Its signature ability is that it lets users overlay animated video transitions across the screen in real time. No other product offers this capability in the price range of the Video Toaster.

Video Toaster Flyer:

The Video Toaster Flyer is a broadcast-quality, tapeless, nonlinear editing system that lets users edit video and audio without the complexity of an analog videotape-based system. The Video Toaster Flyer encompasses both hardware and software tools to record video and audio segments as clips that can be arranged using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

LightWave 3D:

LightWave 3D is one of the industry's most powerful photorealistic 3D animation systems for personal computers and workstations, enabling users to create stunning images and animations.

About NewTek:

With headquarters in San Antonio, NewTek is the leader in providing full-featured video editing and special-effects tools that allow anyone to produce professional video and graphics. The company's products are used worldwide on projects from home video to feature film, including some of the most widely anticipated recent blockbusters, such as Men In Black, Titanic, The 5th Element and The Jackal. Contact NewTek at 8200 IH-10 West, Suite 900, San Antonio, TX 78230. Phone 210-370-8000. FAX 210-370-8001. http://www.newtek.com.

[Comments from John Lynn, JLVideo Productions and CUCUG Amiga SIG Chairman:

I just got my latest New Tekniques magazine and was pleasantly surprised to see that Newtek has announced some really fantastic price packages for the Toaster Flyers. I feel that it would be a good idea to let our members know about them. They are offering 5 Bundle packages [see above] and 2 special offers: Special Offer 1: $295 (msrp) - A one year warranty extension on your Newtek Products even if your current warranty is expired (not on your computer system), and Special Offer 2: $1,500 (msrp) - Replacement Flyer cards with new IC chips.

This is great news for those of us who are on the edge of getting a Flyer System (like me) but who had to wait so long for the price to come down to earth. I could maybe get one now within the next month or two. There are a lot of users out there who are in the same boat and should know about this offer.

The offer also (in my humble opinion) goes to show that at least Newtek is taking some steps at keeping the Amiga alive, I feel it's a positive step! I had a good conversation with a knowledgeable fellow at T.S. Computers who confirmed that these prices are in fact good. Their number is 818-760-4445. ]

[Source: Amiga News Index of the Amiga Web Directory]

ToC

Bars and Pipes Professional 2.5b Now Free

by George Arnold, the Bars and Pipes Software Site, March 11, 1998

The best MIDI sequencer Bars and Pipes Prof. 2.5b for the Amiga is now downloadable from the following site:

http://members.theglobe.com/geoarn

From this site you can also download other Blue Ribbon software packages:

Also, the site contains relative information, links and a chat forum.

ToC

Developers Flock To Netscape Code

By Janet Kornblum, Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM
April 3, 1998, 4:35 p.m. PT
URL: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20773,00.html

Executives at Netscape Communications (NSCP) figured that 5,000 people would download the free Communicator 5.0 source code. In the very first day, 4,500 people downloaded the code from the Netscape site - and that doesn't count the downloads from roughly 100 mirror sites.

Within 48 hours of the release [on 3/31/98], Netscape changed the code based on early feedback.

Usually when a company releases a major product, executives liberally pepper [Source code for the masses]their conversation with hyperbole. But when Netscape executives use words such as "phenomenal," "extraordinary," and "mind-blowing," they appear to have the backing of the developer community.

When the developers talk about the browser code, being referred to as Mozilla (the site Netscape set up to be the clearinghouse for discussion of the code), they don't just refer to the actual recipe.

They speak of bigger concepts such as sharing, bravery, and community - elements that hearken back to the early days of the Internet, when efforts were largely collective and things were run by a cadre of hard-working programmers who ruled by what is often referred to as "rough consensus."

"Originally, the World Wide Web was almost entirely free software," said developer Alan Shutko in an email interview. "This triggered lots of good ideas, and was the reason that it took off. But recently, [Netscape's chief rival] Microsoft and Netscape have been locked in a browser war, which has only given us buggy browsers. Now there will be less of a stress on Netscape employees and it will be easier to advance the technology because there will be so many people helping."

The old days of sharing also worked well, he added, because it "helped gather ideas from many different people so that we had the best of all possible worlds."

Like a lot of programmers, Shutko downloaded the Communicator code to learn, to help debug it, and to work on building applications that would work with it.

But it's easy to get the sense that the process of downloading and reading it is about more than numbers. "It'll also be quite valuable to read the source, simply to see the issues involved in this kind of application," Shutko said.

"The more source that's out there to read, the better programmers can become," he said. "It's like literature: You will have a hard time being a good writer unless you've read a lot of books. But we expect programmers to be good programmers without seeing many different approaches to systems and problems. Netscape's source release will help that."

Vidar Hokstad, a programmer living in Norway, said he downloaded it "about one minute after the release" and then continued to work on it for the rest of the night. He was immediately impressed.

"Netscape's code is surprisingly clean for a proprietary product," he said. "Most modules are quite easy to understand. I've gotten quite a lot of respect for Netscape's developers after the release."

His motivation for downloading? "One of them is curiosity," he admitted. "But it's also practical. There's lots of features I want that I couldn't have before, and lots of bugs that I've seen that haven't been fixed. Now I can fix it myself."

Just as importantly for Hokstad, downloading the code and then working in it is "a sign of support to Netscape. They gave it to us. It's a way of telling them that we care.

"I suspect many people downloaded it just to play around with it a bit, and at the same time put the message through that the interest is there," he added.

ToC

Global Village Sells Modem Business to Boca

Last week, Global Village Communications announced plans to sell its entire modem business - including hardware, software, inventory, OEM agreements, and the Global Village name - to Boca Research for $10 million in cash and notes, plus a warrant for Boca to purchase up to 425,000 shares of Global Village stock. Boca plans to support current Global Village customers and develop new communications products under the Global Village name; meanwhile, Global Village will be renamed and focus on integrated communications servers for small and medium-sized offices. [GD]

http://www.globalvillage.com/press_release_text/general/newgv.html
http://www.bocaresearch.com/

[Source: TidBITS #424 / 06-Apr-98. TidBITS address is http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/default.html.]

ToC

Daylight Savings Time & Mac Extended Format

As portions of the United States sprang ahead to daylight savings time last Saturday, reports of creation and modification time problems on Macintosh Extended Format (HFS Plus) volumes began to surface. (Extended Format is an optional element of Mac OS 8.1.) A disk formatted in Extended Format stores file creation and modification times in Greenwich Mean Time. When you check or uncheck the Daylight Savings Time checkbox in the Date & Time control panel, your computer's offset from GMT changes correspondingly. On an Extended Format disk, this changes the apparent creation and modification times for files; dates may change as well. Some people won't notice, but others may have problems; in particular, backups may take longer or fill backup media because every file will appear to have been modified.

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n24452

Dantz, makers of the popular backup program Retrospect, recommend either using the situation as an opportunity to make a full backup or changing the time using the Current Time field in the Date & Time control panel instead of the Daylight Savings Time checkbox. Another fix comes in the form of HFS+ DST Timefix, a tiny extension from Glenn Austin that causes Extended Format to ignore the fact that the Daylight Savings Time checkbox is checked. For extensive information about Extended Format, see "All About Macintosh Extended Format (HFS Plus)" in TidBITS-414. [TJE]

http://www.dantz.com/technical_support/technotes/tn-405.html
ftp://ftp.austin.dyn.ml.org/pub/software/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04668

[Source: TidBITS #424 / 06-Apr-98. TidBITS address is http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/default.html.]

ToC

Jobs to Outline Software Strategy at WWDC

Steve Jobs, Apple's Interim CEO, will outline Apple's software strategy during his opening keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The five-day developer conference will cover all aspects of Apple's technology and business, including Mac OS, QuickTime, ColorSync, AppleScript, WebObjects, marketing initiatives, and future hardware directions. WWDC runs from May 11-15 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1998/apr/9wwdc.html

ToC

Apple Chases Elusive 52-week High

By Jeff Pelline, Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM
April 9, 1998, 2:10 p.m. PT
URL: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20914,00.html

Apple Computer's (AAPL) stock has been surging, but when it comes to breaking through to a new 52-week high, it's been "close but no cigar."

As reported, the stock has jumped since the start of the year, outpacing the gains of computing giants such as Compaq (CPQ), Dell (DELL), IBM (IBM), and Hewlett-Packard (HWP). This year, Apple stock has appreciated 90 percent.

But as the company's shares approached their 52-week high of 29-3/4 recently, the stock retreated. The stock closed down 1/2 yesterday, at 25, but inched back up slightly today, to close at 25-5/8.

Many analysts haven't spent much time worrying about the fall-off. "Talk to a chartist," said Peter Lieu, analyst for Adams Harkness in New York.

