Download issue 12 - Total Amiga Magazine

Contents 

Editorial 

Issue 12 

Autumn 2002 

Contents 

News 

Editorial ..............................2 

News Items ........................3 

Frogger NG Preview ..........7 

Alan Redhouse Column.....8 

Fleecy Moss Column .........9 

AmigaOS 4 Update......... 10 

INet Dial & SolarNavigator 

........................................ 12 

buzzword......................... 13 

Features 

ADSL Broadband............ 14 

NTL Broadband............... 17 

Reviews 

ADSL Router................... 18 

Highway USB.................. 22 

The Feeble Files ............. 28 

NEC TFT Monitor............ 31 

PD Paradise: 

Taskbar Roundup............ 34 

Jabberwocky ................... 38 

Support 

UK Usergroup Lisiting........8 

ADSL Router Tutorial ...... 19 

TFT Monitor Specifications 

Explained ........................ 33 

PageStream 4.1 Tables... 40 

Photo Panoramas ........... 44 

Back Issues..................... 47 

Subscription Form........... 47 

Colour Screenshots ........ 48 

Advertisers 

Index 

Amiga Super Bit.............. 30 

Eyetech ........................... 26 

Forematt Home Computing 

........................................ 21 

Kicksoft ................... 39 & 43 

North West Micro ............ 21 

We’re back with another 

issue of Total Amiga! The 

theme of this issue has turned 

out to be bringing new 

technologies to the Amiga. First 

off we have a feature on 

connecting to the Internet via 

ADSL. Although ADSL on the 

Amiga has always been possible 

the new wires only packages 

mean that at last you can buy 

and fit your own equipment so 

you don’t need a PC or to rent a 

modem you don’t need. Another 

technology which has been 

around for a while but which is 

new to the Amiga is USB. E3B 

have produced the first Amiga 

USB card in the form of the 

Highway Zorro card, we put it 

through its paces on page 22. 

But before you read the rest of 

the mag (what do you mean you 

don’t read my editorial first!) here 

are some thoughts about the 

future of Total Amiga, please let 

me know your thoughts. 

If you read my editorial in a last 

issue you’ll know that we were 

aiming to get this issue out two 

weeks early as the first step in a 

move to bi-monthly publication. 

We haven’t been able to achieve 

that although this issue is on 

time (give or take a week) 

according to our current 

quarterly schedule. Rather than 

promise the next issue early and 

not make it again we’ve had a 

think about what would need to 

happen to enable us to publish 

bi-monthly. As we’ve said before 

the crux of the matter is getting 

more writers for the magazine. 

Since our last appeal for writers 

a couple of issues ago we’ve 

Total Amiga 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 

Michael Carillo 

Philip Corner 

Geoff Milnes 

Fleecy Moss 

Alan Redhouse 

Mick Sutton 

Proof Reading: Mick Sutton 

Cover Art: Robert Williams 

had a number of people offer to 

write the occasional piece. While 

this is helpful and much 

appreciated what we really need 

is a number of writers (two or 

three would make a big 

difference) who are willing to 

write every issue, perhaps 

contributing a regular column 

and another article such as a 

review or tutorial related to their 

area of interest. While I think we 

cover some aspects of the 

Amiga scene well such as 

graphics and DTP we realise 

there are areas that currently get 

little coverage in Total Amiga. 

This is purely because no one in 

the current team has a great 

interest in them, off the top of my 

head I can think of music, 3D 

graphics and programming as 

cases in point. If we could recruit 

writers with an interest in those 

areas then it would be much 

easier to fill the mag each issue 

and would also take some load 

off the current team. 

So what are we going to do to 

improve this situation? The first 

step is this editorial, if you think 

you could offer your services to 

the magazine as a regular writer 

please get in touch, also if you 

know someone who would be a 

good contributor please let them 

know we’re on the lookout for 

writers. As a non-profit 

publication we can’t pay writers 

but you will get a free copy of 

each issue you contribute to. 

Once this issue is out the door I 

will add these details to the Total 

Amiga website and we will post a 

“wanted” advert to Amiga 

websites and mailing lists to let 

the wider world know. 

We know from our experience so 

far that finding reliable writers 

who are willing to commit 

Contact Us 

If you have any queries 

suggestions or want to contact us 

for any reason please use one of 

the following: 

EMail: editor@totalamiga.org 

WWW: http://www.totalamiga.org/ 

Post: Total Amiga, 

26 Wincoat Drive, 

BENFLEET, 

Essex, SS7 5AH, 

ENGLAND. 

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937 

(19:00 - 22:00 

UK time only please) 

themselves to the magazine is 

very difficult. Especially with the 

Amiga market as quiet as it 

currently is many people have 

lost their enthusiasm for the 

platform as it stands and are in a 

wait and see mode. There is also 

the fact that the number of new 

product releases is currently low 

which makes finding enough 

content to fill a magazine more 

regularly difficult at the moment. 

Taking all this into account I think 

that it is not realistic to move to 

bi-monthly publication until OS4 

and the AmigaOne systems have 

been released. Although it’s hard 

to say exactly what effect this will 

have on the market it has to be 

positive and, at a minimum, we 

will have the new machines and 

OS to write about! 

Before you thank “oh that means 

sometime... never then” take a 

look at our Amiga OS4 update 

on page 10, it really does sound 

as if OS4 is getting close and will 

almost certainly be out by 

Christmas so we shouldn’t have 

too long to wait. 

I’ve had a few E-Mails asking if 

there will be a letters page this 

issue but... no letters to publish! 

So if you would like to see a 

letters page please write in, 

letters can be commenting on 

the magazine, Amiga products or 

the general Amiga situation. 

We’re also looking for questions 

for a Q&A section and to spur us 

on with ideas for tutorials and the 

Top Tips section. Please E-Mail 

your letters to me or write to the 

address in the grey bar below. 

Enjoy the magazine and I hope 

you’ll take the time to help us 

make it better, 

Robert Williams 

editor@totalamiga.org 

Only Amiga Made it 

Possible 

Total Amiga is designed and laid 

out using: 

Hardware: 

Amiga 3000 

CyberStorm PPC/060 

CyberVision PPC 

128Mb RAM, about 13Gb HDD 

space. 

Software: 

Amiga OS 3.9 by Amiga 

PageStream 4.1 by Softlogik 

TypeSmith 2.5 by Softlogik 

ImageFX 4.5 by Nova Design 

Photogenics 5 by Paul Nolan 

News 

Bytes... 

Eternity have announced 

that the Amiga version of 

their Tales of Tamar game 

will be released on the 1st 

of September. Tales of 

Tamar is a turn based 

strategy game set in time 

similar to the middle ages, it 

is designed for on-line 

Internet play via EMail and 

incorporates an on-line chat 

facility so players can talk in 

real time. ToT will be 

released for the Amiga first 

but Eternity are also working 

on versions for Linux, 

Windows, Mac and Java so 

the potential is there for a 

huge base of players. 

Tales of Tamar has been in 

development and testing for 

several years and by the 

look of the website and 

screenshots it will be a very 

professional and engrossing 

game. We’ll have more 

details and possibly a 

review in the next issue of 

Total Amiga. The Tales of 

Tamar website is at: 

http://www.tamar.net 

2 TOTAL AMIGA Autumn 2002 

You may have heard of 

Rainboot before as a program 

to create very fancy boot 

screens, complete with system 

information and other effects. A 

new version is now in the 

works that will extend its 

capabilities so it can be used to 

create presentations too. The 

really exciting thing is that 

Rainboot can work on chipset 

and graphics card screens so it 

may well be the first program 

that can be used to make 

presentations and multimedia 

applications which can be used 

on all Amigas. Presentations 

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: Total Amiga 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 Total Amiga covers our costs 

and nothing more, we don’t make 

a profit from it. 

Contents 

Rainboot 4 

Smarter than your average boot picture? 

About Total Amiga Legalese 

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. 

Total Amiga is entirely created on 

the Amiga, no other machines are 

used at any stage of the design or 

layout process. 

Fonts 

The body text of Total Amiga is set 

in Triumvirate Normal as supplied 

with PageStream, the heading 

typeface is Forgotten Futurist by 

Ray Larabie. Take a look at Ray’s 

huge range of freeware fonts at 

http://www.larabiefonts.com and 

his commercial foundry at 

http://www.typodermic.com. 

created will not be tied to a 

particular screenmode and can 

even run in a window on a 

public screen, these can even 

have transparent sections. 

Rainboot presentations are 

controlled by a script file which 

is created in a text editor and 

calls separate sound and 

graphics files. The final 

presentation can then be 

compiled into an executable 

needed no special support 

files. Don’t expect a GUI for 

putting the presentation 

together but according to the 

author the process should be 

The euro calculator is a Rainboot 4 

presentation with a transparent 

background running on the 

Workbench screen. 

An example transition. 

This time Rainboot is running 

in a normal window. 

quite simple for most people. 

Here are some of Rainboot 4’s 

key features: 

• 100% system friendly, runs 

on all Amigas. 

• Transition effects. 

• Smooth graphics scrolling. 

• Transparent graphics 

• Easy monitoring of user input 

from keyboard and mouse 

• Supports different fonts 

• Use anim brushes, sound 

modules and samples 

Rainboot is shareware and the 

current version (3) costs 

12USD (about £8.50), we’ll 

bring you a full review of 

version 4 when its released. 

For more information visit the 

Airsoft Softwair page at: 

http://www.airsoftsoftwair.com/ 

If you wish to contact a contributor 

please send your message to one 

of the addresses in this section 

and we will pass it on. 

Amiga is a registered trademark 

and the Amiga logo, AmigaDOS, 

Amiga Kickstart, Amiga 

Workbench, Autoconfig, 

Bridgeboard, and Powered by 

Amiga are trademarks of AMIGA 

Inc. 

All other trademarks mentioned 

are the property of their 

respective owners. 

3

News 

Bytes... 

Prometheus 

GoldEd 

AIX 

The final version of Dietmar 

Eilert’s well known text 

editor, GoldEd Studio, is 

about to be released. Some 

time ago Dietmar 

announced that the 

development of GoldEd had 

been cancelled even though 

he had said version 7 was in 

development. The new 

version is an update on 

version 6 and will include 

the work on version 7 that 

had been completed, which 

includes an overhaul over 

the user interface giving it a 

slicker look and new icons. 

The full version of GoldEd 

Studio costs 59.99 Euro 

(about £40), discounts are 

available for existing users. 

Anyone who preordered 

version 7 will get the 

upgrade free. 

For further details and to 

download a demo visit: 

golded.dietmar-eilert.de 

PageStream 

4.1.4 

A free upgrade to 

PageStream 4.1 (reviewed 

last issue) is now available 

from Grasshopper. This 

version fixes numerous 

minor bugs from the 4.1 

release, registered users 

can download it from a 

secure section on the 

Grasshopper website: 

www.grasshopperllc.com 

Development 

Resumes 

Over the last few months 

there has been little news of 

progress on drivers for the 

Prometheus PCI to Zorro 

card which looked so 

promising when it was first 

released. Filip Dab-Mirowski 

from the manufacturer, 

Matay, recently posted to 

the Amiga-Prometheus 

mailing list that development 

had been delayed due to 

some personal issues not 

related to Matay but it was 

now in progress again. A 

firmware upgrade for the 

Prometheus has been 

developed which will allow 

DMA (Direct Memory 

Access) transfers between 

PCI cards and a 

programmer device will be 

available to allow users to 

upgrade their cards without 

returning them to Matay. 

The firmware upgrade will 

allow PCI cards which rely 

on DMA such as sound, TV 

and 100Mb/s Ethernet cards 

to be supported. Matay say 

they are currently working 

on drivers which will take 

advantage of the updated 

ROM and will release it 

when some drivers are 

ready. 

To keep up-to-date with 

Prometheus developments 

join the mailing list at: 

www.yahoogroups.com/ 

group/Amiga-Prometheus 

You can also try the Matay 

website at: 

http://www.matay.pl 

Prototype of the 

programmer device. 

Another 

Elbox have announced another 

member of their growing family 

of Amiga tower kits, the Mirage 

3000 is a sleek but 

undoubtedly huge tower for the 

A3000 desktop. Unlike the 

A4000 model mentioned last 

issue the Mirage 3000 does 

not include a bus board or 

Mediator logic card however a 

Mediator 3000D bus board is 

required to use the tower so 

you will need to purchased one 

with the Mirage. The tower has 

three 5.25” drive bays, a bay 

for the A3000’s floppy drive 

and five internal 3.5” bays for 

hard disks. The whole shebang 

is powered by a 300W power 

supply. The Mirage 3000 costs 

179Euro excluding VAT 

(£159.95 including VAT from 

Power Computing) and the 

Mediator 3000D busboard and 

logic card is 289.95Euro 

(£244.95). 

Details on Elbox products can 

be found at: 

http://www.elbox.com 

Elbox products are available in 

the UK from Power Computing: 

http://www.powerc.com 

+44 (0) 1234 851500 

WoASE Returns 

After last years successful 

show that was attended by 

over 350 people several UK 

usergroups are again working 

together to stage World of 

Amiga South East 2002 on 

Saturday the 2nd of November. 

The show will be at the same 

venue as last year, Poplars 

Hall, near Brentwood in Essex, 

just a few minutes drive from 

the M25 and walking distance 

from a main line railway 

station. The venue has free 

parking and a licensed bar, 

sandwiches and snacks will 

also be available on the day. 

The following exhibitors have 

already confirmed that they will 

be attending: 

• Amiga (in the form of Fleecy 

Moss) 

• Eyetech 

• Forematt Home Computing 

• Kicksoft 

• Weird Science 

Right: the 2001 show was packed. 

We are talking to other 

potential exhibitors including 

several European retailers and 

developers and hope to 

announce more exhibitors over 

the next few weeks. 

In addition to the exhibitors 

there will be many other 

attractions at the show. We’re 

planning to have more 

demonstrations and games 

and there will be a strong 

usergroup presence offering 

information and friendly advice. 

To keep up to date with news 

of the show please visit the 

website: 

http://www.worldofamiga.com 

IOSpirit (the new name for 

Innovative, the developers of 

fxPaint, and VHIStudio) have 

released a new version of their 

all-in-one scanning package 

fxSCAN. Version 4 has many 

new and enhanced features. 

One of the most interesting is 

the improved OCR (optical 

character recognition) engine 

which now had improved 

accuracy and can output the 

scanned document as an 

HTML file complete with 

pictures. Native modules are 

supplied for PPC (WarpUP and 

PowerUP), MorphOS and 

Amithlon so fxSCAN gets 

maximum performance on 

these systems, this should 

especially benefit the OCR 

function. As far as we are 

aware fxSCAN is the first 

commercial application to 

provide direct Amithlon 

support, this means the 

module is compiled as x86 

code so it does not have to run 

Thanks to emulators, keyboard 

adaptors and new systems 

such as the AmigaOne more 

and more “Amiga” systems are 

being used with standard “PC” 

keyboards usually equipped 

with inappropriate “Windows” 

function keys. Netherlands 

based Amiga dealer Computer 

City are planning a solution to 

this blight, official Amiga key 

caps to replace the Windows 

keys. The key caps will be 

sourced from Cherry and will 

be available separately or fitted 

to one of Cherry’s CyBo@rd 

keyboards. To keep the cost 


Keep on Scanin’ 

through the 68k 

emulator. The 

author of fxSCAN 

says this doubles 

the speed on 

Amithlon. 

With the optional 

IO USB module 

fxSCAN 4 will 

support USB 

scanners, initially most of the 

Epson USB range except the 

1250 and 1250 are expected to 

work with the driver. 

Here are some of the other 

interesting features: 

• PDF Support - scans can be 

exported as multi-page PDF 

files for cross platform 

compatibility, Ghostscript is 

not required. 

• Improved Photocopy 

Function - includes preview 

with brightness, contrast and 

gamma controls. 

• Direct support for TurboPrint - 

reasonable 

Computer City 

are looking for 

pre-orders so 

they can bulk 

order the keys 

caps, the preorders 

will not 

be charged 

until they are 

shipped. 

The key caps alone, for you to 

fit to your own Cybo@rd will 

cost 16Euro (about £10.50), a 

complete keyboard is available 

for 40Euro (£26) and a wireless 

The enhanced photocopy options. 

not via graphics publisher. 

• Support for automatic 

document feeders and 

transparency adaptors if they 

are enabled in the driver. 

• PNG Saver 

• New HTML and PDF 

documentation with 

illustrations. 

Plus many other 

improvements, look out for a 

full review of fxSCAN 4 in the 

next issue of Total Amiga. 

fxSCAN 4 is available now 

from the IOSpirit website, a 

downloadable version is 

39.99Euro (about £26) and the 

CD version is 44.99Euro 

(£29.25). Owners of version 3 

can download an upgrade for 

22.99Euro (£15) or buy a new 

CD for 24.99Euro (£16.25). 

The USB module is 10Euro 

(£6.50) extra. 

For further details and to order 

on-line visit: 

Using OCR (left) to convert a document into an HTML file http://www.iospirit.com 

complete with images, layout and font sizes. 

Windows Keys be Gone! 

keyboard and mouse is 

140Euro (£90). 

To place a pre-order visit: 

http://www.compcity.nl/ 

amigakeyboard 

News 

Bytes... 

Radeon for 

CyberGraphX 

Vision Factory Development 

have revealed that they 

have a working driver for 

ATI’s Radeon range of 

graphics for their 

CyberGraphX version 5 

driver system. Version 5 is 

part of the MorphOS system 

which is under development 

for BPlan’s Pegasos PPC 

computer. VFD report that 

most of the driver work is 

finished and in time they 

expect to back port the 

driver for Amiga PCI 

busboards such as the 

GRex. Radeon VE and 7500 

cards have been tested and 

the driver supports the 

common PC BIOS variants 

(as opposed to the less 

common Mac cards). 

Further details on 

CyberGraphX can be found 

at: 

http://www.vgr.com/cybergfx 

Mediator 

USB 

With the excitement about 

USB support coming to the 

Amiga Elbox have 

announced that Mediator 

users will not have to wait 

long for drivers so they can 

use a USB PCI card in their 

Mediator. Elbox are 

developing their own USB 

stack (the software that 

drives the USB card) but 

have not yet announced 

what type of USB devices 

they will support, we also 

wait to hear which PCI 

cards can be used. 

According to a posting on 

the Amiga-Mediator mailing 

list from Elbox the drivers 

should be out by the time 

you read this. 

5

News 

Bytes... 

AWeb Now 

Open Source 

The bad news: Yvon Rozijn 

has stopped development of 

his well know web browser, 

AWeb. The good news: He 

has opened the source code 

so that other developers can 

continue his work and 

improve AWeb. 

A project has already been 

formed to continue work on 

AWeb and already they 

have released a new 

version which can be 

compiled with OS 3.5/3.9’s 

Reaction libraries rather 

than ClassAct which 

required a commercial 

developer kit and is fully 

functional without a keyfile. 

Some new JPEG and GIF 

plug-ins have also been 

released. 

The AWeb Open Source 

team are looking for more 

developers to help them 

improve AWeb, for more 

details and to download the 

latest version visit: 

http://aweb.sunsite.dk 

More Flickers 

Fixed 

Individual Computers have 

added a new product to 

their wide range of handy 

Amiga expansions. The 

Indivision is an external 

flickerfixer for all Amigas, it 

boosts the horizontal 

frequency of Amiga 

screenmodes to 31kHz so 

they can be displayed on a 

standard SVGA monitor and 

also removes flicker from 

interlaced screens. The 

unique feature of the 

Indivision is that it can be 

used with video mixing 

equipment such as a 

genlock. The Indivision is 

available now from 

Individual and their resellers 

and costs 99Euro (about 

£65). Further information 

should be available at: 

http://www.jschoenfeld.com/ 

USB Market Hots Up 

Australian Amiga retailer and 

ISP Boing.net have announced 

a Zorro II USB card called the 

Thylacine, the card is slated to 

be available in August. 

Interestingly the card will be 

supplied with the AmigaOS 4 

USB stack but compiled for 

68k. Prototype Thylacine cards 

have been used as the 

hardware reference for the OS 

4 stack’s development. Initially 

drivers will be supplied for 

printers, keyboards and 

scanners. Printers are said to 

work with the exisitng version 

of Turbo Print without 

modification so we expect a 

USB device is provided for 

printers. Printers are supported 

by a human interface device 

class driver, at the moment this 

is basic and only supports 

simple keyboards and mice 

(we expect this means no 

scroll wheel or “multimedia” 

key support. 

Digital Almanac III, the latest 

release of this astronomy 

program, came out some time 

ago, since its release regular 

updates have appeared. The 

latest is version 4.8 which 

includes experimental access 

to the GSC-2 catalogue of 

nearly half a billion stars! A 

beta copy of version 4.9 can be 

downloaded from the 

program’s website and the list 

of changes and enhancements 

looks impressive: 

• Improved settings GUI 

• Automatic star booster for 

field angles smaller than 20 

degrees 

• Dynamic star data cache to 

improve responsiveness 

• Automatic low memory 

handling 

• Various improvements to star 

data included 

• Implementation of the 

Hertzsprung-Russel diagram 

with star ephemerides 

• Detailed graphics of solar 

eclipse circumstances from 

the years 1900 to 2100 

Scanners are supported by 

drivers for the freeware 

Betascan package. Several 

Epson USB scanners have 

been tested and most others 

(with the notable exception of 

the Perfection 1250 and 1250 

Photo) are expected to work. 

An Epson Stylus 740 printer 

has been tested and again 

USB printers which have a 

driver in Turbo Print are 

expected to work. 

Thylacine developer, Robert 

Tsien tells us that additional 

drivers are in the works. 

IOSpirit are working on digital 

cameras, another developer is 

working on mass storage 

• Improved textures for the sun 

and several satellites 

• Plus many more fixes and 

improvements (most of which 

I didn’t understand!) 

Users who want to try out 

Digital Almanac can now 

download a keyfile for the DA-II 

release from Aminet 

(misc/sci/DAlmanac_Key.lha) 

The Thylacine prototype. 

device support (which as we 

have seen with the Highway 

opens up support for some 

digital cameras directly and 

others via memory card 

readers) and Robert is working 

on Ethernet drivers. 

The Thylacine card should be 

available by the time you read 

this, it costs 134.95 Australian 

Dollars (about £47) plus 

shipping and VAT direct from 

Boing.net. We have been 

promised a board for review so 

you should be able to read all 

about it in the next issue. 

For now visit: 

http://thylacine.boing.net 

for further details. 

Stargazing from you Desktop 

so they can try the full program 

free of charge. The full version 

of DA-III on CD-ROM costs 

45Euro (about £30) including 

postage and can be ordered 

direct from the author. For 

more information and to 

download a demo of DA-III 

visit: 

www.soft-ware.de/dalmanac 

Apparently this is a Hertzsprung-Russel diagram used to 

determine star type! 

Audio 

Evolves 

A new version of Audio 

Evolution is set to be one of 

the first applications released 

exclusively for Amiga OS 4. 

The program allows audio to 

be recorded directly to hard 

disk while playing back a 

number of other tracks. It also 

offers real-time effects, 

automation, editing and 

synchronisation with other 

applications and MIDI 

sequencers. 

The new version is being 

developed on exisitng 68k 

hardware but with the power of 

the new PPC hardware in 

mind, the final application will 

be 100% PPC code. In a 

recent Interview on Amiga 

Arena Audio Evolution’s 

developer revealed a few of 

the features which will be 

present in version 4: 

• Non-linear, non-destructive 

editing on the time line 

including cut, copy, paste, 

move, split, trim and 

crossfade actions. 

• Unlimited undo. 

• Real-time effects with realtime 

parameter control. 

Parameters can also be 

remotely controlled by MIDI 

controllers and can be fully 

automated. 

More information will be 

available closer to the final 

release of the new version. 

Audio Evolution is published by 

Computer City, pricing for the 

new version has not yet been 

confirmed but it is expected to 

be a bit more than the current 

version 3 but less than 

comparable PC and Mac 

products. For further details 

visit: 

www.compcity.nl and 

www.audio-evolution.com 

You can read the full interview 

at: 

www.online-club.de/~ARENA 

The mixer from AE 3. 


News 

Frogger NG 

Preview 

The new version of Frogger promises to be one of the first multi-format media players on 

the Amiga, Michael Carrillo takes a first look. 

It’s not often I feel the urge to 

review a piece of software, I 

prefer to bore people with my 

pompous opinions, still, every 

now and then something comes 

along that just grabs me by the 

proverbials. So why has 

FroggerNG caught my attention 

you may be thinking to yourself? 

Well although it is in beta, 

FroggerNG now supports AVI, 

MOV and more interestingly, 

RealMedia files, including 

RealMedia audio. The list of 

video and audio formats Frogger 

play is very impressive with the 

supported audio formats list 

being as extensive as the video 

formats. As you would expect, 

FroggerNG still plays MPEG 

files, although in this release not 

as well as it’s earlier incarnation. 

Bear in mind though that it is still 

in beta and Sebastian 

Jedruszkiewic, the author of 

FroggerNG acknowledges that 

there are still some issues to be 

addressed. Finally though, 

Amiga owners are able to 

access media formats that have 

been around on other platforms 

for ages with the obvious 

exception being Microsoft media 

files. This isn’t really a major 

pain since the since the amount 

of WM files is small by 

comparison to the other media 

formats. 

So how does it play you are no 

doubt wanting to know, well, the 

version being tested is the 

WarpOS version downloaded 

from the Frogger download area, 

running on an A1200 with a 

Blizzard PPC603@240mhz and 

a BVision. 

MPEG’s - Pretty poor, as 

previously mentioned, the code 

is un-optimised but should be 

fixed in the next release. 

AVI & MOV files - Pretty good, 

plays all pop videos found on a 

music CD single, with only a 

slight, barely noticeable jerk 

every few seconds. However, a 

few hiccups were noticed on the 

AVI side on an internet download 

of a Cinema movie, with the 

images and audio being a few 

seconds out of sync. Whether 

this is the fault of FroggerNG or 

my slow PPC603 is unclear at 

this time. 

