========================================================================= (C) 1993 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt.Type XTX99437,GENIE and press [RETURN]. The system will prompt you for your information. ========================================================================== ************ Topic 9 Mon Jul 13, 1992 GREG at 01:35 EDT Sub: KODAK Photo CD Access System To quote Colour Magazine, "In our opinion there are two requirements for the ultimate success of desk-top color. The ability to capture ... in high resolution and full color fidelity and "to get such an image captured at a low cost." 204 message(s) total. ************ ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 1 Wed Jul 21, 1993 GREG at 01:13 EDT I just uploaded a photo to the libraries here showing the extent of the flooding here in Missouri. The photo was converted from Photo CD to 256 color GIF to keep the download small. Still looks good. It's hard to believe, but the river actual rose 4 additional feet in the past 7 days since the photo was taken. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 2 Fri Jul 23, 1993 GREG at 00:05 EDT We will be shipping the first Photo CD application for the Atari Falcon series of computers starting Monday, July 26. Photo Show for the Falcon makes use of the built in true color graphics, built in SCSI-2 port, and built-in CD quality sound recording and playback capabilities of the Atari Falcon. Graphics can be viewed directly from the Kodak Photo CD disc or scripted into custom slide shows that allow you to mix graphics and sound into a multimedia presentation. Presentations can be played in a continuous loop. Three professional quality sound loops are included with the program to get you started. Presentations can be recorded to VCR without additional cards. All you need is a RCA type cable. Shows can be viewed on RGB, VGA, or broadcast monitors with the outputs built into the basic Atari Falcon. The export module included with Photo Show will allow the exporting of true- color images in 24 bit TIF, 24 bit EPS, 24 bit RGB data, or 16 bit RGB data. A SCSI-2 MultiTOS CD rom driver is included with Photo Show. The driver can read both Photo CD's XA format and standard 9660 CD rom discs. Photo Show retails for $35.00. Ask at your favorite dealer. For more information write It's All Relative, 2233 Keeven Lane, Florissant MO 63031. Voice: (314) 831-9482 GEnie / Delphi: GREG CIS: 70357,2312 Randall Kopchak It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 3 Fri Jul 23, 1993 GREG at 02:26 EDT SKWare One produces SEURAT VERSION 2.8. Runs in ST/STe resolutions on all Atari's: ST/MegaST/STe/MegaSTe/TT030/Falcon030-compatible. SEURAT is the Atari graphics program that pioneered any-sized virtual- screen buffers for multiple images in B&W and COLOR, offering the same powerful functions for COLOR IMAGES that you expect to find only in top mono programs. Supports 16 file formats. New BitCamera enlarges, reduces and re-proportions images. New Clip and Page functions: Rotate, Flip, Invert, Crop, Cut, Paste, Overlay, Copy using whole images of any size, permitting multiple horizontal and vertical image-merging that no merge program can. SCANNER Support! Loads PageStream Fonts (& Degas, GDOS fonts). SEURAT has been and will remain the most full-featured Atari Art program with more than 400 functions. EVERY purchaser of SEURAT V2.8 is guaranteed free upgrade to SEURAT V3.0, for all resolutions and video modes on all Atari's, including Falcon 256-color & TrueColor modes. Price $59.95. NOTE: SEURAT V3.0 will support the TrueColor export file formats of Photo Show by It's All Relative, giving you the power to edit and rework your Kodak Photo CD images! SKWare One also produces COLORSCAN, which converts mono scanned images in- to color pictures (in ten formats). Runs on all Ataris (Falcon-compatible). COLORSCAN II for 256-color video modes is in final development now. Free Upgrade guarantee with purchase of Colorscan I. Price $59.95. Check, money order, MC/VISA accepted. SKWare One * P. O. Box 277 * Bunker Hill, Illinois 62014-0277 USA There is a topic in this category for an ongoing discussion of Seurat. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 4 Fri Jul 23, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 20:17 EDT Well that sounds reasonable. I will soon, (hopefully) have a Falcon and I hate putting pictures in photo albums so I'll probably set that up. I guess I would need a CD-ROM drive. Does it have to be something special or could I just look through computer shopper? How many photos can you fit on one CD and what does it cost to have them made up? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 5 Sat Jul 24, 1993 GREG at 00:37 EDT O-ZONE: You can fit 100-150 photos on one Kodak Photo CD disc. The cost is around $20.00 for a 24 exposure roll, a little more if you order a set a prints to go with it too. We are using a NEC-38 drive. I have been told the Toshiba drives also will work. Perhaps we can publish a list of drives that work with the falcon and the MultiTOS drivers. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 6 Sat Jul 24, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 02:58 EDT Will it run on the TT? Al ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 7 Sat Jul 24, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 11:36 EDT Greg, Is it possible to play audio CDs on that drive and send the output to the stereo out on the Falcon? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 8 Sat Jul 24, 1993 GREG at 23:55 EDT A.FASOLDT: The conversion module that comes with Photo Show will allow the conversion of Photo CD graphics to 24 bit TIF, EPS, or RAW data on the TT or ST, STe, or Mega series. The Photo show module for viewing does require the true-color capabilities of the Falcon. The CD rom driver that comes with Photo Show will work on the Falcon or TT. I believe ICD will or does have drivers available for the ST, STe, and Mega series. You may want to check out the ICD area here on GEnie. O-ZONE: I haven't tried playing a regular music disc with the Falcon yet. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 9 Sun Jul 25, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 04:25 EDT Thanks, Greg. Al ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 11 Thu Jul 29, 1993 GREG at 00:29 EDT We will be at the MIST show this weekend in Indianapolis with Photo Show for the Falcon 030. Stop by and see a real live CD rom drive showing real live Kodak Photo CD images in true color accompanied by CD quality sound. It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 12 Tue Aug 03, 1993 GREG at 00:19 EDT Photo Show Tips: Make sure the drive letter you select for your CD rom drive is not one of the devices used by MultiTOS. Selecting "Install Devices" from the desktop will install an icon for your Photo CD drive, any other drive not already installed on your desktop, and the MultiTOS virtual device. Enable memory protection from the MultiTOS CPX. Photo Show has now been tested with the NEC-38 CD rom drive. Photo Show has now been tested with the Toshiba 3401 drive. If you are using a different CD rom drive with Photo Show, please leave us E- mail with your results. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 14 Wed Aug 11, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 06:39 EDT Greetings, Is there any chance that the "It's all relative" Photo CD software would work with an old Atari CDAR-504 CD ROM drive ? I understand that with a MegaSTE I could only convert the images and not view them directly. I have MultiTOS and have found that the old MetaDOS drivers do work with it (v1.6 of MetaDOS anyway). As I understand it, the MultiTOS CD-ROM drivers would replace MetaDOS, for a full SCSI CD-ROM drive and I guess we'd have to see whether or not they liked the CDAR-504. Since there aren't a lot of CDAR-504's out there and there won't be any more, no one seems to know if the MultiTOS drivers work with it or not. The drivers I have seem to work okay with High Sierra format, but for IBM's version of ISO 9660 it runs a little slow. I can copy files off to hard disk, but I can't view pictures or play .MOD files direct from the CD-ROM. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 15 Sat Aug 14, 1993 GREG at 11:40 EDT L.W.BENJAMIN: You may want to check in the ICD Forum here on GEnie if the MetaDOS drivers support Photo CD with the CDAR-504 drives. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 16 Sun Aug 15, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 09:02 EDT Greg, From what I've seen in the past I doubt ICD would want anything at all to do with MetaDOS and the CDAR-504. I'll just have to wait until I can get a _real_ CD-ROM drive before I can make use of Photo CD. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 18 Mon Aug 16, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 18:19 EDT Greg, Any chance of User's Groups being able to purchase a videotape showing off Photo Show for our users ? Take Care, Lee B. Middle Georgial Atari User's Group (MGAUG) Newsletter Editor ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 19 Mon Aug 16, 1993 GREG at 23:35 EDT In the next couple of weeks I'll do a video demo to send out. As soon as it is ready, I'll leave you e-mail to get the address to send it to. The demo at HACE will be an example of the audio and video capabilities of Photo Show in a loop. I think for a user group meeting, something with a beginning, middle and end would be more useful. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 20 Tue Aug 17, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 21:52 EDT Greg, That sounds great! I'll look forward to your announcement. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 21 Wed Aug 18, 1993 J.BATTEY1 [J. L. Battey] at 22:42 EDT GREG Sub: KODAK Photo CD Access System What WORM drives will work with PCD? I would like to look at the possibility of adding naration to the Photo Disk itself, like is on Kodak's demo disk. They were willing to tell me that the sound is in AISF format, but did not seem comfortable with admitting that the end user might be able to write to data the disk. John L. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 22 Thu Aug 19, 1993 GREG at 22:46 EDT J.BATTEY1: Kodak is VERY proprietary and secret about their formats. There are CD rom writers, but I haven't seen one yet for the Atari line. Using Photo CD does require a license from Kodak. In fact, right now, if you take a one-of for duplication, most duplicators won't touch it unless you have a license for the technology. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 23 Sun Aug 22, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 10:51 EDT From what I recall Nimbus Information systems is ready to perform Kodak Photo CD duplications. They have all the legal issues worked out. For details call (804)-985-1100 ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 24 Sun Aug 22, 1993 GREG at 21:19 EDT AEO.1: Corel has announced a series of Photo CD clip art. Their series of clipart in PCD format will work with our Photo Show program on the Falcon. I believe there will be 50 discs in the first release, each disc with 100 photos with related theme. ALL: Did anyone see our Photo Show tape at the HACE show this weekend? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 25 Tue Aug 24, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 01:46 EDT Greg, 50 discs ... what price are they asking for all of them? Is it in the low $500 range? -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 26 Tue Aug 24, 1993 GREG at 22:58 EDT I believe the suggested retail for the Corel is $49.95 per disc and they can be viewed or converted with Photo Show for the Falcon. It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 27 Wed Aug 25, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 03:44 EDT Greg, What are the interactive and portfolio Photo CD extensions used for? Gene ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 28 Wed Aug 25, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 10:39 EDT Portfolio allows the mixing of audio and pictures on a Photo CD. Using ADPCM sound not red-book. I'm sure Greg's program probably has most of the portfolio format already. I went into more detail on the portfolio format in my article on CD-ROM technology in AEO #201 (its about 60K article) and its in the library. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 29 Wed Aug 25, 1993 GREG at 23:01 EDT GENE: The following is information on the various current and future formats for Photo CD from a Kodak press release.... Disc Formats Kodak has applied the core technology of its Kodak Photo CD system to a variety of disc formats for specialized applications. Any disc carrying the Photo CD logo, including a mass-replicated disc made by a licensed manufacturer, can be played on a Photo CD player, a Philips CD-I player, or, with appropriate software, a compatible CD-ROM drive. Kodak Photo CD Master Designed for 35 mm consumer photography, the original Kodak Photo CD Master disc can hold about 100 high-resolution images, or four 24- exposure rolls of film. The discs offer image resolution as high as 2048 x 3072 pixels-16 times as great as today's TV standards, and four times the standards currently being considered for HDTV. The Kodak Photo CD Master disc can also function as a "digital negative," which means consumers can take the disc to a photofinisher to have prints made. Kodak Pro Photo CD Master Professional photographers use the Kodak Pro Photo CD Master disc. These discs store images from the larger film formats favored by professionals, including 120, 70 mm, and 4 x 5-inch, as well as 35 mm. Depending on the film format, the discs can hold from 25 to 100 images. Kodak Photo CD Portfolio Designed to become a major publishing medium, the Kodak Photo CD Portfolio disc lets people create discs that contain combinations of photographic images, stereo audio, graphics, text, and programmed access. Applications include publishing of consumer "picture stories" (such as wedding discs or family trees), business presentations, or commercial titles. Image professionals also will use the format to make custom Photo CD discs with copied or edited Photo CD images. Because the highest resolutions are not required on this format, users have more space available for other content, such as audio and graphics. Kodak Photo CD Catalog The Kodak Photo CD Catalog format is designed for organizations that want to store large numbers of images on a disc and distribute these images widely-such as mail-order retailers, tourism associations, or art galleries. As many as 6,000 images can be stored at video resolution on Kodak Photo CD