Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/products/volume_06/issue_08

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 19KB | 354 lines

•    10 Out of 10 Early Essentials − Following on from 10/10 Maths and 10/
10 English, 4th Dimension have produced 10 out of 10 Early Essentials
which is for the under 7’s and provides programs that develop concepts
of shape and colour, numbers, alphabet, science, tables and bonds,
logic, algebra, time, properties and words. All this for only £25.95 or
£24 through Archive!
6.8
•    Acorn Multimedia Expansion Unit − This is a metal unit containing a
CD-ROM drive but with space for a second drive unit. It comes either
with or without a SCSI interface and the interface is either an 8-bit
internal podule for A3000/4000 machines or a 16-bit standard-width
podule for other Archimedes computers. The prices are £599 +VAT with a
SCSI interfaces and £499 +VAT without. (The dealer margin on these is
very small, so the Archive prices are not discounted − £590 and £705
including VAT and carriage.)
6.8
If you have your own SCSI card, you need to be sure that it has the CDFS
included and that it is at least version 2.13. Also, this version of
CDFS need RISC OS version 3.10 or later.
6.8
The cabling on the unit is long enough to put it alongside the computer
or you could put it on top of or underneath the computer, subject to a
maximum loading of 16kg.
6.8
The unit will take two internal SCSI devices. One of them must be a 3½“
unit, entirely enclosed, and the other a 5¼” half-height unit with an
external fascia or a 3½“ in a 5¼” cradle. Having an external fascia
allows for the use of removable media such as SyQuests or magneto-
optical devices although some of the MO units are physically too long to
fit in the case.
6.8
If you want a power amplifier for the sound output, this can also be
fitted internally.
6.8
You should note, however, that the internal p.s.u. will only have enough
spare capacity for ONE unit in addition to the CD-ROM, i.e. one extra
drive or a power amplifier. Also, if you add an extra unit, you will
need to fit a fan − for which space and fitting points are provided.
6.8
•    Acorn Options − This is a scheme by which schools and colleges can
obtain Acorn computers on a rental scheme. Capital expenditure is tight,
so this scheme provides a way of getting hold of the latest in computer
technology without large up-front payments. Acorn Authorised Education
Dealers such as Norwich Computer Services can supply Acorn computer
equipment and the educational establishments pay a quarterly rental over
three or five years. At the end of that period, it may be possible for
schools to maintain title of the equipment but the terms have still to
be finalised. In any case, considering the rate at which technology
moves on, it might be better to think in terms of a three or five year
replacement cycle for computers. It is also possible to add more
equipment to the rental scheme as the years go by. For more details,
ring Norwich Computer Services’ education hot-line.
6.8
•    Archive binders − More price rises, I’m afraid! The latest batch of
binders have gone up in price, so we are now having to charge £6 each.
(Does anyone know of a manufacturer we can try who might be cheaper?
Ed.)
6.8
“These binders are too small!” We have been told that, with the ever-
increasing thickness of the Archive magazines, people are having
difficulty fitting them into the binders! Admittedly, it is getting more
difficult to fit them in but it is often because people are not fitting
them correctly. The idea is that only the front and back magazines have
their rods fitted into the holes. The other ten rods should be put into
the slot. The only reason they have so many holes is so that you can use
different holes during the course of the year as the binder fills up.
6.8
•    Archive Monthly Program Discs − For the benefit of new-comers to
Archive, let me explain about the monthly program discs. These discs
contain any of the data which contributors send in each month that are
relevant to their articles. For example, last month we included a list
(contributed by Rob Brown) of items of software that were or were not
compatible with RISC OS 3. If there is not much material that needs to
go on the disc, in a given month, we try to find some PD software or
some other useful information that we can add ourselves.
6.8
If there is a particular month’s disc that you want to buy, they are
available at £2 a disc. You can order these discs in advance, again at
£2 each or at £20 for a full year, i.e. 12 discs.
6.8
•    ArtSchool − This is a painting program for new computer users. Drawing
tools can be temporarily excluded by a teacher or parent using a
separate program so that the user is not confused by too many icons. It
has a built-in help facility and, for the more advanced user, the 256
colour modes can be used with graduated fills and cycling colours. The
price is £29.95 inc VAT from Micro Studio or £28 through Archive.
6.8
•    BattleChess from Krisalis Software is a chess game with a difference.