But recording a new 52-week high would represent a major psychological breakthrough for the beleaguered PC maker, which lately has been invigorated under acting chief executive Steve Jobs. The company has cut costs, dropped Newton, and begun selling products directly via its Web site. As a result, Apple posted a long-awaited profit in its first fiscal quarter.

One possible reason for the retreat in Apple's shares is that analysts are waiting for the company's second fiscal quarter earnings announcement, said Wendy Abramowitz, an analyst with Argus Research. That announcement is expected next Wednesday after the market closes.

According to First Call, analysts are estimating that Apple will post a profit of 16 cents per share, compared with a loss of $1.42 a share for the like quarter the previous year. The range of estimates is between 7 cents and 32 cents per share.

In addition, investors are uncertain about who will become the company's permanent CEO. The board recently told Jobs he could stay as long as he wanted, but the company is still searching for a permanent replacement. An update could be provided at the upcoming April 22 stockholders meeting.

Apple also faces continued uncertainty in its business. Despite making progress, it must expand its market share and battle intense competition, analysts said.

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

The Postman Rings Again - Eudora 4 for Mac

by Matt Neuburg (matt@tidbits.com)

Readers of TidBITS already know that I live inside my email program, and that my email program is Eudora. I liked Eudora Pro 3.0 when I wrote about it in December of 1996, and I like Eudora Pro 4.0 now.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=00800

http://www.eudora.com/pro_email/

Nightmare on Installation Street

However, I must admit that initially my transition to Eudora 4 was anything but smooth. Indeed, this is the first Eudora upgrade that required any significant transition at all from its users. Earlier versions were basically identical to the version preceding them: you installed and launched the new version, its look and features were completely recognizable, and you started sending and receiving mail as if nothing had happened. Some menus may have been rearranged and there were some added capabilities, but basically it was the same old familiar Eudora. (Indeed, to this day I still occasionally encounter Eudora 2.0 or even earlier, and I feel instantly at home with it.)

Not so, this time.

To begin with, the Eudora installer did something utterly uncharacteristic: it meddled with my System Folder. First, it installed the Thread Manager extension, which I don't need because it's built into the system. So I deleted it.

Then, the installer moved my WindowShade and Color control panels into the Trash, and replaced them with the Appearance Manager (a control panel and an extension). Naturally, I wasn't about to stand for this, so I promptly undid it, removing the Appearance Manager stuff and putting back my original control panels. And what happened? Eudora refused to run! It turns out that Eudora 4.0 requires the Appearance Manager.

Now, that's all very well if you have Mac OS 8 or 8.1. You're already living with the Appearance Manager; it's a required part of the system. But I'm still back at System 7.6.1 (the reasons I haven't upgraded to 8.1 are complicated, so don't ask). So suddenly Mac OS 8 menus and windows were being inflicted on me, just so that I could run one little email program! I turned off the Appearance Manager's system-wide platinum appearance, because it was messing up some of my Open/Save dialogs; the result was anomalous, because now Eudora alone had the platinum look, including different windows, a differently colored menubar, and so on. Ultimately I installed Kaleidoscope just to obtain uniformity of windows and menus once again.

http://www.kaleidoscope.net/

On the other hand, when I moved my old preferences and mailboxes into the new Eudora Folder and started Eudora, it coped beautifully, even though it now requires a different arrangement of sub-folders and files within them. Files were moved automatically to their proper places, my settings were preserved, and my old mail was available. I was ready to roll.

Back to Square One

That's when I got my second shock: the new Eudora doesn't look much like the old Eudora. Take, for example, the first column in a mailbox window, the Status column. Previously, a letter appeared in each row of this column telling you what you'd done with the corresponding piece of mail: R if you'd replied to it, F if you'd forwarded it, D if you'd redirected it, S if you'd sent it, and so forth. That was perfect for a verbal person like myself.

Now, however, these abbreviations had been replaced by mysterious arrow icons whose direction are supposed to be significant: west for replied-to, east for forwarded, north-east for redirected (and a check-mark for sent). Unfortunately, I'm not good at distinguishing directions, or at associating arbitrary directions with abstract concepts - so all I see now is a meaningless arrow. (And to top it all off, the icons draw badly on my screen, so that they're hard to see.) Whatever possessed the Eudora folks to ruin a perfectly good thing like this? [The answer is the many complaints that the Eudora folks received over the years about Eudora being ugly, since it lacked a colorful interface. -Adam]

Something similar has been done with the icons across the top of a message window, but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that the interface, which used to be magnificently functional - dry, crisp, monochrome, and two-dimensional - has now been needlessly cluttered with exactly the sort of "trendy 3D junk" that Eudora used to deride (and, ironically, still does) in its Display settings panel.

Another major step backwards is the manual, which might be kindly described as "degenerate." What used to be a clear, generously informative document has now become a muddled mess, utterly confusing on many important points and woefully incomplete - some of the valuable reference and technical material has been moved into a PDF file, but some of it is utterly gone.

Juggling More Balls

After a week of using Eudora 4.0, I had recovered completely from the shock of its new look, and found I was more productive than ever before.

Most significantly, both checking and sending messages now happen in threads (sub-processes) separate from the main thread in which you read and compose messages. This means that you can download received messages, upload queued messages, and write a new message, all simultaneously. I love doing this; it makes me feel as if I had suddenly developed an extra appendage, like the monkey in the Dilbert cartoon who is twice as productive as Dilbert because he can move the mouse with his tail while he types.

Signatures, personalities, and stationery can now be edited through a single tabbed window; there is no longer any need to go through a hierarchical menu, a Settings dialog panel, and the Save dialog respectively to get at these features. Indeed, not just these, but also the address book, filters, and the mailbox configuration window are now directly available from the Windows menu. This change is not minor. Previously, I was unable to figure out how to use personalities and stationery, because accessing these features was so difficult; now I use them all the time. What's more, you can drag tabs from one window to another to customize them; in other words, you control what features combine into each single window.

Styled text can now be sent and received either in Eudora's private text/enriched format or in the more universal HTML. I am constitutionally opposed to styled text in email, but when I do receive an HTML-coded message it is a blessing to be able to read the darned thing! Also, HTML messages mean that inline images can appear anywhere in a message. Some users have reported that received HTML is slow to resolve itself into styled text; this is said to be addressed in the upcoming version 4.0.1.

A long-standing request of Adam's has at last been implemented: nickname auto-completion. If you have designated the nickname "Neuburg" to stand for "matt@tidbits.com", you can now type into a message field just the first few letters of the nickname, such as "Neu", and then tab out of the field; the nickname will be completed and its value substituted, automatically.

Bugs and Gripes

I have not encountered much in the way of bugs. There are still some minor problems with the text engine when you edit an outgoing message, but they are so rare that I can't be more specific. Some users have reported difficulties with threaded sending and receiving, including crashes; I have not seen this. I did have some problems with threaded receiving until I unchecked the "Backup resource fork toc's" setting. I sometimes have an occasional mysterious freeze in Eudora, but it doesn't appear to relate to threading.

The Filters dialog has been improved, but the capabilities of filters have not. For instance, there is still no option to save filtered messages as separate text files automatically.

The Find dialog is still a strong candidate for the worst piece of interface in the known universe. Trying to determine which mailbox will be searched or where the search will start is like trying to set up your VCR. (Indeed, the Find dialog seems to be modeled after a VCR.) After you finally have your search set up, if you delete the search word to try a different word, all your settings are lost. And unlike other email clients, Eudora stops at the first match, rather than presenting you with a mailbox of all found messages that you can manipulate like any other mailbox. The whole thing is idiotic.

Moving the Eudora Folder, something that many users wish to do, is still clumsy; you must create an alias to the moved folder and place it in the System Folder, start up from a Eudora Settings file, or some other obscure trick. Why can't one just set the location of the folder with a dialog? Even the otherwise abhorrent Netscape Mail gets this one right.

Signatures are not shown in the message window, making it all too easy to send out a message with the wrong signature attached. I often find myself taking the following clumsy steps: I press the signature pop-up to learn the name of the signature attached to the current message, and then I open the Signatures window and double-click that signature to see what it looks like. Why not have an option to add a signature pane at the bottom of the window?

Eudora's way of combining styled text with quoted material in a reply drives me nuts. What I want are those nice greater-than characters:

> You know the sort of thing I mean.

But if there is any styled text in the message, you get instead a funny bar-down-the-left-side quoting style. And if you then try to solve this by removing styles from the message, the barred material becomes ordinary text - it does not turn back into quoted material, and lacks the greater-than characters.

Luckily, the forthcoming Eudora Pro 4.0.1 does automatically replace the left-bars with greater-than characters when you send without styles. And meanwhile, there is an undocumented workaround (thanks, Adam!): hold Shift and choose Paste as Quotation from the Edit menu (Command-Shift-') to paste as an unstyled quotation. Eudora puts only a single greater-than character at the beginning of each paragraph, which looks wrong, but when you actually send the message, provided you send it without styles, Eudora breaks the lines with a greater-than before each line.