Real Media - At the time of this 

mini preview, the real media side 

had not been tested however 

various reports on the Frogger 

mailing list and elsewhere have, 

overall given the RealMedia a 

thumbs up as well. 

VideoCD - Unsure, the files used 

to test this function were all all 

jerky and often would have large 

pixels all over the FroggerNG 

window but again this could be 

because of the Amiga’s IDE bus 

limitations. 

What’s Missing? 

This AVI file played back perfectly. 

This version is stripped down 

and by that I mean there is no 

menu options. CLI or Icon 

tooltype are the only means 

available at the moment, the 

menu option should be reenabled 

by the next update, also 

glaringly missing is the open 

FroggerNG on own screen 

function, which generally speeds 

up the display of a video file. 

Overall this is a very positive 

step in the right direction, 

Sebastian should be 

congratulated on the hard work 

he has put in to this. I eagerly 

look forward to the next release 

of FroggerNG and despite it’s 

beta limitations there is nothing 

better on the Amiga at the 

moment. Despite it’s beta 

limitations I cannot recommend it 

enough. 

Lastly, I hope Sebastian 

implements some form of play 

list so that I can play all 20 odd 

pop videos on my Amiga next 

time I have a party. 

Stop Press! 

Since writing this article, 

Frogger202 beta for WarpOS 

was released as well as versions 

for 68k, PowerUp and MOS. 

There have been some 

improvements since the last 

beta, amongst them support for 

.MP4 files produced in Quicktime 

6 as well as support for motion 

JPEG, MJPA and MPJP 

amongst many others, plus of 

course more bug fixes. Still not 

quite good enough for a full 

commercial release, but if the 

updates continue at this pace it 

won’t belong before the Amiga 

community has a product that it 

can show off with the best. 

Check it out at 

http://www.frogger.rules.pl 

7

News 

Amiga One Update 

Eyetech’s MD, Alan Redhouse updates us on the most anticipated Amiga hardware for years. 

What a busy two months 

this has been! Whilst 

OS4 continues its development 

- now with most of the planned 

OS4.2 features built-in - we 

have shipped AmigaOne G3- 

SE boards with (Linux/UAE- 

PPC) to developers, and the 

AmigaOne has itself made 

several public appearances - 

including at the AmiWest show 

in Sacramento at the end of 

July. 

We initially shipped these 

boards to a group of 

development experts to 

thoroughly test out the 

hardware and to port modern 

Linux distributions - and UAE - 

to the AmigaOne board. They 

did an outstanding job, porting 

five modern Linux-PPC 

distributions in a matter of 

weeks. However it soon 

became apparent that the 

BIOS that we had originally 

specified (i.e. the code in ROM 

London 

West London Computer Club 

Based in West London 

Contact: Alan Paynter 

Phone: 07951 909262 

ANT - Amiga North Thames 

Based in North East London 

Website: 

www.amiganorththames.co.uk 

Contact: Michael Carrillo 

Phone: 07956 867223 

South East England 

AmiSEK 

Based in Kent 

Website: http://uk.geocities.com/ 

pagan_johnuk 

Contact: John Worthington 

EMail: pagan@amiga.ca 

which initialises the hardware 

and loads the OS) had several 

limitations. Accordingly, and in 

parallel with OS4 development, 

we and Hyperion have put 

together a team to port the 

PPCboot firmware to the 

AmigaOne. This has actually 

proceeded much more quickly 

than we originally expected 

and so we now expect to ship 

the remaining developer 

boards - with the new firmware 

- at the beginning of 

September. 

Having brought the BIOS 

development ‘in-house’ means 

that we/Hyperion are able to 

add in some significant ‘Amigalike’ 

features to the boot 

A prototype of the AmigaOne XE motherboard. 

Notice the removeable CPU module above the two DIMM slots. 

UK Usergroup Listing 

Looking for some hands-on help with your Amiga or somewhere to meet other Amigans? 

Why not contact one of these fine usergroups and visit http: /www.amigroups.co.uk. 

Amiga Support Association 

www.amigasupport.org.uk 

Contact: Paul Qureshi 

EMail: paul@world3.net 

Kickstart Amiga 

Based in Surrey 

www.kickstart-amiga.co.uk 

Only Amiga User Group 

This is a new group just starting. 

Based around the 

Berkshire/Hampshire border. 

Website: www.onlyamiga.all.at 

Contact: Kelvin 

EMail: jumpship@amiga.org 

Mobile: 07811 270792 

SEAL - (South Essex Amiga 

Link) 

Based in Essex 

Website: 

www.seal-amiga.co.uk 

Contact: Mick Sutton. 

Phone: 07710 039664 

East England 

Felbrigg Amiga Group 

Based in East Anglia 

Contact: Andrew Beeson 

EMail: 

andrew.beeson@ukonline.co.uk 

South West England 

Gloucestershire Amiga Group 

Based in Cirencester 

Website: 

www.glosamigagroup.co.uk 

Contact: Nick Darley-Jones 

Phone: 07779 365155 

South West Amiga Group 

Meets in Bristol 

Website: http://www.swag.org.uk 

Contact: Andy Mills 

Phone: 01275 830703 

process as well as maintaining 

full compatibility with Linuxonly 

and dual-boot systems. It 

also means that we should be 

able to ship end-user systems - 

initially with Linux, but with a 

free upgrade to OS4 - at the 

start of October. This will not 

suit everybody - for example 

those that want a load-and-go, 

ready built OS4/A1 system, but 

sufficient people have 

requested it to make it a 

worthwhile option. For those 

who want a complete ready-togo 

OS4/A1 system both us and 

Hyperion are on track to have 

these available in time for 

Christmas - i.e. by the end of 

November 2002. 

Of course this PPCboot 

development also benefits MAI 

Logic, the manufacturers of the 

Articia ‘S’ chipset used in the 

AmigaOne, by allowing them to 

offer a compatible version of 

PPCboot to developers of settop 

boxes etc. who want to use 

their chipset. In fact one spinoff 

of this that I am particularly 

proud of is that MAI and 

Eyetech have formed a long 

term business partnership 

outside of the AmigaOne 

project. 

Finally I would like to say a big 

thank you to all those who 

joined the ‘I am Amiga’ club in 

June/July. Although neither 

Eyetech nor Hyperion benefit 

financially from this scheme it 

does give us a much firmer 

basis to estimate initial 

production volumes, and may 

even allow us to make some 

small - but no doubt welcome - 

price reductions to end-user 

boards (subject, as always, to 

exchange rate variations). 

So - if you haven’t done so 

already - now is the time to 

start saving for your new 

AmigaOne, and quickly! 

That’s all for now, 

Alan 


Wales 

Cymru Amiga User Group 

Meet in Cardiff 

Website: www.caug.org.uk 

Contact: Simon Eastop 

Phone: 07788 137560 

Scotland 

AGNES (Amiga Group North 

East Scotland) 

Website: http://clix.to/agnes 

GAUG - Glasgow Amiga User 

Group 

Based in Glasgow 

Website: www.gaug.cjb.net 

or: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ 

donaldwm 

Mailing List: 

gaug-subscribe@yahoogroups.com 

Contact: Duncan Gow 

Phone: 01436 679226 

North England 

BAC - Blackpool Amiga Club 

Website: 

www.blackpoolamigaclub.co.uk 

Contact: Barry Riddiford 

Phone: 01253 397339 

Huddersfield Amiga User Group 

Website: www.alt-woa.org 

Contact: Geoff Milnes 

Phone: 01484 322101 

SSAmiga 

Based in Wigan and West 

Lancashire 

Website: www.ssamiga.co.uk 

Contact: Wesley Potter 

Phone: 01942 863798 

Mobile: 07775 747429 

There has been a lot of 

debate on various Amiga 

forums relating to our announcement 

of both a certification 

program for hardware to run 

AmigaOS4.0 and the inclusion 

of authentication code in the 

boot ROMs that will ship in 

such hardware. Whilst much 

of the argument has been 

reasoned, much has been absolutely 

rot (the best one 

being the all existing Amigas 

were open hardware platforms 

- hello, can anyone say 

custom chipset?), and a small 

amount has been pure mischief, 

its aim apparently to 

force us to drop this plan so 

that pirated copies of 

AmigaOS4.0 can then run on 

non certified hardware. 

The purpose of the hardware 

certification program is to 

ensure that consumers know 

when they are buying a 

machine that will run 

AmigaOS at its optimum efficiency. 

Many reputable 

dealers in the past have been 

tarnished with a brush made 

black by a few rogue dealers 

and companies that have singularly 

failed to provide the 

service they advertised, 

whether that be shoddy components, 

badly installed software 

or worse, just disappearing 

entirely with hard earned 

pre payment money. 

Whilst that is the primary aim 

of the certification program, it 

also has a wider agenda, 

namely to ensure that as we 

begin to move the Amiga platform 

back into the mainstream 

markets, existing and new 

consumers can be guaranteed 

a quality experience, from first 

contact with a developer all 

the way through to post purchase 

support, something that 

has been notoriously lacking 

in the past; and again with just 

one or two companies blighting 

the reputations of the rest 

of the community. 

The second issue raised is the 

inclusion of an authentication 

mechanism in AmigaOS4.0, 

namely the infamous `dongle 

code’. In short it is a section of 

code inserted into the boot 

ROM which the OS refers to 

at various times during an 

AmigaOS session to ensure 

that it is on a certified and 

authentic AmigaOne machine. 

The single reason for this is to 

prevent piracy of AmigaOS. 

Whilst we have all heard the 

stories of piracy in the past, 

we have to ensure that from 

the start of the rebirth of the 

AmigaOS, we are actively 

promoting anti-piracy 

measures. Firstly, we will be 

glad if we can get 10k users of 

AmigaOS4.0 in the first 12 

months, not just from a user 

base perspective but also 

from the revenue that that will 

bring in, going directly to 

those who have worked on 

AmigaOS4.0. Secondly, if we 

are to attract developers back 

to such a small platform, they 

have to see evidence that 

Amiga is serious about 

protecting not just its property 

but also the property and 

potential sales of the developer 

itself. Nothing can demonstrate 

the curse of piracy on 

our platform so much as the 

Freespace situation, where 

Hyperion’s actual sales of the 

product were four times less 

than the number of product 

registrations for the updates. 

People such as Davy Wentzler 

(Audio Evolution), Ron of 

Computer City (Inga, 

Mediapoint) and Stefan 

Burstroem (Ibrowse) have not 

just stuck by our platform and 

created product that we all 

News 

FleecySpeaks 

Amiga’s Chief Technology Officer gives us a taste of what to expect in AmigaOS 4. . 

use, but they are at this very 

moment working hard on 

product for OS4.0. We as a 

community owe it to them to 

do everything possible to 

ensure that they are 

rewarded. Without that 

reward, there will be no new 

products, and the Amiga 

rebirth will falter and die. 

I want to end on a high note 

though. The Amiwest show in 

Sacremento showed that 

there is still huge interest in 

Amiga, and Bill McEwen said 

that he could have sold an 

AmigaOne and OS4.0 to 

everyone there if it had been 

ready. Sore point I know, but 

Bill also reiterated our policy 

of announcing only progress 

and not giving a final ship date 

until we have the product 

working in front of us, and 

most people seem to be 

happy with this method. 

Progress is being made. 

There are more screenshots 

of the new interface up on the 

Amiga website, almost all of 

the AmigaOS4.0 modules 

have been completed, 

ExecSG is booting on CSPPC 

boards, and the AmigaOnes 

are now running Linux and 

UAE - one was demonstrated 

by Randir of Compuquick. 

Slowly but surely the Amiga 

rebirth is occurring. 

9

News 

4 

AmigaOS Update 

Loads more news and a bunch of new screenshots, Robert Williams gets his teeth into the latest OS 4 information. 

Iwould have liked to be able 

to start this article by saying 

that OS 4 is out there for all of 

us to buy, however although 

this isn’t the case things are far 

from gloomy, Hyperion have 

been keeping us up to date 

with their progress, most 

recently with a number of 

interviews held at the AmiWest 

show. So once again here are 

the nuggets of information I’ve 

been able to find from various 

sources. 

Although delays are never 

pleasant one of the reasons for 

OS 4’s longer than planned 

development period is that 

many more aspects of the OS 

are being ported to PPC than 

was originally intended for the 

first release. Thomas Freiden 

(one of the OS4 developers) 

said that they found that having 

large parts of the OS emulated 

meant that some of the 

Amiga’s legendary 

performance and quick 

interface response was lost. 

On a similar note Ben 

Hermans (Hyperion’s manager) 

pointed out that after waiting so 

long it would be silly to rush out 

the product with known bugs or 

inadequate testing, he said 

they would rather wait a little 

longer and release the best 

product they can. 

Development of the enhanced 

kernal, known as Exec SG, has 

been completed to the level 

Hyperion originally planned for 

Hot Links 

OS 4 however they have 

decided to implement a more 

complex memory system than 

was planned. This will include 

a full virtual addressing model, 

which means that rather than 

an application being allocated 

a particular area of physical 

memory it is given a virtual 

area which the OS then relates 

to physical memory. The 

advantage of this model is that 

the OS is in control of what 

memory is used, fragmentation 

is eliminated and it becomes 

possible to implement various 

schemes to protect the system 

from crashes. One direct 

benefit that Ben Hermans 

mentioned is that this system 

will allow program’s stack 

allocations to be dynamically 

increased, he estimated that 

30% of Amiga crashes are due 

to applications running out of 

stack space so this would be a 

major boon. When virtual 

memory has been mentioned 

in the past many 

knowledgeable Amiga 

programmer have commented 

that it would not be possible to 

implement it without breaking 

existing applications, it remains 

to be seen how Hyperion will 

handle this, perhaps some 

features will only be available 

to new OS 4 applications. Ben 

stated that although this 

improved system would add 

about three weeks to the 

development it was justified by 

the extra functionality and 

improved stability. 

Download the announcements from the recent AmiWest show 

in mp3 format (Ben Hermans’ and Thomas Frieden’s 

interviews are particularly interesting from an OS 4 point of 

view: 

http://aurora.merseine.nu/amiga 

The latest screen grabs from OS 4 are linked from Amiga’s 

site at: 

http://os.amiga.com 

The new GUI preferences editor looks like it will take the 

configurability of both Intuition and Reaction to new levels. 

Most of the OS 4 modules 

have been developed on 

Classic Amiga systems with 

CyberStorm PPC accelerators 

so far. The new OS uses a 

hardware abstraction layer 

(HAL), this is the part of the OS 

code which is specific to a 

particular PPC hardware 

platform, currently this is being 

perfected on the CyberStorm 

PPC and once it is complete it 

can be quickly ported to 

another platform such as the 

AmigaOne. Hyperion are 

making sure they have the HAL 

specification complete and 

debugged before they start on 

the HAL for the AmigaOne 

hardware to prevent having two 

code bases in development. 

Once the HAL is complete it is 

expected to take about one 

and a half to two weeks to port 

it over to a new hardware 

platform. That said Ben 

Hermans and Bill McEwan 

have both confirmed that the 

new Exec kernal (the heart of 

the OS) is already booting on 

the AmigaOne and that the 

boot sequence is finalised. 

Support for Blizzard PPC cards 

now seems to be confirmed but 

it will not be ready until after 

the CyberStorm because 

drivers have to be developed 

for the on-board SCSI (which 

uses a different chip to the 

CyberStorm) and the OS 

needs to support A1200 

specific ports (clock port etc.). 

Hyperion are now working on 

the BIOS (Basic Input Output 

System) for the AmigaOne, this 

was to be provided by a third 

party who failed to deliver. The 

BIOS is stored in ROM and 

initialises the basic 

motherboard devices such as 

memory and the North and 

South bridges and gets the OS 

loading from disk. The 

Hyperion BIOS will be based 

on the open source PPCBoot 

BIOS. If the user desires it will 

be possible to dual boot 

AmigaOS 4 and another OS 

such as one of the Linux 

distributions which have 

already been prepared for the 

AmigaOne. Note that the BIOS 

is not the same as the Amiga’s 

Kickstart ROM which performs 

BIOS tasks and much more. 

For OS 4 much more of the OS 

will be stored on disk including 

the early start-up screen. On 

that subject Hyperion expect 

the early start-up screen to be 

largely unchanged for OS 4, 

possibly some options specific 

to certain hardware will be 

added (memory timing options 

were mentioned so I think this 

may be similar to the 

Cyberstorm PPC’s early startup 

screen). 

Several options are being 

evaluated for how the new OS 

will be booted on existing 

Amiga hardware (with a PPC 

accelerator). A third party has 

suggested producing a plug-in 

card which would contain a 

ROM to boot the new OS, this 

would obviously add significant 

cost and several models might 

be needed to suit different 

Amigas. Another option would 

be to have a program which 

ran in classic Amiga mode then 

re-booted the Amiga to load 

the new kernal, this is how 

current Amiga Linux 

distributions work. Obviously 

this method would require the 

existing AmigaOS to boot and 

then re-boot into OS 4 slowing 

the boot process. The final 

option and the one that seems 

to be favoured by Hyperion is a 

custom boot loader installed on 

the hard disk, this would still 

require a re-boot but it could 

happen very early in the startup 

process and so should only 

add a few seconds to boot 

time. 

Some more of the utility 

programs that will be included 

with OS 4 have been 

announced. The first being a 

new PPC native version of the 

media player Action, this will 

support more modern codecs 

including DivX and MPEG 4, in 

combination with the processor 

power offered by the 

AmigaOne these should open 

up lots more Internet content to 

Amiga users. A new PDF 

document viewer will be 

included, again this will be 

PPC native and include print 

and search functions. The 

familiar Commodore Installer 

utility will be replaced by 

InstallerNG which adds 

features while remaining 

compatible with existing 

scripts. 

On a slightly less happy note 

fans of dragable screens (I 

know many people don’t really 

care) will be disappointed to 

hear that this feature will not be 

in OS4, the problem is that 


modern graphics chip sets just 

don’t support this feature 

(before anyone says that 

CyberGraphX does support 

dragable screens note that it 

does not on Permedia based 

cards, the most recent type to 

have a driver). It is possible 

that a software emulation will 

be added in a future OS4 

version but it will require 

significant work to make it work 

smoothly. I will just point out 

that OS 4 will support multiple 

screens, just not dragging 

down one to reveal another. 

I’ve mentioned OS4’s USB 

stack before, now we know it is 

the same one that will be 

shipped with the forthcoming 

Thylacine Zorro card (see 

news) and it will have basic 

scanner, printer, mouse and 

keyboard support. The stack 

will also support the Highway 

Zorro (reviewed in this issue) 

and Subway clock port USB 

cards so CyberStorm and 

BlizzardPPC owners will have 

the option of USB in OS4. 

Since the last issue several 

batches of new screenshots of 

OS components have been 

released on the Amiga website. 

These have included a snap of 

the new Palette preferences 

editor which looks very similar 

to the Full Palette utility, 

offering the option to lock 

certain colours to make the 

most of low colour screens and 

to solve problems with palette 

mapped icons such as those 

supplied with Magic 

Workbench. The first grabs of 

the preferences for the new 

TCP/IP stack have been 

shown, this looks similar to 

Genesis or Miami as you would 

expect but it’s nice to see it will 

have easy configuration in 

addition to its claimed speed. 

Another interesting new 

preferences program is the 

GUI preferences which seems 

to include options for both 

Intuition (menus, window 

borders etc.) and Reaction 

applications. In the first release 

of OS4 the options for the look 

of windows is expected to be 

similar to Visual Prefs, the aim 

is to offer a fully skinable look 

similar to some Linux window 

managers. This looks much 

more comprehensive than the 

current preferences and it 

The New HDToolbox 

seems to be getting close to 

the options offered by MUI with 

many different border styles 

and independent control over 

different gadget types. It also 

News 

These screenshots show that AmigaOS’s venerable hard drive 

preparation tool has had a real make over. 

The main window is similar to the OS3.9 version but note the 

removeable media control and SCSI Utilities buttons. 

The install window allows many more RDB options to be 

changed directly. This is the expert version, a simplified 

interface is available if you just want to get a drive installed! 

The partitioning window now lists partitions with their details 

as well as showing them graphically. Note the options to load 

and save RDB’s for easier drive recovery. 

The SCSI utilities window looks powerful. 

has options labelled Controls 

and Menus which we assume 

will cover the menu and 

window configuration options 

shown in the first OS 4 

11

News 

screenshots that we printed 

last issue. The final 

screenshots are of the 

replacement for HDToolBox, 

this seems to be improved in 

every way and looks extremely 

comprehensive. 

Again real progress is being 

made, according to 

announcements most of the 

OS components are now 

complete and being separately 

tested. Apart from the 

additional work on Exec SG 

Sussex based company 

MDR Interfaces Ltd. have 

enhanced the functionality of 

their home server system Inet 

Dial (ID) with the addition of 

dynamic remote web access. 

Some ISPs, such as Demon, 

provide static IP addresses to 

their users as standard, but 

most ISPs use dynamic IP 

addresses, where users are 

allocated an IP address each 

time they dial in. This has 

traditionally presented a 

problem when connecting to a 

home server, but ID now 

resolves this problem by 

providing a dynamic link 

service. 

The new TCP/IP 

stack gets a nice 

preferences 

editor too. 

the Intuition and Reaction 

interfaces are still being 

improved but work on them is 

coming to an end. The big jobs 

that remain are to integrate the 

disparate parts and as this 

involves the new PPC parts, 

existing OS components and 

the 68k emulator there is 

certainly room for unexpected 

complications although 

Hyperion don’t expect too 

many (that sounds a bit like 

Yes Prime Minister but you 

know what I mean). Once the 

Richard de Rivaz is the director 

of MDR interfaces, and readers 

may recall ID from an article in 

Amiga Active some time ago, 

as well as appearances by 

Richard at a number of Amiga 

shows, including World of 

Amiga South East as a visitor, 

and Kickstart 4 at which he 

exhibited an earlier version of 

ID. Originally designed solely 

for remote home automation, 

ID can be used to control lights 

and other attached devices 

from another computer, either 

through direct dial, e-mail 

command or a web based 

interface. It supports the X-10 

protocol, which allows devices 

to be sent control signals 

Keep your home under control from the comfort of your browser, 

anywhere in the world! 

integration and test are done 

the OS should be ready for 

release on the CyberStorm. 

For the AmigaOne some 

additional work has to be done 

to remove chipset 

dependencies from the OS 

components. 

So now we come to the big 

question, when will it be 

released? Unsurprisingly after 

previous delays and missed 

deadlines no one from 

Hyperion was willing to give a 

firm date, they did say that 

there would have to be a real 

“cataclysm” (Ben Herman’s 

word) to push it past the end of 

the year and they seem to be 

hopeful that it will be much 

before that. Another clue is that 

the Italian Pianeta Amiga show 

is advertising that both the 

AmigaOne and OS 4 will be on 

InetDial & SolarNavigator 

Not satisfied with providing the Amiga’s premier home automation system MDR Interfaces is about to set sail 

and they’re taking AmigaOS with them! Philip Corner finds out more. 

through the mains ring, 

removing the need for a radio 

or line-of sight IR system. 

When accessing an ID server 

remotely via its web based 

interface, it is possible to see 

the current status of devices, 

review and alter timed events 

and even give commands to 

turn devices on or off 

immediately. The system can 

also be configured to download 

e-mail at preset times, which 

are sorted into separate mail 

boxes and can be accessed 

remotely, and it can also be 

instructed to go on-line with an 

e-mail command. 

Its repetoir has recently been 

expanded to acting as a 

wireless server, allowing 

browser equipped PDAs or 

other devices to access the 

Web or download e-mail 

remotely when in range, 

without the user having to use 

the computer directly or use 

expensive cellular 

communication. The system 

can also support web cams, 

allowing you to verify the 

results of your remote 

controlling from wherever you 

may be in the world. 

show there on the 21st and 

22nd of September (whether 

OS 4 will be running on the 

AmigaOne is not stated). The 

order in which the OS will be 

released is much clearer, 

everyone says the version for 

classic hardware with a 

CyberStorm PPC accelerator 

will be released first because 

development started on these 

boards so naturally they are 

ahead. Release on the Blizzard 

PPC and AmigaOne is then 

expected at about the same 

time, both requiring some 

additional work for their unique 

hardware. Other PPC 

platforms like Elbox’s Shark 

PPC will come afterwards, 

although if Hyperion are right 

with their estimate of the time 

to port the HAL it needn’t be a 

long wait. 

Now this looks like a 

good place for a 

“Powered by Amiga” logo! 

MDR are also responsible for 

the control system of the 

record attempting boat 

SolarNavigator. SolarNavigator 

hopes to be the first solar 

powered boat to 

circumnavigate the globe, and 

would incorporate a wireless 

LAN to allow all the on-board 

crew to be kept constantly up 

to date with the ship’s status, 

as well as to interact with it 

remotely. The events of 

September the 11th caused the 

programme to be temporarily 

halted, but it is now underway 

again, and work is progressing 

well on a 1/10 scale solar 

powered model. The 

programme has been helped 

somewhat by features in local 

press and television. The 

current plans call for the onboard 

computer systems to be 

PCs running the Amithlon 

Amiga operating system, 

combining the advantages of 

cheap hardware with the stable 

operating system we all know 

and love. Anybody wishing to 

help fund the project can do so 

by joining the SolarNavigator 

club, allowing you to purchase 

merchandise such as 

SolarNavigator branded 

12 TOTAL AMIGA Autumn 2002 

clothing, mugs and even ship 

hull space on which to display 

your own name or message. 

Corporate sponsorship is also, 

of course, possible. Perhaps 

most interestingly of all, 

SolarNavigator are doing a 

“Back for the Future” and 

creating an album of music, 

based on an environmental 

theme, which will raise money 

for the project. Anybody 

interested in getting a break 

and putting themselves forward 

for the album should check out 

the website. The site also 

features pictures showing the 

building and testing of the 

SolarNavigator scale models 

and early concepts, as well as 

News 

buzzword... 