As well as being able to play chess against a human opponent or against
the computer, you get the benefit of some very impressive animation
sequences when a piece is taken. The price is £25.99 inc VAT from
Krisalis or £24 through Archive.
6.8
•    Careware and Shareware − This month we have two new Careware discs and
three new Shareware discs. The graphics conversion utilities on Careware
19 have grown somewhat so that the statistics routines have had to be
transferred onto Careware 20. If you want an update of Careware 19, just
send the old disc back.
6.8
Careware 20 − SkyView v1.01 is an excellent ‘sky simulation’ program by
Nigel Hawkes for use by the naked eye astronomer. Any part of the night
sky can be examined and information is available on most celestial
objects. Also on the disc is the suite of stand-alone statistical
utilities written in Basic by Bob Richards, listed in Archive 6.5 p4 as
being part of Careware 19.
6.8
Careware 21 consists of clipart produced by Steve and Anne Bruntlett −
various drawfiles on a religious theme plus some scanned drawings.
6.8
Shareware 48 is a demo version of !G-Draft 1.0, a 2D CAD package
including various example CAD drawings and some symbol libraries.
6.8
Shareware 49 has various graphical demos in Basic, a suite of desktop
utilities, some Draw utilities for PCB layout work, a ‘presentation’
utility to display multiple drawfiles in succession, a desktop utility
to calculate ‘best-fit’ data, an excellent 2D graphing tool allowing
multiple graphs to be built up using text file data, a useful desktop
mathematics/learning tool covering bar graphs, Euclidean algorithms,
factorization, fractions, greatest common divisor, least common multiple
and prime number search.
6.8
Shareware 50 contains ProTrack and associated files from Gil Damoiseaux
& Bernard Jungen. This utility allows SoundTracker and ProTracker files
to be played. It includes several facilities for monitoring and
modifying the tunes.
6.8
•    Christian clipart − Ian Gooding has a range of about 30 discs of
Christian clipart in sprite, drawfile and Artworks formats. The discs
are £7.99 each plus £2.50 p&p per order. For a full catalogue, write to
Ian Gooding, 18 Larksfield, Covingham, Swindon, SN3 5AD.
6.8
•    Courses Galore − You can now combine computer training courses with
some site-seeing in a beautiful part of the U.K. − the Norfolk Broads.
Norwich Computer Services is going to be putting on some training
courses here in Norwich. You can choose the type and price of your own
accommodation from a list (which we will provide) of hotels and guest
houses as well as camping and caravan sites.
6.8
We are hoping to start this summer, but what we need to know fairly
urgently, is:
6.8
(1) What subjects should we cover? Applications such as Impression,
PipeDream, PinPoint, PenDown, Vector, Squirrel, S-Base, PC Emulator,
Revelation, Magpie, etc? Beginners courses, e.g. Introducing RISC OS?
Programming, e.g. BBC Basic V or C or WIMP Programming?
6.8
(2) How long should the courses be and when? e.g. mid-week or weekend?
How about a Bank Holiday weekend with course work on Saturday and
Monday, leaving Sunday as a day of rest?
6.8
Tell us what you want and we will see what we can arrange for you.
6.8
•    DataPower, Iota Software’s new ‘easy-to-use’ database, is available
now. It is RISC OS compliant, uses outline fonts and has features which
include unlimited length of field, unlimited number of fields in a
record, unlimited number of views of a database, has multi-line text
field-type which accepts an unlimited amount of text. It offers
mailmerge and WYSIWYG labelling. It offers a range of graphing
facilities and can be used over a network. The price is £149 +VAT (£160
through Archive) for a single user, £347 +VAT (£375 through Archive) for
a site licence for up to 10 machines and £599 +VAT (£650 through
Archive) for an unrestricted site licence.
6.8
•    Double-life ink cassettes − We are now stocking double-life black ink
cassettes for the Deskjet 500s. Standard cassettes are £18 and double-
life are £25. (We haven’t tested them, so we cannot guarantee that
“double” actually means what it says!)
6.8
•    Eizo prices up again − Because of the strength of the Yen against the
Pound, monitor prices are going up again. The 9060SZ is now £600 (these
are also in short supply), the F340i-W is £720, the F550i-W is £1020,
the T560iT is £1560 and the T660iT is £2260. The Taxan 795 has also gone
up in price to £640.
6.8
•    Ethernet interfaces − EtherLan 100 is an A3000 version of i³’s
EtherLan 200 interface. The EtherLan 100 costs £220 +VAT although there
are educational prices. Ring i³ for details.
