Totalamiga-09.pdf

Issue 9, Winter 2001

£3.50

Read our full review

We play the new

PPC/Warp3D Version

NEWS

Editorial

Update

Contents

News

SEAL Update ...................... 3

World of Amiga South East. 4

Features

Reader Opinion................... 10

Payback PPC Preview........ 11

DTP Explained.................... 12

DTP Utilities ........................ 17

Mediator Multimedia CD ..... 24

Reviews

Metaview............................. 20

ArtEffect Plugins Collection 22

Epson Stylus Photo 790 ..... 26

Memory Card Reader ......... 27

PhotoScope ........................ 28

Shogo ................................. 29

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

Archive Utilities ................... 40

Support

Top Tips .............................. 34

DTP Tutorial ........................ 36

Back to Basics Archiving ... 39

IRC Tutorial ......................... 41

Clubbed.info

Clubbed is published quarterly by South

Essex Amiga Link. For subscription details

please contact us at the address below or

visit our website.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors: Elliott Bird

Mick Sutton

Kevin Twyman

Jamie Winter

Proof Reading: Sharon Sutton

Cover Art: Roy Burton

If you have any queries suggestions or

want to contact us for any reason please

use one of the following:

EMail: clubbed@seal-amiga.co.uk

WWW: http://www.seal-amiga.co.uk/

Post: Clubbed, 26 Wincoat Drive,

BENFLEET, Essex, SS7 5AH,

ENGLAND.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937

(19:00 - 22:00 UK time only please)

Only Amiga Made it Possible

Clubbed is designed and laid out using:

Hardware:

Amiga 3000

CyberStorm PPC/060

CyberVision PPC

128Mb RAM, about 8Gb HDD space.

Software:

Amiga OS 3.9 by Amiga

PageStream 4 by Softlogik

ImageFX 4 by Nova Design

Photogenics 5 by Paul Nolan

Final Writer 5 by Softwood

Ghostscript 6.50 from Aladdin Enterprises

There are also some essential utilities we

couldn’t live without: Directory Opus 5,

SGrab, MCP, Turbo Print 7, MakeCD.

Our thanks to the creators of this and all

the other great Amiga software out there.

Clubbed is entirely created on the Amiga,

no other machines are used at any stage of

the design or layout process.

Meetings

It has to be said that things have been

fairly quiet at SEAL meetings over the

last few months, we think there are

several reasons for this. Firstly it has

been the summer when many people

are on holiday or at least would rather

be outside than sitting in front of a com-

puter. Secondly it has been a quiet time

in the Amiga market as a whole, there is

a great feeling of “wait and see” with

several big developments on the

horizon. Finally several of SEAL’s

movers and shakers have been very

busy with the forth coming WoASE show

which has also meant that this issue of

Clubbed has greater urgency than usual

too.

Future Meetings

Once the show is over we aim to

revitalise SEAL meetings, hopefully this

will be aided by the release of new hard-

ware and software at around the same

time. So SEAL members, now is the

time to be thinking about topics you

would like to see covered at future

meetings and if you could contribute in

any way to make them more interesting.

W elcome to the ninth issue of

Clubbed, if everything has

gone to plan you could well

be reading this just before the World of

Amiga South East show which we’re all

working hard preparing for as I write.

I’m sure regular readers won’t fail to

spot that this issue is on time for a

change! I would like to thank all the con-

tributors to this issue, and everyone who

lent a hand in getting it finished. Special

thanks should go to Mick Sutton who

spent a lot of his evenings helping me

with the layout, in addition to writing

several articles.

One idea we do have is a “bring and buy

sale” where members can bring along

any kit they want to sell and can also

buy from other members, we had one of

these in SEAL’s first year and it was a

success. Also SEAL has received

several donations of hardware and soft-

ware in the last year and those items

which are not needed for the club

machines will be available for sale at

this meeting, all contributions going to

club funds.