On Saturday 27th of July 

2002, our last hope to 

buzzword... Bringing you the latest news and 

comment from the Amiga world. 

general links to other sites on 

solar vehicles and renewable 

energy sources and the 

technology used in the ship. 

MDR Interfaces: 

http://www.mdr.co.uk 

SolarNavigator: 

http://www.solarnavigator.org.uk 

another disappointment, and Shopping Malls once to day running on other 

happily Sharp have promised again. 

matters including the Amiga 

end a world of Microsoft 

damnation, Amiga President 

Bill McEwen, attended a 

computer show at the Holiday 

Inn in Sacramento, California, 

USA. 

AmiWest 2002 may finally 

prove to be a turning point in 

Amiga`s fortunes after many 

years of poverty and belt 

tightening. It was very 

refreshing to hear Bill McEwen 

in his speech at AmiWest, 

owning up to mistakes made 

by the current Amiga owners 

that the Zaurus will start 

shipping Intent/AmigaDE 

sometime this year with 

upgrades for existing owners 

being made available too. 

Another major unknown deal 

that got canned was with MTV 

Europe for a set-top device 

being planned, a deal that 

would have given Amiga a 

wide exposure in Europe. 

On the plus side, Amiga have 

signed new deals with Sendo 

a mobile phone manufacturer 

in the UK as well as with 02, 

the fifth biggest mobile phone 

Buzzword has also learned 

that Amiga are currently in 

negotiations with a big name 

in portable/mobile devices, if 

they secure the deal will mean 

their financial future should be 

secured for some time. We 

know the name of the party 

but are at this time unable to 

release the name. 

Bill McEwen also revealed that 

the last 6 months he has spent 

concentrating mainly on 

securing finance for Amiga 

from investors, leaving the day 

desktop/Amiga Anywhere to 

other parties. 

Buzzword has uncovered 

unconfirmed reports that 

AmigaOS4 is in separate near 

complete modules and is 

currently awaiting to be 

integrated or “bolted” together. 

If there are no complications, 

the first AmigaOS for the PPC 

platform could be released in 

September 2002 first to 

CSPPC owners followed 

thereafter by releases for the 

AmiaOne and Blizzard PPC 

owners. 

after acquiring Amiga from operator in the world. Deals 

Gateway in January 2000. like this are a must for Amiga 

Bill Admitted that they were 18 

months behind schedule, 

effectively meaning that for 

most of their tenure as owners 

of the Amiga name, pretty 

much went down the toilet. 

Good also was that finally, Bill 

McEwen seems to have taken 

a leaf out of the Alan 

Redhouse school of press 

releases, and actually gave a 

because they need to bring in 

the revenue in order to keep 

themselves afloat. Whilst the 

Amiga desktop platform is 

what we really all care about, 

Amiga need to generate 

revenue to satisfy investors 

and most importantly, keep 

themselves afloat which is the 

single most important thing 

anyhow. 

speech that was straight and Bill McEwen also said that he 

to the point. Gone was the will no longer announce 

glossy, overhyped, rose tinted products or deals until they 

vision of the future, instead Bill are about to ship or shipping, 

shot straight from the hip and this is a good strategy 

laid the facts down, something because it will stop Amiga 

many an Amiga user has been looking foolish in the broader 

wanting to see. 

IT world. 

Some of the biggest 

Dixons, one of the largest, if 

disappointments that Bill not the largest retailers of 

mentioned were the Nokia electronic goods in Europe 

media terminal, a project that and the UK will be selling 

Nokia were cancelling at the AmigaAnywhere products later 

same time they were signing a this year. This is a great coop 

contract with Amiga. The for Amiga, as they will finally Sendo’s Z100 smart phone, the 

Sharp Zaurus not shipping return to having a major latest host for Amiga Anywhere. 

with Intent/Amiga DE was presence in the High Street 

13

Features 

ADSL 

Broadband Internet 

Robert Williams and Mick Sutton find that Broadband Internet access is now within the reach of many more Amiga 

Whatever it says on the 

box modems are slow, 

even 56k ones. Everybody 

wants faster internet access, 

but until recently there were no 

affordable options. A couple of 

years ago some of the cable 

TV companies introduced a 

broadband service (starting at 

around ten times faster than 

56k modems) for their 

customers, obviously this is 

limited to areas where cable 

networks have been installed 

and a PC or possibly Mac is 

required for installation. British 

Telecom at around the same 

time introduced ADSL 

(Asymmetric Digital Subscriber 

Line) which gives a broadband 

internet connection over 

existing telephone wires. 

Initially the only service aimed 

at home users included a USB 

ADSL modem that had to be 

installed by an engineer. This 

excluded Amiga users on 

several fronts the first being we 

didn’t have USB (and we still 

don’t have drivers for ADSL 

modems) and secondly the 

engineer would only install on 

a PC (or Mac if you were 

lucky). You could then buy an 

Amiga compatible modem and 

use the service but that is 

against the terms and 

conditions and you’re paying 

for a USB modem you can’t 

use. 

Earlier this year things 

changed for the better, BT 

introduced a wires only option. 

This means that you can have 

your telephone line ADSL 

enabled and then purchase 

your own hardware which of 

course you can make sure is 

Amiga compatible. Another 

significant advantage of the 

wires only option is that it is 

cheaper because you don’t 

users. But just what do you need to get into the fast lane? 

have to “rent” the hardware or 

have an engineer visit. 

What ADSL is and how it works 

ADSL uses frequencies above 

those used by normal voice 

telephone to give you high 

speed data transfers without 

interrupting the telephone 

service. A special splitter called 

a micro-filter is used to 

separate the two frequency 

bands and stop the two 

services interfering with each 

other. ADSL connects you 

permanently to the Internet so 

you don’t have to dial up a 

connection when you need it, 

ISPs charge a flat fee for your 

connection, there are no “call” 

charges. The standard home 

user services offer 576Kb/s 

(Kilo bits per second) download 

speed and 288Kb/s upload 

speed (that’s why it’s called 

asynchronous). This is more 

than 10 times the speed a 56k 

analogue modem typically 

achieves (on most telephone 

lines a connection speed on 

50k is typical). For example a 

20Mb compressed file (for 

instance an archive, movie or 

mp3) would take nearly an 

hour on a good 56k 

connection, on ADSL it would 

take about 5 minutes to 

download. 

What do you need for 

ADSL to work? 

To use ADSL in the UK you 

need a BT line (in other 

countries you’ll have to talk to 

your local telephone supplier) 

connected to an exchange 

which has ADSL equipment 

installed. The length of the line 

to your exchange (not the 

direct distance) must be less 

than 5.5km and the line must 

be of sufficient quality and not 

A typical microfilter with sockets 

for the ADSL modem (left) and 

telephones (right). 

contain any optical fibre. If you 

have an ISDN service such as 

Home Highway it must be 

removed before ADSL can be 

installed but we understand an 

upgrade option may be 

available in the future. ADSL 

services are sold by a number 

of Internet Service Providers 

(ISPs), when you place your 

order they will ask BT to 

activate your line, there is 

normally a fee for this setup 

and it takes about ten days. 

You can get a good idea of 

whether your line is suitable 

and if your exchange has been 

enabled using the availability 

checker at all ADSL ISPs and 

linked from the excellent 

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/. 

To use the checker you just 

need to enter your full 

telephone number. You can 

also find your local BT 

exchange using this handy web 

page Exchange Finder: 

http://www.nothingon.tv/adsl/std_query.html, 

if it 

hasn’t been enabled you can 

keep an eye on ADSL Guide to 

see if it appears on the lists of 

upgraded exchanges that BT 

publishes periodically. As we 

write this BT have just 

announced that they will be 

surveying interest in ADSL to 

see which exchanges should 

be upgraded next, this will 

probably mean 

registering your 

interest with an ISP. 

What happens when 

ADSL is installed? 

When your line has been 

ADSL enabled initially you 

should not notice any 

difference unless you have an 

ADSL modem installed, the 

telephone can still be used 

normally. If you connect an 

ADSL modem and configure it 

correctly you should see an 

ADSL connection light about 

30 seconds after it is switched 

on (this light is labelled 

“SHOWTIME” on the Conexant 

router reviewed in this issue). 

To use ADSL and your 

telephone at the same time 

you need at least one microfilter. 

This is a device that plugs 

into a telephone socket and 

has an RJ11 socket for the 

ADSL modem and a normal BT 

phone socket for your phone or 

any other equipment that uses 

a telephone line (fax machine, 

satellite TV boxes, burglar 

alarms or even a dial up 

modem should you need it). All 

telephone equipment has to be 

connected through the filter for 

it to work, this can be achieved 

in two ways, a separate microfilter 

on each phone socket or 

one filter on the master socket 

with all the extensions plugged 

into the filter. An advantage of 

having a filter on each socket 

is that you can use your ADSL 

modem on any socket and also 

it avoids changing any phone 

cabling. 

At the present date there are 

no drivers for USB ADSL 

modems (although we do now 

have a USB card for the 

Amiga) so the only option is to 

connect an ADSL modem via 

Ethernet. In the UK you need 

to get a combined ADSL 

modem and Ethernet router. 

These devices connect to your 

ISP via ADSL and allow 

computers connected to them 

via Ethernet to access the 

internet. The ADSL connection 

is taken care of by the firmware 

on the router which is usually 

configured using a web 

browser so you don’t need any 

proprietary software on your 

Amiga. What you do need is a 

TCP/IP stack such as Miami or 

Genesis and an Ethernet card. 

The other good thing about 

having an Ethernet router is 

that you can share your 

internet connection with 

several computers as long as 

they are on your Ethernet 

network (often called a LAN, 

Local Area Network)........neat! 

All each computer needs is 

Ethernet and a TCP/IP stack 

which most platforms have. For 

example Mick has his A1200 

and his wife’s iMac connected 

to his router and Robert has 

his A3000 and his family’s 

Windows PC . Of course if you 

decide to get a new computer 

say for example an AmigaONE 

or Pegasos as long as it has 

Ethernet and a TCP/IP stack 

(and both of those machines 

will do) then you’re in business. 

“So how much will all this cost 

me?” I hear you ask. The exact 

answer to this will depend on 

what Amiga you have, which 

ISP you choose and what 

equipment you have already. 

Below we have tried to 

estimate the costs for different 

Amiga set-ups. 

Whatever system you have, 

you will need the ADSL router, 

an RJ11 cable to connect it to 

the micro-filter, an Ethernet 

cable to connect the Amiga 

and at least one micro-filter. 

ADSL Router £80 

RJ11 line cable £5 

Ethernet cable £5 

Micro-filter £10 

Total £100 

On top of these costs you will 

have to add an Ethernet card 

to your Amiga : 


An RJ 1 cable like this is used 

to connect the ADSL modem 

to the filter. 

A1200 

On an A1200 without a 

busboard (Zorro or PCI) you 

can add a PCMCIA Ethernet 

card designed for laptop PC’s. 

You can either buy a generic 

card that is compatible with the 

freeware cnet.device or buy a 

bundled card and driver from 

an Amiga dealer. However you 

get your card you will need to 

fix the CC_reset line on the 

A1200 motherboard, this can 

be easily achieved with a plug 

on fix that fits over the Gayle 

chip (easiest, no soldering 

required) or by soldering a 

couple of components onto the 

motherboard (you will need 

good soldering skills, the 

instructions are in the Cnet 

archive). If your A1200 is 

mounted in a tower where the 

PCMCIA slot is at the bottom 

you will require a PCMCIA right 

angle adapter so the card will 

fit. 

Ethernet Card £35 

Reset Fix £10 

Angle adaptor £20 

(if in non-Eyetech EZ Tower) 

Total £65 

Zorro Based Amiga 

If your Amiga has Zorro slots 

(either as standard like the 

A4000 or on a bus board) you 

can buy a Zorro Ethernet card 

such as the X-Surf from 

Individual Computers. If you 

decide to buy a card second 

hand it will make life easier if it 

has an RJ45 socket (rather 

than a BNC or AUI connector) 

as this will allow direct 

connection to a router. Take a 

look at our networking feature 

in issue 8 for more information 

on different Ethernet types and 

the Zorro cards available. 

Zorro Ethernet card £80 

PCI based “Amiga” 

If you own either a PCI 

busboard (Mediator, GRex or 

Prometheus) or run Amithlon 

on X86 hardware you can 

purchase an inexpensive PCI 

Ethernet card. As with Zorro 

cards make sure it has an 

RJ45 connector and is based 

on a chipset supported by the 

Ethernet drivers supplied with 

your busboard or Amithlon. 

Currently boards based on the 

Realtek 8029 are supported by 

all the busboards and 

Amithlon, Mediator users can 

also use Realtek 8139 cards if 

they have the Mediator 

Multimedia CD. 

Compatible PCI Network Card 

£10 

ADSL Sharing Network 

This diagram shows a standalone ADSL Ethernet Router as 

part of a network installation. This single device performs the 

functions of the three components (switch, router and modem) 

in the dashed box. 

Computer 

Computer 

Computer 

Switch 

or hub. 

ADSL Ethernet Router 

Router 

ADSL 

Modem 

Internet 

Features 

Hardware Setup 

Each computer you want to be 

able to access the Internet 

needs to be on the same 

network as the router, usually 

this means connecting the 

computer directly to the router 

using a patch cable. A patch 

cable has RJ45 connectors 

that look a bit like telephone 

plugs on each end and is wired 

straight through, they are 

widely available from computer 

stores. You can buy a router 

with one Ethernet connection 

or one with a built-in hub or 

switch which provides several 

connections (usually 4). If your 

router only has one port you 

can add a separate hub or 

switch allowing more 

computers to be connected. 

The ADSL side of the router 

(usually referred to as WAN, 

Wide Area Network) is usually 

connected to a micro-filter 

using an RJ11 cable (these are 

American style telephone 

cables and in the UK are often 

used to connect the telephone 

handset to the base). If you are 

not using any telephones on 

the line (including on any 

extensions) you can connect 

most ADSL modems and 

routers directly to a telephone 

socket without a micro-filter 

using a suitable cable. 

What Software and 

Setup? 

On your Amiga you only need 

two pieces of software to 

connect to the Internet via the 

Ethernet router, a TCP/IP stack 

and a driver for your Ethernet 

card. Anyone who is already 

connected to the Internet via a 

dial-up modem will already 

have a TCP/IP stack such as 

Miami or Genesis which are 

also suitable for ADSL. You 

don’t need Miami Deluxe 

(although it will work just as 

well) because you only need 

one interface connected. Most 

Amiga specific Ethernet cards 

come with a SANA II (Standard 

Amiga Network Architecture) 

driver which works with all 

TCP/IP stacks and there are 

SANA II drivers available for 

generic Ethernet cards 

including some PCMCIA cards 

for the A1200 and PCI cards 

15

Features 

for the various PCI busboards 

and Amithlon. 

Once your Amiga and router 

are connected to the network 

you need to configure the 

router to make the ADSL 

connection. Most routers are 

configured using a web 

browser to access their built-in 

configuration pages. In the 

router manual it should tell you 

the default IP address and how 

to access the built in web 

pages. Before you can do this 

you need to setup your TCP/IP 

stack. 

Select SANA II Interface 

Choose appropriate device 

Set your IP address to the 

same subnet as the router e.g. 

if the router is 10.0.0.2 your 

Amiga’s IP address must be 

10.0.0.n where n is any 

number from 1 to 254 except 2 

(e.g. 10.0.0.1!). If your router 

uses a 10.n.n.n type address 

then set the netmask to 

255.0.0.0, if it uses 

192.168.n.n then the netmask 

should be 255.255.255.0. The 

gateway should be the address 

of the router, in this example 

10.0.0.2. 

With the setup done you 

should now be able to put the 

TCP/IP stack online, as a first 

test you can now ‘ping’ the 

router to check it can be 

accessed over the network. To 

do this enter the following 

command in a shell: 

Miami Users: 

Miami:miamiping 

Genesis: 

ping 

If the test is successful you 

should see lines ending with a 

time in milliseconds scrolling 

down the screen, to stop the 

test press Ctrl+C and you 

should see a report saying “x 

packets transmitted, y packets 

received, n% packet loss” at 

most one packet should not 

have been received and the 

percentage packet loss should 

be very low, normally 0%. 

If the ping test works you are 

now ready to access the 

configuration pages of the 

router, load up a web browser 

(any browser should do 

although it may depend on 

your router) and enter the IP 

address of the router into the 

location field. You will probably 

be prompted for a username 

and password, the defaults 

should be in the router 

documentation. Now you need 

to find the following settings in 

the routers configuration: 

VPI = 0 

VCI = 38 

ADSL Modulation = Auto, then 

try G.DMT, then try ANSI 

T1.413 

Encapsulation Mode = PPP 

http://www.adslguide.org.uk is an excelent source of information 

on ISPs and ADSL hardware. It also carries the latest news 

and has checks to find out if your line has been enabled. 

The end result... much faster downloads! 

over ATM (PPPoA - RFC2364) 

VC-MUX 

Authentication = CHAP 

Then you will need to enter the 

username and password 

provided by your ISP. 

Once you have made these 

settings they can be saved into 

the router’s flash ROM and it 

will usually need to be reset 

before they take effect. If ADSL 

has been activated on your line 

after around 30 seconds you 

should see a light confirming 

your ADSL connection. The 

router then automatically logs 

on to your ISP and you’re 

ready to rumble! 

So enter a web address 

(preferably a site with plenty of 

big graphics!) and watch in 

bewilderment as the page 

loads in a fraction of the time 

(in fact your browser probably 

won’t be able to decode the 

image quick enough!). 

Service Providers 

ADSL is available from a 

number of UK Internet Service 

Providers however in all cases 

the ADSL connection from the 

local exchange to your home is 

handled by BT. This doesn’t 

mean that the service provided 

by all ADSL ISPs is the same, 

because the speed of your 

Internet connection will rely, in 

part, on the quality of your 

ISP’s network. Different 

providers also give you 

different services included in 

the cost of the subscription, for 

example several e-mail 

addresses, free web space, 

free software (mostly of 

interest to Windows users), or 

a news server. Some ISPs can 

provide you with a static IP 

address (sometimes they 

charge an extra monthly fee), 

this means the address of your 

computer (or router) on the 

Internet remains the same 

allowing you to more easily run 

servers on your computer. 

Most ISPs give you a dynamic 

address that can change over 

time (although on ADSL you 

will often keep the same 

address for days at a time). 

Although a static IP can be 

useful ADSL is not ideal for 

servers as the upload speed is 

slower than download and the 

service has no guaranteed 

availability. 

When comparing the cost of 

ISPs it is worth taking note of 

the setup fees (to ADSL enable 

your telephone line) and the 

hardware cost (ADSL modem 

or router and micro-filters) in 

addition to the monthly charge 

(which varies from £23 to £30 

per month including VAT 

depending on ISP). Keep a 

look out for special offers 

because you may be able to 

get free setup (which usually 

costs about £50) and even free 

hardware. 

Comparing the quality of 

service and support provided 

by the ADSL ISPs is more 

difficult than comparing their 

prices and services. You can 

get a good feel for the level of 

satisfaction with each ISP from 

the “Rate Your ISP” and 

“forum” sections on the ADSL 

Guide website. 

All ADSL ISPs allow you to 

sign up using an on-line form 

on their website, the process 

includes a basic check on your 

line for ADSL availability. You 

may have problems filling in 

the on-line forms using Amiga 

web browsers (although you 

should have no problems using 

the actual service!) if so you 

should be able to setup an 

account over the phone with 

the ISP. Once your order has 

been accepted BT perform a 

more complex set of tests to 

ensure your line is suitable for 

ADSL. Once the ISP receive 

confirmation from BT they will 

inform you of the date when 

your line should be activated. 

Before your activation date 

your ISP should send you the 

log-on details (username and 

password) you need to use the 

service, they will also supply 

information such as DNS, email 

and News server 

addresses. 

A word of warning first - NTL 

use dynamic IP addresses 

whereas some ISPs use static. 

This means that your IP address 

can change if you turn off the 

modem - apparently these 

addresses are assigned 

approximately every 6 hours - 

and, whereas your PC will pick 

up these settings when you boot, 

you would have to run MiamiInit 

every time on the Amiga. I’ve 

found it easier to just leave the 

modem on permanently - I’m 

renting it so if it goes wrong, it’s 

not my problem is it? 

My first connection through the 

cable modem was by way of a 

dual-boot Amithlon / PC and it 

was so simple to set up I couldn’t 

believe I had done it! The 

modem installation was carried 

out by an NTL engineer and had 

both USB and RJ45 Ethernet 

connectors (the modem NOT the 

engineer) but the accompanying 

book warns only to use one of 

them. Whether this is so you 

don’t use 2 computers on it or 

there is actually a valid reason I 

do not know but I’ve stuck with 

the recommendations. 


NTL Broadband 

on Amithlon and Amiga 

Most cable TV companies offer a broadband access package . Geoff 

Milnes share his experiences with NTL. 

System Info. 

The first thing to bear in mind 

is that I am running OS3.9 on 

both Amithlon and the Amiga. 

After that, the specs of my 

machines are: 

Amithlon 

Duron running at 350 mhz 

(slow I know but it works fine) 

128 megs RAM 

Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 

Realtek RTL8029 Ethernet 

Soundblaster 128 

MiamiDx 

Amiga 

Towered A1200 060 with 

SCSI 

44 megs RAM (total) 

PCMCIA Ethernet card with 

cnet driver 

Eyetech PCMCIA Reset 

corrector 

Miami 

Once the modem is powered up, 

NTL supply a CD for installation 

on the PC and Mac but 

obviously, nothing for our little 

machine so I went for the PC 

install first. I actually took around 

15 minutes to install all the 

software, check out the 

connection and leave me free to 

use the Net. Having checked out 

the connection and installed a 

firewall, I powered down and rebooted 

with Amithlon. I had 

already been using Amithlon on 

the ‘Net via a dial-up connection 

so I knew it worked. MiamiInit 

was launched and I selected the 

Ethernet, cable/ADSL modem 

option, on the next screen you 

only have ‘other’ - so select it 

and click next where you need to 

actually type in 

‘powerne2k.device’ and leave 

the unit number set to ‘0’. With 

an Amiga, you would need to 

enter ‘cnet.device’ or whatever 

device you are using. This is 

about the only difference 

between the Amiga and 

Amithlon. 

MiamiInit will then go through a 

series of checks where it obtains 

information from your ISP. 

Accept the defaults it asks you 

about and when you reach the 

final screen, enter your real and 

user names, give the details in 

the ‘Save Config’ text box a 

unique name to separate it from 

your dial-up in case you require 

it again (something like 

‘Miami:MiamiInit- 

CableModem.config’), do the 

same with the ‘Save information 

sheet’ and, if you don’t have a 

printer attached, un-tick the ‘Print 

Information Sheet’ box otherwise 

Miami will attempt to print out the 

config sheet. This gives the 

impression of everything having 

locked up - took me 3 attempts 

to find out this was why I couldn’t 

get any further! 

I now had a complete working 

PC/Amiga Internet setup which 

worked every time. Around this 

time I had given a PC 

motherboard and processor by a 

friend so I added a few quids 

worth of bits and pieces to build 

myself a stand-alone PC. This 

would leave me with a dedicated 

Amithlon 

computer too. 

Once built, the 

machine would 

only boot when 

it felt like it ( I 

used to have a wife like that...) 

so I did the same as I did with 

the wife - I got another one! Or at 

least a new motherboard and 

processor. Built it with the aid of 

another HAUG member, Paul 

Smith, and then my problems 

really started. You know how it is 

when everything is working fine 

and you think “I’ll just tweak so 

and so...” - then it all falls apart! 

My new PC wouldn’t pick up the 

settings so I e-mailed NTL and 

they suggested turning off both 

the modem and PC overnight, in 

the morning turn on the modem 

first and when the lights stopped 

flashing, turn on the PC. Worked 

beautifully! Until I turned on my 

Amithlon machine - nothing! 

MiamiInit couldn’t find a thing 

and asked me for every single 

setting so as a temporary 

measure, I was stuck with 

Outlook as a mailer and Internet 

Explorer as a browser! It’s just 

not the same is it? I missed YAM 

particularly ( can’t stand Outlook 

) so I tried Pegasus and although 

that was slightly better, it still 

wasn’t YAM! 

I remembered then that Chris 

Morris had mentioned he was on 

broadband with an Amiga so I 

mailed him for some advice. 

Chris, it turned out, had a 

broadband router so connecting 

8 mixed computers to the single 

modem wasn’t a problem. I 

made enquiries and found out 

that an 8 port router was in the 

region of about £150 which was 

out of the question so I called at 

my local PC shop who quoted 

me £90 for a 4 port one ( the 

make is Mentor if anyone is 

interested ). I tried selling my 

body to medical science and in 

the local red light district - got 

turned down on both so I saved 

up! 

The instructions for installation 

are straight forward - connect the 

router to the modem - connect 

the computers to the router! OK - 

in what order then? A bit of 

Features 

Router (left) and cable modem (right). 

thought using the information I 

already had plus what little made 

sense to me from the router 

handbook led me to believe that 

I turn everything off, connect the 

router’s WAN connector to the 

modem, connect the computers 

to the router, take a couple of 

aspirin and go to bed! The 

following morning, I turned on 

the modem first and waited while 

the lights stopped flashing which 

meant it had the necessary 

information from the ISP. Then I 

turned on the router which 

performed a ‘power on self-test’ 

and obtained the info it required 

from the modem. So far so good! 

All the lights flash just as they 

are supposed - you don’t 

suppose that’s it do you? 

Well, it was. I turned on the PC 

and Win98 did its stuff - TCP/IP 

is built in! I turned on Amithlon 

and ran MiamiInit - straight 

through and out the other side in 

a matter of minutes. It couldn’t 

find the DNS servers but there 

again, it didn’t need to as the 

router had those. Then for the 

acid test - my A1200! MiamiInit - 

straight through and working 

inside 3 or 4 minutes again! I 

was gobsmacked that everything 

went so smoothly so I am now 

on-line permanently with three 

computers, Amiga - Amithlon 

and PC, and back using YAM. I 

come home of an evening, turn 

on Amithlon which boots up, 

runs Miami, launches YAM and 

collects my mail whilst the PC 

plays itself little tunes and takes 

ages! 