6.8
•    FontWay is a font managing application from XOB (which works only with
RISC OS 3.10 onwards). This allows you to set up pre-selected sets of
fonts and add and subtract fonts easily. It also gives you a font-
viewing window. It costs £16 +VAT from XOB or £18 through Archive for a
single user licence. A site licence is £64 +VAT from XOB or £72 through
Archive.
6.8
(Keeps your eyes peeled for an extremely powerful font filing system
that should be available soon from another software house. It even
allows you to drop an Impression or Artworks document, for example, into
its window and it will automatically select and load the fonts needed!
It sounds too good to be true! Ed.)
6.8
•    Karma − We have had some enquiries recently about the progress of
Karma. We are extremely sorry to have to report the death of one of the
two programmers, Rick Delarre, in a motorcycle accident recently. We do
not yet know how this will affect the future of the project but if we
get any further news, we will let you know. We would like to express our
sincere condolences to Rick’s family and friends.
6.8
•    Knowledge Organiser 2 − Clares have released an updated version of
their Knowledge Organiser which is a free-form text database. Clares
describe it as being “relational” and say that the search engine is
“more powerful than any yet seen”. The price is £99.95 inc VAT or £93
through Archive.
6.8
I have had a chance to play with KO II and am writing a review of it for
the magazine. It seems to be an extremely versatile and powerful
application and I am hoping to use it to create and distribute an
Archimedes hints & tips database. Clares are providing us with a licence
so that we can distribute the read-only version of KO II with the hints
& tips database − watch this space! Ed.
6.8
•    Microvitec Cubscan 1440 − Microvitec have now produced a 14“ multisync
monitor aimed at the Archimedes market. It has the same resolution as
the Eizo 9060 with dot pitch of 0.28mm and scans from 15 to 40 kHz but
it is rather cheaper. The Eizo 9060 has just gone up to £600 whereas the
Cubscan 1440 will sell at an Archive price of £480. The scanning range
is slightly higher at 40kHz compared to the 9060’s 38.5 kHz but it
shouldn’t make much practical difference. It also has the advantage over
the 9060 of having electronically control picture positioning. It senses
the different signals that come in and sets up the screen to a preset
position which you can program into it. These presets only apply to the
size and position of the picture and not to the huge range of parameters
that can be preset on all the Eizo monitors from the F340iW upwards.
6.8
If it costs £120 less than a 9060 and has electronic position control,
are the days of the 9060 numbered? Well, we put the Cubscan 1440 next to
a 9060 to compare them. First of all, although the dot pitch is supposed
to be the same, the 9060 is definitely clearer when viewing small text
and secondly, we feel that the styling of the Cubscan leaves a lot to be
desired − but that is obviously a lot more subjective than the picture
clarity. Also, the control of the Cubscan has no audible or tactile
feedback − you just press a button and watch the screen shrink or grow.
Is the 9060 worth £120 more? Hmmm, it’s difficult to say − I think it is
too much of an individual decision to make any general pronouncement
about it.
6.8
•    NetChat − This is a real-time electronic mail and peer-to-peer file-
space sharer, mentioned last month as being available from Archive for
£92. What we forgot to say was that it was produced by XOB − sorry about
that!
6.8
•    NetGain for Ethernet − Digital Services have launched a new product
that speeds up loading times on Level 4 Fileservers using Ethernet. Data
rates can be increased markedly and application loading times
correspondingly reduced. This costs £200 for the server pack and the
first ten machines. Additional 10 station packs are £100 +VAT from
Digital Services.
6.8
•    North Sea is the latest curriculum datafile from Anglia Television.
For £22 +VAT, you get a 28-page workbook and a datafile disc. This is
for use with KeyPlus version 2.5 or later.
6.8
•    PassMan IV − This is XOB’s password management software. It provides
facilities on Level IV fileservers to view and set users’ passwords,
boot option, free space, etc. PassMan IV costs £49 +VAT from XOB or £54
through Archive.
6.8
•    PC386/486 cards for A3020/4000 − Acorn are now selling PC cards for
the A3020 and A4000 computers. The costs are £275 +VAT (£310 through
Archive) for the 1Mb PC386 and £499 +VAT (£560 through Archive) for the
4Mb PC486 card. (In case you are wondering, these cards are supplied to
Acorn by Aleph One − there is still no sign of the long-lost Watford
Electronics’ PC card.) The 486 price includes the Windows driver
software which speeds up Windows applications.