The next few months look like being a

time of significant changes for Amiga

users, several major products, from

Amiga and others are expected in this

time frame. There is the Amiga One and

OS4, then there are the other solutions

based on OS 4 from Elbox, Matay and

anyone else who chooses to take up a

license. MorphOS, probably best

described as an Amiga compatible PPC

OS, with the BPlan Pegasos mother-

board will probably be shown to the

public for the first time at a show in

Cologne, Germany in mid November.

Finally we have the Amiga OS XL x86

emulation package from H&P, which

gives Amiga users yet another option!

we’ve had to look for a new printer for

this and future issues.

All that said we have had some interest-

ing meetings, bizarrely most featuring

CyberVision 64/3D graphics cards! We

had a go at fitting an AMon automatic

monitor switch to Alf Whitfield’s

CV64/3D. Next Elliott Bird asked for

some help setting up a CV64/3D in his

A4000, he had installed the card under

Picasso 96 but it was very unstable.

This turned out to be a hardware incom-

patibility between early DCE manufac-

tured CV64/3Ds and Zorro II (see Top

Tips on page 38 for more details). Then

Steve Willis brought along a Power

Tower, Z4 bus board and, you’ve

guessed it, a CyberVision 64/3D making

him the latest SEAL member to ex-

perience the wonders of high resolution,

high colour fast screens.

Before I go into the ramifications of this I

would like to thank Jeff for all the hard

work he’s put into getting Clubbed

printed, including putting up with my last

minute phone calls of... “don’t print it yet,

I’ve spotted a major typo!” (oh yes folks,

Issue 7’s cover very nearly referred to

the little known prehistoric era the

“Scantasic” instead of “Scantastic”!).

Everyone at Clubbed and I’m sure all

our readers wish Jeff the very best of

luck in finding a new job.

SEAL on the ‘net

SEAL has several, rather under used,

resources available on the Internet, with

more and more members getting on line

I think it’s time to give them a bit of a

plug. There are several mailing lists

which use the Yahoo Groups service,

these allow anyone with EMail to easily

receive information about the club. Seal-

announce is for club related announ-

cements and is a very low traffic list, it

would be great if all members with EMail

could join this list as it makes sending

announcements much easier. To join the

list, which is free, simply send a blank

EMail to: seal-announce-subscribe

@yahoogroups.com Seal-talk is an in-

teractive list for members to communi-

cate outside meetings, to join send a

blank Email to:

seal-talk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Then you can post your Amiga problems

and comments to everyone belonging to

the group by sending one EMail to:

seal-talk@yahoogroups.com.

Next Issue........................... 43

Gallery ................................ 44

From our initial enquires with local prin-

ters it seems that our printing costs are

going to increase considerably, probably

nearly doubling in fact. Because

Clubbed is non profit making there is no

way we can absorb this increase.

Therefore we have had to make a

decision as to how to continue without

making a loss on every issue sold. As

we need to have the magazine printed in

time for World of Amiga South East (ex-

actly four weeks away as I type this) we

have decided that we must put up the

price of the magazine in time for the

show. The new price is £3.50 per issue

with UK subscriptions at £14.00, current

subscriptions will not be effected, but

renewals from this issue will be at the

new price. We hope people will feel the

magazine is worth it and we will do our

best to make it good value for money.

From a Clubbed point of view we’d like

to hear your opinions on these develop-

ments, and which products, if any, you

choose to buy when they are released.

We can then start thinking about the fu-

ture direction of the magazine, although

that will also depend on the choices

made by our contributors.

Do The

But not everything revolved around the

Phase 5 designed card, new member

Philip Beasley had trouble with booting

his A4000, when we opened it up at the

meeting it not only had some interesting

hardware (a time base corrector for

video work and a GVP ‘040 accelerator)

but it also showed just how much dust

can collect in a machine that hasn’t

been opened for six years. We also

found a leaky battery, as mentioned in

the Top Tips section of issue eight. Sam

Byford is another member with an inter-

esting Amiga, his A4000 is in a Power

Tower with the new Elbox PCI bus

board, he’s just waiting for the Mediator

PCI logic to arrive so he can use those

exciting and inexpensive expansions.

Thing

Legalese

The views expressed in this magazine are those

of the author of each piece, they do not

necessarily reﬂect the views of the editor, other

contributors or SEAL.

