Commodore Amiga Retro

Amiga Format

AMIGA FORMAT: Issue 53 Dec 1993
THE WORLD`S BEST SELLING AMIGA MAGAZINE

Now I have a dilema with this issue
cus there is also a Christmas edition
of the Amiga Format. I have decided to
stick with the format thus far and stay
with Issue 53 and not Issue 54:

Two cover disks on the cover: Uridium and Imagine
`Discover new Horizons ` A complete 3D package

JURASSIC PARK: Ocean - Go Play in the Park

COVER DISKS: Imagine - Welcome to the wonderful
world of Imagine, the 3D rendering software
which took the world by storm last year and is
widely regarded as the best 3D ray-tracing
package available for the Amiga...

..Because of the limitations of Workbench 1.3
you will have to initially boot your machine
from the Workbench disk.

Uridium 2 - Strap in and let loose a hail of
laser death in what is quite literally, a blast
from the past. This month`s Coverdisk has an
exclusive level from Andy Braybook`s conversion
of his own 8-bit classic. And so to the Dreadnought
and all things Manta.

FIRST COMPUTER CENTRE: Advert - A1200 Desktop
Dynamite Pack £339 - A4000/30 £1969 - A600 base
pack £194 - 1084ST Monitor £199

THE DAVE ROBERTS COLUMN: ...

GAMES PRICES AND PIRACY....Most CD32 Games will
be priced at £29.99, but because the format is
virtually pirate proof, publishers will be able
to confidently lower prices if the installed
base picks up.

CD32 GOOD TO BE TRUE:

Despite denials from Microbotics that the product
is not finalised yet, mail order firm Indi are
touting their new CD32 Expansion Board. The unit
is said to have serial and parallel ports, a
floppy drive port, support for an IDE drive
and RAM expansion and a port for the MPEG unit.

US ROBOTICS GET SLOWER AND CHEAPER:

We have made no secret of our love of the
US Robotics Sportster modem... The Sportster
Quad is a 2400 bps fax modem.

ACID ADD EASY TOUCH TO PROGRAMMING:

Acid Software, authors of Blitz Basic 2, have
added 50 new commands to the language , which
was featured on AF52`s Coverdisk. These will
be supplied to registered users with issue five
of the gorgeously named BUM ( Blitz User Magazine )

OVERDRIVE AN AMIGA FIRST:

It looks like many other hard drivers, but the
Overdrive from Software Demon is the Amiga`s
first PCMCIA hard drive.

COMMODORE`S QUADRUPLE WHAMMY !

Commodore UK boss exclusively reveals a four-point
plan to introduce new machines by the end of the
year, and introduce even more powerful Amigas.

Amiga Format can exclusively reveal that Commodore
are to hit the rest of the computer and console
manufacturers out of the park with not one, not two
not three, but FOUR stunning Amiga announcements.

In an exclusive interview with Commodore UK`s
managing director David Pleasance..

1: Full motion video board for the Amiga CD32
2: CD-ROM drives for the A1200 and A4000
3: A lower cost A4000/40
4: 64-bit RISC-based machines within 6 months.

CRAFT LANDING:

New for AMOS programmers is Craft from Black Legend
Software. Designed for use with both classic and
Pro versions of AMOS, Craft adds over 160
commands to the AMOS instruction set.

GAMES CHART:

1: Championship Manager 93
2: Syndicate
3: Project X
4: Alien Breed: Special Ed 92
5: F17 Challenge
6: Premier Manager
7: Dogfight
8: Sensible Soccer 92/93
9: Gunship 2000
10: Soccer Kid

INTO THE VALLEY:

When it comes to third party manufacturers, the
biggest player in the game is Great Valley Products
Nick Veitch cornered Gerard Bucas the company
president in a west London Hotel: GVP are justifiably
proud of the A1200 accelerator. Soon it will be
updated by the A1230 Turbo+ which Gerard Bucas
says will be the best possible A1200 accelerator.

IV24 is one of GVP`s most formidable products. The
complete video solution includes a framegrabber
a genlock and a 24-bit display card.