Tried and True

Despite these quibbles, Eudora remains my trusty companion. Much of the time, my computer is Eudora, plain and simple. If anything, Eudora 4.0 seems even more trusty than before, handling mailboxes stuffed with many megabytes of messages without a murmur.

Readers desirous of becoming power Eudora users should study Adam's "Eudora Tricks & Tips" article; I must admit that even I learned a thing or two from it. And, you might also want to check out the page he maintains for his Eudora Visual QuickStart Guide - he posts tips from the book there regularly.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04270

http://www.tidbits.com/eudora/

For those wishing to stay on the cutting edge, Eudora Pro 4.0.1 is currently in public beta; it offers a few minor changes but mostly small bug fixes. Support for IMAP, the alternative to POP that large organizations want so their users can check mail and leave it on the server, is slated for version 4.1 due later this year.

http://eudora.qualcomm.com/betas/

Eudora Pro 4.0 is now priced at $39. There are no discounts for owners of previous versions, but for such a reliable workhorse and lifeline, it's still a bargain. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

[Source: TidBITS #424 / 06-Apr-98. TidBITS address is http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/default.html.]

ToC

The Amiga Section:

Amiga98 - The St. Louis Amiga Show

by Paul Sadlik, NCAUG Editor

Since our last meeting, NCAUG made another raid into the heartland for another Amiga convention. This time, we made our return to Saint Louis, Missouri for the Amiga98 show. Another visit with the new owners of our platform, Gateway and the developers and dealers that keep us in software and hardware.

Relying on the airlines to get us there, we were spared the excitement of exploding dumptrucks and minivan people packing that characterized our Columbus trip. This trip, waking up at 3am got us to the show in time for a full day of seminars and presentations Friday.

Throughout the weekend, dozens of seminars ranged from public presentations Motorola staff on the nature of their new PowerPC processors (used in the new Phase5 "PowerUp" cards) to inexpensive Internet programming classes with our TCP/IP guru, Holger Kruse.

By Friday night, the full NCAUG contingent was on-site - 10 people - setting a record for one of our long distance excursions. The more the merrier, as we were all invited into a Amiga Inc. party held in the hotel Ballroom - where NCAUG had a little surprise waiting for Joe Torre of Amiga Incorporated.

Boing, Boing

Some may remember Joe Torre as the Amigan hired for duty in South Dakota as a Senior Engineer. Many more may remember him as the man responsible for the "Boing Ball Levitator" unveiled in Columbus, Ohio last Fall (check your old Active WIndows!). Our Vice Chair, Bill Borsari took it upon himself (and NCAUG) to return the boing treat to Joe with a gift: Boing Shoes.

Bill Borsari and Walter Miles led an effort to design, fabricate and install a circuit into a mild mannered pair of tennis shoes that would create a boinging noise when walked on. After much hacking, sawing and the sacrifice of a number of telephones, Radio Shack audio circuits and hand-built amplifier circuit boards - they had a working prototype.

To program the shoes, they created the "SPI" or "Sneaker Programming Interface". A small hand-held interface that let the shoe wearer record and playback audio samples on the shoes, even while walking.

To complete the package, Udo Schuermann - our developer of Weblord and KingFisher - created the "Boing Shoe Installation Disk", complete with install script... "Insert foot in..." ... :-) ...And we painted the shoes with a sympathetic, if psychedelic red and white checkerboard pattern.

Presentation

At the start of Friday's Amiga Inc party, a few words were said by Bob Sharp and Bill was introduced. He cryptically went on stage and unveiled the present for Joe. To say the least, Joe was quite stunned, amazed and still he recognized the audio circuit's Radio Shack origins... we have to wonder about that man...:-)...He danced in the shoes for most of the remaining weekend.

The party continued for some time in the ballroom, then settled into the Hotel bar - with a number of tables trying to outdo each other in noisemaking contests. It was a long first day in the Missouri.

The next morning started with breakfast and show set up. Like the Ohio show last fall, NCAUG organized a joint booth for local developers to present their products. This time we had the actual authors on hand: Brian Koetting with his "KidStop" children's "edutainment" software; Udo Schuerman with his "WebLord" web site compiler; and John Tyler showed his "Ptolemy" web Image map editor. For the demos, our resident masochist - Walter Miles - drove out a car load of equipment and provisions to supplant the "PAWS" portable Amiga Bill brought on the plane.

Let the Show Begin

While the show was held in the same space as last year's show; it seemed twice as congested, with overflow booths down both sides of the adjacent hallways. Besides half a dozen retailers (new and used software and hardware), there were a number of developers:

Nova Design - Kermit Woodall and Corinna Cohn were demonstrating their new ImageFX 3.0 and Aladdin 5.0 packages. The new ImageFX boasts a number of improvements, foremost being the ability to work on multiple images of multiple layers at once. The new ImageFX version is shipping as you read this. Fresh on the heals of a major re-write of Aladdin, the Nova Design crew has been promising a new Aladdin version is in the works. Stay tuned to one of the Amiga's most proactive commercial developers.

AsimWare Innovations was also present showing off new versions of their CD applications: AsimCDFS v3.9 now supports more drives and IDE splitter hardware; while the new MasterISO v2 boasts much more bang for the buck than any peecee package with wide CD writer support, including advance audio CD editing capabilities. To whet your appetites, AsimWare was promising future upgrades that will even more drives and DVD writing abilities.

NewTek also made an appearance (maybe they haven't forgotten their roots?...:-) ) with their Toaster, Flyer and Lightwave products. While Lightwave development has been put on the back burner, they were not excluding future development and have said they have Amiga PPC cards in their possession - for potentially peecee eclipsing rendering performance.

One of the most intriguing items of the show was advertised by AntiGravity: the "Neila-498" Amiga computer clone. Starting with an Index "BoXeR" motherboard, they advertised turnkey units for $1495 with a 66mHz '060 CPU, a 1GB hard drive, 16 MBs RAM, 56k internal modem and active ISA slots. Pretty impressive, considering the cost of accelerators alone. AntiGravity CEO Dan Lutz said they expected to be producing the units within the next month or two.

For those Photogenics fans out there, Paul Nolan was present announcing "Photogenics Ng", with a number of improvements, including multi-layer support. He was also showing the latest version of his Siamese system, that lets you see and control your Amiga from a peecee. Finally, he was providing more information on his future efforts to use his Siamese technologies to combine peecees and Amigas into one, high powered box.

Another Amiga clone builder was present for much of the show giving out information on their "Nitro" series of machines: Nova Sector Engineering. Their approach to shipping turnkey systems out the door has been to custom build systems from off the shelf components, including: A4000T motherboards, phase5 PPC cards, NewTek Flyers and a variety of drives, networking cards, etc.

For those desktop publishing folks out there, SoftLogik was at the show with a number of specials on the latest version of their Pagestream 3 package. They also announced version 3.3b, which should be shortly available on their web site, and a new tables and charts editor. Meanwhile work was proceeding with a new 3.4 version with PDF import and export functions.

Finale Development/Gamasoft was also present with a number of their InterNet packages. Chris Aldi demonstrated the latest versions of his "New York" news reader and the "Voodoo" mail program. The latter supporting HTML formatted mail. He promised that new versions of both programs were also in the works, including offline news reading. While he showed us a beta of the Finale Web Cruiser, it didn't sound like it was going to be coming out any time soon. They were also showing "INetAccess", a new Amiga web server. While still in its nascent stages, it supports CGI scripting, multiple connections and is being actively developed. Finally, they were showing off a new text editor program called Digital Quill.

Across the aisle, Holger Kruse of Nordic Global was showing and selling the latest version 3 of his "Miami" TCP/IP stack - the phenomenally easy to use networking software for getting any Amiga on the InterNet. He was also spelling out the features of his upcoming "MNI" driver system, guaranteeing accelerated EtherNet speeds and "sexier" BSD-like inner workings (:-)) - all to be included in his upcoming Miami v3.1 release.

To round out the InterNet pack, John Zacharias was also present showing off his AEMail client. The latest version of this package (v1.5) adds a new ARexx interface to this standalone application - it requires no add-ons to operate (MUI, mail utilities, etc) and integrates itself with your networking software for automatic InterNet connecting to send your mail. John was also advertising the "AmiWest'98" show taking place in Sacramento, California July 10th through 13th - for those people that want to get a real road trip under their belts!

For those video folks out there, OzWare and ProWave were present with a number of Video Toaster/Flyer products. They ranged from a Flyer Undeleting tool for recovering deleted video clips to RenderFX compositing tools to ProMix audio mixing utilities. Tutorial video tapes were also being offered on a variety of Toaster and Flyer operations. A range of products to support the beginner through professional non-linear editors out there.