Please Note: Clubbed is produced by SEAL

members in their spare time, while we will always

strive to produce the magazine on time and

include all the advertised contents this is not

always possible due to other commitments. The

price you pay for Clubbed covers our costs and

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

If you wish to contact a contributor please send

your message to one of the addresses above and

we will pass it on.

Amiga is a registered trademark and the Amiga

logo, AmigaDOS, Amiga Kickstart, Amiga

Workbench, Autoconﬁg, Bridgeboard, and

All other trademarks mentioned are the property

of their respective owners.

Along with the big changes in the Amiga

world we have had quite an eventful

month here at Clubbed. Currently the

magazine is printed for us by SEAL

member Jeff Martin who works in the

printing department of a large insurance

company. This means we get Clubbed

printed at cost price and in the excellent

quality you saw in issues three to eight

(and the second print run of issues one

and two). Unfortunately Jeff has in-

formed us that the printing department is

closing at Christmas and more impor-

tantly for us the machine used to print

the Clubbed covers has broken down

and probably won’t be fixed. Therefore

We’d like to make Clubbed more “in-

teractive” so we need your input!

Got a question you’d like answered

or an opinion you’d like to share?

Write to us and we’ll include it in a

letters page.

SEAL also has an IRC (Internet Relay

Chat) channel on Arcnet called #SEAL,

here you can chat with other members

in real time, for more information on IRC

see Elliott Bird’s tutorial on page 41.

There are full details of all SEAL’s

Internet activities on the website at:

Got a tip for other readers or even an

article up your sleeve? Send it in and

you could very well see your name in

print.

Well that’s about it from me, enjoy the

magazine and see you at World of

Amiga South East!

Got a suggestion or comment on the

magazine? Let us know and we’ll try

and make Clubbed better for you.

Robert Williams

www.seal-amiga.co.uk

CLUBBED - Issue 9

Winter 2001

NEWS

x86

World of Amiga South East

New Look

Aminet

AmigaOS on

In the Amiwest update sheet included

with issue 8 of Clubbed we were

surprised to find that two, ostensibly

similar Amiga Emulators were being

developed in tandem. One was

Amithlon, developed by Harald Frank

and Bernd Meyer, which was demon-

strated by Bill McEwen at Amiwest and

the other, previewed in Amiga Active

issue 23 turned out to be AmigaXL from

Haage and Partner.

Amiga drivers to support your hardware,

for example if you want to print on a

modern inkjet you would still need

TurboPrint. From what has been said

Using Amithlon will be very much like

using a very fast 68k Amiga, it will still

have the limitations of an Amiga such as

limited driver support, but on the other

hand it you like your Amiga driver soft-

ware for scanning, printing, CD writing

etc. you should be able to continue

using it, just much faster.

The main Aminet website has been

given a make over, the site is still simple

and quick to load (if anything I think the

one graphic is smaller than before) but

now all the common functions are easily

available on the main page. Straight

away you can see the list of the last

week’s uploads and the search function

is in the side bar along with direct links

to the top level directories.

At the moment the new look only seems

to be available on the US site at:

Similarities

Both emulators run on a host OS, Linux

for Amithlon and QNX for AmigaXL, but

hide the fact from the user. They are

both derived from UAE although

Amithlon’s developers say

almost every aspect has

been rewritten, we don’t

know yet how much of

UAE remains in AmigaXL

although H&P do say it

uses a “modified and highly

accelerated 68k emulator”.

Another common factor between

the two is their claimed speed, on a

fast x86 PC speeds of up to 20 times

‘060 have been quoted, which is quite

amazing! Finally both will read your ex-

isting Amiga hard disks allowing easy

transfer of programs and data. With both

emulators offering such similar facilities

and Amiga and H&P being partners in

various developments it seemed clear

they would have to come to some sort of

agreement. The end result is that Haage

and Partner will publish both emulators

in a package called AmigaOS XL which

includes all the necessary licences,

neither will be available separately.