So, that’s about it. With help 

from Paul Smith and Chris 

Morris, I’m a happy little bunny 

who can edit video on a PC, 

browse the Web with Aweb / 

Voyager and write e-mails with 

YAM on Amithlon. All I need now 

are 2 more brains and 2 more 

pairs of hands! 

17

Reviews 

Conexant AMX-CA64E 

ADSL Ethernet Router 

Robert Williams and Mick Sutton find out if one of the lowest priced 

ADSL routers is cheap and cheerful or cheap and nasty! 

To connect your Amiga to 

ADSL in the UK you need 

an ADSL modem with a built-in 

Ethernet router, in a device like 

this the router handles the 

ADSL connection and your 

Amiga just needs an Ethernet 

card and TCP/IP stack. 

Typically Ethernet routers are 

considerably more expensive 

than USB ADSL modems (that 

cannot currently be used on 

the Amiga) but Dabs (a large 

computer equipment retailer) 

sell this 4 port Ethernet router 

as part of their Value range for 

just over eighty pounds, 

around the same price as a 

USB modem. As this is so 

much less than other ADSL 

Ethernet routers, can it be any 

good... lets find out. 

The router comes in a printed 

box with no manufacturers 

name, inside is the router itself, 

a plug-in power supply, 

telephone cable and brief man- 

.info 

Developer 

Amigo 

http://www.amigo.com.tw 

Distributor 

Dabs 

http://www.dabs.com 

Price 

£80 incl. VAT 

Compatibility 

Any Amiga with a 10BaseT 

Ethernet connection. 

Requirements 

ADSL enabled phone line 

and contract with an ADSL 

ISP. 

ual. The telephone cable 

supplied has a RJ11 plug on 

the router end and a BT phone 

plug on the other. This is fine if 

you intend to connect only the 

router to your telephone line 

but if you are going to use 

other telephone equipment with 

micro-filters (as most people 

will) you will need to get a RJ11 

to RJ11 lead (these are a standard 

item and should be available 

from DIY and electrical 

shops for a few pounds). The 

router is about the size of two 

conventional dial-up modems 

side by side at 20cm wide by 

13cm deep by about 3cm high. 

The case is all plastic and is 

painted metallic blue with a 

slightly “swooping” design, at 

one end is a foot that seems to 

be to allow the router to be 

stood on end if required. It is 

quite light and flimsy compared 

to some networking gear but 

no worse than the average 56K 

modem. On the front are 

several LEDs showing the current 

status of the ADSL and 

Ethernet connections but we’re 

more interested in what’s round 

the back! 

On the back there are several 

connectors, starting with the 

RJ11 socket marked WAN 

(Wide Area Network) which is 

connected to the telephone 

socket (via a micro-filter if 

required). Then there are four 

RJ45 sockets (marked LAN) for 

Ethernet connections to the 

built-in 10/100Base T switch. 

This router also has a USB port 

so it can be connected to a 

computer with USB (even if it 

does not have an Ethernet 

card), no drivers are included 

for the USB port but you can 

download them, only Windows 

drivers are currently available 

for the USB port. Finally there 

is the power connection and 

on/off button. 

Connecting up the router is 

straight forward, you can connect 

up to four computers 

directly using RJ45 patch 

cables, because the router 

contains a 10/100Mb/s switch 

you can connect computers 

using both 10 megabits per 

second (all Amiga Ethernet 

cards I’m aware of are 10Mb/s 

as are older PC and Mac 

cards) and 100Mb/s Ethernet 

cards and each connection will 

run at full speed. Note that 

even 10Mb/s is nearly twenty 

times faster than ADSL so the 

Amiga Ethernet card won’t 

cause a bottleneck. 

The router is configured using 

built-in web pages which can 

be accessed from a computer 

connected to it. Before setup 

can be started the computer 

must be configured to use the 

same sub domain as the router 

(see tutorial for details). Once 

this is done a web browser can 

be used to access 10.0.0.2, 

which prompt for a username 

and password which are 

supplied in the manual. The 

web pages provide a list of 

options to configure and we 

found they worked well in the 

“big three” Amiga web browsers. 

When you make changes 

to the configuration the router 

often has to be rebooted (via 

an option in the web pages) 

before the changes take effect, 

this takes about thirty seconds 

and causes the ADSL connection 

to drop and reconnect. See 

the boxout for detailed configuration 

instructions for UK 

ADSL. 

Once 

the configuration 

is complete 

switching on the router or 

rebooting it causes it to start 

searching for an ADSL signal 

on the line, when one is 

detected the “SHOWTIME” 

light stays on solidly (it flashes 

up to this point) and the router 

automatically logs in to your 

ISP using the PPP details 

you’ve specified. By default the 

router is in NAT (Network 

Address Translation) mode 

which allows several computers 

to share an Internet 

connection with only one IP 

address (all UK home user 

ADSL accounts supply one IP). 

In NAT mode the computers on 

your network can access the 

Internet by setting the router’s 

IP address as the default 

gateway and entering your 

ISP’s DNS servers into their 

TCP/IP stacks. 

In addition to the basics 

needed to get connected to 

ADSL and share your Internet 

connection the CA64E also 

offers some more advanced 

network options. It can act as a 

DHCP server allowing the 

machines on your network to 

pick up their TCP/IP settings 

(for example IP address, 

gateway and DNS servers) 

automatically. It can also be set 

to automatically find the DNS 

servers used by your ISP, 

these features can make 

adding a new computer to your 

network completely automatic. 

If you are using NAT to share 

your Internet connection 

normally you cannot run a 

server on one of the connected 

machines because they do not 

have an IP address on the 

Internet. The router’s Virtual 

Server option allows you to 

map a port on the router to one 

on a local machine where a 

server is being run. When a 

client on the Internet tries to 

access the mapped port on the 

router the request is transparently 

forwarded on to the local 

machine. Multiple virtual 

servers can be defined but you 

can only specify a single port 

for each entry, not a range. 

If your ISP assigns you multiple 

IP addresses (this is only 

available on more expensive 

business ADSL accounts in the 

UK) for the machines on your 

network you can disable NAT, 

the router then acts as a bridge 

connecting your network 

directly to the ISPs. 

One feature the CA64E lacks 

is a firewall, this is a feature of 

some routers which can block 

certain types of Internet traffic 

from entering and leaving the 

local network. With computers 

connected directly to the 

Internet, especially with a permanent 

connection like ADSL, 

a firewall is an important 

protection. However if you 

leave the CA64E set to use 

NAT then your local computer(s) 

are not connected 

directly to the Internet, only the 

ADSL modem is connected. 

Unless you configure the virtual 

server options to allow 

connections to the computers 

on the LAN from the WAN 

(Internet) your machines will be 

protected. Not having a firewall 

does mean you cannot block 

machines on the LAN from 


The router’s connections are all on the back panel. 

From left to right they are: Power switch and input connector, 

USB, four RJ45 Ethernet (LAN) connections, 

ADSL (WAN) RJ 1 connector. 

Results 

Pros 

+ Easy to setup 

+ Plenty of features 

+ Cheap 

Cons 

- No UK specific setup 

documention 

accessing particular services 

on the Internet, on a small network 

this is not normally a 

requirement although on 

machines susceptible to Trojan 

horse attacks (it has to be said 

Windows is the prime example 

here) you may also want to run 

personal firewall software. 

Although the CA64E does not 

come configured for UK ADSL 

and no UK specific instructions 

are supplied we found the information 

easily enough on the 

Internet. Then it was simple to 

setup and worked first time as 

soon as ADSL was activated. 

The web based configuration is 

easy to use and works well 

with Amiga browsers. For a 

single computer or small home 

network this router offers all 

the features you need and 

some additional options for future 

expansion. Although it 

lacks a firewall this is not really 

required if you’re using NAT to 

share the connection. Once the 

router is installed and configured 

you can pretty much 

forget about it, the Internet 

connection is always there so 

you just need to turn on the 

Amiga and run a TCP/IP stack 

to get online. The CA64E 

offers far more for the money 

than any other comparable 

ADSL router we’ve seen, it’s 

an ideal way for an Amigan to 

get connected! 

Top 

Notch! 

Features 

Router Setup Tutorial 

Before you can configure the router you must setup your TCP/IP 

stack to access it via Ethernet. Here we will go through the steps 

to configure Miami, other TCP/IP stacks will be similar. 

Open your Miami: drawer and double click on the MiamiInit icon. 

On the first page of Miami Init click “Continue”, if you want to 

learn more about the setup you are making read through the 

information at the top of each page. 

On the connection type page select “Ethernet, cable/ADSL 

modem” from the list and click “Continue” (from now on I’ll 

assume you’ll click “Continue” after each page of settings). 

Choose your Ethernet card from 

the list if multiple units are listed 

and you only have one Ethernet 

card pick unit 0. 

When prompted enter the IP address for your Amiga. By default 

the router has the IP address 10.0.0.2 so the computer must be 

set to an IP address of 10.0.0.x where x is between 1 and 255 

but not 2. In this example we set the Amiga to 10.0.0.1. 

Accept the default subnet mask (255.0.0.0). 

Set the gateway to the IP address of the Router, “10.0.0.2”. 

If you know the DNS server addresses used by you ISP select 

“Enter now” in the next requester, if not you will need to find out 

and enter them later. 

Enter the address of each DNS server. 

Enter a host name for your Amiga on your local network, this is 

the name for your computer and can be anything you choose. 

Enter your real name and a user name in the final screen, note 

that this does not have to match the username give to you by 

your ISP because the router will log on to their network. 

Select to save a config file and to save and/or print an 

information sheet if you wish then click “Continue”. 

MiamiInit should now have closed, our next job is to load the 

settings into Miami. Load Miami by clicking on its icon. 

Select “Import from MiamiInit V3...” from the “Settings” menu, in 

the file requester choose the config file saved earlier, it’s called 

MiamiInit.config by default. 

If you need to set the DNS servers select the “Database” page 

from list on the left of the Miami window and then “DNS Servers” 

from the top cycle gadget. Then click “Add” and enter the server 

“IP address” for each server. 

With Ethernet you will probably 

want Miami to go on-line as 

soon as it is loaded, to do this 

go to the “Events” page and 

select the “auto-online” check 

box in the “Start” section. You may also want to choose “Hide 

GUI” from the cycle gadget so Miami is iconified as soon as it 

connects. 

When your settings are complete choose “Save as default” form 

the “Settings” menu if you want the Ethernet settings to be 

loaded each time you run Miami. Choose “Save as...” if you wish 

to keep your current default settings (for example a dial-up 

account). 

If all has gone to plan clicking “Online” will now connect your 

Amiga to the Ethernet network allowing it to communicate with 

19

Features 

the router. 

To check this try pinging the router, to do this open a shell 

window and enter the following command: 

Miami:MiamiPing 10.0.0.2 

When you press return you should see lines similar to the 

following repeated every second or so: 

64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.344 ms 

WAN Configuration Page 

This is the WAN page of the router’s web interface grabbed 

from a browser. This grab shows the settings for a typical UK 

ADSL ISP (only the PPP section is ISP specific). 

20 

If there is a problem you will see: 

ping: wrote 10.0.0.2 64 chars, ret=-1 

In either case press Ctrl and C to stop the ping. If there is a 

problem check your settings in Miami, check the router is 

switched on and all cables are correctly connected (you don’t 

need the WAN (ADSL) cable connected for this test to work). 

With Miami online you are ready to configure the router, to do this 

launch a web browser and enter the URL “10.0.0.2”, when you 

press return the browser should prompt you for a username and 

password, by default these are “admin” and “password”. The web 

based configuration interface is then displayed in the browser. 

You need to make several changes for the router to work with UK 

ADSL: 

Select the “WAN” page from the “Configuration” section in the left 

hand frame, then in the page on the right change the following 

settings: 

VPI: 0 

VCI: 38 

ENCAPSULATION: “PPPoA VC-Mux” 

Username: The username supplied by your ISP. 

Password: The password supplied by your ISP. 

Click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page. 

On the “LAN” page you can change the “IP Address” of the router 

to fit into an existing network, click “Submit” after you make the 

change. If you do this remember to change the IP address, 

Subnet mask and Gateway in Miami to suit. 

That’s all there is to it! Now click “Save Settings” and then 

“Submit” to save the setting to flash memory and reboot the 

router. If your “WAN” cable is connected and your line has been 

enabled after about 30 seconds the “SHOWTIME” light on the 

front of the router should stop flashing and light solidly indicating 

an ADSL connection. Then the “RxD” light should flicker as the 

router logs in to you ISP. 

To check all is well go to the “Diagnostic Test” page under “Admin 

Privilege” on the router this runs a number of tests on your 

connection, if the ADSL connection has been mode “Testing 

ADSL Synchronization” should “PASS” and if the connection to 

your provider has worked “Test PPP Layer connection” and “Test 

IP connect to PPP” should “PASS”. If you have problems with the 

ADSL connection check your cabling, micro-filters and other 

phones on the same line, then check with your ISP that your line 

has been successfully enabled (it is possible that your activation 

has been delayed). If there is a problem with the PPP connection 

check you have your login and password exactly as supplied by 

your ISP. If there is still a problem contact them to check your 

account has been properly set up. 

The web configuration interface as it appears in a browser. In this 

case showing the Diagostic Test section which tests certain 

aspects of the ADSL and LAN connections. 

TOTAL AMIGA 

HARD-DRIVES 

2.5" 540 Meg 19.95 

2.5" 1.0 Gig 39.00 

2.5" 8.0 Gig 59.00 

Drives are fully set up for A1200 

with Pre-WB3.1 installed + Utils 

please add £4 UK delivery 

CD-ROM DRIVES 

52x CD-Rom Drive for tower 

fitting.no cables,sw. 24.95 

4 way B/Int c/w cables24.95 

EDO SIMMS 

8 Meg EDO Simms 4.00 

16 Mg EDO Simms 10.00 

MODEMS 

56k/V90 External 34.95 


SPEAKERS 

200w mains powered 7.99 

1200w sub woofer sys21.95 

Amiga convertor lead 2.99 


ACCESSORIES 

Amiga 7" wallclock 4.99 

Amiga Tech mouse 7.99 

Amiga Action Pad 7.50 

Amiga Attack Stick 7.50 

3.1 Rom Chips 25.00 

3.1 WB Disks 9.95 

2.05 WB Disks 4.99 

1.3 WB Disks 3.99 

Squirrel/Zip Adaptor 8.95 

Scart Lead 6.25 

Amiga to TV lead 1.99 

Network PC 

12.99 

Keyboard cleaning Kit 3.99 

Pay by credit card and 

get a free CD-ROM. 

(call for details) 

State Amiga model 

when ordering. 

CDROM GAMES 

Adventurers Lair.......................... £20 

Amiga Classix.............................. £10 

Amiga Classix 2........................... £10 

Amiga Classix 3........................... £20 

Aminet Games............................. £15 

Aqua ............................................£15 

Arcade Classix Mk 2 ................... £10 

Blade............................................£10 

Bubble Heroes............................. £10 

C64 Classix ................................. £10 

CDS Collection ............................ £15 

Cedric .........................................£15 

Chess 2k .....................................£15 

Civilization AGA/ECS.................. £10 

E2140 Mission Pack.................... £15 

Eat The Whistle ........................... £10 

European Superleague ............... £10 

Fields of Glory ............................. £15 

Final Odyssey ............................. £10 

Foundation Gold.......................... £25 

Foundation Und.Land.................. £15 

Genetic Species .......................... £10 

Gremlin Classix ........................... £10 

CDROM GAMES 

Hell Squad ................................... £30 

FORE-MATT Home Computing 

(08700) 112234 • Dept. TA, PO Box 835, Wootton Bassett, Swindon, SN4 8RX 

Heretic 2 £40 Quake £10 

Napalm £15 Freespace £35 

Simon Sorcerer 2 £30 

CD Drive cleaning Kit 4.99 

FloppyDrive cleaner 1.99 

Syquest EZ135 cart 9.99 

Int.Floppy Drive a120014.99 

GAMES 

add £1per game UK pp 

Atomino puzzler 2.99 

Banshee A1200 4.99 

Base Jumpers 4.99 

Blade Warrior 2.00 

Blinkeys Scary School 1.25 

Captain Dynamo 2.99 

Chaos Engine A1200 4.99 

Chaos Engine 2 4.99 

Classic Arcadia: Invaders, 

Muncher, Galaxy 4.99 

Cosmic Spacehead 4.99 

Dangerous Streets 2.00 

Death Mask 4.99 

Desert Strike 5.99 

Dinosaur Detective 4.99 

Dizzy Panic 2.00 

Fantastic Dizzy 4.99 

F29 - Retalliator 4.99 

FIFA Soccer 4.99 

Firehawk 3.99 

Gloom AGA 4.99 

Grand Prix 6.00 

Heimdall 2 RPG 4.99 

Huckleberry Hound 2.99 

International Soccer 2.00 

Jurassic Park 4.99 

Legends AGA 4.99 

Lion King A1200 6.99 

Marvins Adventure 4.99 

Microprose Golf A5/600 3.99 

Microprose Soccer 2.99 

Minskies. puzzler 4.99 

Mortal Kombat 4.99 

Nick Faldo A1200 4.99 

Nigel Mansell GP 4.99 

Ninja Warriors 2.00 

North and South 4.99 

Pinball Mania A12 4.99 

Imperator CD ...............................£15 

Islona Collection ..........................£20 

Labyrinth Of Time ........................£10 

Land of Genesis...........................£20 

Mad About Mahjong.....................£10 

Megaball Deluxe ..........................£15 

Moonbases...................................£10 

Myst..............................................£25 

Nightlong ......................................£45 

Pacman Attack.............................£10 

Payback........................................£35 

Phoenix Fighters..........................£10 

Pure Doom ...................................£10 

PuzzleBobs ..................................£15 

Red Mars .....................................£10 

Retro Gold ...................................£10 

Seaside .......................................£20 

Shadow of 3rd Moon...................£20 

Simon the Sorcerer......................£10 

Sixth Sense Invest’ns ..................£15 

Skeleton Krew CD32 ...................£10 

Speccy Classix .................£10 

Spherical Worlds..........................£10 

Star Fighter ..................................£15 

Street Racer CD...........................£10 

Superfrog ....................................£10 

NORTH WEST MICRO 

31, Catterick Drive, BOLTON, Lancashire Tel: 07884-162899 12-9pm 7 Days 

Road Rash 6.99 

Ruffian jungle adv 4.99 

Rugby World Cup 4.99 

Sci Fi Collection 4.99 

Second Samurai 6.99 

Simon The Sorcerer 6.99 

Skeleton Krew A12 4.99 

Sports Masters: PGA Tour Golf, 

Tennis, Indy 500, Euro Soccer 

Champs 4.99 

Street Racer A1200 4.99 

Striker soccer 4.99 

Suburban Commando 4.99 

Super Methane Bros 4.99 

Super Streetfighter 2 4.99 

Super Tennis Champs 3.99 

Sword of Excalibur 4.99 

Tactical Manager 2 4.99 

Team Yankee 2.00 

Tennis Cup 2 2.99 

Theme Park 5.99 

Thunderblade Sega 2.99 

Timekeepers 2.99 

Total Carnage war 4.99 

Treasure Island Dizzy 2.99 

Trolls Platformer 4.99 

Turbo Trax racing 4.99 

Valhalla - Before TheWar 4.99 

Wembley Rugby League 2.99 

White Death Strategy 2.00 

Whizz 4.99 

Winter Olympics 4.99 

Worms DC 7.99 

Zeewolf 2 3D copter 4.99 

Zool A1200 2.99 

CD 

5,000 Colour Images 4.99 

Adult Sensations 3D "18" 9.99 

AGA Toolkit 97 4.99 

Amiga Classix Mk 2 12.99 

Amiga OS 3.9 CD 29.95 

Aminet 37 inc.Zombie Mass 12.99 

CDROM GAMES 

Super Methane Bros. .................. £10 

Theme Park CD........................... £10 

The Games Room....................... £15 

The Prophet................................. £10 

Trivial Pursuit .............................. £10 

Ultimate Gloom ........................... £10 

Ult. Super Skidmarks .................. £10 

Uropa 2........................................ £10 

Virtual Grand Prix........................ £20 

Virtual Karting 2 .......................... £10 

Vital Light .................................... £10 

Wasted Dreams........................... £20 

Whales Voyage 2 ........................ £15 

Wipeout 2097 PPC...................... £30 

Word Games ............................... £10 

Zombie Massacre{18} ................. £10 

EPSON COMPATIBLE INK 

Black 440/460/640/660 ................. £7 

Col 440/460/640/660 .................. £10 

Black 670/720/750/1200 ............... £7 

Col 740/760/860/1160 ................. £10 

Black 400/500/600/700 ................. £7 

Col 400/600/800/850/1520 ......... £10 

Black C20/C40/480/580................ £7 

Col. C20/C40/480/580 ................ £10 

UTILITIES 

17 Bit Level 6 ...............................£10 

100% Amiga Magazine.................. £5 

100% Amiga Annual UK..............£48 

A-Z of Amiga Games ...................£20 

Amiga Desktop Video2................£10 

Amiga Developer 2.1...................£20 

Amiga Forever 5 ..................£40 

Amiga Forever upg >5.................£25 

Amiga Repair Kit..........................£35 

Aminet Set 4, 5, 7 - 12 ................£25 

Aminet Set Subscribe..................£20 

Aminet Singles.............................£12 

Aminet Subscription.....................£10 

Amos PDCD2...............................£20 

Animatic ........................................ £5 

Art Studio Pro ..............................£35 

Asim CDFS v3.x ..........................£30 

Aweb II v3.3 ................................£40 

Aweb II v3.3 OS3.5/3.9upg .........£30 

Best of Airsoft ..............................£10 

Best of Mecomp v1........................ £5 

Blitz Basic 2.1 (ult.)......................£10 

Burn It DAO..................................£60 

Candy Factory Pro.......................£35 

CD32 Network Kit ........................£25 

Aminet 38 inc P. Paint 7.1b 12.99 

Aminet 46 inc. Virt Karting 2 12.99 

Aminet Set 5 4 CD's 17.95 

Assassins 3 4.99 

Award Maker 4.99 

Babes Adult CD 9.95 

Battle Chess 4.99 

Battle Chess 1+2 used 8.99 

Bubble Heroes 9.99 

Cannon Fodder 4.99 

Classic Collection 2 CD Set 19.95 

Desktop Video Vault 9.99 

Epic Encyclopedia 97 4.99 

Fighting Spirit 14.99 

Final Oddysey 4.99 

Games Room 12.99 

Genetic Species 030+ 14.99 

Great Giana Sisters 9.99 

Guardian 3D flying 2.99 

Guinness Disk of Records 4.99 

Hidden Truth. UFO's, cover 

ups, etc 4.95 

Insight Dinosaurs 9.95 

Islona Collection 19.95 

Kang Fu Platformer 2.99 

Last Will & Testament CD 4.99 

MarryamPic 4.99 

Midinet 4.99 

Napalm 24.95 

Octamed 6 4.99 

Octamed Sound Studio 6.99 

Pacman Attack 9.95 

Pandoras CD MM 3.99 

Personal Paint 7.1 9.99 

Phoenix Fighters 7.99 

Pictris NEW 9.99 

Prophet RPG 9.99 

Retro Gold C64/Speccy 4.99 

Rune Magic. 4.99 

Sounds Teriffic 2 CD set. 4.99 

Draw Studio 2 £45 Amiga Writer 2 £35 

T-Zero £20 Feeble Files £35 Earth 2140 £30 STFax 4.5 £40 

Art Effect 4 £40 

UTILITIES 

CybergraphX ................................£25 

Cross Dos 7 Gold.........................£40 

Darkage Developer......................£10 

Diavolo 2000 ................................£50 

Digibooster Pro ............................£20 

Digital Makeup .............................£15 

EASys! Enhancer.........................£20 

Emulators Unlimited.....................£10 

Extreme CD....................................£6 

Faces of Mars 2001 .....................£15 

fxPaint v1.5 ..................................£60 

fxScan v3.0 ..................................£25 

Gateway v1 (netBSD) ..................£10 

Giga Graphics ..............................£10 

Giga PD v3 (3Cdset)......................£5 

GlowIcons ...................................£10 

GlowIcons 2 .................................£15 

Graphic Sensations .....................£10 

Guinness Records v2 ..................£10 

HD Patchez ..................................£10 

Hidden Truth.................................£10 

Ibrowse 2.x...................................£35 

Learning Curve ............................£20 

Lightrom 8 or 9 ea........................£30 

LSD 1 or 2 ea...............................£15 

Speccy 98 Emu+Games 4.99 

Spherical Worlds 9.99 

Strangers.street fighting 2.99 

Street Racer 4.99 

Theme Park 7.95 

Time Of Reckoning. 

Doom/Quake add-ons 2.99 

T-Zero 030+HD+8m 24.95 

Ultimate Gloom 6.99 

Ultimate S Skidmarks 4.99 

Under Construction 4.99 

Uropa 2 4.99 

Virtual GP Special 14.99 

Virtual Karting 2 4.99 

Vulcanology 4.99 

Wasted Dreams 14.99 

WB Enhancers CD 7.99 

Whales Voyage 2 14.95 

World of Clipart. 2 CDs 7.99 

Visit our webpage... 

www.northwestmicro.co.uk 

for latest prices/specials. 

e-mail: 

derek@northwestmicro.co.uk 

FREE JOYSTICK 

with all orders over £15 

Please add £1.99 for pp 

UTILITIES 

Make CD DAO............................. £50 

MediaPoint................................... £30 

Meeting Pearls 4 ......................... £10 

Midi Files ..................................... £10 

Moovid Pro 2 ............................... £20 

Multimedia Backdrop .................. £15 

Multimedia Toolkit........................ £10 

NcodeR ................................... £25 

Network CD ................................. £10 

Network CD 2 .............................. £15 

OS 3.9.......................................... £30 

PFS3............................................ £35 

Photo CD Manager ..................... £15 

Photofolio v2................................ £25 

Photogenics 5.............................. £70 

Red Hat Linux.............................. £20 

Screen Savers 2.......................... £10 

Sounds Terrific 2.......................... £10 

System Booster........................... £10 

Texture Heaven 1&2.................... £10 

Turbo Calc 5 ................................ £60 

Turbo Print 7.x ............................. £40 

VHI Studio 5.2 ............................. £30 

Workbench 3.0 Set...................... £10 

Workbench Addon CD................. £10 

“The Amiga Online Superstore” - Visit our new 128 bit secure online shop at www.forematt.co.uk 

Amiga Retro Classics Site: www.forematt.free-online.co.uk EMail: sales@forematt.co.uk

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Distributor 

KDH Datentechnik 

www.kdh-datentechnik.com 


www.forematt.co.uk 

(08700) 112234 

Price 

99.90 Euro (approx. £65). 

Compatibility 

Any Amiga with Zorro slots. 