Another video oriented company, Y/C Plus, was on hand with a broad range of video oriented monitors and professional video distribution gear: including composite to Y/C converters, test pattern and black screen generator, switcher and tape deck controller boxes. Most interesting to the hobbyist was an inexpensive new product, about to be released, that uses the second Amiga joystick port to control any Sony VCR (they are all said to have the needed "Control-S" ports). They said that the system could be expanded to support other decks that had similar control interfaces. This opens up interesting areas from home control to video integration with apps like Scala on your Amigas.

While it may come off as a novelty for most Amiga users at a glance, a small Amiga developer - WeemsWare - was demonstrating an interesting program called "Lips". By mating appropriate graphics with the Amiga translator system and a sophisticated speech/audio/gfx scripting system, it lets you easily create the kind of "Max Headroom" presentation that was only dreamed of a few years ago. It's conceivable that 3D modelers could use this to create talking animations from their 3D images or animators out such a tool to use for talking cartoons. With continuing development, the possibilities broaden.

Amiga icon Jason Compton also hosted a booth selling a variety of wares: they quickly sold out of their video Amiga news report, "Legacy"; they were demonstrating their ImageFX animated compositing software "PanFX" and showing their ImageFX tutorial video tape. Word was that a new tape might be in the works for DTP fans out there.

Another booth was occupied by a St Louis developer, Brewster Productions, that was selling a couple of productivity apps based on the Superbase data engine. "Organize Pro" is a sophisticated contacts manager that was originally written for the operations of the Gateway show itself. It offers mail merging, filtering, classification and sorting functions needed for an operation with thousands of database entries. Their other product "Payroll Plus" is an even rarer Amiga program: an application for the recording of employee wages, accounting, pay check printing and tax record keeping and reporting. Just what the doctor ordered for any business that wants to put their employee bookkeeping on a reliable platform.

The Vagabonds

With booths filling the show room and spilling out into the hallways in all directions, it wasn't surprising to see a number of Amiga developers wandering the show, some with their products in hand. One notable was Marcus Nerding from Haage & Partner, the German developer of StormC and a number of productivity applications. He said that while development was continuing on their C development environment, they were about to release a new Amiga word processor called EasyWriter. Stay tuned!

Bill Panagouleas, formerly of AntiGravity fame, showed his latest product, developed in conjunction with VCE: Pyromania Classics. A CD full of royalty-free, high quality animations, video clips and images of fire and explosion effects in Amiga formats (for the Toaster/ Flyer, Animators, etc). Bill told us, the CD was selling well and that he was negotiating with them to do a follow up Amiga project.

For a little blast from the past, Brett Hester appeared at the show with a bright Yellow CanDo T-shirt and copies of the program for sale. He was also selling copies of his own "Plug-Ins and Go!" macros for Lightwave - a large number of macros for speeding, aiding and refining Lighwave's operations.

A number of shareware developers were also wandering the floors and doing seminars: Adreas Kleinert, the author of a number of graphic datatypes on the AmiNet came over from Germany. As did Stefan Ruppert, the developer of the HTDS datatypes system, who gave a seminar on developing datatypes for the operating system.

All of the activity and people made Saturday a hectic day. While we haven't heard specific numbers, the show attendance (both in developers and visitors) was well above last years numbers. Bob Sharp has to get a bigger space next year!

The Banquet

A little while after the show, Ball room was filled with tables and set up for the official banquet and speeches. With much grumbling, the ballroom over flowed and a number of people were forced to eat dinner in hallways and anterooms. At least, we had an interesting dinner with Petro and Don Hicks, of Amazing Computing. Afterwards it was time for speeches.

As usual, Petro exuded his confidence and love for the Amiga platform... this is the man to grab a Stein and lead us all into the trenches to do battle with the "assimilated". Mitch Stone, the founder of a "Boycott Microsoft" movement (see http://www.vcnet.com/bms), followed him up with a speech on the evils of the Borg... err, um... Bill Gates... :-) Unfortunately, for the crowd, his words went on at great length and more theoretical detail in the usurping of open standards, the leveraging of OS control into applications control than most wanted to hear about... :-( ...

Then for the blockbuster speech of the night - Jeff Schindler - the man at the top of Amiga Incorporated. With a year under their belts at the helm of the Amiga, what did he have to say? To try to summarize the speech, let alone analyze it is a challenge - so look for the side bars in this issue with a transcript of his speech as well as more in-depth conclusions from Udo Schuerman. On one hand, it seems that Mr. Schindler does have his heart in the right place and that he has an idea about what the Amiga is about. On the other, he is grounded by the demands of the accountants and business managers above him (in Gateway 2000, proper) that want to know the bottom line, the quarterly forecasts and probabilities of success... His comments seem to confirm that Gateway did not buy the Amiga just to dump some unwanted money into decade old patents and intellectual properties, but that there is some higher plan still unrevealed. We Amiga users can only benefit from this if we survive the hard times in the meantime - could the next two years be any worse than the last four? Read the speech and Udo's comments - what do you think?

That's what bathtubs are for?

In retrospect, I begin to worry about the Amiga die-hard community - the developers, users and executives - that spend their nights wearing funny looking shoes, packed into little hotel rooms with walls full of electronic equipment generating psychedelic images and music... all night... :-)

I assure you, I only went this place purely journalistic reasons... When I entered the packed room, there was only the electronics, people and a lone six pack cooler of drinks. Aaron and Robert, our hosts from Atlanta, were simultaneously editing a Banquet video while playing mod files along one wall. Every remaining square foot of bed and floor was packed with folks dissecting Jeff's speech and interrogating Joe Torre and Darreck Lisle for their opinions. Then the Canadians showed up (bless them)... with a trash can... full of beer from the North country... A couple more trips with the trash can, and four floors of the hotel had been emptied of all of the ice and the bathtub filled to the rim with chilled drinks. The party was still packed and going quite strongly at four something, when my journalistic will finally faded and I retired for the night. Maybe Bill Borsari has video tape?

The last day

After the crowds of Saturday, Sunday was anticlimactic. Many visitors headed home midday and the die-hards were left to their own devices again. With the bar depleted of quality beers, we were reduced to drinking local suds (or should I say spud...err, bud?...:-)). My time at the bar still gave me a taste for what the ICOA is up to.

While we spent a lot of time during the weekend informally with folks like Fleecy Moss and Dean Brown, more serious discussions were going on Sunday night. As one who has explored the possibilities of improving the Amiga printing system, I joined a group of developers under the banner of: the Amiga Printing System WorkGroup. It was founded a couple of weeks ago and this was our first chance to sit down with a few folks (Holger Kruse, Joe Archibald of National Amiga and I dragged our friend Udo Schuermann in) and discuss possible directions for a new system.

In this group, like others formed for improving the Amiga graphics system, documentation systems (Amiga Guide, etc), developer interaction, etc. initial discussions are going on and some work is being started, pulled together and coordinated to give shape to the future of the Amiga Operating System. Starting just before Gateway bought the Amiga, the entire ICOA has almost had a "come hell or high water" attitude about what they are working on. While Amiga Inc. has risen and been offered the reigns for leading Amiga development, the group is still trying to make immediate headway. The upcoming OS (v3.5) is bound to reflect a lot of this effort.

Finally, we made our way back to the St. Louis airport and for our red eye special back to Washington. These meetings with the people that form the North American core of the Amiga community is reassuring. These people are all focused on trying to make Amiga things work and proceed. There was no bespectacled troll lurking in a back corner (hiding from pies?) trying to control or undermine things. No slick salesmen practicing their schtik for the upcoming FOSE show. Just a bunch of folks looking for more ice for the bathtub, a new rendering engine for their PPC cards and an all around elegant computer platform. The quality of the Amiga is a result of where these people have been, through the ICOA and Amiga Incorporated, I hope their determination reaches an even higher targets tomorrow.

[Source: The National Capital Amiga Users Group newsletter, "Active Window" April, 1998. NCAUG's address is P.O. Box 12360, Arlington, VA 22209. On the web it's http://www.ncaug.org ]

ToC

"I really want to speak from my heart."

Jeff Schindler, Saturday March 14, 1998, at the Gateway Amiga 98

I really want to thank everyone that came here, especially Bob and Diana (Scharp) for putting this on. It's a wonderful event, and my first US show. As Petro mentioned, we went to the Cologne show in Germany, and that was a great experience. I also want to recognize Marilyn Flint and Darreck Lisle who are both Amiga Inc. employees, along with Joe Torre, all Amiga Inc. employees. And Petro coming all the way from Germany and always staying with the Amiga. One other person that I want to say something about, and I'll get in trouble for doing this, but I wouldn't be the man who I am unless she was with me, and that's my wife Kim.

