ScuzzBlog: Diaries May 2018
Entry 13th May 2018: Post: 2
SpectraColor - Wanted this for 'Aegis'
So pleased to pick up a copy of the very splendid Aegis Spectracolor
manual off Ebay. I do keep my eye open for the odd gem that comes
up for sale and certainly Amiga manuals are becoming quite rare.
Especially for some of the older software packages.
Spectracolor first came to my attention on various cover disks.
The name Aegis was very popular in the day, providing some quite
stunning 3D design packages for the Amiga. I never dabbled in the
3D as in truth it reminded me of my daily drudge of drawing on
AutoCAD and when you spend your days as a CAD jockey you don't
really want to be reminded of it in your down time. That being
said I always had time for paint packages and this one also had
the extra added joy of animation.
And so I set too today to dig out my disks and fire up the A600
and have a play. All went fine until I tried to install onto the
HD and I got a checksum error. I tried another copy and other
floppy disks but kept repeating the same checksum.
I moved to an A1200 and tried again and had again the same problem.
I determined the checksum was trapped in the DMS on the actual
magazine disk. And it was the same for all disks. Not giving up I
moved to the A4000D and copied the DMS from the disk and used my
DMS Pro software to decrunch the actual DMS file. This I then placed
in a folder and then copied the files over one by one so I could
identify the failed files. It turned out to be three files. The
first was the Topaz font which I was able to replace. The next was
the Preferences file... which I assumed would over-write the zero
version the first time I used it and the last was the actual program
file for Spectracolor. Trick here is to use DOpus to copy and then
simply keep telling the fail notice to try again. Nine times out
of ten it will eventually copy the correct file. You know if you
have been successful cus both the original and copied should be
the same size. This worked and I was set to go.
I relabelled my disk and I was then back to the A600 and she ran
just perfectly. Unfortunately I lost a bit of time and had to cut
short my play time with the software.
Still had time to play Turrican and Soccer Kid which came as cover
disks on CU Amiga as shown in the pictures. I was also fortunate to
find my lost China Challenge III which I have looked everywhere
for... That is so addictive.
All in all a good day and I will no doubt return to SpectraColor
and the Amiga 600... er tomorrow. How cool is that. Great fun.
Aegis Spectracolor
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