AmigaXL is said to make much more

use of the underlying QNX operating

system, for example it uses QNX printer

drivers and network access is via the

QNX TCP/IP stack. From what

has been said it doesn’t

seem possible to access

the various interfaces of

the PC as Amiga devices

from AmigaXL, the FAQ

states that several ap-

plications requiring device

level access to interfaces (for

example CD burning and scan-

ning) will not work under the emula-

tion. On the plus side being more reliant

on the host OS means that AmigaXL

can offer features like USB support and

even access to QNX programs like

Opera and Voyager web browsers (com-

plete with SSL, Macromedia Flash,

MPEG, RealAudio, JavaScript and Java-

support) within the emulation.

From the FAQ it seems that AmigaXL

will also have some what better support

for programs using the Amiga chipset

than Amithlon which is purely for pro-

grams that run on a graphics card.

However with a fast PC there is no

reason why one couldn’t run UAE within

either of them to support older software.

http://us.aminet.net/pub/aminet/

Mediator

Fast

Ethernet

Elbox has announced new drivers for

Ethernet cards based on the Realtek

RTL8139 chipset, which supports

10MBit/s and 100MB/s operation, this

will be the first 100MB card available for

the Amiga. The new drivers are avail-

able for Elbox’s Mediator range of PCI

bus boards and will also require the user

to own the recently released Mediator

Multimedia CD (see our preview on

page 24 for further details). The

RTL8139 is used on many PCI Ethernet

cards and tends to be very economically

priced, you should be able to find a

compatible card for well under £20.

P reparations for the World of

Cloanto

Apart from the bar other highlights of the

show will be several presentations in-

cluding one from Fleecy Moss of Amiga

and several games tournaments. Keep

an eye on the show website for further

details and a time table of presentations.

Amiga South East have been

going very well, we now have a

list of exhibitors and a floor plan as you

can see here. In addition to the main

hall, the venue boasts a bar which will

be staffed throughout the show and a

smaller hall that will be used as a café

and presentation area.

8-14

Eyetech

15-16

Formatt Home Computing

100% Amiga

SEAL

Differences

Until the package is released or at least

demonstrated it is hard to know how the

emulators will compare in performance

and the “feel” of their emulation. From

the specifications and other information

released so far it seems that the main

difference between them is how much

use they make of the services offered by

the host OS.

ANT

Kickstart

The show is taking place on Saturday

the 3rd of November 2001 at:

Poplars Hall,

Poplar Drive,

Hutton,

Brentwood,

Essex, CM13 1YU.

The AmigaOS XL package with both

emulators, licensed OS 3.9, 3.1 ROM

image, QNX and Picasso 96 will cost

299DM which is about £100. For loads

more information visit Haage and

Partner’s AmigaOS XL web site at:

http://amigaosxl.haage-partner.de/

Note: The detailed information is under

the “Products” link at the top of the

page.

ASA

Elbox

23-24

Mediator Support

This is the current list of exhibitors, as

usual with these things there will

probably be some minor changes by the

day of the show but this is what to ex-

pect:

25-27

Virtual Programing

and Amiga Active

28-30

Weird Science

31-33

Stellar Dreams

Hyperion Games Area

It will run from 12:00 until 17:00. If you

haven’t bought your tickets already they

will be available on the door at just

£3.50 each. Full details including direc-

tions from the M25 and on public

transport are on the show website:

Mediator boards and the MMCD are dis-

tributed in the UK by Power Computing,

for further details visit:

http://www.powerc.com

or telephone them on (01234) 851500.

1-2

Kicksoft

Gloucestershire Amiga Group

Amithlon seems to make very little use

of its Linux base, it uses Linux drivers to

access basic motherboard resources

(mouse, keyboard, IDE and SCSI con-

trollers etc.) and to initialise graphics

cards. From that point on you must have

Pagan Games

We also have an assurance from Haage

and Partner that they will be there to

demonstrate the Amiga OS XL package

but we don’t know exactly what form

their attendance will take yet.