I had a presentation that I was putting together for this, and then I had a speech that I wrote for this. Then after spending the weekend with you guys, I decided I didn't want to do either one of those. I really want to speak from my heart, here. I'll be very honest with you and open. As much as I can share with you, I will, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of questions afterwards.

I'll give you a little bit about my background. I'm very honored to be asked by Ted Waitt to be here tonight in this spot. When I came to Gateway, I was in charge of the portable division at a competitor, and Ted asked me four years ago, "Well, you know, we could really use a lot of help on our portables." I said, "No, I don't want to work any more on portables." And he said, "so what do you want to do?" And I said, "I just want to look into the future." He said, "Okay," he's a cool guy, "do what you want." So, I spent some months in research and came up with the concept of (some of you might be familiar with it), the Destination TV, the PC-TV. It's an interesting product. It was more of an attempt to get that market started, knowing that convergence market is coming. It's interesting to see that all the top competitors are now working on products very similar to that. So, we'll see where that goes.

I really believe because of the vision that Ted saw in me to come up with that so early in the market when Gateway wasn't recognized as an innovative company in the way of new types of technology, when he saw the Amiga opportunity, I think that was a good reason. In fact, in dealing with part of the Destination I saw this was launched and was happening, I sort of wanted to go on to that next stage. I was just telling one of my colleagues that night that I was sort of tired, and I really wanted to move onto the next stage. I was walking down the hall very late at night at work, and I ran into Ted Waitt, and Ted said, "Come on over here, Jeff." I just thought that he wanted to shoot the bull. We were talking, and he said, "Well, I want you to think of one thing." I thought, he's just pulling my leg, here, because I'm always thinking of all kinds of things. Rick Snyder, who was the president back then, came out and he was sort of smiling at me, and I thought these guys were just pulling my leg. So, I started to walk away, and they said, "No, come on back here, come on back here." He looked at me and he said, "I want you to think AMIGA." That was just after Gateway had acquired it. I said, "Seriously, really?" He said, "Yes. I want you to think about it, look into it a little bit, and write me an email and tell me what you think about Amiga."

Some of you might know my background, when I was in college I worked for a company, and through the years I actually worked for their headquarters. My job was back when the Commodores, Ataris, TI, Activision, and all those companies were out. It was a big retail chain, and they asked me to actually go to each of these stores, train them and teach them about how to merchandise. So my salary was actually being paid by Commodore back then. It was funny because in our house (I'm ashamed to tell you) we had Ataris and Commodores, and, well, we had them all. My conclusion was that the VIC 20 was the best thing.

I brought my VIC 20 home, and I spent I think about four hours writing my first microprogram, and I ran out of memory. I had to run back to the store, go to the back and grab one of this big modules with, like, megaram, or something K, or, I don't know what it was. It was this huge thing, and just about four hours of programming and I ran out. I don't know if that means that I'm a bad programmer, but I always said when I went back and finished up college that the Commodore was the best out of those machines, I always loved it. That was sort of my background.

One thing that I've realized since I've taken this job, more than anything, is that Amiga not only is this awesome technology that was really ahead of its time, but it is more than a technology, it's the people. The values, dedication, it's in your heart. I want to say that we're going through a lot of tough times, and it's very difficult for me to read the emails and listen to the phone calls, to find out about the companies that are going down with Amiga. It hurts. It hurts so bad, sometimes I tell my wife, "I don't even know if I want to do this any longer". I don't want to let these people down. But the fact is, nothing good comes very quickly. We have to have patience. That's something I struggle with very much. I go into Gateway's management and I say, "I want to do this," and they say, "Do you think that's the best plan?" Well, maybe not, go back to the drawing board, let's hear another one. Since I've started, I've come up with at least twelve different business plans for the future of Amiga. These plans aren't `what are we going to do six months from now'.

These plans are `what are we going to do through the year 2001, or 2002'. It's very frustrating because I want to get everything going, and yes, we are working on an operating system upgrade. We've got a lot of things we can do in the interim but, until that future plan is solid, which I'm really excited about right now, actually. That's one of the good things that's happened is, because I've gone back to the drawing board so many times, now I've got a plan that has exceeded my expectations, and I'm really excited about it. One of the things, to address what Mitch was saying, that big competitor we know about may own the standards today, but they don't own the future.

I really believe what's coming is what I call the `digitally connected global society'. What that means is, basically, because of the acceptance of the internet, because of the need for people in the future to be connected, it's going to be part of your daily life. It already is for you, but I'm talking about people who never wanted computers in their life. It's going to be part of education. It's going to be part of their daily chores. So, that's one of the big things that's going to drive us. The other thing is the digital revolution. Everything is going digital, digital media. Basically those two things, I believe, the need to be connected and the need to understand the digital stuff, and the entertainment value. The realism that digital brings, the ability (and you guys have shown it more than anybody) to take your imagination and digitally project it. I'm amazed when I see what NewTek has done, when you see a movie and they say, "Well, you know that whole scene had nothing to do with video. It's all digital graphics producing it." Just imagine what that's going to become in the future. I think those two things are going to drive a brand new market, and, guess what? The other guys don't own it yet.

I believe that they are trying to own it, but there's three fears, three basic fears that's stopping, well let's say in the US. They say that 40% of the households in the US have a PC, well, 60% don't. Why? I believe there's three basic fears, and this goes for the rest of the world as well. The first fear is how much time is it going to take for me to figure out how to use this stupid thing, and then after I use it, is it really going to give me what I want? They're scared to buy a product that's got all these things on the screen and, it's like, I don't see anything in here that says how I can send an email, or things like that. I believe that there's a big fear there, that if we can accomplish that and make that easy, then that's one thing that will build bridges to this new market.

Another thing is the dollar investment. How much money do I really want to invest to buy a PC when I can use a notepad, buy this new thing when I can just watch my TV, get this new box when I can just use my telephone. I can read a magazine, and those things. I believe that when the prices continue to drop, and we're seeing the PC market drop, but because of this operating system that uses so many resources. How do they ever get to the point they're going to get to? It's going to be a real chore for them. I believe that Amiga's operating system has the efficiency to get to those products.

The other fear that people have is obsolescence. If I buy this today, next week some new thing is going to come out that I'm not going to be able to do when I just bought this thing yesterday. Or, the value of this is going to drop so much because there is a new CPU coming out or whatever. In my new plan, I believe we can actually overcome that. That's one thing that I really can't talk about, but there's a way to actually do that, and it's not going to be based on the typical architectures here today, but, it can be done.

We do need to talk about standards. Because this market is being seen by all these companies, you basically have every PC company, every consumer electronic company, telephones, cable companies, broadcast companies. You name it. They're all in this huge acquisition and partnering flurry because they don't know who the leader is going to be. Basically, one of the questions that keeps coming up is, do they want a standard for this new industry? Well, I believe they do want standards, but they do not want any one company to control them. I think that's one of the great things we can do. We can look at our competition and say, "what are they doing wrong and what can we do right?" That's one of the reasons why I'm not going to stand up hare and make promises about vaporware that we're going to come out with in two years. When we tell you what we're going to do, I really want to be honest and say it's coming, it's true, this is what's going to happen. The hard part about that is that it's going to take time to develop this. It's going to take time to launch this. What I'm telling you now is we're going down into the valley, and we're going to keep going into the valley before we can actually come back out of it. So, what I'd also like to tell you is that if you have to do other things, whatever you have to do to survive, never leave that piece in your heart that says Amiga.

Everyone wants to know about the upgrade probably.

We do have a small staff, we do have several people that we have under contract, and you probably heard an awful lot of rumors about us working with other companies to actually come up with the upgrade. That is true. We are working with several companies to actually take what's been produced out there, take the best pieces of that, try to integrate that, and also add some new value and come out with the release. Petro talked about the third quarter this year. We still don't know exactly when we're going to come out with that, but as we get closer, we will make announcements. I can tell you in general what the areas are that we're putting the highest priority on right now. We're working the hardest on having full internet solutions. We'd like to make some enhancements to the user interface. We want to support more industry standards, as many as we can in this release.

The other thing that's very important, because we're a licensing and technology company, we're not planning in the near future coming out with a new box. We're looking for OEMs to do those hardware and those pieces that we'll be licensing the technology to. One of the things we really need to hear is from all you people through the users groups and through the ICOA, the Developers Groups, what you're developing, what you'd like see. We want to support those things in the operating system.

Another thing we're going to do is have better documentation, especially for the developers. It's important that we oversee all of the new changes, but we want the Amiga communities to build and build and build. If someone wants to come up with a device that's a robot built on Amiga technology, I'd say go for it.