68020+ processor 

Uses about 100KB of RAM 

AmigaOS 3.0 or above 

MUI (for preferences GUI) 

Test System 

A3000 Desktop 

Cyberstorm PPC/060 

CyberVision PPC 

Other Zorro cards: 

Ariadne II Ethernet 

Wavetools Sound Card 

Hypercom III fast I/O 

AmigaOS 3.9 

The Highway is about as small 

as a Zorro card can be! 

It’s taken a long time but at last USB for the Amiga is here! 

Robert Williams takes his Amiga into uncharted waters. 

The Universal Serial Bus 

was developed as a 

method of connecting relatively 

low speed peripherals 

replacing the RS232 serial and 

Centronics parallel ports that 

have been standard on most 

computer platforms for well 

over a decade. USB has a 

number of advantages over the 

existing ports. Multiple devices 

to be connected to one USB 

port using hubs. USB is faster 

than both serial and parallel 

ports so it can be used for 

devices which require little data 

transfer such as mice and 

keyboards and those that 

transfer more data such as 

printers and scanners. USB 

devices can draw their power 

from the bus so many do not 

require a separate power 

supply. From a manufacturer’s 

point of view USB is relatively 

simple to implement using a 

connector with just four pins, 

the connectors are also 

physically smaller than a 

typical parallel or serial port. 

With the popularity of USB on 

the two major consumer 

computing platforms, 

Windows and 

Macintosh, 

over the last few years it has 

become increasingly difficult to 

find peripherals compatible 

with the Amiga’s standard 

serial and parallel ports. For 

example digital cameras and 

scanners now use USB almost 

exclusively and some printers 

no longer have a parallel port. 

Several efforts to bring USB to 

the Amiga have been mooted 

but none of them came to 

anything until now! E3B, a 

small German developer are 

the first to actually bring a USB 

solution to market in the form 

of the Highway Zorro II card. 

The Highway is a small card 

just long enough to fill a Zorro 

slot. Its size means it can be 

fitted behind another card in a 

bus board which shares Zorro 

slots with PCI, video or ISA 

slots. Installing the card in a 

Zorro slot is easy, you just 

have to be careful to get it the 

right way up. Two blanking 

plates are supplied each 

holding two USB connectors 

which connect to a header on 

the Highway via short cables. 

These will only really reach to 

the brackets immediately 

behind the Highway so if you 

wanted to install them 

elsewhere in a tower you would 

need to get longer cables. With 

both plates installed you have 

four USB connections on the 

back of your Amiga, 

more can be 

added using a 

hub if required. 

In my A3000 

desktop I only had 

room for one plate, 

this posed no problem 

for the Highway. The 

printed manual explains 

the installation in detail 

with a section on installing 

the card in various Amiga 

systems. On the E3B website 

there is a list of third party 

Zorro bus boards with which 

the Highway has been tested. 

At the time of writing the RBM 

OnBoard 4000 bus board is the 

only one said to cause 

problems. 

In addition to the USB 

connectors the Highway also 

has a clock port header so 

devices intended for the A1200 

clock port can be connected, 

for these devices to work 

updated driver software is 

required from their 

manufacturer. The Highway 

also has a 38pin expansion 

port, E3B are developing an 

10Mb/s Ethernet card called 

the Norway for this port, in fact 

a driver for the Norway is 

included on my Highway disk 

but the hardware is not yet 

available as I write this. Full 

pin-outs for these connectors 

are in the manual which also 

states that developer 

information for the expansion 

ports is available on request 

from E3B. One final connector 

on the Highway allows for the 

bus interface logic to be 

upgraded, if such an upgrade 

were ever available (and there 

is no sign one is required) it 

would have to be carried out by 

an authorised service centre. 

Getting working hardware on 

the Amiga is only part of the 

battle to a USB solution (after 

all you could plug a PCI USB 

card into one of the existing 

PCI bus boards but it wouldn’t 

do you any good without a 

driver), software referred to as 

a USB stack is needed to add 

USB support to the OS and 

then drivers for USB 

peripherals are also required. 

As you might guess from the 

name a USB stack is very like 

a TCP/IP stack in concept, it 

provides a standard way for 

the USB drivers to access the 

USB hardware and deals with 

the low level device access. 

The Highway is supplied with a 

USB stack called Poseidon, 

developed by Chris Hodges. 

Although Chris has developed 

Poseidon using a Highway 

card the stack accesses the 

hardware using a driver and 

has been designed so that 

other types USB card can be 

supported. 

Poseidon needs to be installed 

before the Highway and any 

attached USB devices are 

recognised. The program is 

supplied on a single floppy disk 

and is installed using the 

standard installer. Only two 

options are given during 

installation, the first is whether 

Poseidon should be started 

automatically at start-up. If you 

select this option a command 

is added to the end of your 

user-startup file to load the 

USB stack, USB devices are 

then ready to use as soon as 

your Amiga boots. The second 

option is to install an updated 

input.device, the input.device 

is the part of the OS which 

handles the keyboard and 

mouse. Replacing it allows 

USB devices to seamlessly 

replace the standard mouse 

and keyboard without patching 

the OS. The updated device 

also supports multiple 

keyboards and mice (should 

you need them for any reason). 

Also on the Poseidon disk is an 

Extras drawer which contains, 

amongst other things, the 

Fat95 file system which is 

useful for many mass storage 

devices and some nice Glow 

Icons for the stack’s utilities. 

USB peripherals are grouped 

into various classes based on 

their function, for example 

keyboards and mice generally 

belong to the Human Interface 

Device (HID) class and storage 

devices such as disk drives 

come under the Mass Storage 

Device (MSD) class. Poseidon 

allows class drivers to be 

written supporting different 

classes of device. A number of 

drivers are supplied so the 

Highway card can be used with 

several types of device straight 

away, the currently supported 

classes are: 


The Highway installed in an A3000 desktop. The card is 

connected to the USB ports by the two light coloured cables. 

Hubs 

A hub allows you to connect 

several devices to one USB 

port, usually they are a small 

box with one USB “input” 

known as an upstream 

connection and several 

“outputs” or downstream 

connections. The number of 

downstream connections 

provided by a hub varies and 

they can sometimes be found 

built into other devices such as 

keyboards allowing another 

device (for example a mouse) 

to be “daisy chained”. A hub 

can pick up its power from the 

bus (meaning that in total the 

devices connected must not 

draw more than 500 milliamps) 

or it can have its own power 

supply (self powered), in that 

case each device can draw up 

to the 500mA maximum 

allowed in the USB standard. 

The Highway can only supply a 

limited current because the 

whole Zorro bus is limited to 2A 

(2000mA) so the manual 

recommends that high drain 

devices (in particular anything 

with a motor such as a ZIP 

drive or bus powered scanner) 

are connected to a self 

powered hub. Poseidon 

supports both bus and self 

powered hubs and most are 

expected to work. I tried a 

Belkin four port hub that is 

readily available locally and all 

devices except an Epson 

printer (see printers section 

below) worked equally well 

connected to the hub or directly 

to the Highway. 

Keyboards and Mice 

As I mentioned above USB 

keyboards and mice generally 

belong to the HID class, at the 

moment this is not supported 

by the Highway however it 

does support the bootmouse 

and bootkeyboard classes. 

These classes were designed 

for simple keyboard and mouse 

support in system configuration 

screens (such as a PC’s 

BIOS). The Supplied drivers 

work with most keyboards and 

mice and provide fairly basic 

functionality. Mice act as a 

simple three button mouse, any 

additional buttons or scroll 

wheels are ignored. That said 

modern optical mice such as 

my Logitech Wheel Mouse 

Optical and a Microsoft 

Intellimouse Explorer work well 

(with the exception of their 

scroll wheels). I also noticed 

that the same mouse 

connected through USB seems 

to track more smoothly than 

through my PS/2 to Amiga 

adaptor. On the keyboard front 

the basic keys (102 if I 

remember correctly) on a PC 

style keyboard are supported 

but not any additional 

“multimedia” buttons. The 

author of Poseidon has said he 

is working on a full HID class 

driver for Poseidon which 

should enable support for scroll 

wheels and additional buttons 

on mice and “multimedia” 

keyboards. 

Since I got my Highway I’ve 

had my mouse connected by 

USB, it has worked well and 

my system seems to be as 

stable as ever. I was also 

pleased to see that the mouse 

continues to work smoothly 

even when there is intense 

activity on the USB bus such 

as printing or copying large 

amounts of data, I think this is 

because USB can prioritise 

“interactive” devices. Anyway it 

works very smoothly, pretty 

impressive for the first release 

of an entirely new product to 

the Amiga. 

Reviews 

Printers and Parallel 

Devices 

When a USB printer is 

connected to the Highway the 

Poseidon USB stack 

automatically creates a device 

driver called usbparallel.device 

which can be used to access 

the printer, if multiple printers 

are attached they are assigned 

different unit numbers. Being 

able to access the printer via 

USB doesn’t suddenly make 

printer drivers available 

however if the printer has both 

USB and Parallel ports or their 

is a similar model with a 

parallel connection someone 

may already have written a 

driver, for example in the 

Turboprint package. If this is 

the case then you just need to 

set the driver to print to the 

usbparallel.device and the 

appropriate unit and print as 

normal. We tested USB 

printing with a Canon S450 

and an Epson Stylus Photo 

790 both printers worked on 

the USB connection. We did 

have some problems with the 

Epson when connected 

through a hub but this issue is 

also reported on other 

platforms, it worked perfectly 

when connected directly to the 

Highway. We also compared 

printing speed between USB 

and the standard parallel port 

using Turboprints “Turbo par” 

mode. In cases where the 

standard parallel port wasn’t 

able to keep the printer fed 

with data all the time (we could 

hear the head pausing 

between passes) the Canon 

was between 20 and 30 

percent faster on USB, the 

Epson was up to 20 percent 

faster with similar tests. As we 

have proven with the mass 

storage devices (400 - 

500KB/s) that USB is much 

faster than the standard 

parallel port (about 50KB/s) 

this seems to suggest that the 

main bottleneck in Amiga 

printing is actually processing 

the data ready to print. 

Given that the speed 

advantages of USB printing are 

not huge (although a 20% 

speed up on a 15 minute print 

job is not to be sniffed at) and 

currently most printers have 

parallel and USB support 

23

Reviews 

printing might seem to be one 

of the less interesting aspects 

of the Highway. However E3B 

report that the authors of 

TurboPrint are working on more 

USB printer drivers for the 

package and some interesting 

printers are now being 

introduced which only have 

USB ports (for example the 

acclaimed Canon S900 and 

9000 photo printers) so in the 

future USB printing will 

become more important. 

Storage Devices 

There are many storage 

devices that connect by USB, 

the most common being flash 

memory card readers and disk 

based devices such as ZIP 

drives. Poseidon supports 

devices that comply with the 

massstorage class. Several 

memory card reader have 

been tested as compatible, I 

purchased a LaCie Hexadrive 

which reads all the common 

Flash memory formats 

(Compact Flash, MicroDrive, 

Smart Media, Memory Stick, 

Secure Digital and Multimedia 

Card). When you plug in a 

storage device Poseidon 

creates the usbscsi.device 

which is used to access the 

device. If you connect more 

than one device or your device 

has several slots (like my 

reader) multiple units of the 

device are created. Disks or 

cards inserted in the device are 

not automatically mounted, you 

have to create a suitable 

DosDriver. Most USB storage 

devices will use DOS/Windows 

style FAT file systems so you 

will probably want to install the 

FAT95 file system included on 

the Poseidon disk in the Extras 

drawer. A sample DosDriver 

using FAT95 is installed with 

Poseidon into your 

Some digital cameras like this 

Olympus E20 can be directly 

connected. 

Sys:Storage/DosDrivers/UMSD 

drawer. You can edit this 

DosDriver to point to the 

correct unit of the 

usbscsi.devce for your device. 

With my card reader when you 

mount the device by double 

clicking on the DOSDriver a 

bad disk icon appears until you 

insert a valid memory card. 

Then you can access the 

contents like any normal Amiga 

drive, with Workbench, a file 

manager or direct from 

programs whatever you prefer. 

As well as reading files from 

the drive you can also save 

back to it and perform other 

operations like renaming and 

deleting files. One slight oddity 

I did notice is that when you 

remove a card it’s icon does 

not disappear from Workbench 

unless you issue a manual 

diskchange command, 

however a new card is 

recognised automatically when 

inserted. I did some tests 

reading and writing to Compact 

Flash and Smart Media 

memory cards and achieved 

around 460 Kilobytes per 

second transferring a 24Mb file 

to and from Compact Flash. 

Smart Media came in at about 

400KB/s for the same 

operations. Compared to 

connecting a camera via the 

serial port this is hugely faster, 

as the best you’ll get on serial 

is about 14KB/s. 

According to the E3B website 

USB ZIP100 and 250 drives 

work with the Highway 

(although you may need a self 

powered hub). Currently the 

massstorage.class does not 

support auto mounting devices 

with RDBs so you have to 

create a DOSDriver or use a 

mounting utility such as 

AutoMounter (supplied in the 

Extras drawer). Some digital 

cameras conform to the 

massstorage class themselves 

meaning they can be 

connected directly. For me the 

storage device support is the 

most useful part of the 

Highway, now I can get 

pictures off my digital camera 

in a fraction of the time making 

it much more enjoyable. When 

I’m ready to upgrade I can 

consider any camera with a 

removable memory card 

(almost all of them). 

USB Device Compatibility 

The Highway should be able 

to operate with any USB 

device however to 

make use of a device it 

must conform to one of 

the classes with a 

Poseidon class driver. 

The E3B site warns that 

there are also devices 

which supposedly belong to a 

particular class but do not 

properly implement the 

standard and thus cause 

problems. From my limited 

testing mice, keyboards and 

printers seem a fairly safe bet, 

with storage devices you need 

to be more careful, make sure 

you can return it if it doesn’t 

work. The E3B website 

mentions that the source code 

to the Linux USB stack if full of 

work arounds for devices that 

don’t quite stick to the 

specifications. For example the 

first flash card reader I bought 

would work without problems 

until I also connected a USB 

mouse, then it kept reporting 

errors in the Poseidon error log 

and I could no longer access 

the device. When I reported 

this to Chris Hodges he looked 

at the Linux sources and found 

the particular device was 

marked as non-standard. The 

E3B site also has a useful list 

of USB devices that have been 

tested as working, I returned 

my card reader and got the 

Hexadrive which was 

confirmed to work properly. 

There are also devices which 

do not belong to any class, 

instead they use a vendor 

specific driver, usually these 

are only available for Windows 

and MacOS (if you’re lucky). 

For these devices a specific 

driver is needed to provide 

support. Scanners and some 

digital cameras are commonly 

vendor specific devices. 

IOSpirit have announced that 

they are working on Poseidon 

compatible scanner and digital 

camera drivers for their fxScan 

and VHIStudio packages 

respectively. Poseidon is also 

supplied with a simple 

command line program to 

download pictures from 

webcams based on the 

STV680 chip, for example the 

Aiptek Pencam series. 

Trident 

Most of the time the Poseidon 

USB stack just sits in the 

background doing its job, never 

the less it comes with a handy 

MUI based preferences 

program called Trident and a 

few command line utilities. The 

main Trident window has 

several pages selected from a 

list on the left hand side, Miami 

style. The Hardware page 

shows the USB cards installed 

in your system, normally one 

Highway card is shown but 

additional hardware drivers can 

be added if they become 

available. Devices lists all the 

USB devices connected to the 

Highway, this includes hubs 

and any USB devices 

connected to them. On the 

Devices page you can check 

which class driver has been 

Poseidon’s preferences program, Trident, shows all the USB 

devices connected and which class driver they use. 

The bottom section gives easy access to the log file. 

bound to each device and if 

necessary release the binding 

(I guess this might be useful in 

the future if there was more 

than one driver for a device). 

There is also a button which 

displays more information 

about the selected device. The 

classes page shows the USB 

class drivers available with a 

brief description and how many 

devices are currently using 

each driver. When new class 

drivers are developed an Add 

button allows them to be 

registered with Poseidon. 

There is a Configure button on 

the Classes page but none of 

the currently supplied classes 

have any configuration options. 

The last page is called Config 

but as yet there are no 

configuration options available. 

At the bottom of the Trident 

window is a list which shows a 

log of events since the 

Poseidon was started. This is 

handy because you can look 

back and see exactly in what 

order devices were recognised, 

Front 

Computer cases are 

designed to look good on 

a shelf in a shop, so all the 

messy stuff like input/output 

ports is hidden at the back. 

This is fine for things like 

keyboards, printers, modems 

and many other devices. You 

want their cables out of sight, 


it also shows when any device 

was added or removed from 

the bus and what class driver it 

was bound to. I should mention 

here that the log is particularly 

humorous, here are a few 

examples: 

New hardware 

DEVS:USBHardware/ 

highwayusb.device/0 added. 

Plug in, baby! 

0-bootmouse.class: I’m 

pleased to introduce a mouse 

alliance to ‘USB Mouse’! 

0-hub.class: Device ‘Hub: 

Vdr=0451/PID=2046’ at port 2 

is gone! 

0-hub.class: Oh no! I’ve been 

shot! Arrggghh... 

Well I enjoyed them anyway, 

more seriously the log can be 

handy for trouble shooting, if 

you want to save the log to a 

file you can use the shell 

command “psderrorlog 

>device:file”. 

X 

Dealing with the rat’s nest of cables behind your Amiga is 

always a problem , Neil Bothwick seems to have found an 

interesting solution to this perenial problem. 

and you don’t need easy 

access to them very often. 

There are some things you 

may want more frequent 

access to. Digital camera users 

will want access to serial and 

(hopefully) USB ports. Gamers 

may want to use different 

controllers for different games. 

Anyone who likes to listen to 

MP3s late at night, or play 

noisy games, may want to 

replace the speakers with 

headphones. All of these are a 

pain in the neck (or wherever) 

with a standard tower case. 

FrontX provides a solution. It 

extends selected ports form the 

back of your computer to the 

front, housing them in a 5” 

drive bay. There are two 

elements to the kit, the first is a 

chassis that fits in a drive bay. 

Pressing the Help key within 

Trident brings up Poseidon’s 

extensive AmigaGuide 

documentation, this provides 

information on using Trident, 

the class and hardware drivers. 

I found it to be comprehensive 

and well written. The Highway 

package also comes with a 

printed manual which covers 

the hardware installation. 

Conclusion 

From the very start the 

Highway has impressed me, 

the board itself is high quality 

and it is accompanied with well 

written installation 

documentation. Having used 

Results 

Pros 

+ High quality 

hardware. 

+ Reliable software. 

+ Useful set of drivers. 

Cons 

- Keyboard and mouse 

drivers currently 

simple. 

This has a flap to cover the 

ports when not in use and a 

number of slots in which to 

place the ports. It also has a 

special cover plate for one of 

your PCI access slots to allow 

cables to pass through. 

The second element consists 

of the port extenders. These 

can be bought individually, or 

as a kit of commonly used 

ones. You choose which ports 

you move to the front, from 

serial, USB, game, audio, 

video, microphone and firewire. 

There’s also a headphone port 

that leaves the speakers 

connected to the back of the 

computer, but cuts them off 

when headphone are plugged 

into the front socket. The 

chassis hold six of the smaller 

Reviews 

the board for about a month 

now both it and the software 

have been very reliable, even 

though this is the first release it 

feels like a mature product. A 

useful combination of drivers 

are provided, for many 

Amigans just having the ability 

to use a modern digital camera 

will justify the purchase of the 

Highway and a flash card 

reader. It seems likely that in 

the next few months more and 

improved class drivers will 

appear making the Highway an 

even more attractive 

proposition. 

Pretty 

Good! 

Just slot in the ports you need, 

FrontX is compatible with any computer including Amigas. 

extenders, the ones that use 

jack or phono plugs, and two of 

the larger ones for serial, USB 

etc. 

Some ideas are so simple you 

wonder why no one has 

thought of them before. FrontX 

is one of those ideas. FrontX is 

totally hardware independent. 

It will work on any computer 

that has a spare 5” bay and 

standard connectors. All the 

parts are sold separately, so 

you can tailor it to fit your 

needs exactly. The multimedia 

kit costs $28.90 (about £20), 

the chassis alone is $10.90 

(£7.50) and most port 

extenders are $5-$10 (£4-£7). 

FrontX can be ordered from 

http://www.frontx.com and 

prices include shipping. 

25

Reviews 

The Feeble Files 

It’s about time we had a new point and click adventure on the Amiga. Sam Byford thinks EPIC Interactive’s latest port 

will keep fans of the genre quiet for a while. 

.info 

Developer 

EPIC Interactive 

www.epic-interactive.com 

Price 

£35 

Available from 


www.forematt.co.uk 

Kicksoft 

www.kicksoft.co.uk 

Requirements 

68060 

32Mb RAM 

4Mb graphics card 

600MB hard drive space 

AHI 

AmigaOS 3.0+ 

PPC accelerator 

recommneded. 

Test System 

A4000 

CyberStorm Mk III 060/50 

65MB RAM 

Mediator 4000 

Voodoo 3000 (16MB) 

AmigaOS 3.5 BB2 

Picasso 96 

The Feeble Files is the latest 

game conversion from the 

company Adventure Soft 

(published by EPIC), and is in 

the age-old format of a Pointand-Click 

adventure. Anyone 

that has played Monkey Island I 

or II, Simon the Sorcerer or 

Nightlong will feel immediately at 

home with the environment of 

Feeble Files and except for a 

few differences the basic 

concept is the same also. You 

control an alien called Feeble. A 

member of the Omnisociety 

(ruled over and controlled by the 

Omnibrain) who, through some 

rather reckless (but fun!) space 

piloting manages to collide with 

an Earth satellite and thereby 

ruins a company installation 

base. 

According to the printed 

introduction in the manual the 

“..Omnibrain considers all life 

forms to be his citizens who he 

loves and cares for in the way 

that is best for them..... He 

watches over you constantly to 

protect you from any possible 

rebellious influences and 

dangerous emotions you may 

find yourself experiencing. 

Praise be to the Omnibrain!” This 

is the first hint that the Omnibrain 

may not be the all-wonderful 

‘God-like figure’ he is believed to 

be and as you progress in the 

game you find this out for 

yourself and, well - the rest is 

obvious! Uncover the truth you 

must; give the members of the 

Omnisociety back their freedom 

and make all right in the 

(Omni)Universe again. 

Becoming a member of the 

Omnisociety. 

The Feeble Files comes in a 

DVD case and consists of two 

CDs and a manual in English, 

Dutch and French. Unfortunately 

it is not a double leaf case which 

would have kept things nice and 

neat, instead the second CD is in 

a paper wallet tucked under the 

manual. CD1 consists of the 

main executables, a readme file 

and a Spoilers directory. This 

contains a complete Solution text 

file and another directory with ten 

save files in it taken from various 

progressions through the game. 

These are here to help you in 

case you become completely 

stuck at some point in the game, 

but as with any cheat would spoil 

the fun of the game if you use 

them. 

Installation of Feeble Files could 

not be easier - open up the CD 

contents and double click the 

“Feebleinstall” icon, it will then 

copy the needed contents to the 

hard drive in a place of your 

choosing which will take up 

about 700mb of space. To run 

the game just click on Feeble’s 

head (a rather large icon). You 

will need CD2 in the drive to play 

the game. Personally I find this 

kind of dependence on CDs a 

real pain so if you have a big 

enough hard drive I would 

recommend that you copy the 

contents of the 2nd CD to a 

directory of your choosing and 

then make an assign “ Assign 

Feeble2: Movies:Feeble2 “ 

where Movies: is the directory of 

your choice. 

As with any program you should 

always read the readme file first, 

and in this case it tells of a few 

changes to the Amiga version 

from the Mac version. It also tells 

you that Feeble Files uses AHI 

for its sound output and that it 

uses Unit 0 only - which is a bit 

naughty as it should use 

whatever channel you tell it to. It 

also says to set the channel 

number to between 4 and 6, 

though I had it running on 1 

channel for ages and didn’t 

notice much difference except 

that with 6 channels I had to turn 

the volume up louder than with it 

set to 1 channel! 

Stepping into the Shoes of 

an Alien. 

When you first start Feeble Files 

it will ask you for a screenmode 

to use. Most people should 

select 640x480 8bit because this 

is the ideal mode for the game. It 

will run in a higher res but on my 

060 it went really slow 

(slideshow speed in fact). 

Anything smaller and all I got 

was a blank screen. For an 8bit 

game the graphics are 

remarkably good but its a shame 

there isn’t a 16bit version as 

well, especially as a lot of Amiga 

users now have graphics cards 

which can handle this standard 

very nicely now. You can then sit 

back and enjoy the introductory 

animation that is presented to 

you. It shows feeble and the 

already mentioned joy-ride that 

causes the destruction of the 

installation. You then take control 

of Feeble on this base and are 

introduced to the first set of 

puzzles in the game. (A hint - 

pick up the Doll and use it in the 

transporter. This isn’t the only 

thing to do at this stage but it 

gets you started!) 

