Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

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42 TECHNICAL a s AMIGA COMPUTING ADVICE SERVICE II1115 i5 here ill Hike dil — your PMbarld55ing fiE1501731 fimiga probiem5 Final Writer WOR5 t a My desperation situation stakes has now and reached I am in serious danger of taking a hammer to my Amiga 1200 and the HP520 that is attached. I am running Final Writer 2.1, and the problem is that I cannot print past 10.5 Inches - anything after this is being ignored and not carried over to the next page. I have exhausted all the options in the program and in the Workbench preferences. Also, I would like to expand my memory via a trapdoor board. I recently acquired a 4Mb SIMM from an old 386 - t e e d •1 T0 hk e n Mo Ow O iAmiga hs ai s f ROO kegboard I have recently acquired an Anna 600 and I am antic ,by the lack ol a numeric keypad and would like to allac•. one I have several PC keyboards lying around What I Pl Pied. Fife A500*, so will support a numeric keypad I do feel, however, that the biggest problem is how you will attach the PC keyboard. As the A600 uses a ribbon cable the same as the Al200. it NM be guile a task to convert the PC keyboards 5-pin connector to the Amiga's ribbon if you do manage it. there is a program on Aminet to help retnap PC keyboards for use with thp Amiga Computing OCTOBER 1995 (0 Dilemma5 In the near future I am going to upgrade into the world of CD by adding a CD l) -a drive to my computer. I have taken a fancy to Power Computing's dual drive, but have just noticed the price drop in the CD32. I am now wondering which to buy, as I know the CD32 can be attached to the Al200. Will the CD32 act in the same way as a CD drive? I do not want to use the two separately for CDs and floppies, but want to use the two as one. I have seen some CDs that are only CO32 compatible, and also know about the FMV option, which inclines me to buy the CD32. I will be using the CD drive for CD32 games, audio CDs, public domain, and the odd encyclopaedia. Which would give me the greatest access to the huge world of CD? Just one more quick question - how do I gel OctaMED sound files to play from m startup-sequence? Andrew. Northernotonshit As with most things in life, which ever decision you make will involve r compromises. If you must have 100 per cent CD32 compatibility, then the only real option is to buy a CD32. You can then use something like the Communicator!i to allow you to access the CD32 via parnet. Basically, you get an icon on the Workbench and can access the CD32 like a normal device, such as a floppy or hard drive. The maior down side to this is you will only be getting around 20 to 40K a second transfer, which is not much better than floppy access. Your other option is to go for the Power Computing offering. That consists of either a dual or quad-speed CD, and the excellent Squirrel SCSI-II interface. The CO32 emulation might not be perfect, but most recent CO32 games. and hopefully all future releases. will be written with these CD32 emulators In mind. Therefore, future compatibility should be much better. The other thing you should keep in mind is that with the last option you are getting a SCSI CD-ROM and a PCMCIA SCSI-II adapter. This means that there is a good possibility that they could be used on a future Amiga, or any other computer, with the right software, and the fact you have a SCSI interlace means it is possible to lit up to another six devices onto the SCSI chain. The biggest benefit, however, is that you can access the CD at its maximum transfer rate - 300k a second for a dual-speed drive. That is around 15 times faster than the Communicator II, and if you are planning to use PO discs a lot then this could be quite an important point. I would go for the Power Computing system. You get a SCSI CD-ROM that could be used with any other computer with a SCSI interface. The CD access on the Al200 side is Infinitely faster, and on top of all that you have got a SCSI-II Interface. When you say sound files, do you mean samples or complete modules? To play a module, edit your user-startup file, found in the S: drawer, and add 'Run >NIL:
Do you have a problem? Do you sometimes find yourself poised over your Amiga with axe In hand, spouting profanity at the stubborn refusal of your Amiga software or hardware to behave property? Well, calm down and swap the axe for pen and paper, jot down your problems, along with a thorough description of your Amiga setup. and send It off to Amiga Computing Advice Service. IDG Media. Media House. Adlington Park, Macclesfield SKI() *NIP. Or email us at ACAStfacomp.demon_co.uk AssignPreis gives you a nice GUI front-end to add, change and remove assigns. which makes looking after your assigns a lot easier. A500 PHRI151011 i have an A500 and would like to know what is involved in upgrading to OS 2.04 or 3.1. I know you can buy ROM kits and that they come with fitting instructions, but are they easy to understand by a complete novice like me? Do they need speoal tools, and do they come with the Workbench disks as well? Is it also possible to use the 3.1 ROMs in conjunchon with a ROM switcher? At some point in the future I would also like to lit a hard drive, but there seem to be so many different sorts !Owl really know which one would be best. Rose &lasted, Oxon r With regards to upgrading your A500's Kickstart chip. I would suggest you went for the