Basically, we're working on those things, and there are more. I do want to say that I don't want to just concentrate on what we call OS 3.5. I want to concentrate on what we call expanding the operating system and go to new levels. Because 3.5 is just going to be a start and there will be more, we'll continue to add. So, don't think that when 3.5 comes out, `oh, that's what all these guys were working on'. No, we're working on a lot more things. They're just not ready to be released at that point. Don't ever forget that the big plan, and I want to say this. I said it to my employees this week. I sat them down and I said, "You guys, have I been ignoring you a lot?" And they said yes. I said, "That's on purpose." And they asked why, and I said, "Because we need to figure out what the future is. And that doesn't mean we don't keep working on the current stuff, because that's what we need to do as well. But if we can cement our future, we can come back stronger than we ever have. That's what I've been working on." So, I want to tell you the same thing. I apologize right now that I've been ignoring you. That is true. I'm trying to work the future and get it approved and bring us into the future. The future's going to be a little time off, but if we get there, it'll be one major party.

Amazing Computing/Amiga Editor's Note: Jeff Schindler delivered this speech before several hundred Amiga users crammed into the exhibit hall of the St. Louis Gateway Amiga 98 show late on Saturday March 14, 1998. Prior to Mr. Schindler, Petro Tyschtschenko had discussed some of the problems and concerns and successes of Amiga international (please see his speech separately) and Mitch Stone gave a presentation on the problems of a Microsoft world. This speech was transcribed by Amazing Computing/Amiga from a video tape our staff took at the event. It is presented here with every effort to be certain the quotations are correct. This file will be corrected as any errors are discovered, please be aware of the latest date of correction: March 22, 1998 at 7:00 AM.

Full Coverage of this event and the rest of Amiga 98 will appear in the May issue of Amazing Computing/Amiga. Amazing Computing/Amiga, the Amiga's longest running Monthly Amiga magazine, is available at PiMPub.com, 1-800-345-3360 (toll-free Canada and US), 1-508-678-4200, by FAX at 508-675-6002, and by snail mail at PiM Publications Inc., P.O. Box 9490, Fall River, MA 02720.

[Source: http://www.pimpub.com/JeffS398.html ]

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Speech Review

Udo Schuermann (the author of Kingfisher and WebLord) and I (Paul Sadlik, NCAUG Editor) have been exchanging email reviewing the St. Louis show address by Jeff Schindler. It was an interesting speech, but it raised many questions about the future of the Amiga and what Gateway was planning to do. Udo's comments were interesting and follow below:

The Amiga community has been strung along on promises for so long that we're not going to take another "just two week" promise followed two months later by yet another disappointment.

Although I would have loved for Jeff to say "we've been working on porting AmigaOS for 10 months now and we're looking to have a native PPC v4.0 in stores by the end of the summer"... there is, realistically, no way that could happen. You know it, I know it, we all do, as much as we wish it were otherwise.

Jeff could have strung us along, saying that they've been working on it for... oh, let's say 6 months, that they're about 1/3rd done, that they're looking at xmas for release, etc. etc. And what if they didn't manage to get it out the door, perhaps only because of too many divergent PPC implementations? Ask us to hold our breath for an additional six or eight months? And then, maybe a bit longer because someone they relied on went out of business? How soon would we all run out of air?

I much rather have him give me the truth, as ugly as it sounds. Everything that he *did* say (as little as it was) sounded like the truth to me: it will be two years before we come out of that valley. That jives with what everyone has been saying about what it would take to port AmigaOS to the PPC (18 months); it gives enough time for R&D to figure out what really needs to be done in the process to give us not just AmigaOS-PPC 3.1, but AmigaOS-PPC 4.0 or 5.0 or whatever, a new AmigaOS to carry us forward for real.

In other words, they have a *lot* of work to do and they "MUST" get it right. If they don't get it right (the port, the features, the direction), then it's curtain time and the Amiga will exit stage left with hardly anyone left to notice its passing.

I get from Schindler the sense that they know that. I get from him the sense that he's looking to design *real* solutions, rather than allow the Amiga to end up in yet another dead-end alley (e.g. dependence on aging custom chips).

Why am I so confident? Because anything less than this would be little more than giving aspirin to a cancer patient. I might make the patient feel better, but it won't cure the problem.

And if Schindler pulls it off? He'll have a reborn, modernized computer operating system that's faster, more reliable, less costly than any of the others out there, with a rabid following to push the Amiga back where it belongs: into the light! And not just because we want it to be there, but because we will be able to demonstrate that it's every bit as capable as "the other" systems out there, even able to outshine them.

The road there will be long and it won't be pretty, but quick patches and hastily conjured solutions will not get us there. I believe that is what Jeff Schindler was trying to say.

Maybe I should be his speech writer. ;-)

[Source: The National Capital Amiga Users Group newsletter, "Active Window" April, 1998. NCAUG's address is P.O. Box 12360, Arlington, VA 22209. On the web it's http://www.ncaug.org ]

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Warning For SCSI Removable Media Drives

by Wayne M. Cole, Compuserve

[Commo-Hawk Editor's note: This warning sure hit home with me. I use my Amiga 3000 to edit sound effects at Theatre Cedar Rapids. I have a 1 Gig external SCSI Jaz drive attached to store the huge sound samples. During a show this fall, I low-level formatted a Jaz cartridge and it was trashed. I can't format it on either my Amiga or PC. That's an expensive $100+ lesson!]

NEVER EVER LOW LEVEL FORMAT A SCSI DEVICE unless you are developing lots of read/write errors after the device has worked flawlessly for a time. Even then I wouldn't recommend it. You can do actual physical damage to the media in such a way as to make it unusable at all. Here's why:

Although SCSI is a standard, there is leeway within the standard for manufacturers to define their own "custom" SCSI operations parameters within certain SCSI commands. Bad block remapping methods fall into this category. If the controller is unaware what method is in use, it may send the command that works correctly for, say, an old Syquest 88, which may not work for a Jaz. Depending on how the Jaz marks and replaces bad blocks, you could easily get to a point where the controller thinks it's mapping out bad block when, in fact, it is mapping out good blocks. When it thinks it runs out of spares, it stops, but the bad block remap table on the media is now toast, and the "good block" map may also be toasted. Now when you go to do an OS level format and it discovers there are no (or very few) good blocks left on the media and can't format or only has enough for an RDB and no data, you is screwed. Recovery, if it is even possible, involves getting the media back to the manufacturer to have the maps rewritten to media - something you can't do, even with a sector editor - it is space accessible only to the HD controller firmware.

How do I know all this? I blew away some Ricoh removable media with a GVP controller because the GVP assumed any removable was a Syquest and followed the Syquest bad block remap algorithm. The repair facility is here in town, and they were kind enough to let me sit with their engineers as they attempted to repair my media. They showed me the documentation on the different parameters to the low level format, and how what works for the Ricoh would not work for Syquest and vice versa. (It has to do with how bad blocks are numbered, replaced, and allocated.) With fixed disk drives, these methods are more standard and you are less likely to be burnt. But for removable media, if your controller is not specifically "Jaz aware" at the firmware level, you should NOT EVER low level format Jaz media.

Another thing, on Amigas in particular (and it is a good practice on all machines), removable media should never have multiple partitions put on it.

[Source: The Commo-Hawk Commodore/Amiga Users Group newsletter, "The File" January, 1998. CHCUG's address is P.O. Box 2724, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52406-2724. On the web it's http://soli.inav.net/~jibes/commo.html ]

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The CUCUG Section:

March General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins

The March 19th meeting began with President Jim Lewis performing the traditional introduction of the CUCUG officers. These are the folks to begin with if you have a problem you need handled. If they don't know the answer, they will more than likely know the person who does.

Jim then gave his impressions of the Gateway Amiga Show in St. Louis he and several other CUCUG members attended. Jim said, "We went and had a booth. We sold T-shirts, memberships, buttons, and we met many of the Amiga luminaries. We had Mike's A4000, which he has donated to the club. We borrowed a SCSI controller from Greg Scott of National Amiga to hook up Kevin Hisel's ZIP drive upon which he has a backup of the entire Amiga Web Directory, which we ran as a demo. The links weren't active, but it was still a good thing to show.

"We still have some T-shirts left over, sizes Large to 4X, which we sold for $14.99 at the show. We'll sell them for $10 to local members. I'll have buttons available next month. I just forgot to bring them. In the end, we made a little money and paid for the trip."

Jim made a point of thanking John Lynn and Jerry Feltner for helping out at the booth. For the record, Jim and Mike Latinovich were the principal booth sitters.

In conclusion, Jim said the show was good; everybody liked it better than last year.

Jim then opened the floor up to the Question and Answer Session.

After the Question and Answer Session, Kevin Hisel got up to give his impressions of the Gateway Amiga Show.

First, he thanked Jim Lewis and Mike Latinovich for drinking all that liquor. :-) Kevin felt it was a good show, better than the last few we've gone to. He said there was a more positive atmosphere at this gathering.