You will notice that there is a 

gold coloured icon at the top left 

of the screen. This is Feeble’s 

Database system - Oracle. It 

holds the rules of the Omniverse, 

the items Feeble has picked up 

(the inventory) and has basic 

prefs and info items. Use the 

mouse to click on this icon and it 

will bring up the Oracle screen, 

where you should read through 

the “Ency” (Encyclopedia) items, 

and change your preferences to 

suit you. It should be noted that 

turning “Hitbox” names on will 

often help you in the game. With 

this on whenever your mouse 

passes over an item that Feeble 

can interact with it will throw up 

on screen the name of the 

object. This can be very valuable 

for finding those hidden items 

not easily seen. Not far into the 

game you help to get a member 

Turning on “Hitbox” names 

helps you find vital items. 

of the Omniverse killed and he 

leaves behind a boarding pass 

that you need to get your 

hands(!?) on, but it was only with 

the Hitbox names turned on, 

and a bit of patience, that I found 

the pass sitting on the table in 

deep shadow (see the 

screenshot for the exact 

position!). Understandably 

though, some players will prefer 

to have this turned off for exactly 

the reverse reason, they like to 

make life that little bit harder for 

themselves! 

Time to get interactive. 

The mouse pointer is actually a 

multi-tasking item, which with a 

right click of the mouse turns 

from a “walk-to” icon (the default 

setting) to a “look-at” “pick-up” 

“action” and “double-action” icon. 

All of these are pretty obvious in 

their uses but I’ll clarify the use 

of the double-action icon, 

throughout the game Feeble will 

need to use certain objects with 

other objects or people (such as 

the doll with the transporter at 

the start of the game), that is 

where the double-action mouse 

comes into use. You first click 

on one of the two items to use, 

then on the other and Feeble will 

try to use them together with 

either a positive or negative 

result. 


The graphics are detailed and humerous and look great 

even though they are only 8bit. 

The Oracle system contains 

rules, prefs and inventory. 

Now call me picky, but this is 

actually where the game falls 

down in my estimation! The 

inventory of items you see, as 

previously mentioned, is stored 

within Oracle. To get an item for 

interaction you have to move the 

mouse up to the Oracle icon, 

click it, move the mouse back 

down and to the required object, 

then click “OFF” to return to the 

playing screen and then click on 

the item or person you want to 

try to get that object to interact 

with. A lengthy process at the 

best of times. However, when 

you’re in a situation where you 

Know something should interact 

with an item but your not sure 

exactly what then you have to 

repeat this process over and 

over till you (maybe) find the 

correct combination! Not clever, 

a much better solution is the way 

the Clickboom game Nightlong 

works, in Nightlong you move the 

mouse pointer to the bottom of 

the screen and a bar pops up 

with the inventory items in that 

making the whole process quick, 

efficient and painless. If Feeble 

Files did things this way then you 

could still have all the other 

Oracle processes inside that icon 

but the item handling would be 

made much easier. 

Look and Feel of Alienism. 

So other than the ‘interesting’ 

user interface how does the 

game look and feel? The Box 

cover says that Feeble Files 

requires a minimum spec of an 

68060 with 32mb Ram and a 

4mb graphics card (as well as 

600mb of hard drive space, AHI 

and AOS3.X) with the 

recommended specs being a 

PPC Amiga with a 8mb graphics 

card. On my Cyberstorm 060 

system with Mediator and 

Voodoo 3000 (which puts it 

somewhere between the 

minimum and recommended 

specs) the game is more than 

playable. However it is still 

somewhat jerky which, 

considering this is only an 8bit 

game in 640x480 is quite 

surprising! I would have 

expected much more fluid screen 

scrolling and animation playing 

from a game of this calibre. As 

an example look at T-Zer0 

(another game from Clickboom) 

this is of similar graphics and 

size but the scrolling in it is 

perfect, no stuttering like in 

Feeble Files. That said it is not 

too bad and I have seen plenty 

worse which were still playable. 

No doubt on a PPC system the 

screens and animations will fly 

and run perfectly. Talking of the 

animations, it may have just 

been a quirk of my system but on 

a fair few of the cut-scenes I had 

graphics glitches in the form of 

swapped colours and also, once, 

the animation itself froze. The 

sound kept going so all I actually 

missed was a lot of head turning 

and hand waving but still, 

perfection would have been nice! 

The sound in the game is fine, if 

overused at times. While 

walking through the main town 

you get the voice of the 

Omnibrain coming over the 

tannoy system at regular 

intervals, highly annoying when 

you have heard the same 

distracting sing-song voice 

several times already. 

Thankfully that is confined to that 

one area out of all those I have 

encountered so far. 

All in all then the sound and 

pictures are very sharp, well 

drawn and in the case of the 

voices, well performed (in this 

case by Robert Llewellyn of Red 

Dwarf and Scrapheap Challenge 

fame). 

The End of the Omniverse? 

I couldn’t possibly tell you 

whether the game has a 

satisfactory conclusion or not, 

Results 

Pros 

+ WGood use of graphics 

and sound. 

+ Easy to use gameplay. 

+ PPC supported. 

Cons 

- Slightly jerky graphics at 

times. 

- Inventory can be tedious 

to use. 

Reviews 

The cut scenes are 

worth watching. 

mainly because I’m nowhere 

near finishing the game! Some of 

the puzzles in the Feeble Files 

may well keep you frustrated for 

hours (I haven’t yet figured out 

how to get past the secretary to 

see the person I’ve been told to 

go see!) but from what I have 

played there is more than 

enough to keep all point-andclick 

fans interested for ages. 

I’m just hoping the end isn’t as 

quick to happen or as easy as it 

was in Code Name: Hell Squad 

(the only Point-and-click game 

I’ve ever finished!). While I may 

have some slight hang-ups 

about the graphics smoothness it 

is not something that would stop 

me buying the game and though 

the inventory system may be 

somewhat cumbersome it is still 

very workable and, I suppose, 

neat (in that everything you 

could possibly need is in the 

same place). 

So, Feeble, whatever his (my) 

task may be in the game, will 

have to plod along (saving 

regularly of course!) and I’m sure 

eventually I will discover if I can 

truly unmask the Omnibrain and 

return the (Omni)Universe to its 

inhabitants. The graphics and 

sound along the way will not let 

you down and the cut-scenes 

are definitely worth watching 

and, for a 256 based piece of 

work, really quite impressive. 

All in all a worthy addition to the 

converted Amiga Games market. 

I would recommend all fans of 

point-and-click games to buy the 

Feeble Files as soon as 

possible. 

Pretty 

Good! 

29

.info 

Developer 

NEC-Mitsubishi 

www.nec-monitors.com 

Supplier 

Micro Warehouse 

www.microwarehouse.co.uk 

Price 

£411 Incl. VAT 

Compatibility 

Graphics card with 15pin 

VGA connection. 

Specification 

Screen Size: 15.1” 

Max. Resolution: 1024x768 

Brightness: 300 cd/m2 

Contrast Ratio: 450:1 

Response time: 25ms 

Colour: 24bit (16 million) 

Viewing Angles 

Vertical: 110° 

Horizontal: 150 

Input Signal 

Scan rates: 31.5-60 kHz 

Refresh rates: 56.2-75.1 Hz 

Features 

Built-in stereo speakers. 

Headphone socket. 

Powered 4 port USB hub. 

Autumn 2002 

Reviews 

TFT 

NEC Multi-Sync LCD 1550M 

to the traditional CRT monitors which currently dominate most people’s desks? 

Monitor 

Mick Sutton has taken a step up to the latest monitor technology but how does it compare 

It was only in issue 6 that I 

reviewed my then new Sony 

17” CRT monitor, so why only 

18 months later or so am I 

reviewing another monitor I 

hear you saying? 

Size Matters 

The answer is space, or in fact 

the sheer lack of it to be 

precise. On my desk at home I 

had a 17” CRT monitor, a 

printer, a flatbed scanner and 

my wife’s iMac and keyboard 

(my keyboard is on a separate 

pull out shelf luckily) which 

made it very tight for room to 

work but just about enough to 

get away with it. Then my 

audio setup died, the 

significance is that it was a unit 

that sat beneath my monitor 

and therefore took no extra 

space. Looking around I 

couldn’t find anything like it and 

the alternative speakers would 

not remotely fit on my desk, so 

what should I do? 

15.1” 

I had been very interested in 

the latest TFT monitors 

available and had noticed the 

prices dropping quite 

considerably. On further 

investigation I found out that 

specs of such monitors can 

vary quite a bit according to 

price, I also was informed that 

playing games on such 

monitors was unbearable 

unless response times were 

very quick (see boxout). When 

I spotted the NEC 1550M with 

good specifications (see panel) 

and built in multi-media 

speakers I thought to myself 

that would meet all my 

demands in one swoop, so 

here we are! 

Big is Small! 

The NEC 1550M (Multi-media) 

is a 15” TFT monitor which has 

a diagonal visible screen 

measurement of 15.1 inches. 

Although it is a 15” monitor the 

actual viewable area is about 

the same as a 17” CRT 

As you can see from the photo the 15.1” TFT display (right) gives 

almost the same screen area as a 17” CRT monitor (left). 

(Cathode Ray Tube) monitor, 

the reason for this is that CRT 

monitors sizes quoted is the 

actual size of the physical tube 

which is partially surrounded 

by the monitor casing. On most 

17” CRT monitors you end up 

with about 15.9 inches of 

viewable screen, so you can 

see it is not much difference in 

size. One other thing to note is 

that 15” TFT’s have a 

maximum screen resolution of 

1024 x 768 so if you like to use 

resolutions above this you will 

need a 17” TFT monitor and 

they cost around £550 or so. 

The entire flat panel area of the 

monitor measures 34.5cm 

horizontally by 30cm vertically 

and that includes a 2cm border 

down each side, a 2.5cm 

border at the top and a 5cm 

border at the bottom that has 

the control buttons and 

speakers within it. The entire 

footprint including the screen 

panel and base of the monitor 

is 34.5cm width by 16.5cm 

depth which is much less 

15.1” 

31

Reviews 

space than my 17” CRT 

required I can tell you. 

Feature Packed 

This particular monitor has 

several features that I have not 

mentioned yet, it has a stereo 

headphone socket in the front 

as well as the in-built speakers 

which is useful for playing 

games in the early hours of the 

morning (mustn’t wake the kids 

or my life would be hell) and it 

has a four port USB hub 

(powered) built into the base 

which should be very handy in 

the near future with the release 

of USB on the Amiga both in 

the “Classic” form and the new 

AmigaONE. I can even make 

good use of it at present with 

my wife’s iMac which only has 

two USB ports that are free to 

use once the keyboard and 

mouse is plugged in! 

Looks Good 

The monitor has a very neat 

entry panel at the back that 

has the cables coming into it, 

these are the power cable, the 

monitor input cable and a pair 

of audio cables if you want to 

use the in-built 2w speakers. 

Where the cables enter there 

are clips to secure them and a 

cover that clips over that area 

to conceal the whole 

thing....very neat indeed! At the 

front of the monitor under the 

Size Matters! 

screen are eight buttons that 

perform all the functions, the 

one on the far right is a power 

button which is only in fact 

used to put the monitor in 

stand-by mode (the proper 

power off switch is at the rear 

of the TFT panel on the left 

hand side). The other seven 

buttons are used to access the 

various on screen menus that 

used to set up speaker volume, 

brightness, alignment, 

languages and the like found 

on almost every monitor. 

Feels Good 

The first time I connected this 

little gem to my Amiga and 

powered it up I was rather 

pleased by the image quality 

displayed on screen as it was 

excellent, it’s pin sharp and the 

colours vibrant even more so 

than on my previous monitor, 

which was to my mind very 

good quality also (as stated in 

my review in issue 6). One 

other thing that I noticed when 

my Workbench screen 

appeared is that the monitor 

performed an auto adjust to set 

the screen perfectly... mega 

cool! This meant that I didn’t 

have to sit and fiddle with the 

controls to get it perfect like I 

did with my CRT monitor and in 

fact the first time I loaded every 

“standard” (ie 1024x768, 

800x600 and 640x480) screen 

resolution it did this auto adjust 

The cables connect behind a cover (removed here). 

Left to right: USB hub power, mains, VGA cable, audio cable. 

which it then saves to it’s 

settings. If you load something 

that uses a non “standard” 

screen resolution you have to 

perform the adjustments to 

screen position and size 

manually via the on screen 

menus. One of my concerns 

with buying a TFT monitor was 

that I was not totally certain it 

could cope with Amiga games 

screens, I had seen one at 

World of Amiga in 1999 (owned 

by Kickstart member Chris 

Green if my memory serves me 

correctly) that refused to show 

PAL screens despite them 

being put through a scandoubler 

on his A3000, maybe 

they are less tolerant than CRT 

monitors when the lowest scan 

rates are used. But in the end it 

worked fine with all the 

screenmodes I could throw at 

it, and in fact the game screens 

did not suffer much at all with 

the stated response rate 

problems I mentioned earlier. 

The only game that showed 

any slight effects of response 

rate blurring was Freespace 

and this is probably due to the 

high contrast within the game 

(from the darkness of space to 

the bright light coloured craft) 

but it was not bad enough to 

+ Compact size. 

+ Sharp and vivid 

display. 

+ Built-in speakers and 

USB hub. 

Cons 

- Expensive compared 

to a CRT monitor. 

distract you from the game. 

Another concern of mine was 

what the viewing angles would 

be limited to, and I can tell you 

they are very good with a 

vertical angle of 110° and a 

horizontal one of 150°. This 

means that you would have to 

be some way off the centre of 

the screen before the image 

fades an unacceptable 

amount, so unless you’re one 

of these strange people who 

uses their monitor at awkward 

angles it won’t be a problem! 

and by Golly it is Good 

All in all I am very impressed 

with this monitor, it is sharp 

and clear, it uses about a 

quarter of the space of my 

previous monitor (and weighs a 

lot less) and therefore makes it 

more practical for carting down 

to SEAL (http://www.sealamiga.co.uk) 

meetings every 

fortnight. The only negative 

thing I can really think of is the 

price (£411), but you can pick 

up TFT monitors now from 

about £270 so things are better 

than say a year ago when a 

price tag of around £700 was 

very common. 

TFT LCD monitors work in a 

quite different way to a 

traditional CRT (Cathode Ray 

Tube) monitor. Therefore 

when you’re looking to buy 

one you need to learn a 

whole new set of 

specifications and jargon! 

Here’s a quick primer on the 

basics of the technology and 

what to look for in a new LCD 

monitor. 

CRT Monitors 

A CRT monitor is based on 

the same technology as a 

television that has been 

available for around 70 years. 

The display consists of a 

glass tube coated with 

phosphor on the inside of the 

screen. At the back of the 

tube are three “guns” (in a 

colour monitor) that fire 

electron beams at the back of 

the screen making the 

phosphors illuminate, 

producing the picture you 

see. The electron beams from 

the guns scan across each 

line of the display working 

their way down the screen 

until a complete picture is 

built up, persistence in the 

phosphor keeps it glowing for 

a fraction of a second and the 

display is redrawn many 

times per second giving the 

illusion of a stable picture. 

The number of times per 

second the screen is redrawn 

is called the refresh rate 

(typically 60-100Hz (times per 

second)), a low refresh rate 

gives a flickery screen 

because the phosphors have 

started to dim before they are 

redrawn. 

TFT Native Resolutions 

A TFT monitor is based on a 

completely different 

technology. It uses a type of 

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) 

called a TFT (Thin Film 

Transistor) this is in the form 


Results Pros 

Top 

Notch! 

How it Works 

of a thin glass or plastic panel 

which is illuminated from 

behind by fluorescent tubes 

(although you couldn’t tell 

they were tubes from looking 

at the display). The display is 

constructed from discrete 

pixels making up the “native” 

resolution of the display. For 

example a typical 15” display 

like mine has 1024x768 

pixels, unlike a CRT monitor it 

is not possible to exceed this 

resolution because the pixels 

are set. Lower resolutions can 

be displayed by scaling them 

to fill the whole screen. Some 

TFT monitors applied a 

simple scaling method which 

could lead to ugly doubled 

pixels when displaying a 

lower resolution, recent 

models use a smoothing 

system that just makes these 

resolutions look softer than 

the native mode. With an LCD 

monitor it is advisable to run 

in the native resolution most 

of the time. 

Wht’s Important 

Each pixel in a TFT display 

can be individually controlled 

to show the colour required, 

unlike a CRT monitor the 

display does not have to be 

regularly refreshed. This 

means that the refresh rate 

that is so important to prevent 

flicker on a CRT monitor is 

not relevant to a TFT. You 

might see refresh rates 

quoted on TFT monitor 

specifications but this is 

purely the signal the display 

can accept from your 

graphics card. The key 

measure of the quality of a 

TFT display is how quickly it 

can change the state (colour 

and brightness displayed) of 

an individual pixel, this is 

called the response time. On 

displays with a slow response 

time moving objects on the 

screen, for example scrolling 

windows, games and even 

the mouse pointer can blur as 

the display tries to keep up. 

This effect is particularly 

noticeable in areas of high 

contrast where the pixels 

have to change from one 

extreme to the other (dark to 

light or vice versa). The 

response time is usually 

quoted in milliseconds, you 

probably won’t find many 

displays with higher than 

40ms response, my monitor 

has a 25ms response time 

and the lower the time the 

better the monitor will display 

moving graphics. You might 

see the response time 

measured in two parts, build 

and collapse, these are the 

times for the element to go 

from black to white and back 

again. Generally the overall 

response time is the sum of 

these two. If you see a spec. 

with an unusually small 

response time check they are 

not just quoting the expand or 

collapse time alone. 

The Angle of the Dangle 

LCD displays have a limited 

viewing angle, when you look 

at the display from the side, 

from above or below the 

display appears dimmer and 

the colours begin to change. 

Manufacturers specify the 

viewing angle of their displays 

and it is good to look for one 

with as wide angles as you 

can find. Again on modern 

displays you can find viewing 

angles of 150° or more which 

in my experience is fine for 

normal usage. 

Do you Amiga? 

Most LCD monitors will run 

with no problems on any 

Amiga with a graphics card, 

you may need to tweak your 

screenmode settings in the 

graphics driver software 

(CgXMode or 

Picasso96Mode) to meet the 

Reviews 

A short guide to TFT monitor specifications. 

input specifications of the 

monitor. As I mentioned 

before you will also want to 

use the native resolution of 

the monitor for most of your 

screens. I don’t know of an 

LCD display that will sync to 

the standard 15KHz Amiga 

screenmodes (PAL, NTSC) 

however if you have a 

scandoubler or flicker fixer 

there is a good chance it will 

work (my monitor does, I 

would advise you check 

compatibility before you buy if 

15kHz compatibility is 

important to you). Another 

option is that some LCD 

monitors have a composite 

video input in addition to the 

graphics card input which is 

intended for video equipment 

(video cameras, VCRs etc.) if 

you can get a screen like this 

you could hook it up to the 

Amiga’s composite video out 

for 15kHz screenmodes. 

Some TFTs have a DVI 

(Digital Video Interface) 

connector in addition to or 

instead of a standard 15pin 

SVGA connector. DVI can 

send digital signals direct to 

the monitor but it requires a 

graphics card with a DVI 

connection. No Amiga 

graphics card to date have 

DVI so make sure any 

monitor you buy has at least 

one standard VGA connector. 

33

Reviews 

PD Paradise: 

Task Bar Roundup 

Like it or loath it a Windows style task bar and “Start” menu has become standard on most desktop operating systems. 

Robert Williams looks at four utilities designed to bring similar features to AmigaOS... and add some ideas of their own.! 

AmigaOS has never really 

offered an easy method of 

dealing with lots of windows on 

screen, for example finding a 

window that is completely 

obscured by another. In the 

past small screen resolutions 

and multiple screens meant 

that most people ran all their 

programs on separate screens 

and seldom had too many 

windows to worry about. In 

these days of high resolution 

graphics card displays it is 

becoming more common to run 

many programs on a single 

screen (often the Workbench 

screen) and this means it is 

handy to have a way to easily 

reveal a particular window. In 

Windows 95 Microsoft’s 

solution to this problem was 

the taskbar which lists all the 

running applications and allows 

them to be easily brought to 

the front. Many Amiga 

programmers have written 

programs to bring similar 

functions to the Amiga. In this 

roundup we look at four of the 

best examples and see what 

they have to offer. 

StartMenu 

Developer:Martin Elsner 

License: Freeware 

WWW: 

http://www.martin-elsner.de 

StartMenu offers pretty 

much a direct clone of the 

Windows start menu and task 

bar on the Amiga right down to 

a (rather ugly in my opinion) 

Windows XP default look. The 

program is configured by a 

neat Reaction based 

preferences program which is 

installed in your Prefs drawer 

by default. 

Using the preferences program 

you can add items and sub 

menus to the start menu. Shell, 

Workbench and AREXX 

commands are supported. The 

program name and icon shown 

in the menu can be set 

independently of the filename 

and icon. Programs can be 

easily added by dragging their 

icons from Workbench. You 

can make additional submenus 

to organise your 

programs as you wish. Internal 

StartMenu commands can be 

added to the menu too. Only 

two commands are supplied, 

quit adds an item which quits 

StartMenu (without warning or 

any other options) and 

commodities creates a new 

sub-menu showing the 

currently running commodities. 

Each commodity in the menu 

has a sub-menu with Show, 

Hide, Deactivate/Activate and 

Kill options. One feature that 

StartMenu lacks is the facility 

to explore drives within the 

menu, personally I don’t find 

this feature very useful so it’s 

no great loss, of course your 

opinion may differ. 

For quicker access commonly 

used program icons can be 

added to the left hand side of 

the task bar where they load 

with a single click. At the 

opposite end of the task bar a 

clock is shown, 

moving the 

mouse over the 

StartMenu’s Reaction based preferences program. 

clock shows the date and 

clicking it opens a pop-up 

menu where you can load the 

prefs program or quit 

StartMenu. Between the two is 

the taskbar area, here a button 

is displayed for each window 

on the current screen, clicking 

on a button brings its window 

to the front. With many 

windows open the task bar can 

get crowded and the window 

titles truncated, as far as I can 

see there is no way to see the 

complete window title. 

StartMenu can be configured to 

open on all public screens, an 

other option allows open 

screens to be listed along with 

windows on the task bar. 

These options can be very 

handy, you can easily open 

programs or switch windows 

and screens to screens other 

than Workbench. A 

preferences option lets you 

exclude Windows and Screens 

from the task bar. 

The appearance and operation 

of StartMenu is quite 

configurable, colours, fonts and 

background images can all be 

changed but there is no option 

to change settings for 

individual menus. I was also 

disappointed to see that the 

icons for the start button, 

folders in the menu and those 

used on the task bar buttons 

are hard coded so you have to 

replace the defaults to change 

the look (I think it would be 

nicer to pick your own choices 

in prefs). On the plus side the 

bar can be hidden until your 

mouse pointer reaches the 

edge of the screen and you 

can also choose to have the 

bar at the top if you wish. 

If you’re after a taskbar that 

sticks fairly closely to the 

Windows design, offering 

mostly cosmetic options then 

StartMenu is a good choice. If 

you share my opinions on the 

Windows XP look set aside 

some time to re-configure the 

default look though! 

Screen Tab 

Developer:Michael Link 


Download: Aminet, 

util/cdity/ScreenTab_3_2.lha 

and ScreenTab_Ext.lha 

Screentab’s main purpose 

in life is to let you easily 

swap between open screens 

and windows using two 

different key combinations. By 

default Left Amiga and Tab 

switches between screens, 

pressing the key combination 

brings up the name of the next 

StartMenu in its “Windows XP” default look. Note that is shows windows and screens. 

screen in a window in the 

centre of the current screen, 

pressing Tab again cycles to 

the next screen and releasing 

the Amiga key brings the 

selected screen to the front. 

Bringing a window on the 

current screen to the front 

works in a similar way except 

the hotkey is different (Left 

Amiga and ‘ by default). 

These features work well but 

they’re not all that ScreenTab 

has to offer, move your mouse 

to the bottom edge of the 

screen and a task bar with start 

button appears. The taskbar 

cannot be set to appear 

permanently and must be at 

the bottom of the screen. 

However it does appear on 

every screen for easy screen 

swapping and launching of 

programs away from the 

Workbench screen. The 

taskbar only displays buttons 

for the currently open screens, 

there is no facility to list the 

open windows on the taskbar. 

However a plug-in is provided 

to add a window list to the start 

menu. At the right hand side of 

the task bar the time is shown, 

the format can be altered from 

the prefs program. 

The start menu can contain 

three types of object, programs 

for quick launching, plug-ins 

that add additional features 

and sub menus. This is all 

configured from a neat MUI 


ScreenTab’s task bar only shows screens, not windows. However 

it does let you select windows with a keypress. 

In the MUI prefs program you 

can add programs and plug-ins 

to the Start menu. 

based preferences program 

(ScreenTab itself doesn’t use 

MUI). You can add programs 

and plug-ins anywhere on the 

top level of the start menu or 

on a sub-menu. The menu can 

be reorganised using drag and 

drop. Programs can be added 

to the menu by dropping their 

Workbench icons on the 

preferences editor, if you want 

an item to have an 

accompanying image you must 

select it separately as 

ScreenTab does not use the 

program’s icon. A selection of 

suitable icons are included in 

the ScreenTab distribution. 

Plug-ins are used to add 

powerful features to the 

ScreenTab start menu, several 

are supplied with Screen Tab. 

When the program was 

Shareware the author held 

back several plug-ins as an 

incentive to register, he has 

now uploaded these plug-ins to 

Aminet in the 

ScreenTab_Ext.lha archive. 

The Commodities plug-in adds 

a sub-menu containing all the 

currently running commodities, 

each commodity has a sub 

menu containing the control 

options found in the OS 

Commodities Exchange 

program. The previously 

mentioned Windows plug-in 

lists the windows on the current 

screen and brings a window to 

the front when you select it. A 

unique plug-in to ScreenTab is 

Bookmarks, this displays your 

web browser’s hotlist in a sub 

menu and then loads the URL 

in your browser when you 

select an item. The docs for 

this plug-in show how to set it 

up for IBrowse but as it uses 

AREXX you should be able to 

make it work with any browser. 