HAUG and

Blackpool

The UK distributor for the Package is

Virtual Programming:

http://www.vpltd.com

+44 (0) 1202 41111 7

user groups

To Be Announced

Elbox have a website at:

http://www.elbox.com

Amiga

http://www.worldofamiga.com

CLUBBED - Issue 9

Winter 2001

NEWS

MorphOS

DV Editing

GREX Bites Back

Earth Ten

Years On

In the last few weeks DCE have

announced a host of new drivers for PCI

cards installed on their GREX family of

PCI expansion boards. At the time of

writing none of these new drivers have

been released. Here is a run down of

the drivers being developed and some

other GREX related news.

E.P.I.C. Interactive have announced that

they will be publishing a port of Earth

2150: Escape from the Blue Planet, the

follow up to Earth 2140 reviewed last

issue, they plan to release a Mac ver-

sion and then one for MorphOS running

on bplan Pegasos hardware. Like Earth

2140, 2150 is a real time strategy game

but unlike it’s predecessor it features a

true 3D environment. The game was

very popular in the PC world, in fact

there has already been a sequel, The

Moon Project and yet another E2150:

Lost Souls is about to be released.

E.P.I.C. state that ports of these games

will follow at a later date.

The GREX

4000D Replaces the

A4000’s daughter board.

Titan Computer have released some

specifications and screen shots of their

new non-linear digital video editing

package Motion Studio. Titan are the

publishers with the product being devel-

oped by Motion Studios, the people be-

hind the Elastic Dreams and Fantastic

Dreams image manipulation packages.

Like those two titles Motion Studio

features a very flash non-standard user

interface which you can see in this

screen shot.

To run Motion Studio you will

need a computer with a

PowerPC G3 running at

400Mhz, firewire ports and

MorphOS 1.0. Titan ore ob-

viously aiming this product at

computers based on the

bplan Pegasos motherboard

which is expected to be

shown to the public running

MorphOS later this year. In

the mean time, to whet your

appetite take a look at the

titan website:

USB

Drivers for Universal Serial Bus PCI

cards will enable many common, low

cost peripherals to be connected, initially

Human Interface Devices (HIDs) such

as keyboards and mice will be sup-

ported and according to an interview

with the developer “many other devices

will soon follow of course”. There are

two standards used by USB controllers

(such as those found on PCI cards),

OHCI and UHCI currently the driver sup-

ports UHCI and has been tested with a

card based on the VIA 83C572 con-

troller, OHCI support is planner for the

final release.

STB and 3Dfx .

To run Visionary you will need

CyberGraphX running on a PCI card in

your GREX. No release date has been

set but it is expected to be available

some time in October, probably coincid-

ing with the new GREX board for the

A4000 desktop.

Other GREX News

According to DCE the second model in

the GREX family of PCI bus boards has

now entered production. The GREX

4000D is a replacement for the A4000

desktop’s Zorro daughter board and

provides four PCI slots, four Zorro slots

and one video slot. Unlike the other

options that will fit a 4000 (Matay’s

Prometheus and Elbox’s Mediator Z3

and Mediator 4000) the GREX will fit

properly in the standard A4000 desktop

case. A CyberStorm MkIII or PPC is

required because the GREX plugs

directly into the local bus slot of these

accelerators.

Motion Studio is designed for MorphOS

and supports the bplan Pegasos

motherboard, using its Firewire connec-

tion to load Digital Video (for example

from a digital camcorder). 40 video

effects are included and most of them

are performed in real-time on a system

which meets the minimum

specifications. There is also full sound

support with over 20 sound effects in-

cluding echo, fades and decrackle.

Plugins are supported so additional

effects can be easily added. Finished

projects can be saved in common

Quicktime and AVI formats and we

assume back to a DV recorder.

For further details visit the E.P.I.C.

Interactive website is at:

http://www.epic-interactive.com

http://www.titan-

computer.com/

motionstudio

The official Earth 2150 site is:

http://www.earth2150.com

Hyperion Spread

the Curse

TV Cards

Visionary is a new

driver system for

TV cards based on

the popular

Booktree 878, 879

and 848 chipsets

with Microtune or

Philips tuner chips

are supported.