Prefacing his comments with the statement that he had not personally attended the banquet, Kevin then gave a second hand report on banquet speeches. Kevin said that there we reports that Petro is frustrated with Amiga Inc.; he wants something to sell. Another report has it that Jeff Schindler is working real hard on his 12th business plan for the future of the Amiga.

Kevin summed up the atmosphere at the show this way: "I personally met with all the vendors; some are concerned; some positive."

He said Asimware MasterISO is very impressive. Mike Latinovich interjected that Rick Gionnini had impressed him by using an A4000 to burning 3 CD-Rs at the same time. Mike said, "You can't do that on a PC."

Kevin said Paul Nolan was showing Photogenics and Kermit Woodall was showing ImageFX 3.0 - "amazing effects. There's still new software coming out." The Boxer being sold by Antigravity was another notable sight.

Kevin concluded by saying he had brought a color printout of his report from the web for anyone who'd like to look at it.

Kevin then asked John Lynn for his impressions os the show. John said he had gone to the banquet. The food stank. The mood was pretty upbeat. However, John said he got tired of the second speaker, Mitch Stone, and his anti-Microsoft diatribe, and walked out after about twenty minutes of his speech. John said the classes were good, and that he had gotten a free upgrade of Lightwave, so all in all he was pleased.

Mike Latinovich said, "The beverages were good. Everything was a little smaller than Ohio show. The attitude was a lot better than Ohio. The developers were happy. Things are still selling well. About 8 or 9 CUCUGers went." Mike said he has seen Don Schaffer there with consignment table.

Just before the break, President Lewis asked the SIG Chairmen what they would be covering this evening in their respective meetings. Tonight for the Amiga SIG, Dave Witt will be doing something with DirOpus. For the Macintosh SIG, Jim Huls will be conducting a Q&A Session and we'll help Norris with his desktop problem.

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The Amiga SIG: Dave Witt Shows Directory Opus

reported by Kevin Hopkins

David Witt began by saying that there were various ways of installing Directory Opus 5.5. When asked, he said this version was not much different from DirOpus 5 Magellan. He said when loading over version 4, it tries to respect your previous preference settings.

Dave said DirOpus is one of the best applications on ANY platform. He said he has been using PCs for the last 4 years and has been actively looking for anything like it. But, as yet, hasn't found anything that comes close. Dave related some stories about his efforts to get the author to port DirOpus to the PC, but he was unsuccessful. The author remains loyal to the Amiga.

Returning to his demonstration, Dave said that there is a lot of stuff built right into DirOpus. You can use right-Amiga N will open up a new lister. Dave had a little trouble with the new version of DirOpus. He said he uses version 4. "I fear change." Dave said. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've been running DirOpus since 1990."

DirOpus has an FTP client in it and will work with AS225, Iworks, AmiTCP, Miami, TermiteTCP (not completely compliant), INet and MLink.

Dave said the Configure window is very well done. It's very easy to customize it. Dave brought up the button editor and showed how it worked.

Kevin Hopkins asked how many of the people in attendance had or used DirOpus. Of the eight people sitting there, seven of them have DirOpus.

Next month, Mike Latinovich will show UAE and MAME. MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulation, which is a program that does just what the name suggests, it emulates many of the old arcade favorites. There are 346 games in the MAME arsenal. There a currently versions for the PC (DOS and Windows), Mac, Amiga, and several other machines. Mike said it was originally programmed by a former Amiga guy. The whole thing fits on one Zip disk. Mike will be showing it on a PC.

Meanwhile, quietly in the background, Bill Zwicky had installed DirOpus on his Fujitsu Pentium 120 laptop, which was running UAE, the Unix Amiga Emulator. When the rest of us clued in to what he was doing, everyone was very impressed. Dave could see he finally had DirOpus for the PC. Bill said his machine with UAE was comparable to an A1000 in speed. He said a Pentium 166 is really the bare minimum to make the Amiga emulator worthwhile. A Pentium II 300MHz with UAE would compare to an A3000 in speed.

For next month, we decided to broaden our meeting topic to include a range emulators. We finished the meeting by watching Bill Zwicky play games using MAME on his laptop.

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The Mac SIG: Questions and Answers

reported by Edwin Hadley

Discussion started with talk of the recent decision to "can" the Newton. Why kill it and why not spin it off to those who'd develope it? Rich Rollins thought that Apple might want to bring it back at a later date. (The notetaker thinks this is a mistake. How do you regain the lost time of development?)

Edwin Hadley had a question about Desktop Printers and what causes them to "not find themselves." His machine was running OS-8 at the time and on occasion would not allow the Desktop Print Monitor open because the Desktop Printer could not be found. Two thing were suggested. 1) dump it; it isn't required in the system. You must turn off several extensions, though. 2) upgrade to OS 8.1, there have been improvements that would reduce or eliminate the problem. [Notetaker's comment: I have been running without the Desktop Printer since the March meeting and haven't had any problems. Also all of the machines at my place of work have been upgraded to OS 8.1 and none of them have had Desktop Printing problems since.]

A question came up about Microsoft Word printing problems. Seems that Word prints half of the first page of a document on the first page and the second half on the second page. Word then tells the poor fellow that he has a corrupt font. What to do? The suggestion was to use Font Box Utility to find and fix or replace the font.

We had a discussion of rebuilding the systems desktop. The keystroke is Option-Shift held down until the system asks if you want to rebuild. Another thing to do is start up without extensions as well. The keystroke is Shift-Option-Command, hold this until the system says extensions off, continue to hold down Option-Command until the system asks if you want to rebuild the desktop. If you do this and then restart, the system will rebuild the desktop again with the extensions on.

Discussion turned to the pros and cons of network computers. The pros are cheap "boxes"; software upgrades faster and cheaper; access to expensive software. The cons are software by the minute; limited capabilities of the "cheap boxes"; limited access to software due to choked bandwidth. Edwin Hadley mentioned the problems of working with software "off the server," i.e. slow response time, limits to the memory allotment by user (can the user change how much RAM a program uses?). And software just plain not working off of the server. "At the Life Sciences Artist Service we use some software on servers. The problems are not being able to use some software because someone else is; not being able to add more memory to a program because we don't have clearance to write to the server. We are always being told by MS Word that we should put the software on our machines for best results. And if the server is overloaded, you wait, and wait, and wait."

Network computers may also tend to work against the individual owner. Possibly making it hard or impossible for the individual owners to get software/hardware. Someone mentioned that this has or will be going full circle. A while back there was a system called Plato (a network computer), things moved to the individual machine, networking was added, now there is the move to a "network" computer which is similar to the old Plato system. [Notetaker's comment: This seems to be part of a trend in this culture in general to take away the power of the individual and to increase the power of the corporation. This leads to the demise of technologies because they are not "profitable" regardless of whether they are better than the "profitable" ones. Does Betamax and Amiga ring a bell? The bottom line rules and nothing else matters, which seems to be the opposite of the fanatic loyalty developed around such things as the Amiga. So ends my socio-political commentary.]

A question came up about icons "disappearing," i.e. an icon for a certain program converting to a generic icon. The answer is related to the rebuilding of the desktop mentioned earlier. The other possibility mentioned was that the program in question is no longer present on the machine. Basically what happens is that the system looses track of where the icon info is and rebuilding the desktop resets all the pointers the system uses to locate the icon info. Jim Huls mentioned that rebuilding with the extensions off except for Easy Open control panel can aid the rebuild.

Questions were asked about hard drive partitioning. It was suggested to keep partitions to 500 MB to keep documents the optimum size. The bigger the partition, the bigger the minimum file size. The new HFS Plus format system will keep the minimum file size constant. There are potential problems with reformatting your drive with the new HFS Plus, though. If it crashes, you need to have a OS 8 CD to get access to the drive. (A friend on the notetaker recently had some problems with a drive reformatted to the HFS Plus format. He tried to use a current version of Norton Utilities on fix his drive problems. Later, he did some searching on the Symantec site and buried inside one of their FAQ files was a small comment that using Norton on HFS Plus formatted drives may cause permanent drive damage. The network office where the notetaker works has stopped using and recommending Norton because "they (Norton) have dropped the ball too many time lately") Rich Rollins was suggesting that before reformatting to HFS Plus you should back everything up for safe keeping. He "loves" Dantz Retrospect for this purpose.

Rich Rollins said that the new OS 8.1 has increased machine speed and is more stable than OS 8. The notetaker agrees - "Our computers have been purring along just fine since upgrading. And, on the new 266 mhz G3, everything snaps except some of the Photoshop filters, Gaussian blur for example. While it is faster than before, it is not a proportional speed increase."