THE WORLD OF COMMODORE SHOW USA:

Although Europe accounts for more than 80 per cent
of the Amiga`s worldwide sales, Commodore`s
machine still has a strong foothold in the USA
as a serious video and graphics tool.

AAA IS ON THE WAY:

In a keynote address at the World of Commodore
Show in Pasadena, Commodore`s Vice President
of Engineering, Lew Eggebrecht, revealed that
the long-awaited AAA chipset now exists. " We
have had a very dramatic breakthrough in the
last week... we now have running silicon "

CD32 TO GO STATESIDE: Contrary to previous reports
CD32 will be launched in the USA. Jim Dionne
President of Commodore US confirmed.

WARM AND FUZZY RAVE ON: One of the most
controversial products at the show was LightRave
a hardware and software device that enables you
to run the excellent raytracing programme
Lightwave without the video toaster.

NEW AMIGA READY FOR RELEASE:

A new high performance Amiga could be released
in Britain next year. A prototype of the A4000T
was on display at the World of Commodore Show,
and according to Commodore US it will be released
in the States before the end of the year.

TOP 10 AMIGA CHRISTMAS PRESENTS:

US Robotics Modem - Genius Digitiser Tablet
Power XL 1.76 Drive - Philips TV monitor
GVP A1230 Expansion - Vidi Amiga 12
Miricle Keyboard - Overdrive 35 Hard Drives
Amiga Games from Future Zone - Gold Disk Office 3

IMAGINE: Welcome to the world of Imagine. You`ve
got the software, now learn how to get the most
out of it by following our six pages of step-by-step
tutorials......

FRONTIER ELITE II: David Braben Presents - Only the
very best mature with time. ... Konami - GAMETEK

DREAMWEB: If you`ve ever woken at 3am soaked in
sweat and quivering like a jelly, don`t blame it
on the late night cheeseburger. It`s more likely
to be the work of evil forces controlling the Dreamweb
Empire Software`s latst adventure game.

BENEATH A STEEL SKY: If you thought that Lure of the
Temptress was pretty dam good, then just wait until
you see what Revolution Software have created
when they unveil their new graphics adventure.

GAME REVIEWS:

Uridium 2 - Renegade 94%
Second Samurai - Psygnosis 91%
Oscar AGA - Flair 67%
Blaster - Core Design 44%
Dogfight - Micropose 81%
Overdrive - Team 17 74%
Bob`s Bad Day - Psygnosis 79%
QWAK - Team 17 85%
Donk - Supervision 85%
Premier Manager II - Gremlin 89%

HIRED GUNS - Advert Have you got the guts

HELPING HANDS: Captain Planet to the rescue

EXPANDING YOUR A4000/30:

The A4000/30 is a powerful machine and it is
now widely recognised as the entry level
professional Amiga. Richard Baguley looks
at the various ways of expanding this
machine`s already considerable capabilities.

If you want to use your A4000/30 for serious
work, one of the first things that you will have
to do is to think about expanding it. Although
2 or 4Mb of memory and 80Mb of disk space
may sound like a lot , once you start loading
in your professional programs and generating
your 24-bit IFF files it will soon get eaten up.

STEP BY STEP GUIDES: On fitting SIMMS and
Zorro cards... and a warning about Static electricity.

CYGNUSED Professional 3.5:

In the beginning was the word - but it wasn`t much
use without a decent word processor. Getting back to
basics, Nick Veitch tries out the new version
of CygnusEd.... Meridian Software 81%

SILICA - Advert GVP HD8+ slashed from £249 to £199

EVESHAM MICROS: Advert - A600 1Mb RAM/CLOCK £44.99

WHEN THE WORST HAPPENS:

Feature on Back-up systems: Quarterback 5.0 and
AmiBack. Recovery programs - FixDisk, Disksalv,
AmiBack Tools and Quarterback Tools.