Other plug-ins offer options to 

reset the Amiga (with optional 

confirmation), flush used 

libraries etc from memory and 

paste the current clipboard into 

the keyboard buffer (adding 

simple clipboard paste support 

to most programs). 

Probably the most complex 

plug-in is the Directory Walker, 

this allows you to explore a 

volume or drawer from an item 

on the start menu. ScreenTab 

uses the FileID.library to 

identify the type of each file 

displayed, there is then a 

configuration file where you 

can define which actions will be 

available in a sub-menu for that 

type of file. For example you 

could define Show and Edit 

options for a graphics file 

format and link them to your 

favourite viewer and graphics 

editor. A default set of actions 

can be defined for files which 

are not recognised and these 

can be appended to any file 

specific actions so you don’t 

have to define common actions 

for every filetype. The actions 

configuration file is plain text 

and has to be changed in an 

editor, however the format is 

simple and a good example file 

is supplied. 

The look of ScreenTab is fairly 

fixed, you can change the fonts 

and icon images used but not 

colours. There are no facilities 

for background patterns or 

changing borders. If you want a 

light weight solution with a 

surprising amount of power 

then ScreenTab works very 

well. Personally I would have 

liked windows shown on the 

task bar and it’s probably not 

ideal for those who like 

customising the look of their 

system. 

Reviews 

Workbench 2000 

Developer:Emmanuel Dausse 


WWW: 

www.memory-overdrive.com 

Workbench 2000 is 

unique among the other 

taskbar/start menu clones 

mentioned here in two ways, it 

is a stand alone program rather 

than using plug-ins to add its 

functionality and it uses MUI 

for its task bar and preferences 

program (the others that use 

MUI only do so for their 

preferences program). Being a 

stand alone program has some 

advantages, installation is 

easier and all the options are 

immediately available., 

however any future expansion 

is up to the program author. 

Using MUI for the task bar is 

also a double edged sword, it 

allows the user to access all of 

MUIs settings (assuming MUI 

is registered) but also means 

the MUI system and the 

classes used by Workbench 

2000 are loaded all the time it 

is running. 

At the top of the start menu 

you can add items to launch 

programs, these can be split 

into sub-menus. Programs can 

be added by drag and drop 

and it is also possible to run 

AREXX commands, CLI 

commands and script files from 

menu items. If you have an 

icon datatype installed 

Workbench 2000 can display 

the program icon next to its 

entry, you can also choose any 

other datatypes supported 

image. One minor quibble I 

Workbench 2000 offers many options (controled from this 

prefs window) largely making up for its lack of plug-ins. 

35

Reviews 

Workbench 2000 shows the windows of all screens on its task bar, that can be a lot of buttons... 

have with the Start menu is 

that you have to click to open it 

and then click on the item you 

want when I prefer the click 

drag approach used by Amiga 

menus. 

The lower section of the start 

menu contains Workbench 

2000’s built in functions, all of 

these can be disabled in the 

preferences if required. 

Commodities offers easy 

control over the running 

commodiities. Workstation 

contains sub-menus for all the 

drives mounted on your system 

allowing you to explore them in 

the menu. Right clicking on a 

file icon in the Workstation 

menus brings up a pop-up 

menu where you can perform 

file operations (Copy, Move, 

Rename and Delete) and also 

add user defined operations. 

You can define the default 

action for different file types 

using the MIME Types section 

of the preferences program, 

this is limited to recognising file 

types based on their 

extension. 

The final entries on the start 

menu are Execute which 

allows you to execute a shell 

command, this includes a 

history function of recently 

issued commands. A 

Shutdown option at the bottom 

of the menu opens a window 

with options to quit Workbench 

2000 or reboot the Amiga. 

Workbench 2000 shows all the 

windows on all open screens 

on its task bar this means it 

can quickly to get very 

crowded. A useful option in this 

case is to limit the maximum 

number of window/screen 

buttons on the task bar. When 

this limit is reached Workbench 

2000 starts a new row of 

buttons above the task bar. 

Another way to reduce clutter 

on the task bar is to exclude 

certain applications or 

particular windows from the 

task bar. The bar can be visible 

all the time or only when the 

pointer is at the edge of the 

screen, it can also be 

positioned at the top of the 

screen if you wish. At the right 

of the task bar you can opt to 

have several useful monitors. 

In addition to the usual clock 

there is are memory, CPU 

activity, printer, on-line and 

freespace monitors. Hovering 

the pointer over most of the 

monitors brings up additional 

information, for example the 

freespace monitor shows a 

graphical display of the usage 

of all your disks. You can 

assign a program that will be 

run when you click on one of 

the monitor icons too. On the 

left hand side of the task bar 

next to the Start button is an 

area where you can add 

program icons for quick 

launching. 

In its default setup I thought 

Workbench 2000 looked rather 

ugly with an odd mixture of 

Magic Workbench, Glow and 

Windows icons. I also had a 

problem where the 

backgrounds of icons weren’t 

removed but that may be 

related to my datatypes. With a 

new set of images and some 

work in MUI prefs I’m sure it 

could be made to look good. 

So if Workbench 2000 offers 

the feature set you want and 

you like MUI it is a powerful 

choice. 

AmiStart 

Developer:Darius Brewka 

License: Freeware (Author 

requests an EMail from users) 

EMail: 

d.brewka@freenet.de 

Download: 

Aminet, util/wb/AmiStart.lha 

AmiStart started life as a 

“Start” button clone for 

program launching but as 

subsequent versions have 

been released it has grown a 

host of new features. Clicking 

on the button at the left hand of 

the bar opens the familiar 

menu, unfortunately the menu 

is “sticky”, you have to click on 

the start button, move the 

mouse over the menu items to 

open sub menus and then click 

on your choice. You can’t drag 

like standard Amiga menus or 

click on sub menus to open 

them. At the top menu level 

there are several items by 

default. The programs submenu 

has several pre-defined 

categories into which you can 

add your own favourite 

programs for easy launching. 

To add a new program to this 

menu you simply open the submenu 

where you want to add it 

then drag the programs icon 

from Workbench. Options for 

individual menu items and for 

whole menu sections are 

accessed by right clicking on 

the item which brings up a popup 

menu using the 

popupmenu.library. Programs 

can have their name and icon 

changed (so it is different from 

their file name and icon), a 

separator bar can be placed 

beneath their icon (to split the 

sub-menu into sections) and 

you can choose to scale down 

the program icon to a size set 

in AmiStart’s tooltypes. 

The next sub-menu contains 

filesystem items for the Ram 

Disk and your System partition. 

Pointing to one of these items 

opens a sub-menu showing the 

top level directories and files of 

the device and allows you to 

explore the volume. If you wish 

you can add other volumes by 

dragging them onto the menu. 

There are various options you 

can set for the Filesystem 

items. You can set how the 

entries will be sorted in the 

menu and whether AmiStart 

will show the original icons. 

Although this slows things 

down a bit I would recommend 

it as it allows files to be 

launched using their existing 

default tool and tooltypes. The 

right click menu for a file has 

options to bring up the 

information window, “Open 

with” which opens the file in a 

choice of programs (that are 

defined in the “Commands 

setup” window and “Select 

application” where you can 

choose a program using a file 

requester. Also on the file popup 

menu are Copy, Move, 

Paste and Delete items that 

are used for file system 

operations, a “Properties” item 

opens a window where the files 

protection bits can be changed. 

Be warned that these items 

change the actual files on disk 

not just how they are displayed 

in the menu! While AmiStart’s 

filesystem items are very 

powerful I found manipulating 

files in a menu rather 

cumbersome, it would probably 

be my least used feature. 

The “Commodities” sub-menu 

lists all the commodities you 

have running on your system, 

for each commodity a sub 

menu offers Remove, Show, 

Hide, Activate and Deactivate 

options making commodity 

control much quicker than 

using the Exchange program. 

Next up is a filesystem item 

that is a short-cut to the 

preferences directory, a useful 

example of how a directory of 

commonly used items can be 

easily added to AmiStart. A 

search item is provided at the 

top level but it is simply an 

application item and you must 

use its settings pop-up menu 

item so it launches your 

favourite search tool (such as 

the Find utility provided with 

OS3.9). Similarly the Help submenu 

is initially empty allowing 

you to add your own help files 

such as Amiga Guide 

documentation. The last 

default “Start” menu item is 

“Quit”, selecting this opens a 

...by contrast AmiStart shows no windows or screens on its bar 

but you can add a neat pop-up window list. 

requester where you can quit 

AmiStart, save preferences or 

reboot the Amiga. 

AmiStart has an optional 

(activated by a tooltype) bar 

which runs along the bottom of 

the screen, this isn’t really a 

task bar because it doesn’t 

display current windows, 

screens or applications. 

Instead it is more an extension 

of the menu, any of the items 

allowed on the menu can also 

be added to the task bar. For 

example you can add favourite 

applications to the bar for easy 

launching. Equally you an add 

application or filesystem 

directories which then pop-up 

from the bar when clicked. The 

facility is included for external 

tools to display on the taskbar, 

two examples are supplied 

which show the current time 

and free memory on the right 

hand side of the bar. A second 

type of external module is 

supported which adds a new 

type of sub menu to the start 

menu or task bar, an example 

module is supplied that shows 

all the windows open on the 

Workbench screen. It can be 

configured to bring the 

selected window to the front 

when you roll the mouse over it 

or when you click. Adding this 

module to the bar gives you 

similar functionality to a task 

bar except you have to click 

the icon to see it, on the plus 

side the menu does give plenty 

of room for menu titles that 

often have to be truncated on a 

traditional task bar. 

AmiStart is very configurable, 

you can change the look of 

every part individually. There 

are also transparency and 

anti-aliased font options. 


AmiStart’s default look is slick. 

The look of AmiStart is very 

configurable, all the icons can 

be changed as can the 

background image and colours 

of each menu, sub-menu and 

the bar. Fonts are configurable 

too and the latest version even 

supports antialiasing with 

truetype fonts. If that wasn’t 

flash enough you can also add 

a configurable level of 

transparency to the menus and 

bar! That said a few aspects 

are fixed, the bar must be at 

the bottom of the screen and 

there is no option for hiding the 

bar until the pointer reaches 

the edge of the screen. 

Overall AmiStart is extremely 

powerful and comprehensive, I 

hope in the future the author 

will add drag support in the 

menu (for those like me who 

can’t abide “sticky” menus) and 

perhaps a proper task bar. With 

the excellent external tool and 

module support perhaps some 

third party programmers will 

come up with some new plugins 

too (an SDK is included in 

the archive). 

Other Options 

If you don’t like the idea of a 

full task bar and start menu 

there are other utilities which 

make screen and window 

handling more comfortable. In 

general these don’t offer 

program launching or other 

more advanced features but 

these can often easily be 

handled by separate utilities. 

For example many people will 

be happy to stick to AmiDock 

(supplied with OS3.9) or 

Directory Opus button bars to 

launch their programs. 

Depth Menu 

Developer:Arkadiusz Wahlig 


(assumed) 

WWW: 

http://www.depthmenu.prv.pl 

Requires: popupmenu.library 

available on Aminet, directory 

util/libs/pmuser.lha 

Depthmenu adds a list of all 

the open windows on the 

current screen to the depth 

gadget of each window. Right 

clicking on a window’s depth 

gadget brings up the list and 

selecting a window pops it to 

the front. Depthmenu adds a 

similar menu to the screen 

depth gadget except it lists the 

current screens. One limitation 

is that windows without a title 

bar (for example Opus and 

AmiDock button bars) do not 

get listed in the window menu 

(because they have no title) 

and cannot be used to call up 

the menu (because they have 

no depth gadget). This problem 

is partially solved because the 

window menu can be called up 

at any time by pressing Alt and 

Tab even if the active window 

doesn’t have a title bar. 

Although essentially a simple 

utility with few options Depth 

Menu does support add-on 

modules which can change the 

way certain windows are 

presented in the menu and add 

new menu items. A number of 

modules are available for 

download from the author’s 

website. The DOpus5 module 

shows Opus windows in a 

consistent manner for example 

listers are shown as DOpus 

Lister [path] this means all the 

opus related windows are 

grouped together in the 

Window list. This module also 

adds a new item to the menu to 

close all Opus lister windows. 

The MinMax module adds 

three new items to each 

window menu. “Minimize” 

reduces the window to the 

DepthMenu adds a simple 

window list to each window’s 

depth gadget... 

Reviews 

...and a list of screens to the 

screen depth gadget. 

smallest possible size, 

“Maximize” enlarges it to fill the 

screen and “Normalize” sets it 

back to the original size. On 

my Amiga I found these menu 

items had a tendency to lock 

the machine with some 

programs, though the other 

functions of Depthmenu 

worked reliably. 

Depth Menu uses the 

popupmenu.library (which you 

need to install separately) 

which has a preferences 

program giving plenty of 

control over the look of the 

pop-up menus. For example 

you can change the colours, 

border style and even add drop 

shadows (both dithered and 

true translucent types are 

available). You can also 

change the way menus 

operate so you can have 

“sticky” menus if you prefer. 

I found DepthMenu worked 

well and placed the window 

selection menu in a very logical 

yet unobtrusive place. If you 

want easy window and screen 

selection without clutter it’s a 

good choice. 

37

Support 

Jabberwocky 

Elliott Bird finds yet another way to meet and chat 

with friends online whatever utility they use. 

On the Amiga, there were 

only two ways to 

communicate with friends in 

real-time, ICQ and IRC (as 

detailed in issue 9 of Clubbed). 

Now there are five ways to 

communicate on your Amiga, 

but with just one chat client, 

and that’s Jabberwocky! 

Jabberwocky allows you to 

communicate with your friends, 

not just on ICQ and IRC, but 

also Yahoo, MSN, and through 

Jabber itself. 

Setting Jabberwocky up is 

relatively simple. Each time 

you fire it up, a window will 

come up asking you for your 

Jabber ID and your password. 

Because this is your first time 

you will need to come up with 

an ID of your choice, for 

example: 

“JohnSmith@jabber.at”. You 

can also have 

“JohnSmith@jabber.org”, 

although jabber.at tends to be 

more reliable. Once you’ve 

chosen your ID, you will need 

to enter in a password. You’ll 

need to do this carefully, as 

you cannot see what your 

typing for this, it is so that 

annoying brothers or sisters 

can’t see what your password 

is! Once you’ve done this, click 

on Register and you should be 

in! Each time you fire up 

Jabberwocky from now on, you 

should already have your ID 

entered in for you, and all you 

need to do is enter in your 

38 

A chat session. 

password and click on connect. 

In order to make use of the 

various chat protocols 

(otherwise known as 

transports), you’ll need to 

register for each of them. This 

can be done by going to 

“Windows” in the menu, then 

go down to “Agents list”, which 

will bring up a window with the 

available transports, and what 

you are able to do (i.e. 

Register, conferencing, and 

group chat). Fill in the required 

details, and bearing in mind 

that you may already have to 

be registered, so it may require 

access to a PC (cough!). Once 

your account has registered 

with Jabberwocky, a 

subscription window will 

appear, click on “accept” to 

accept it (it does help!). It 

should now appear in your 

contact list with a light bulb 

next to it, telling you that it’s 

working and you’re online with 

it. If it’s ICQ you’ve subscribed 

to then it should appear as 

“icq.jabber.at/registered”, or 

“yahoo.jabber.at/registered” if 

you’ve registered with Yahoo 

Messenger. 

To add a contact to your list, 

you eed to go to “Roster” in the 

menu, and select “Add 

Contact”. Where it says 

“Jabber ID” enter the address 

of the user you want to add, for 

example if you wanted to add 

someone who’s on ICQ, their 

ID would be something like 

“123456789@icq.jabber.at”, or 

if they’re on MSN it would be 

something like 

“johnsmith%hotmail.com@ 

msn.jabber.at”. Then the 

contact should be added, along 

with a light bulb telling you if 

they are online or not. You will 

be able to tell when they are 

away or not available with 

either a small “N/A” or “DND” 

symbol in place of the light 

bulb. You can change your 

Jabberwocky brings together all your instant messaging 

contacts even if they use different networks. 

status by going to the 

“Presence” tab in the main 

Jabberwocky window. To chat 

to someone, click once on the 

user you want to speak to, go 

to “Roster” in the menu, and go 

down to “Chat”, and a chat 

window will open up. What you 

say is in italics, and what the 

person at the other end says is 

in normal style text. With ICQ, I 

recommend you make a note 

of ICQ UIN’s, and who is what 

number, to save yourself from 

embarrassment! If you suspect 

that anything isn’t working 

properly on Jabberwocky, go to 

“Windows” in the menu, and go 

down to “Console”, then make 

sure “Watch XML Traffic” is 

ticked. This way, all activity 

This windows shows the 

various messaging systems 

(transports) supported by 

Jabberwocky. 

from Jabberwocky, as well as 

the presence of other users 

and traffic of messages 

between users show up in this 

window. Any errors usually 

show up in this window too. 

Unfortunately there are some 

features of Jabberwocky that 

are yet to be implemented, 

such as the ability to have 

conferencing, and save 

messages. But “Flush” does 

actually work as I found out 

(Wipes conversations in chat 

windows). 

Overall I am quite impressed 

with what Jabberwocky is 

capable of, and it brings the 

ability to be able to chat to your 

friends on Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, 

as well as Jabber itself, on 

your Amiga! Well worth a try! 

It’s free, and now open source 

too! 

jabberwocky.amigaworld.de/ 

TOTAL AMIGA 

Kicksoft 

Graphics 

Drawstudio 

This excellent Graphics package avaliable one again!! Comes on CD and 

includes Texture Studio & Image Studio. 

£35.00 

Photogenics 5 

This excellent Graphics package by Paul Nolan. Comes on CD. 

£70.00 

Image Engineer 

Great Image manipulation program. Add effects to images such as Jigsaw. 

£25.00 

Candy Factory Pro 

Create 3D Text from any standard font and use them on web pages etc. 

£35.00 

Art Effect 4 

Billed as “Photoshop® on the Amiga”. Excellent graphic package. Comes on 

CD. 

£39.99 

FxPaint NEW 

With over 70 effects this is a superb addition to any software collection. 

£60.00 

Image FX4 NEW 

THE image manipulation package !! 100s of effects. 

£99.00 

Games 

Misc 

NEW 

PayBack £35.00 

Freespace £35.00 

The Feeble Files £35.00 

TaskiSMS 

Send Text Messages to mobile phones from your Amiga! Comes on CD. 

£12.00 

FxScan 

The only Scanner software that offers OCR on the Amiga today!! 

£30.00 

NEW 

OS 3.9 

Latest operating system for the Amiga. Comes on CD. 

£30.00 

NEW 

Aminet NEW 

Latest Aminet disk or the latest series. Gigabytes of Amiga Software. 

Single £14.99 Series £29.99 

VHI STUDIO 

Connect digital Cameras to your Amiga and so much more 

!£30.00 

Amiga Forever 5 

Emulate a AGA based amiga on your PC. 

NEW 

Full Version £40.00 Upgrade £25.00 

If you don’t see what you want, just ask! 

Our range is always growing! 

Players 

Moovid PPC 

PPC version with both WARPUP and POWERUP versions. Comes on CD 

£18.00 

Moovid 

Play AVI, Mov and QT files on your Amiga©. Comes on CD. 


Frogger PPC 

PPC MPEG player. Comes on CDwith example MPEGs. 

£18.00 

Frogger 

68k MPEG player. Comes on CD with example MPEGs. 


Riva 

The fastest 68k MPEG player on the Amiga! Comes on CD with MPEGs. 

£9.00 

SoftCinema 

PPC AVI, QT and Mov player. On CD with example Movies. 

£9.00 

AMP 2 NEW 

PPC Mpeg, CD-i and DVD player. The only way to play DVDs on the AMIGA. 

£18.00 

Internet Inet Dial 

Home server on your Amiga©., includes Apache and Geek Gadgets. 

£40.00 

AWeb Upgrade 

Excellent web Browser. Upgrade from OS 3.5 or OS 3.9. Comes on Floppy. 

£30.00 

Utilities PFS 3 

The fastest and safest file system avaliable, up to 300 times faster than FFS. 

£35.00 

Metaview 

The best Clipart viewer on the Amiga©. Comes on CD with clip art images. 

£18.00 

Diavolo 

The best backup program on the Amiga©. Comes on Floppy disk. 

£50.00 

PhotoFolio V2 NEW 

The professional way to view, catolouge and manipulate your images. 

£30.00 

GoldEd 

The best Editor, Program Editor, HTML Generator on the Amiga. 

£30.00 

Turboprint 7.21 

Use modern printers with 24 bit output!! The quality is astounding. 

NEW 

Full £40.00 Upgrade £25.00 

Make CD (DAO version) NEW 

CD writing software.Compatibale with most CD writers/rewriters. 

£50.00 

Spitfire 2 

If you have a 3com Palm© or compatible then you need this program! Comes 

on CD. 

£25.00 

Mediapoint NEW 

multimedia presentation tool on your Amiga. 

£40.00 


Add £1.00 UK postage per item. Make cheques payable to Kicksoft Ltd. 

We accept Solo, Switch, Mastercard & Visa 

Kicksoft Ltd., 

30 Whitegate Way, 

Tadworth, 

Surrey, KT20 5NS 

Tel/Fax (01737) 219280 

sales@kicksoft.co.uk

Support 

PageStream 4.1 

Tables 

Tutorial 

By Robert Williams 

One of the major new 

features of PageStream 

4.1 is the tables tool which 

allows you to create complex 

tables of data and text in a 

PageStream document and 

even has some basic 

spreadsheet features. The 

table feature is currently only 

documented by a few notes in 

the 4.1 readme file so I thought 

it would be useful to 

demonstrate creating a table in 

this tutorial. 

Load PageStream and start a 

new document by choosing 

“New” from the “File” menu. In 

the “New Document” window 

select a page size, I chose to 

use standard A4 letter, also 

enter 1 under the “Column 

Guides” section. 

To start with we need to draw 

out a basic table. First select 

the table tool from the tool box, 

it is the 11th icon from the top 

and looks like a small white 

irregular grid. If you see the 

grid icon (a grey regular grid 

icon) click and hold the left 

Table Cell Edit Palette 

Cell value (used in calculations). 

mouse button on it to select the 

table tool from the pop out. 

With the table tool selected 

click on the page to locate one 

corner of the table then drag it 

out to the size you want. I 

made mine fill about a third of 

the sheet height and the width 

inside the margin guides. 

Editing 

Initially the table has four 

columns and four rows so 

probably the first thing you’ll 

want to do is customise it to 

have the right number for the 

layout you want. For this 

example I want five columns 

and eleven rows. To modify the 

table we need to be in modify 

mode, to select this click and 

hold on the pointer 

tool and select the 

modify tool (a pointer 

Creating a new table is as easy as drawing a rectangle. 

Del. Col. 

with a square at its tip) from 

the toolbox. Now click on the 

cell in the table where you want 

the row of column to be added 

(as we don’t yet have any data 

in our table you can choose 

any cell) it should be 

highlighted in black to show it’s 

selected. Now take a look at 

the Edit palette (normally at the 

bottom of the screen) it now 

shows controls that effect the 

table and the current cell. To 

add a column click the insert 

column icon. A new column of 

four cells is added at the cursor 

position, notice how the table 

becomes wider the 

accommodates the new cells 

rather than squashing up the 

existing ones. 

Now we’ll add some rows, 

before we do so it’s a good 

idea to adjust the height of the 

rows already in the table 

otherwise it will grow bigger 

than the page when the rows 

are added. Make sure you’re in 

modify mode then click on a 

cell in the top row, now hold 

down shift and click once in a 

cell in each of the lower rows. 

Change the height (H) gadget 

in the edit palette to 7.5mm (or 

equivalent in your preferred 

measurement system) and 

press Return twice (this is 

necessary to activate any 

change you make in the edit 

palette), the table then 

changes to show the new 

height. Now we can add the 

new rows, you can only add 

rows or columns one at a time 

Del. Row 

Accept Cell Reference Width Height Add Col. Add Row Merge 

Un-merge Fill 

so click in any cell then click 

the insert row icon seven times 

to get a total of eleven rows. 

It would be nice if the width of 

the table fitted the margins of 

the page, we could do this by 

setting each cell’s width to one 

fifth of the pages width but it is 

easier just to re-size the whole 

table. This is achieved using 

the standard pointer tool, 

select it from the tool box then 

click on the table. Now drag 

the middle right hand editing 

handle to the right hand margin 

guide. Notice that the table 

cells scale down evenly to fit 

the new width. 

Before you do any formatting 

it’s a good idea to put the data 

into the table so you can see 

the effect of the formats. Data 

can be entered into a 

PageStream table in two ways, 

with the text tool or into the 

Value box on the edit palette, if 

you don’t intend to use any 

formulas the easiest way is 

with the text tool. Select the 

text tool then click in the top 

left cell, the flashing text cursor 

should appear there. Now type 

“Media Price List”. In the 

second row click in the first cell 

and type “Product Information” 

then select the third cell in the 

second row and type “Price (£, 

per pack)”, don’t worry if either 

of these phrases don’t fit in the 

cell. Select the first cell in the 

third row and enter 

“Description”, moving along the 

third row enter the following 

into the cells: “Pack Qty.”, 

“RRP”, “Our Price” and “Saving 

(%)”. On the bottom row enter 

“Average Saving (%)” in the left 

hand cell. 

Now we’ll use a feature unique 

on the Amiga to PageStream’s 

tables implementation, merging 

cells. Select the modify tool 

and click in the top left cell then 

hold down shift and click all the 

cells in the top row in turn. 

Click the merge icon in the Edit 

palette to join the cells. Next up 

is to merge the first two and 

then the last three cells in the 

second row. Finally merge the 

first four cells on the bottom 

row (leaving one cell at the 

right). The merged cells can 

now be treated as one, for 

example try centering the 

“Media Price List” text in the 

top row (drag select it with the 

text tool then choose 

Alignment/Center from the 

Type menu) notice that it 

centres to the middle of the 

table not its original cell. 