This encompas-

ses many cards

from different

manufacturers,

the Vision Factory

site already lists

thirteen different

cards which have

been tested and found

to be compatible. The developers also

say that Visionary is designed to be

easily expanded to support more chip-

sets and tuners where developer

documentation is available.

AMP Plays

DVD!

In the last issue of Clubbed we reported

that Hyperion had released Voodoo 3

Warp3D drivers for Matay’s Prometheus

PCI board enabling Warp3D ap-

plications, in particular games such as

Shogo and Heretic II to take advantage

of the Voodoo 3’s hardware 3D ac-

celeration. Since then drivers for DCE’s

GRex board have been released and

Hyperion have signed a deal with Elbox

to produce Mediator compatible drivers.

As we go to press Elbox have

announced that the Mediator drivers are

now available and that they also support

the Voodoo 4 4500 and Voodoo 5 5500.

However Ben Yoris or Hyperion has

stated “We did do Voodoo 3 drivers for

them but no Voodoo 4/5. It’s a remote

possibility that these Voodoo 3 drivers

work on a Voodo 4/5 but...we have no

way of testing or knowing this.” We will

wait with interest to see exactly what is

going on!

A new version of AmiDog’s Movie Player

has been released with a major new fea-

ture, it can now play DVD movies, the

first utility on the Amiga to do so! AMP

version 2 (not to be confused with

Amiga AMP the MPEG audio player) is a

PPC only movie player using WarpUP, in

addition to DVD it also supports video

CDs and MPEG video files. DVD

playback requires a fast PPC card and a

DVD-ROM drive attached to a fast inter-

face, the author recommends a SCSI

drive on a DMA controller. For owners of

slower PPC cards there is a low resolu-

tion which decodes the video at half the

width and height approximately doubling

playback speed.

In addition to the Visionary TV card

drivers DCE have also announced that

drivers for three other PCI cards will

soon be available for GREX users. The

first is for 100MBit Ethernet cards based

on the popular and inexpensive Realtek

RTL8139C chipset. Two sound cards will

also be supported with AHI drivers, the

Terratec128i and 512i, Terratec is a

German company and from what I can

see both these cards are affordable at

around £25 and £50 respectively. In the

Visionary screen shot you can also see

the sound mixer utility for these cards.

Blittersoft

Long standing UK Amiga hardware and

software dealer Blittersoft has been

bought by Virtual Programming, a rela-

tively new company developing,

amongst other things, software for Tao’s

Elate platform that forms the basis for

the AmigaDE. One of VP’s directors is

Mark Hinton, the publisher of Amiga

Active and he is joined by Paul Lesurf of

Blittersoft.

£10 in cash to the author, buy on-line

and get the keyfile EMailed to you

through regnet for 18USD or buy it on

CD from Kicksoft for £18.

Virtual Programming say that they in-

tend to support both the classic Amiga

and new Amiga markets and will con-

tinue to support Blittersoft’s existing cus-

tomers. You can find Blittersoft’s range

of classic Amiga products on the VP

website and development is set to con-

tinue.

The program can be used for 30 days

before registering, so you can download

the latest version from:

http://www.amidog.com

and see what you think.

http://www.vgr.com, the official Vision

Factory site is an excellent source of

news on the GREX, Visionary and

matters graphics card related.

Visionary features a “skinnable” user

interface which allows the user to design

their own GUI, from the screen shots

provided it seems to be very flexible,

with the option to reposition the

elements of the GUI, as well as chang-

ing the graphics. It supports Visual

Reality skins which are supplied with TV

tuner cards from companies including

Although AMP is a command line pro-

gram it is supplied with an attractive MUI

GUI allowing you to easily change its

options and basic controls are provided

in the playback window to seek to a

position in the movie and to pause and

restart. There are several options to get

a registered copy of AMP, you can send

Hyperion are at:

http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com

http://www.dcecom.de also has some

interesting product information.

You can order from Kicksoft at:

http://www.kicksoft.co.uk

On their site you can register and then

download the latest version of Warp3D

from the download area.

Further details can be found on the new

Virtual Programming website at:

http://www.vpltd.com

Details of the other registration options

are in the AMP documentation.