A question about viruses came up. What programs are available and good for what virus? Disinfectant is free and only good for some viruses. Virex and SAM are commercial applications and are good for a wider variety of viruses. Virex and SAM are good for program viruses, Hypercard viruses and macro viruses (MS Word files - effects files only.) Disinfectant is good for program viruses. To date there are 28 known viruses for the Macintosh platform and there are over 7,000 for the PC platform. (Another reason to own a Mac!)

At this point we had to vacate the premises so the poor Park District employee could go home and relax. The Park District people are very understanding and patient with us and we appreciate it.

Thus ends the word.

[Notetaker's addendum: A special note of interest to those who are interested in 3D software. Strata is giving away their StrataVision 3D version 4 software for shipping and handling ($10). If you want it shipped C.O.D. it costs $15 and they take personal checks. You can get the software by calling 1-800-STRATA3D or ordering it over the web by going to their site at www.strata3d.com. You might want go there anyway to see what sort of features it has. This is the program that Myst was built with. Also Zygote www.zygote.com has a good site with a lot of links to software companies and free sample 3D objects. There are also links to Electrimage and Lightwave among others. Want an abominable snowman or a scorpion or ... ? ]

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March Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins

The March meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, March 24, 1998, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way -the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were Jim Lewis, Dave Witt, Mike Latinovich, John Lynn, Jim Huls, Mark Landman, Kevin Hopkins, Kevin Hisel, Emil Cobb and Richard Rollins.

Jim Lewis: Jim noted that the Gateway show receipts had been taken care of by Kevin Hopkins. Jim said, "We made a little bit for our efforts. The memberships idea that Richard Rollins had turned out to be a very good one. We have some leftover T-shirts. We can dispose of them by offering a $30 combination of a membership and T-shirt, or $10 for shirt if you're already a member. We can put the rest up for sale on the AWD. We have about 30 buttons left." Jim said that doing these shows, as an ongoing thing, might be a good idea. The Board them reviewed the schedule of upcoming shows. Jim wanted it broadcast to the membership, "Does anybody want to work the Toronto show?" If so, contact Jim. Jim said we will probably go to the next Ohio show (October 2nd, 3rd, and 4th).

Dave Witt: Dave said the next Amiga SIG meeting will be an Amiga/emulators show. Cool stuff. He said he will also demo DirOpus 4 if there's time.

Mike Latinovich: Mike reiterated that next month's Amiga SIG will be on emulations. Mike said UAE is capable of running your old games. He will also show MAME.

Referring to the Gateway show, Mike said, "The show was cool; a lot of fun. I'm glad the Board and the members allowed us to go. People like to see the people behind the names." At this point there was some repartee between Jim Lewis and Kevin Hisel about their impressions of the show and the Amiga. In the end, Jim conceded that seeing a WinCE palmtop with the Amiga emulator running on it was very impressive.

John Lynn: The ever succinct John Lynn said, "Show was really good; meeting was really good." John thought it was cool that Bill Zwicky could put DirOpus on his PC laptop. John said he was looking forward to emulation programs next month.

Jim Huls: Speaking of the last meeting, Jim said, "We can never have enough Q&A."

Concerning the upcoming raffle, Jim said he had fired off some letters.

Jim reported that he is working on Mac Web Directory, a new search engine, and he is also working on its content. By way of encouragement, Richard Rollins told Jim that when he puts people online, he leaves them with one primary link to the Internet and that's the Mac Web Directory. Richard said the Mac Web Directory is a great place to start. Once the people see it, they become very enthused. Richard said he uses the link a lot.

Mark Landman: Mark let everyone know he has left his previous employment and everyone commented on how well he looked, rested, less harried, and having better color. With that as background, Mark said, "This is the first meeting I've been able to stay all the way through in a long time. It was interesting to view both sides [Mac and Amiga SIGs] and see what we actually do at these meetings.

Mark said Kevin Hopkins has been helping out with making the bank deposits. It's been helping a lot.

Mark gave his Treasurer's Report and stated that we needed to think about how to handle our funds.

Jim Lewis commented that the establishment of credit card handling will probably happen this week.

Kevin Hopkins: Jim Lewis thanked Kevin for tabulating the show receipts and membership information. Kevin gave the Board a review of how that process was handled. The funds were deposited. The membership receipts were translated, transcribed, and entered into the database, after they had been compared against our online applications to see if any of the new people were renewing members or had applied before. The appropriate information was then passed to Emil Cobb and Kevin Hisel, so the latter could email the thank you notes. Kevin Hopkins then emailed or postal mailed each new member a newsletter to confirm their membership.

Kevin queried Jim Lewis about a couple of questionable receipts and also about some ticket stubs from prize winners at the show.

Kevin reported on the deposits he had recently made.

Kevin told Kevin Hisel that with the information Jim had given him he could complete the membership list Mr. Hisel uses to draw prize winners from for the Amiga Web Directory. The list would be delivered soon.

Kevin asked for a few modifications to the online membership form. As with the Clone PC machine choice, Kevin asked for a Mac Clone and Amiga Clone selection. Kevin Hisel said it would be no problem.

Jim Huls made a couple of suggestions for changes in the email version of the newsletter. He asked that links for the Amiga Web Directory and the Macintosh Web Directory be added to the Back Page along with the CUCUG Main Page. Jim also noted that CUCUG's postal address was not in the email version. Kevin said he would make the additions.

Kevin then asked about making arrangements for an alternate site from which to email the newsletter. He had tested Pine on Kramer and found that it didn't work. Kevin Hisel said he'd attend to making those arrangements with Advancenet.

Kevin then mentioned he'd seen advertisements for an Amiga show on the west coast in July in Sacramento. The AmiWest '98 show will be July 10-13. Information can be obtained at http://www.sacc.org/amiwest/.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin reported that he had sent of the Computer Fair notes. Some of the responses were "We don't do the Amiga anymore." However, there was a lot of positive feedback as well.

Kevin reported that he had awarded five copies of Myst over the AWD in February, five more in March and he would be awarding five Vulcan MegaPacks in April.

Kevin Hopkins suggested we get a PC version of Filemaker Pro for use by Jim Lewis and Kevin Hisel so they can use the club membership database.

Kevin Hisel reported that there were 1/4 of a million hits on the Monday after the Gateway show, a record day for the AWD. The volume on Tuesday registered a record second and Wednesday came in third.

Mr. Webmaster reported we now have a Russian mirror of our site.

Disk sales were "about as expected."

Kevin reported that our ISP had received a complaint about us, the CU CUG Klan (K.K.K. ???). Yes, the person was serious. Spooky what goes on in some people's minds.

Emil Cobb: Emil asked, "What are we going to have for the Mac next month?" When no concrete plan was voiced, he volunteered to show his QuickCam.

Emil reported that we had 24 members at the last meeting.

Richard Rollins: Richard reported that the Advancenet account has been cleared up.

Richard said Ed Hadley might do something next month for the Mac SIG. He thanked Jim Huls for stepping in, on short notice, and conducting the Mac SIG for him this month. In a general discussion of program ideas, Richard said the Mac SIG might be doing MAME. There was also a discussion of WAV and MP3 formats, and SoundForge on the PC and MacAmp and MPecker on the Macintosh.

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The Back Page:

The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then.

Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the Bresnan Meeting Center in the Champaign Park District Headquarters (398-2550). The Center is located at 706 Kenwood, 1/2 block south of the corner of Kenwood and John Street, in west Champaign. Kenwood is the fourth north-south street off of John as you are going west, after crossing Mattis. The Center is in the northwest corner of Centennial Park, northwest of Centennial High School.

Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.

Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by the postal service or email at the member's choice. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.

This newsletter was prepared with PageStream 2.22 on an Amiga 3000 25/100 and output to an HP Laserjet IIP plus. Pagestream was donated to CUCUG by Soft-Logik Publishing Corporation.

For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):

President:         Jim Lewis           359-1342              NOSPAMlewis_j_e@yahoo.com
Vice-President:    Emil Cobb           398-0149               e-cobb@uiuc.edu
Secretary/Editor:  Kevin Hopkins       356-5026                  kh2@uiuc.edu
Treasurer:         Mark Landman        398-2910        mlandman@earthlink.net
Corporate Agent:   Jim Lewis           359-1342              NOSPAMlewis_j_e@yahoo.com
Advisor & Mac SIG: Richard Rollins     469-2616
Webmaster:         Kevin Hisel         406-948-1999              khisel @ cucug.org
Amiga SIG:         John Lynn           586-3555              jlvideo@pdnt.com

Surf our web site:

CUCUG Home Page

Amiga Web Directory

Macintosh Web Directory

To get on the net free, call Prairienet at (217) 255-9000. Login as "visitor". Once you're on, just type "go cucug" for a good place to start.

CUCUG
912 Stratford Dr.
Champaign, IL
61821

ToC