THE STRUCTURE OF AN AMIGADOS DISK:

There are three important areas of an AmigaDOS
disk. The first of these is the boot block .
If you have a disk editor such as the one supplied
with QBTools DeLuxe you can take a look at the
one on your copy of Workbench.

An AmigaDOS disk will always begin with blocks
defining it as such. This is done by placing the
ASCII values for the characters "DOS" at the
start of the disk. In the case of a bootable disk
this is followed by a short piece of code which
instructs the Amiga how to boot up from the current
disk.

The root blocks occupy the two blocks at the very
centre of the floppy, blocks 880 and 881. The first
contains directory information about the disk
defining the structure in which files will be stored.
The second contains the bitmap information for the
disk which is simply a little map, with one bit
for each block on the disk.

If any of these blocks get dameaged you are in
serious trouble.

SOFTWARE REVIEWS:

Rpaint - Megagem 64%
SBAse 4 Personal - Meridian 89%
CDPD III - Almathera Systems 85% ( PD Software )
MegaloSOUND - HiSoft 89%
Pegger - Heifner Communications 70%
Helm - MicroPace 91%

PD UPDATE:

Troni-cad - Magnetic Fields (electric circuit designer)
Mandelplot - MF ( fractel generator )
Communicate - Your Choice ( communicate in semaphore )
Printmaster - Wack PD
Smartplay - Anglia ( module player )

KLONDYKE AGA - Telescan ( excellent card game )

TOP 10: PD GAMES AND UTILITIES:

1: Kick 1.3
2: Numpad
3: AGA Tetris
4: D-Copy 3.1
5: OctaMED V5 (demo)
6: Andy`s WB3 Utilities
7: SID 2
8: AGA Klondyke
9: Text Engine V4.1
10: Kickstart 2

BLITZ BASIC: Tutorial - This month Simon Armstrong
features an editor for the iso-blaster project
and more commands to keep you experimenting
with Blitz2 on last issues coverdisk.

WORKBENCH: With Nick Veitch

...A hard drive is a crucial step toward true
oneness with your machine and the HD8 is a steal
at current prices.

Is the Commodore CD-ROM drive going to use the
trapdoor expansion ? LEW EGGEBRECHT answers...
As you are aware the Amiga A1200 has room for
only one expansion board in the trapdoor space.
The CD-ROM drive we are planning for the A1200
will use this slot. Therefore other expansion
boards cannot be used.

HARD DRIVES: In depth explanation

There are two main types of hard-drives
for the Amiga - SCSI and IDE

SCSI drives have intelligent interfaces which
means they rely much less on the host computer
to tell the what to do.

IDE drives are slower because the host computers
CPU has to do some of the work.

The SCSI interface is much more versatile than IDE.

In general seven SCSI devices can be added to a
single SCSI interface.

The A1200 and A600 both have built-in IDE intefaces.

... 16 point list

LETTERS:

AF IS CRAP! Amiga users in general are not the
mindless couch potatoes who use Segas or Nintendos.
Indeed most are intelligent, thoughtful, and can
read pages with more than one column of text...

US GONE:

LucasArts have stopped supporting the Amiga,
due largely to the Migs failure as a games
machine in the USA.

THE MAN AT THE TOP:

Keen to increase communication between the Big C
and the Amiga community, Commodore UK`s General
Manager David Pleasance will be replying to your
letters personally on a monthly basis.

..... Thank you for being such a loyal and
longstanding Commodore user.... there have
been problems on delays in repairing Amiga
4000`s due to a shortage of spare parts.

Amiga Format Issue 53 for Dec 93
was bought to you by:

Editor - Marcus Dyson
Deputy Editor - Julie Tolley
Consultant Editor - Nick Veitch
Production Editor - Richard Jones
Games Editor - Rob Mead
Staff Writer - Richard Baguley
Staff Writer - Stephen Bradley
Art Editor - Sue White
Design - Frank Bartucca

There is no reference to who was in
charge of the new broom.

Amiga Format was produced and published
by Future Publishing .... Your guarantee of value.

Anyway that was that for 1993, a year that
seemed to have more promises than substance.