Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

ELF HELP .ammi
I have owned my Amiga 1200 for about two
years now To start with I used it mostly for
games and DPaint, but since then I have
bought a hard drive, accelerator and monitor
and agree that if the Amiga is to continue
users must keep their machines up to date,
Rut more importantly than that, they must
also know how to use them properly. Since
*grading, my Amiga has become ten times
more usable, but if 1 hadn't spent the time
ring to know the OS, I wouldn't have got
half as much benefit from the upgrades as I
hem.
Naturally, there will always be beginners
. problems, but some of the people who
le in and say that they have been Amiga
rs for years sound like they have never
i n opened a Shell window! I consider
e4ly
dsei
uld be able to answer at least half the
, f loblems you get sent just by explaining how
po a use 'assign'.
3. cWhy
don't you help raise user competence
at
o
, titling AmigaDOS (which was what I used),
m
rdxf
stop ACAS from getting clogged up with
p
u.
,T4Fich simple problems.
l
nrill
would also like to congratulate you on the
e
n)
comparison feature in Decembers Amiga
'n t outing - it was very interesting and, most
i
.ciortantly, e honest. Maybe in a future issue
n
a
g ad
mt
we should expect from Workbench 4
a 'II
arid
when we can expect it)?
sp
° t
pu
F:n
e
whether the AAA chipset, which was
et
i"parently
u
98 per cent complete when
cf
nirnmodore
r
went bust, will be used in a new
ioa
b
ar
l
a million times better than anything any-
Iu
l w
else had, it makes you wonder what it
l t
oa
vi '
yI
fr
egng
t used.
, '
fd
s fco
Nigel Harper, Nunburnholme, York
t m
es
a.
hs
r o
nA
bite agree, but you can't expect everyone
eu
om
d
P, s
r r
n e
w
wt
fact that people have to assign soft-
D
e e
a i
h
aMi
a
hI
bd
y
nt re trkbench that should be addressed in
v
a
i
oe
t
tp
-
s
d
oa
h
o os
glad you liked the OS comparison
b
P
k s
e
liu
r;lure - Frank Nord is blushing with pride
e
l
l/
r
en
r
i
e
is
e
at
e
tn
n
a
ku
'
rs
v
Aa
)ert. He could have extended the article
a
s
e g
s
n te
r011
s ten pages if we had let him. And as
l
a
Bg
a
to
r
sw
future Workbench suggestions, I hope
found his article last month as interest-
o
n
Se
n
o ws
e
as you did the comparison feature.
t
c
Bs
y
ua
i
, s1.astly,
it doesn't look like the AAA
o
e
't
q
sr
o
ap
i
f
s
si
u
e dn
s e
prhn
l• o ogles are trying to work out
s
a
o
e
t s
oa
sether
to supply the Amiga with a custom
p
i
n
s
ha
o
uk
e
pset, or go for a more general level of
e
d
s
t
e df
r . npatibility with PC manufacturers and
t
c
t
o
i
Se
t
rig
I in a VGA-type graphics card. Even if
w
u
h
n
o
hf
h
e-y
t work out this conflict satisfactorily and
i
l
n
ei
e
s_he
c custom chipset's favour, they would
l
a
a
o
lco
ia
need to do an awful lot of work with
l I, to bring it up to speed.
t
t
f
lip
dm
e
i
i.
e
v
OXPANSION ANGST
Who says that good things can't come from bad ones? With Amiga Worlds demise I am now
blessed with your publication and I believe you are 'Numero Uno'.
I share B Nicholson's concerns in his letter in issue 4 (English readers will have Mr
Nicholson's letter in the November issue - ES). As an A3000 owner I have seen very little A3000
improvements available in the market (I guess Commodore got it right with this design). To go
straight to the point, perhaps this time Amiga Technologies' engineers could be challenged to
design a motherboard for the next generation of Amigas that would have a processor slot
where the CPU would reside and would be easily upgraded but, more importantly, two video
slots where one would be populated by the video display co-processors and video custom
chips on a daughterboard.
Perhaps this would solve the dreaded occasions when an improved video chipset hits the
market and loyal users were forced to keep up and upgrade, or stagnate with their old Amiga&
Perhaps Escom could even gain by manufacturing these video processors and making them
available to other video board manufacturers (maybe they will even make their way into PCs
and Macs thus gaining greater exposure in the market,. Make the Amiga into an open system.
I don't want to put down AGA-equipped Amigas but releasing software solely for these units
actually leaves the rest of the Amiga owners out of the picture. Maybe software libraries and dri-
vers should be produced by Amiga Technologies and provided to Amiga software developers.
These patches would allow software to take advantage of the AGA chipset but also third-party
video boards. Let's face it, many Amiga owners are not going to get rid of their units just to get
AGA machines. They want to add peripherals (CD-ROMs, ZIP drives, etc.) they can share with
another computer, while they wait for the next RISC-based Amigas to hit the market
I sincerely wish the very best to Escom and their Amiga Technologies division. In order to
maintain the loyalty of Amiga fans, Escom must show a dedication to continuously improve and
aggressively advertise and market Amigas. And it's up to the users to spread the word_
Jose A Ferreira, Kingsland, Go USA
Obviously, in the computer world it is a case of move or die. Commodore released some
fine machines and the A3000 was the best of them, but that was five years ago now and it
is time to get with the plan. However, as you say, it would be better for you to wait for the
new PowerAmiga rather than spending money on a machine that will be obsolete in about
12 month's time.
Amiga Technologies face a difficult task over the coming year in persuading people that
buying an Amiga actually makes sense. In order to overcome potential purchasers' worries
about the lack of compatibility the Amiga has with other platforms, I think we will see a
move to a more standardised machine, possibly without the custom graphics chipset that
we have become used to, opening the way for third-party graphics cards to take over the
market.
UBLISHER
PANIC di
Having received your magazine for several
, years now I have built up a large collection
0
1 wish to use regularly is the February 1994
. coverdisk, The Publisher. In that issue of the
0 magazine there was an offer to buy the offi-
f cial manual for the program, so I bought
the manual and just left it on the shelf
y
awaiting the time when I would need it
o
The magazine had a serial number in it
u
to override the built-in copy protection on
r the Publisher disk once it was unarchived,
c but, unfortunately, I seem to have lost the
omagazine
with the number in it. Could
vyou
possibly let me have the serial num-
eber
for the program so that I can install
r the program onto my hard drive and,
dmore
importantly, use it
i
Geoff Bowel!, Caine
s
It feels like we get a request for this ser-
k
ial number every three months or so, so
s
do keep this copy of the magazine
• handy, just in case you might need it!
OHere's
the number you need to unlock
nThe
Publisher:6547495F
e
s
OINAL WORD
Just a note to ask why publishers on the
Amiga don't look for cross-platform compatibility
in their products. I own copies of both
Final Copy and Wordworth, yet I cannot
transfer files between them and my PC at
work without saving out as ASCII and having
to redo all my layout work.
It just seems like developers live in their
own little worlds and never pay any attention
to what's going on around them. II
I that did in my business, I wouldn't make any
money.
The computing industry is probably the
only one where standards are created by
competing companies which can be used
industry-wide for better all-round performance,
but Amiga software houses seem to
ignore all of it_
R A Bryant. Shepstow
quite agree. The lack of observation
means that companies end up reinventing
everything from scratch each time without
paying attention to what other people
Me doing, meaning the Amiga loses
out on some handy features like PNG
or support for word processor file
formats.