~~5Atari News PHOTO-CD FOR THE FALCON. You may be aware of some new technology from Kodak. This is the new 'Photo-CD' hardware. The basic idea of this is that you can view your favourite photographs on a CD instead of paper. They don't wear out and can be stored more efficiently than in normal photograph wallets. Up to 100 photos can be stored on a single CD, which equates to about 4.5Mbytes per picture(with data compression)giving you some idea of the detail involved. Normally, the viewing harware from Kodak would cost somewhere in the region of 400 pounds. But Atari have managed to come up with some software for the Falcon which enables you to view the pictures. To do this you will need just a normal CD-ROM player. These can cost as low as 150 pounds, and is just an initial outlay. After that has been bought, you can just buy a CD for about 8 pounds, and then put your photos on them, costing 17 pounds for 24 exposures. You can then view, rotate, flip, view, crop and skip photographs at your leisure. Given the Falcon's graphic capability, the images should just as good, if not better than the paper-printed equivalents. This idea can be interpreted in various ways. Including photos into DTP without the aid of a colour scanner for example, or for clip art. Discs containing images are expected to become available. For more advice, contact Herald Communications on 081 222 8515 ATARI'S NEW CONSOLE Atari hope to get a large slice of the consoles games market with the release of what they call their 'billion doller baby' - the new_Jaguar. It is based around a 64-bit RISC processor, with 24 bit colour graphics (16777416 cols), and the DSP, similar to the one in the Falcon. The DSP in this machine however is dedicated to processing sound (unlike the Falcon which can use it for a hell of a lot more!). It also can be expanded via a 32-way cable so that things like printers, DAT storage and the new Photo- CD (see above) can be connected. This console (to compare it with other machines) is 4 times faster than any console available. It's technology enables it to do processor-intensive operations with ease (polygon drawing and Real-time texture mapping for example). This wonderful new machine is due over here in Autumn sometime with a 160 quid price tag on it, with game cartridges being sold for about 20 pounds. At these sort of prices for the technology, you can see that Atari appear to be interested in taking on the likes of Nintendo and Sega. ~~5 -[hs1st1 - 68K]- ~~6Amiga News CD AMIGA SET TO BLOW MEGA CD INTO SPACE Commodore unveiled just recently their brand new Amiga. This time it has no keyboard, and has CD as its primary storage media. The specifications of the new machine are much the same as the A1200, boasting a 68020 32 bit processor chip, accompanied with the usual array of AGA custom chips. The sound is also unfourtunately still the same 4 channels of 8 bit stereo sound (no DSP chip in sight as yet). Expansion posibilties are huge, thanks to a massive expansion port on the rear of the machine. So hardware such as hard drives can be connected. There are also ports to allow a keyboard and floppy disk drive to be added, effectively turning it into a 1200 with CD drive. A CD drive is planned for the A1200, so users will have two ways of buying an 1200 with CD. Either first get the CD32 then the extras, or buy the A1200 and then get the CD drive. A full motion video (FMV) add-on will be released for the CD32 shortly after the CD32 is launched. Several specific CD32 games will be bundled with the machine. With a long list of developers nearing completition of CD32 games. Developers who have DEFINATELY got CD32 games coming out soon include: GREMLIN - Lotus Turbo Trilogy, Litil Divil, Utopia 2, Zool 2, Premier Manager, Nigel Mansell, Hero Quest 'Legend of Soracil'. MILLENNIUM - Diggers, Dino Worlds, Daughter of Serpents, 1884, Robocod. MINDSCAPE - Liberation, Chaos Engine, Sensible Soccer, Sim Life, Drive Fractulus. MICROPROSE - Grand Prix. ICE - Akira. OCEAN - Jurassic Park, TFX. SYSTEM 3 - Putty. TEAM 17 - Body Blows, Project X, Superfrog. VIRGIN - Dune. There are some other games planned for release about the same time as the CD32 too, and thats only at the launch! The CD32 has got the backing of the software developers that it needs already. A1200 PRICE CUT The A1200 is now available for £100 less, at £299.99, which was previously the trade-in price if you traded in an A500. The A4000/040 also got a slight price reduction too. But unfourtunately the A4000/030 remains at the same price. COMMODORE RECOVER AFTER SHOCK LOSS Commodore has streamlined the company, which will now concentrate 100% on the Amiga, as it has dropped its PC side. Although Commodore made a huge loss in the last year they hope by just concentrating on the hugely successful Amiga market they will go back into profit again. ~~3PC News APRICOT RELAUNCHES INTO COMMODITY PC MARKET A new range of PC machines have been launched by Apricot. The Xen-PC range, are priced from £899 for a 25MHz 486SX machine, with 80Mb hard drive, and colour SVGA monitor. MICROSOFT UNVEIL WINDOWS NT Windows NT has just been launched by MicroSoft. It is aimed at the server and high end user.