CLUBBED - Issue 9

Winter 2001

FEATURES

NEWS

W hile compiling the news for

Perfect Paint 2.7 MUIBase

TurboPrint

7.20

this issue we noticed several

software packages that had

been given a minor update, although

these updates might not normally make

the Clubbed news page we thought

these programs were so good or inter-

esting that they were worth mentioning.

Georges Halvadjian has been at it

again, gradually improving the freeware

Perfect Paint making it a really com-

prehensive package, particularly for

detailed work like game and web

graphics. Here are some of the useful

features which have been added since

we last looked at Perfect Paint way back

in version 2.4:

MUIBase is a powerful shareware rela-

tional database with, you’ve guessed it,

a MUI interface. It supports multiple

tables with an unlimited number of

records which can be dynamically

loaded from RAM. A wide selection of

field types are allowed including

datatypes fields for displaying images

and other file types. Other features in-

clude a query editor and powerful

search, sort and filter functions.

A new version of Isreesoft’s essential

print enhancement system is now avail-

able, 7.20, like the earlier 7.10 release is

a pure driver upgrade, keeping

Turboprint up to date with the new prin-

ters that are constantly released. As

there are no functional upgrades you

don’t need to upgrade unless you have

one of the newly supported printers.

ProStation

Audio

• A new bridge tool that enables you to

exchange pictures, brushes, palettes

and animations with any program with

an AREXX port, settings files are

provided for most common graphics

applications and also Final Writer and

PageStream.

Epson Stylus Photo 750, 790, 870,

890, 1200, 1270, 1290 with full photo ink

support

HP DeskJet 810, 812, 815, 830, 832,

840, 882, 930, 950, 970, 98x, 99x

supplied and users are asked to con-

tribute other languages.

• Improved gradients which can now

have translucent elements and up to

10 different colours.

Italian developer Audio Labs has made

several announcements regarding their

professional audio software ProStation

Audio. If you’re not familiar with

ProStation it is an application for editing,

mixing and mastering digital audio. It

provides a virtual mixing desk and time

line user interface which supports auto-

matic and manual control. ProStation

supports some sound cards directly

such as the Sunrise AD516 and all

cards with an AHI driver, it is compatible

with many audio file formats, ideal for

working in a multi platform environment.

The latest version, 1.6, adds an AREXX

interface (which compliments the built in

programming language), enhancements

to printing and relationship display and

improved HTML documentation.

Some of the new printers supported:

Canon BJC 1000, 2000, 4400

Canon BJC 3000, 6000, 6100, 6200,

7100, 8200 with full support for photo

cartridge

Canon S 400, 450, 600, 800, 4500 with

full support for photo cartridge

Epson Stylus Color 460, 660, 670,

760, 860,880, 900, 980

For a list of all the printers TurboPrint

supports visit the IrseeSoft homepage:

http://www.irseesoft.com

The full version of TurboPrint costs

£38.95 from Eyetech, they don’t yet list

the 7.20 upgrade but according to

Irseesoft lit it is 69DM, about £20.

• Load and save transfer anims for

Voyager, AWeb and IBrowse.

• A thumbnail bar which shows you the

currently open images (buffers).

MUIBase is well worth a look, the

evaluation version is slightly limited and

times out after four weeks, registration

costs $30 which is around £20. For

more information visit:

• Many improved animation features

including transitions between two

frames, dissolves and motion blur.

Download the latest version of Perfect

Paint, absolutely free, from:

http://gothic.fr.free.fr/amiga/

http://www.muibase.de

• Perfect Paint is now localised, a 98%

complete French translation is

The Voyage

Continues

The Future of the Amiga?

Mick Sutton and Robert Williams try and make sense of recent developments,

it’s thought provoking stuff!

Audio Labs’ first announcement was of a

new upgrade to ProStationAudio 4.20

which provides enhanced plug-ins sup-

port. Next was that they have tested

PSA with a Mediator and Sound Blaster

128 sound card in a professional studio

environment and found the combination

passed their tests. Later a similar an-

nouncement was also made about the

DCE GREX and Terratec PCI sound

cards, again they are said to work well

and Audio Labs are working with DCE to

ensure the best compatibility. Audio

Labs also noted that these bus boards

support the installation of two PCI

graphics cards, ProStation supports this

configuration with two monitors to in-

crease the screen real estate available.