Fill in the Description and Pack 

Qty, columns, if you want to 

use the same data as me you 

can copy it from the 

screenshots. To fit the 

descriptions in we need to 

make the Description column 

wider, select modify mode and 

click in one of the cells in the 

first column. 

TIP: When changing the 

width of cells choose a single 

cell not a merged one, when 

changing the width of a 

merged cell PageStream sizes 

the first column contained in 

the merged cell the size you 

specify and then adds the 

width of any other cells making 

the merged cell wider than you 

specified. 


Line 

Enter the new width in the Edit 

palette’s “W” box, make the cell 

slightly wider than it needs to 

be to hold the text (I found 

55mm about right), and hit 

Return twice. Now the table is 

too wide for the page again, 

instead of changing the size of 

the other cells individually we’ll 

reduce the size of the whole 

table. Select the pointer tool 

and drag the edge of the table 

to the right margin guide as we 

did before. Again all the cells 

are scaled evenly keeping their 

relative proportions (the 

description column is still 

bigger than the others. 

Now its time to enter the 

prices, however because I 

want to use them in a formula 

later we need to enter them in 

a different way. Using the 

modify tool select the cell 

immediately under “RRP”, in 

the Edit palette click in the 

“Value” box and type “3.50” 

then press return twice. 

NOTE: Formulas only work 

on values entered in the value 

box, not on numbers entered 

with the text tool. 

Using the same method fill in 

all the values in the “RRP” and 

“Our Price” columns, be careful 

that there isn’t a space before 

the number you enter. 

Now we’ll add a formula to 

automatically calculate the 

percentage saving for buying in 

bulk. To do this we can enter a 

formula in the “Saving (%)” 

column, PageStream uses 

formulas that will be familiar to 

anyone who has used a 

spreadsheet program. A 

formula can use standard 

mathematical operators such 

as +, -, / (divide), * (multiply) 

and brackets. A formula can 

include the value of other cells, 

these are referenced using a 

letter for their column and a 

number for their row. For 

example cell C4 would be the 

fourth down in the third column. 

TIP: If you’re unsure of a 

cell’s reference click on it with 

the modify pointer and check 

the “Cell” box in the Edit 

palette. 

A formula must be entered in 

the Edit palette “Value” box for 

the cell where you want the 

answer displayed. To tell 

PageStream the text you enter 

is a formula you must start with 

an “=” symbol. Enter the 

following formula in the “Value” 

box for the cell below “Saving 

(%)”, this should be cell E4: 

“=(1-D4/C4)*100”. Now press 

return twice and you should 

see the result of the formula 

displayed in the cell. 

NOTE: If the formula does 

not calculate correctly (shows 0 

or the wrong value for 

example) check that you have 

typed it exactly as shown and 

check none of the cells holding 

the numbers or formula have a 

preceding space in the value 

box. 

The next job is to copy the 

formula down to the product 

rows in the “Saving (%)” 

column. Unfortunately 

PageStream doesn’t have an 

easy copy down method as 

found in most spreadsheets 

that automatically updates the 

formula to calculate the 

appropriate row so you have to 

copy the formula manually. To 

do this select the formula cell 

(E4) with the modify tool and 

click in the “Value” box on the 

Edit palette. Now press Right 

Amiga + C to copy the formula 

to the clipboard. Click in the 

next cell down (E5) and paste 

the formula into its value box 

using Right Amiga + V. Edit the 

cell references in the formula 

so it calculates using the value 

on the current row, the formula 

should now read “=(1- 

D5/C5)*100”, press return 

twice to apply the change. Now 

Support 

repeat this to copy the formula 

to all the rows except the 

“Average Saving” row. 

In addition to simple 

calculations PageStream also 

has a few functions which help 

you perform more complex 

mathematics in one step 

(check the Functions box out 

for a complete list). We’ll use 

one of these to calculate the 

average saving in the bottom 

row. The function we’ll use is 

called “average”, select the 

bottom right cell (E11) with the 

modify tool and enter the 

following formula in the “Value” 

box: “=average(E4:E10)”. Two 

things to notice here are how 

the function is supplied with the 

information it needs inside the 

brackets and how we’ve 

specified a range of cells for it 

to work on. E4:E10 tells it to 

find the average value of all the 

cells from E4 to E10 inclusive. 

Press return twice and the 

average should be calculated. 

Now our formulas are all setup 

we can see how useful they 

really are. For example lets say 

we had a special offer on 5.25” 

disks and decided to sell them 

at £1 a box, modify the Value 

of cell D6 to “1” instead of “4” 

and press return twice 

(remember you must make the 

change in the Edit palette). 

Immediately the saving is 

recalculated to 80% and the 

average saving is recalculated 

too! 

Limitations 

Currently the implementation of 

formulas in PageStream tables 

has a number of limitations, the 

most obvious one form our 

example is that you can’t set 

Editing a value (in the edit palette) causes the calculated cells 

which use the value to automatically update. 

41

Support 

Nearly finished... the table with just the text formatting to add. 

the formatting of the displayed 

numbers. By default they are 

displayed at four decimal 

places and any zeros after the 

decimal point are hidden. This 

can make the results look a bit 

messy. Also there is no option 

to have a leading or trailing 

symbol for currency or 

percentage values. 

42 

Formatting 

Next up is some formatting to 

make the table look a bit more 

interesting. In a PageStream 

table you can set the 

background fill and outline of 

each cell individually and also 

set the fill and line style of the 

table as a whole. By default 

each cell has a solid white 

background and a thin black 

border. To edit the style of a 

cell choose the modify tool and 

click on the cell, you can shift 

click on multiple cells to edit 

them all at once. The first thing 

Functionality 

Here is the complete list of 

mathematical functions 

currently available in 

PageStream tables: 

ABS 

ARCSIN 

ARCCOS 

ARCTAN 

AVERAGE, AVG 

COS 

EXP 

INT 

LN 

LOG 

MAX 

MIN 

SIN 

SUM 

TAN 

I usually do is to remove all the 

cell borders, to do this click on 

one cell with the modify tool 

and then shift click on all the 

others. At the right hand side of 

the Edit 

palette click 

on one of the 

line buttons surrounding the 

box (fill) button. In the Line and 

Fill window that appears you 

can change the line style and 

colour, in this case we want to 

turn the line off so click on the 

“Stroked” check box until it is 

cleared (not a tick or a cross). 

Click OK and follow the same 

procedure for the other three 

line buttons. Click on one of 

the cells to clear the selection, 

now you should have a bare 

table with an outline around the 

outside. 

I’m going to make the heading 

lines and Average Saving lines 

red, using the modify tool click 

on one of the cells in the top 

three rows and then shift click 

on all the other cells in those 

rows and the two cells in the 

bottom row. Click the fill button 

on the edit palette and choose 

“Red” from the “Color” drop 

down menu, click OK. Now 

we’ll give these cells a yellow 

vertical border, click on the left 

border button and set the 

“Weight” to “1 pt” and the 

“Color” to “Yellow”. 

For the information rows we’ll 

use alternate yellow and white 

backgrounds to make then 

easier to read. Use the modify 

tool to select all the cells in 

every other data row (4, 6, 8 

and 10). Use the fill button to 

set the fill “Color” to “yellow” 

and the intensity value (to the 

right of it) to “50%”, this will 

give a light yellow which is 

easy on the eye. Click OK and 

select another cell to see the 

effect. Next we’ll add some 

vertical lines to the data 

section, select all the cells in 

this area, click the left border 

button and set the line “Color” 

to “Red” and the “Weight” to “1 

pts”. 

To finish the table off we’ll add 

a border to the whole table, to 

do this select it with the pointer 

tool. Choose “Line & Fill” from 

the “Object” menu or press the 

“L” key, in the window choose 

the “line” tab, set the “Weight” 

to “4 pts” and the “Color” to 

“Red”. 

Text Formatting 

The last job is to format the 

text, this works exactly like any 

text formatting in PageStream. 

Use the text tool to select the 

text you want to format then 

change the options using the 

edit palette, type Line & Fill 

requester and other options on 

the Type menu. I selected 

“Product Information” with the 

text tool and set the fill colour 

to “White” in the Line & Fill 

requester (accessed from the 

“Type” menu or by pressing 

Ctrl+L), then I set the style to 

Bold by clicking the “B” button 

on the “Edit” palette. 

TIP: You can select text in 

several cells at once by holding 

the “Alt” key while you select 

each block. Then you can 

apply formatting to several 

blocks at once. You may find it 

easier to apply the format you 

want to the text in once cell 

and then use the Eye-dropper 

tool to copy it to other cells. To 

do this click the eye dropper 

tool then Shift-Click on the text 

with the format you want to 

copy and click (without shift) on 

the text you want to give this 

format. 

I used the eye dropper 

technique to apply the white 

and bold text format to all the 

heading cells (with the red 

backgrounds). 

NOTE: If you increase the 

font size of the text if can spill 

over the bottom edge of the 

cell, to avoid this you need to 

make the cell height larger. On 

merged cells this will cause the 

problem I mentioned before 

where the table suddenly 

becomes very wide (the first 

column is set to the width of 

the merged cell). To cure this 

you will have to re-size the 

cells manually (either by sizing 

the whole table or individual 

cells) remember to set the size 

in non-merged cells, if you size 

another merged cell the 

problem will re-occur. 

Bearing the above in mind 

select the “Media Price List” 

text in the top cell and use the 

Edit palette to set the text size 

to “24pt”. Then, in modify 

mode, change the height (H) of 

the top cell to “12mm”, when 

you press return twice the 

height should change as 

expected but the width of the 

table will now be much too 

wide, I found that the text in the 

cell also disappeared (this 

didn’t happen when I changed 

the size of an ordinary cell). To 

correct the size problem select 

one of the single cells in the 

left hand column (the 

“Description cell for example”) 

and set the width to “55mm”. 

You will then probably need to 

adjust the width of the table 

slightly using the pointer tool. 

Now choose the text tool and 

re-enter the title, it should 

remember the text formatting 

you set. 

I hope this tutorial is helpful to 

people who have PageStream 

4.1 and wondered how the 

table tool works and also 

shows most of the possible 

options to people thinking 

about buying the program or 

upgrades. As you can see 

there are currently some 

limitations and bugs in the 

table feature but it does work 

well for the most part and is far 

more powerful than tables in 

any other Amiga program. 

TOTAL AMIGA 

Kicksoft 

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£89.00 

If you don’t see what you want, just ask! 

Our range is always growing! 

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Add £1.00 UK postage per item. Make cheques payable to Kicksoft Ltd. 

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Kicksoft Ltd., 

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Support 

As we’re in the middle of the 

holiday season I thought it 

would be good to have a 

tutorial that could be applied to 

holiday photos. One of the 

utilities commonly supplied 

with digital cameras is to stitch 

together several photos to form 

a panorama. While there isn’t a 

dedicated application to do this 

on the Amiga there’s no reason 

you can’t get similar results 

using a standard image 

processor, particularly if it has 

layers. In this case I’m going to 

be using ImageFX but there’s 

no reason you couldn’t apply 

the same technique in 

Photogenics or ArtEffect. 

Before you can begin of course 

you must have a set of photos 

you want to assemble into a 

panorama. As you can 

probably tell from my photos 

I’m no expert photographer, to 

be honest I’m just your 

average snapper! So I’m not 

going to pretend to offer any 

advice on the actual 

photography. All I will say is 

that your job in assembling the 

panorama will be made much 

easier if you keep the camera 

settings constant as you take 

each photo so they are all 

evenly exposed. To avoid the 

Step by Step Merge 

1. Find a landmark. 

Creating a Photo 

in ImageFX 

Robert Williams helps you do something a bit more interesting with those holiday photos. 

You must zoom out the display so you can see the whole 

image before cropping. 

large steps I have in the 

positions of my photos you 

need to pan the camera on an 

even path, a tripod would help 

in many situations I’m sure. 

As my source material I have a 

four photo panorama of St. 

Ives bay taken while I was on 

holiday in July. If you want to 

try this tutorial with the same 

photos as I used you can 

download them from the Issue 

12 page of the Total Amiga 

website. 

Let’s get Started 

So without further ado load up 

ImageFX (I’m using 4.5 here 

but I think everything here 

should apply to any 4.x 

version) and lets get started. 

Open the photograph that will 

go at the left side of your 

panorama in ImageFX by 

2. Position the image roughly 

and turn on transparency 

clicking on the “Open” button in 

the main tool bar and choosing 

the file in the file requester. 

Next we need to add sufficient 

space to this image to give us 

room to add the other images. 

ImageFX doesn’t have an add 

space command so you have 

to use the “Scale” command in 

border mode. The border mode 

adds a border to both sides of 

the image so one side then 

needs to be cropped. 

TIP: In this tutorial I assume 

you have ImageFX set to leave 

palette windows open. By 

default when you choose an 

option from a palette window 

(such as “Size” mentioned 

above) ImageFX closes the 

palette. To change this 

behaviour open the “Prefs” 

window and click the 

3. Nudge the image to get 

an exact match. 

“Interface” button, in the 

window clear the “Close Child 

Windows Immediately” check 

box. To save this preference 

click “Save” in the preferences 

window and save the prefs file 

as “Default.prf”. 

Click on the “Size” button in the 

toolbar and then in the “Size” 

palette that opens click “Scale”. 

In the “Scale Image” window 

set “Mode” to “Border” and 

make sure “Aspect” is set to 

“Ignore Aspect”. Now we need 

to add a border equal to the 

width of the additional images 

we are going to add. I have a 

total of four images, as the 

border command applies to 

both sides of the image I will 

need to make the border on 

each side wide enough for 

three images, so that’s six 

images in total. As the first 

image is already included we 

must add that so we want the 

buffer to be seven times the 

current width. To do this easily 

just type 700 into the first 

“Percent” box and press return, 

then click “Okay”. 

To crop off the unwanted space 

on the left hand side you need 

to zoom out to see the whole 

image, to do this click on the “-” 

icon in the image window’s 

4. Remove transparency. 

bottom border or on the toolbar 

until you can see a border to 

the left and right. Make sure 

you can see the whole image 

including the borders on both 

sides because the crop 

function only works on the 

visible area. Click “Crop” in the 

size palette then, on the image, 

drag the middle left handle to 

the right until it just reaches the 

left of the photo, don’t worry 

about being too accurate as 

we’ll have to crop the image 

again later. Click the “Crop” 

button in the “Crop” requester. 


Merge 

Zoom in on the image until it is 

about half the screen width, 

stretch out the window to cover 

most of the screen so you have 

a good view when composing 

the other photos. Now open 

the “Layer Manager” by 

clicking on the icon to the left 

of the R, G and B buttons on to 

toolbar. From the Layer 

Manager’s pop-up menu 

choose “Load Layer”, select 

the next photo along in your 

panorama in the file requester. 

The photo will be loaded into 

the middle of the buffer so 

depending on how wide it is 

you may need to scroll the 

buffer right to see the photo. 

When the image has loaded 

select “Move Layer” from the 

pop-up then drag the photo to 

the left so it’s left edge is close 

to the first photo. 

Look at the joining ends of the 

photos and try to identify a 

common landmark or object. 

As ImageFX shows a bounding 

box rather than showing the 

content of a layer as it is 

dragged I found the easiest 

way to line up the photos was 

to click the mouse on a 

landmark I had found in the 

second and then drag the 

pointer to the landmark on the 

first photo to get a rough 

match. At this stage it’s 

probably wise to take a look at 

the overall join and check 

obvious things (for example 

make sure that the horizon (if 

there is one) lines up! To 

improve the match try reducing 

the “Blend %” in the “Layer 

Manager” to about the half way 

point. This allows the first 

image to show through the 

second. Although you won’t get 

a perfect match you should be 

able to see if objects on one 

layer are misaligned with those 

on the other by a few pixels. It 

will probably help to zoom in 

again to at least actual size 

(indicated by 1:1 after the 

filename in the Image window 

title bar) for this operation. To 

nudge the layer a pixel at a 

time with the arrow keys 

position the pointer over the 

layer and then hold Left Amiga 

+ Alt (the standard left mouse 

button key combination). When 

you think you have a good 

match I would suggest nudging 

the layer a couple of pixels in 

each direction in turn from your 

good position just to check 

there isn’t an even better 

match. 

Slide the “Blend %” back up to 

the far right and check out your 

handy work (at this point don’t 

worry if the colour balance of 

the two photos doesn’t match), 

unless you have done a 

fantastic job of shooting the 

panorama there will probably 

still be some mismatches. I 

found the best way to deal with 

this was to blend the two 

images slightly into each other. 

For this we use the layer’s 

alpha channel which allows us 

to control the translucency of 

the image. The first job is to 

give the layer an Alpha 

channel, click on the “Alpha” 

button in the tool bar then on 

“Create” in the palette and 

finally on “Matte”. Next take a 

look at the Alpha by clicking on 

“Swap”. You should see a plain 

white image, if you need to 

zoom out so you can see it all. 

Notice that the Alpha channel 

is the size of the photo layer 

not the whole buffer. Now white 

areas of the alpha channel 

relate to solid parts of the 

image and black parts to 

transparent areas, grey areas 

are more transparent the 

darker they are. 

Blend 

What we want to do is to add a 

gradient to the left side of the 

image making it gradually 

transparent. First we’ll make 

the gradient we’re going to use, 

take a look at your palette 

window and see if you have a 

black and white colour next to 

each other. If there aren’t 

choose the “Palette” button in 

the toolbar then click on any 

colour in the palette window so 

it is selected. Now in the tool 

bar drag the R, G and B sliders 

down to “0” the palette entry is 

now black. Click the next 

colour along the row in the 

palette and set all its RGB 

values to “255”. In the toolbar 

set the cycle gadget above the 

“Range” button to “R1”. 

Click on the Black colour then 

click the “Range” button, finally 

click the white colour, the new 

range you have created (from 

black to white) is shown by 

dots on the colours in the 

palette. 

Click on the “Toolbox” button in 

the toolbar and double click the 

filled box tool (click the bottom 

right hand corner of the box 

tool), the “Drawing Options” 

palette should open. In the 

palette set “Fill” to “Horizontal” 

and “Range” to “R1”. Now size 

the image window so you can 

see the whole alpha channel 

with a small border at the 

bottom and right edges. In the 

bottom border position the 

mouse pointer along the image 

at the point you want the fade 

to start. Exactly where you 

start will depend on how much 

your images overlap, I was 

able to have about 100 pixels. 

Now click and drag the box up 

and to the left until you cover 

the whole left hand edge of the 

alpha channel, don’t worry if 

you move over the window 

border, then release the mouse 

Support 

Blending the photos together using an alpha channel (below) 

smooths out imperfectly matched sections. 

button. Your alpha channel 

should now have a smooth 

fade on the left edge. To see 

the effect this has click the 

“Swap” button in the “Alpha” 

palette again. 

Carry on and follow the steps 

above to load each of your 

other images as a layer and 

merge them together. Once 

they’re all loaded we’ll have a 

go at correcting the differences 

in colour balance. If you’re 

short on memory or using 

particularly large images it will 

help if you flatten the layer 

you’ve just merged before 

adding the next image. To do 

this select the “Flatten Layers” 

command from the “Layer 

Manager” pop-up menu. 

However if you have to do this 

you will need to perform colour 

corrections on your layer 

before it is flattened. 

Match 

No matter how careful you 

have been in keeping your 

camera settings consistent you 

will probably find that the 

colour balance of the photos 

which make up your panorama 

needs some adjustment to get 

them to match up and look like 

45

Support 

The “Color Balance” window is 

ImageFX’s main colour 

adjustment tool. 

one image. If you have been 

able to keep each photo as a 

separate layer then you can 

work on each photo in turn 

tuning its colours to the others. 

If you’ve had to flatten layers 

as you added each photo then 

you will need to match each 

photo in turn which can be 

more difficult as you won’t see 

all the images together to 

decide which balance you are 

trying to match. I’m going to 

assume here you have each 

photo loaded as a separate 

layer. 

The first job is to look at each 

of the photos in turn and 

decide which one has the best 

colour balance, the aim will 

then be to match the others to 

this photo. 

With my photos I hadn’t 

followed my own advice and 

left the camera in automatic 

mode, this gives me four 

photos with noticeably different 

colour balances. It doesn’t help 

that the right side of the scene 

is overcast and the left side in 

bright sunshine. In my 

selection the left hand photo is 

pretty over exposed and looks 

quite washed out where as the 

right one is rather grey and 

dull. So I picked the second 

photo as the one I wanted to 

try and match, it is nice and 

bright without being over 

exposed. 

Starting with the first image 

you want to balance select its 

layer in the “Layer Manager”, 

I’m working on the left hand 

image so in my case it’s the 

“Background” layer. Then we 

can use ImageFX’s colour 

tools, the basic adjustments 

are in the “Balance” window 

accessed from the toolbar. In 

the “Color Balance” window 

zoom out the preview 

thumbnail by clicking the “-” 

button until you can see a top 

and bottom border (about 1:9 

for me) then click on the top 

thumbnail and drag it until you 

can see the photo (you may 

need to drag a few times). Now 

click the “Realtime Update?” 

check box so you can see the 

difference your changes make 

in the lower thumbnail. In this 

window the R, G, and B sliders 

adjust the intensity of the 

primary colours, “V” is 

brightness, “Co” contrast and 

“Ga” gamma. The gamma is 

often a useful tool because it 

adjusts the brightness of the 

middle tones without effecting 

the very light and dark colours 

which would normally be 

washed out or merged together 

respectively. In this case I have 

some light areas that are very 

washed out so after some 

experimentation I settled on 

reducing the brightness by “- 

30” and increasing the contrast 

by “10” to pep the colours up a 

bit. This worked well on most 

areas, especially the sea and 

town. But the sky was still too 

light and grey because it had 

been over exposed in the 

photo losing its true brightness 

and colour. 

The only option seemed to be 

to treat the sky on its own and 

make the blue more intense. To 

select the sky I used 

ImageFX’s flood region tool, on 

the main toolbar click the cycle 

gadget at the left hand side 

(which is on “Full” by default) 

until it says “Flood”. Now click 

in the sky of the photo you’re 

editing, the area selected is 

shown by “marching ants”. If 

the area selected is too small 

you can increase it by 

changing the “Flood” tolerance 

slider in the “Drawing Options” 

palette (I found I needed to 

increase this to “50” to get the 

whole sky) and click in the sky 

area to perform the flood again. 

If you want to add an area to 

the selection (for example 

among the tree branches) hold 

down Alt while clicking, to 

remove an area hold Ctrl. Now 

any processing operations you 

apply will only effect the 

selected region. 

TIP: If you want to apply 

effects to the other parts of the 

image and protect the currently 

selected region open the 

“Buffer” palette from the tool 

box, click “Region” and then 

click “Invert Region”. This 

requester also has options to 

load and save regions for later 

use. 

I then used the “Balance” effect 

to increase the blue level by 20 

and reduced the brightness (V) 

by 10 to get a good colour 

match on the sky. When you’re 

finished with the region 

remember to set the cycle 

gadget back to “Full” otherwise 

you may be surprised when 

your next effect only changes 

the region. 

And Finally... 

When you’re happy with the 

first photo choose the layer of 

the next one you want to 

adjust. On the third photo I 

thought the bushes at the front 

of the shot already looked quite 

a good match so I decided to 

work on just the sky and sea. 

Using a “Flood” tolerance of 50 

at the top of the sea, this 

should select most of the sea 

and sky area with just a few 

Cropping the flattened composition to give the final panorama, see it in colour on the back page. 

exceptions. Then switch the 

region mode cycle gadget to 

“Box”, hold down the Alt key 

and draw a box over any areas 

in the sea and sky that didn’t 

get automatically selected. 

Now open the “Balance” 

window, I found a contrast 

setting of 20 combined with a 

brightness of 10 gave a good 

match. 

Set the region control to “Full” 

and then choose the final 

photo’s layer, this one is 

considerably darker than the 

rest and in this case I found I 

could adjust the whole thing 

without the bushes getting too 

bright. So it’s just a case of 

opening the “Balance” window 

and setting brightness to “27” 

and contrast to “25”. 

When you’re happy with the 

overall look of the panorama 

you can flatten it into a single 

image. If you wish to keep the 

layered image make sure you 

save it as an INGF file before 

flattening. Then choose 

“Flatten Layers” from the 

“Layer Manager” pop-up menu. 

Once the image is flattened 

you can apply any effects you 

want to the whole image. If you 

wish you can also crop it to 

remove the uneven borders 

making the finished panorama 

look as much as possible like 

one photo. 

When you crop remember to 

zoom the image so you can 

see the whole area you want to 

crop out without scrolling. 

Overall I’m quite pleased with 

the way this panorama turned 

out, especially as I hadn’t given 

much thought to keeping the 

camera settings consistent 

between shots and I didn’t use 

a tripod. There are a couple of 

areas where the colour 

balancing could probably be 

improved if I had spent a bit 

more time on it, especially in 

the bushes on the first and last 

photos. You can also still make 

out the joins in the sea and sky 

again those transitions could 

be lost with a bit more work. So 

get out that digital camera and 

find some interesting 

panoramas to photograph! 

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Total Amiga Issue 11 

• x86 Amiga emulators feature 

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• AmigaWriter 2.2 Review 

• Perefect Paint Tutorial 

• Introduction to MIDI 

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Next Issue 

Coming up in Total Amiga 

issue 13: 

News 

• The latest on OS4, 

AmigaOne and other 

developments. 

Features 

• Digital Cameras - USB 

opens up the range of 

cameras available to 

Amigans. We take a look 

using them on the Amiga. 

Reviews 

• Thylacine USB card 

• fxSCAN 4.0 with USB 

scanner support. 

Support 

• Introduction to Wordworth 

Regulars 

• PD Paradise 

• Top Tips 

• Letters 

Please let us know what 

features and articles you 

would like to see in the next 

issue! 

The new issue is due in: 

November 2002 

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