OS 3.1 kit. How difficult this is depends on what revision your A500 is. Basically, if your Uiorkbenth blue5 I have an Amiga 500 and a ROM switc- \ „, her fitted with Kickstart 1.3 and 2.05. I have just Increased my hard drive from 40 to 350Mb and have a Megachip installed. My problem is that on the initial start „o I am getting the message 'pure bit not set'. y'inat is this pure bit and how do I set it? If I switch to 2.05 and boot my system, everything becomes very slow and jerky. I am told this is because it is still booting Workbench 1.3. How can I get my system to detect which ROM I have selected, and automatically boot the correct Workbench? Finally, when using Pen Pal I find it very useful to use the CMD function to redirect the output to my hard drive, and then print later. This always worked fine, but since changing the hard drive, every time I use ill gel a blank screen and a redirecting data message. When I then quit Pen Pal I am left with just the blank screen and Workbench cannot be found. M Dennett, Somerset oue5tion5? Morkben oh release Amiga is no more than six-years old It should be a revision six machine. The only way to find out for sure is to open your machine up, remove the metal shield by carefully bending all the tabs up. and somewhere on the mother board, normally on the righthand side, there will the revision number. If it is an earlier version than six you are going to have to do a bit of amateur electronics, and depending on how adventurous you are it may be best to get a qualified electrician to do the job. If, however, you have a revision six machine, fitting the ROM is a case of carefully prising the old ROM out of its base - a flat head screwdriver pushed carefully between the chip and the base at each end should do the trick - and then replacing it with the new ROM. making sure you place it the correct way around. There are clear markings on the chip and its base. so this is obvious. It is possible to use a ROM switcher, but why do want to? I am sure once you use 3.1 you will wonder how you ever managed using 1.3. When OS 2 first appeared there was a legitimate use for ROM switches, but nowadays every program will run under OS 3. As for fitting a hard drive In the future, five years ago you could not move for Amiga 500 hard drive adverts, but now A500 stuff is getting pretty thin on the ground. The easiest way to add a hard drive to an A500 is to choose any of the ones that fits Into the side expansion slot. You should also consider getting some extra memory, as each hard drive partition uses up some memory and Bigger, be tte r a nd Va ste r. Eve ry a spe ct of Workbe nch 3.1 iv a n improve me nt ove r the now de cropild 1 .3 Normally, the pure bit error is associated with the pure protection bit of a r, file not being set. A quick cure for this is to simply type from a shell, 'protect C:*? +p'. This will set all the pure bits of all the programs in the c: directory. However, running the 1.3 tiles under Kickstart 2.05 should not make any difference to the speed Amiga Computing OCTOBER 1995 TECHNICAL AROD ethernet 1 Is there an ethernet adapter available for the Al200 which plugs into the PCMCIA slot or the parallel port? I know these are available for the PC, but I have not seen any advertised for the Amiga. I hope to buy an Al200 when I go to university and would like to connect to the campus network, if I can. Philip Chung, Cambridge r t h e r e i s s u c h a c a r d a v a i l - You will be glad to hear that ., able called the I-Card. This is only half the story, as you have to find out what type of network the university uses so you can purchase the correct network and driver software. Unfortunately, the card is expensive at £249. If you give White Knight Technology a call on 01920 822321. I am sure they can help. There is another option, but this involves more work_ You could get hold of a PC PCMCIA ethernet card, which is much cheaper, but you then need the driver software and a copy of AmiTCP. The problem here is the driver software for the card. Apparently, Erik Quackenbush has written a driver. but I have been unable to get hold of him - keep you informed. you will be stretching 1Mb to the limit, You can normally fit extra memory into the hard drive, but It is something worth checking before you buy one. of your computer. The error message you are getting, and the fact your computer is running slower, is indicative of a keyboard problem. It could be that when fitting the Megachip you dislodged the keyboard connector. Does your caps lock light flash when you boot your computer? If it does then this definitely means you have a keyboard problem. All I can suggest is that you check the keyboard Is correctly connected and make sure none of your keys are trapped by the computer casing. As for your problem with CMD, are you running Pen Pal under 1.3 or 2.05, and which OS version of CMD are you running? Earlier versions of Pen Pal do not run under version 2, but it is possible to upgrade to either the last version of Pen Pal, or the much more recent Final Writer. I do wonder why you are still using 1_3. If its just to run Pen Pal then you really should upgrade and dump all the 1,3 stuff on your hard drive. If you have to run 1_3 then there are a number of small CLI utilities that can detect which ROM you have running, and then execute the correct startup-sequence. 43
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