I thought it was about time we gave

Vaporware’s Voyager web browser

another mention in these news pages as

at the moment it is by far the most

frequently updated Amiga browser, new

beta versions for the 3.3 are being

released approximately monthly and the

beta is now becoming very usable.

Voyager is also the only browser to sup-

port Flash and PDF plug-ins that display

these files inside the browser window.

The major feature in version 3.3 is a

new layout engine which is being

designed for better HTML, Javascript

and Style Sheet com-

patibility and to be

much faster too. The

latest beta versions

which the Voyager

team note still contain

a debugging code

and lack op-

timisations are al-

ready much faster on

complex pages than

previous versions.

major additions in recent betas:

W hen Amiga announced the

AmigaOS. If the world becomes split

between “classic” 68k Amiga users, OS4

PPC users and x86 emulator users,

plain 68k code will be the only thing that

runs on all the platforms, which could

stifle the development of OS4 specific

programs.

probably most importantly it will be the

platform for future AmigaOS develop-

ment, the x86 emulators will be stuck

with OS3.9 (although on OS4 port would

almost certainly be technically possible).

It is increasingly hard to see where any

future AmigaOS development will come

from, either for OS4 or OS3.x, there are

now very few developers of any size,

can you imagine a major new applica-

tion or original game being released in

the current Amiga market? In a market

with little new development the dif-

ference between OS4 on the AmigaOne

and OS3.9 on x86 is much less, you are

running your existing programs under

emulation in both cases. But x86 also

offers you the option to run other OSs

complete with their library of programs.

• Big overhaul of the download manage-

ment.

Amithlon Amiga OS emulator

for x86 Pc’s at AmiWest

2001 it caused a huge uproar amongst

Amiga users, since then much more in-

formation has become available and

another emulator has been announced,

Amiga XL from Haage & Partner. Both

these emulators claim to run modern

68k Amiga software at speeds far in ex-

cess of current 060 based Amigas using

run of the mill PC hardware. As these

two emulators are potential competitors

and both require a licensed AmigaOS

3.9 Amiga and Haage & Partner decided

to release them both together as a

package called AmigaOS XL.

• Javascript improvements, many to fix

problems with specific sites.

• Single window mode, multiple pages

can be shown in one window, using

tabs at the top.

So what about PPC programs that we

know won’t be compatible with the x86

emulators? Many PPC programs are

also available in a 68k version that

should run much faster than on a current

‘060 system, they could well perform at

a similar speed to the PPC versions on

current hardware! While there are major

PPC only programs these tend to be

ported games which, to be brutally

honest, can probably be found in the

bargain bin of your local PC store, they

may be good but they’re not going to be

a selling point of a new platform.

Beta versions can be downloaded from

the V3 portal at:

http://v3.vapor.com

ProStationAudio is available in several

configurations starting at 125USD

(about £90), a demo version can be

downloaded from:

http://www.audiolabs.it

The idea of running your favourite

Amiga programs at break neck speed on

readily available and therefore cheap

hardware is pretty exciting stuff for many

Amiga users. However,if the emulators

are successful they could well jeopar-

dise sales of the AmigaOne and other

OS4 based systems, especially amongst

Amigans who would find it useful to run

other OS’s and have access to their

software on the same machine as the

Maybe we’ve got this all wrong, and as

Amiga say current PC users will try

AmigaOS XL and, to miss quote Victor

Kyam “like it so much they buy the

AmigaOne”! Maybe there will be some

major developments for OS4 that make

it really worth while, we’ll just have to do

what Amiga users do best... wait and

hope!

The AmigaOne (and other similar

systems such as Elbox’s Shark) will cer-

tainly have many good points for ex-

ample it should have much better com-

patibility with older software, especially

titles which use the custom chipset and

will also run existing PPC software. But

Apart from general

bug fixes and speed

ups here are the

CLUBBED - Issue 9

Winter 2001

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