6.8
•    !Perform − This is a utility, normally supplied with Clares’ VoxBox,
which allows up to twelve Rhapsody scores to be played in sequence.
Clares have very kindly released it into the public domain and it is
available on this month’s program disc.
6.8
•    ProCAD − This is the professional version of Minerva’s CADet 2D
draughting package. Facilities include multiple drawings, fast zoom and
pan, 32 layers, BS308 automatic dimensioning, ruled line and graphic
fills, user-designed symbols, multiple line types, four plottable fonts,
bill of material type reports, roll-back undo, on-the-fly snaps, import/
export of DXF, advanced construction tools, CSV import, multitasking
plotter driver. The single user price is £495 +VAT (£535 through
Archive) and a site licence for up to 30 machines is £1580 +VAT from
Minerva.
6.8
•    QuickType is a touch-typing tutor that allows the teacher to set up
exercises tailored to the pupils rather than being limited to the
exercises specified by the programmer. This costs £32 +VAT from XOB or
£35 through Archive. A site licence is £99 +VAT from XOB or £108 through
Archive.
6.8
•    RemoteFS is now available. Atomwide’s inter-computer communication
software was described by Brian Cowan last month (Archive 6.7 p55). It
is now available for £49 +VAT or £53 through Archive. For that price,
you get the software plus a serial lead and a parallel lead although you
should remember that the parallel lead will only work on the newer
computers with the bidirectional parallel port (A5000/4000/3020/3010).
The serial cable will work on all Archimedes computers although the
A3000 must have a serial port upgrade fitted (£21 through Archive).
6.8
•    Removable drive price up − The price of 42Mb removable drive has
followed the general upward trend of imported goods. The new Archive
price is £485. The cartridges are still £75 each and the 84Mb drives
remain at the price stated last month of £590 for the standard drive and
£670 for the enhanced version that writes as well as reads the 42Mb
cartridges.
6.8
•    Sherston software prices up − There has been a small across-the-board
rise in prices of all Sherston’s software. New prices are as per the
Archive Price List.
6.8
•    SimCity − Krisalis Software have produced an Archimedes version of
this famous city-simulation game. It is claimed to be the best-selling
computer game ever with sales in excess of half a million copies
worldwide! The price is £34.99 inc VAT from Krisalis or £32 through
Archive.
6.8
•    SUMthing − From the same author as Droom and Dust comes SUMthing, a
maths program with a difference. Thee six different programs in the pack
involving placing numbers in order, number sentences, reading numbers,
digital roots and number bonds. It can be set up for the individual’s
particular level within National Curriculum levels 2 to 4 and the
pupil’s work is recorded for the teacher to check later. It is aimed at
Maths AT2 & 3 at Key Stage 1 & 2. It costs £19.95 +VAT from RESOURCE or
£22 through Archive.
6.8
•    SuperMon II is XOB’s Network Manager’s utility which allows you to
monitor and control remote stations. It lists logged-on users and
stations, opens any directory on the network, has a digital clock,
calculator, protect facility. With it you can log off selected stations,
halt and restart stations, view and/or blank remote station’s screens,
send text messages, force commands on remote machines and zap
(irreversibly!) software running in a remote machine. SuperMon II is £89
+VAT from XOB or £98 through Archive.
6.8
•    Switch − This is a new game from Soft Rock Software (whose motto is
“software on a shoestring”!) costing just £3.49 inclusive. It is “best
described as an on-going puzzle”. From the description, it sounds like a
glorified Tetris.
6.8
•    TechnoDream is here − What was going to be Nevryon 2 has now appeared
as TechnoDream published by Superior Software. The price is £24.95 or
£23 from Archive.
6.8
•    Topographer − Dave Clare writes, “Due to the tragic death of Ricky
Delarre, Clares Micro Supplies have delayed the release of Topographer.
The Clares team found working with Ricky a very rewarding experience. He
was a very professional programmer who took a pride in his work.
6.8
Topographer was literally hours away from being finished. It is a
reflection of Ricky’s popularity that his colleague, Ian Robinson, has
immediately stepped in to complete Topographer so that it can be
released as a fitting tribute to Ricky.
6.8
He will be missed by all at Clares, and his death is a great loss to
everyone in the Acorn world as well as to his family and his wife,
Jayne.”
6.8