Catalog discs for soft display on TV sets or computer monitors. (The images are of lower resolution than standard Kodak Photo CD Master discs or Kodak Pro Photo CD Master discs and can't be used to make photo-quality prints.) MY FOOTNOTE: When you take film in for Photo CD processing, the disc you get back is in Kodak Photo CD Master format. It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 30 Thu Aug 26, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 03:18 EDT Greg, Thank you for posting that comprehensive description of the various formats. How does one go about producing a Kodak Photo CD Portfolio disc? How does the audio portion get on there? Gene ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 31 Thu Aug 26, 1993 POTECHIN [Nathan @ DMC] at 09:06 EDT This is great information Greg. Thanks for posting. Nathan @ DMC ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 32 Thu Aug 26, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 10:48 EDT Greg, There is also another PRO format that is 24,000 by 16,000 in size. It was announced at one those photo research shows. Gene, To make a portfolio disc you need Kodak's special authoring software that is supposed to come out late summer or early fall to the last reports I've seen. The audio is ADPCM which is part of CD-ROM-XA standard. The audio allows for compression which red book doesn't. In general to have a complete Photo CD you need a Kodak's $100,000 workstation. It includes a film scanner, thermal printer and a SUN UNIX workstation, Phillips CD-ROM writer with special Kodak roms that allow for serialization and other things. Then the media itself is around $50 or so. The time it takes to write one to WO media is about 30 minutes sinces its a 2X times normal speed device (Philips). Not only can you create Photo CDs but you can create normal CD-ROMs as well (ISO-9660 but not Rock Ridge). Audio would require different software. I don't know how much UNIX CD-Audio software costs but like most UNIX software its very high compared to the equivalent PC stuff. I've seen ads in different magazines where you can buy a Philips writer with software (pre-mastering and for making a WO) for around $6000. Which isn't very high at all if you do make CD-ROMs quite frequently. As Scott Brownstein (formily of Kodak and now at AGM) likes to call it the 600 megabyte floppy. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 33 Thu Aug 26, 1993 GREG at 20:45 EDT GENE: The authoring software for Portfolio format will be available first for Sun workstations. Cost could be high as the scanner/writer and software for the Master format is over $100,000 now. With cheaper write drives becoming more common, a home based non-commercial Portfolio maker could be a reality in a couple of years. Till then, there will be services popping up that will do the mastering and sound for you. If your interested in mass producing, I can put you in touch with people who can get you off to a good start. Leave me E-mail. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 34 Fri Aug 27, 1993 MIKE-ALLEN [NM~SysOp] at 00:19 EDT Greg, Will Kodak place existing 35mm slides on a Photo CD Master? How much? My dad has hundreds of 35mm slides from WWII and they are starting to discolor. I would love to get them on a Photo CD before they are lost forever. Mike Allen ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 35 Fri Aug 27, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 01:29 EDT Greg, Thanx for the response. Based on your information and other industry events I have observed, I will be buying more stock in Atari Corp. :^) Gene ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 36 Fri Aug 27, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 19:35 EDT Al, I've heard of ISO-9660 (including an IBM variant) and High Sierra, but not Rock Ridge. What's Rock Ridge format ? Is that the format that SUN uses ? Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 37 Sat Aug 28, 1993 GREG at 00:51 EDT MIKE-ALLEN: Kodak will do 35mm slides to Photo CD. Just send your slides into the processor for Photo CD conversion. Make sure you have them in the order you want them written to the disc in. We had some slides done a couple of weeks ago and they turned out great. When I was going through our older slides, I was surprised that some had already started fading. GENE: We bought some ATC stock before it started the jump. It's around 4 now and still should have room for a 25% jump in the near future IMHO. Beats 2% at the bank. L.W.BENJAMIN: AEO.1 did an article on CD rom formats that is in the libraries here. Perhaps he will be kind enough to post the file number here. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 38 Sat Aug 28, 1993 M.DRYSDALE [Drys] at 07:12 EDT Mike Allen, Yes you can put 35mm slides on a Photo CD. In fact any 35mm media can be transferred to P-CD. Shop around, some stores will discount the price. Cost is between $0.40 to $0.70 each. Kodak had a rep hosting a Cat in the MAC RT. Lots of questions like this were answered there. Mike, GenTech and POWER Computers ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 39 Sat Aug 28, 1993 AEO.MAG [?] Travis [?] at 08:13 EDT AEO_0201.LZH is in the libraries as file # 27193. Albert's article is certainly worth the time to read. --Travis ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 40 Sun Aug 29, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 00:23 EDT Greg, Thanks for the plug. Photo CD has been one of the most exciting things in computing in a long time. Glad we have your program on the Atari! Lee B. Rock Ridge is an extension to ISO-9660. I have the complete spec for Rock Ridge which is freely distributable in you want a copy. I should just upload it to the library. A Rock Ridge disk is downwardly compatible as well. Basically its an ISO-9660 but the directory entries/filenames have a special field called system use field. This field can contain anything you want it to. The Rock Ridge specification allows for all the nice things about the UNIX filesystem (deep directories (TOS/MS-DOS limit it to 8 levels), 255 character long filenames, permission bits (9 on most Unix systems) and more. Rock Ridge is not limited to Unix but its the most common purpose today. Its a freely distributed specification which is nice. In the past UNIX filesytems on CD-ROM were just image dumps of the hard disk. With Rock Ridge extensions any UNIX system can read any CD-ROM since its first ISO-9660 compliant and second Rock Ridge. On a system without a Rock Ridge driver like Atari and MS-DOS and Apple the disc appears just like a normal ISO- 9660. Its still there but not not accessed. You can think of this as normal software. If its ported without taking advantage of any of the hardware (like the Atari Falcon) its just like ISO-9660 if it does take advantage of the Falcon hardware its like Rock Ridge. Sun was the first Unix system to have the Rock Ridge driver written for it. Its since been added to many different UNIX workstations as a standard feature (ie IBM RS-6000, DG AViiON, DEC 3100, SUN, etc ). Travis, Thanks for the file number for AEO_0201.LZH -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 41 Sun Aug 29, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 09:36 EDT Albert, Thanks for the information on Rock Ridge. Were the SUN "catalog" disks (I forget what they're really called) done as "disk dumps" ? I have a few of them and I cannot read them at all. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 42 Sun Aug 29, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 11:56 EDT Lee B., If you can't read the disc it is a hard disk dump. Sectors are 512 bytes each, and you would need some information on how the Sun boot block works as well as transversing the filesystem. Its fun with all of the inodes schemes, etc. If you like to read more on the subject. A good book is File Structures, 2nd edition, authors Zoellick & Folk, publisher: Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201- 55713-4. Its probably one of best books on the subject that I've seen. It was recommended to me by Paul Hershensen at Hybrid Arts. The ADAP II filesystem is very similar to UNIX filesystem by the way. The book highlights include: Discussion of a "toolkit" approach to retrieve file records: simple indexes, paged indexes(e.g. B-trees), variations on paged indexes (e.g. B+ tress, B* trees) and hashing. Inlcudes a chapeter on extendible hashing. Uses pseudocode extensively, particularlly where the prodecures are complex and where it is important to avoid the distractions inherent in actual compiable code. Emphasizes the biulding of conceptual tools for the design and \retrevial of informatiuon from files. Provides completed examples in both ANSI C (yea C!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and Turbo Pascal 6.x (there are a few Turbo Pascal compatible compilers for the Atari as well). Introduces UNIX concepts and utilities that apply directly to file structures and file management. File structures, 2nd edition: is an invaluable resource (YES, absolutely!!!) for computer science professionals using file and data structures in a UNIX environment (or any environment ... including the Atari). It will also be of interest to professionals interested in learning about the design of file structures and the retrieval of records. Students majoing in computer science will benefit from this book's book's emphasis on fundemental concepts and its inclusions of C (yea!!!) and UNIX. About the authors: Bill Zoellick is VP and Chief Scientist at the Avalance Development company in Colorado, a leading producer of text conversion software. Previously he was the director of technology for Alexandria Institute, a non-profit organization working to resolve the problems associated with electronic publishing. He is a frequent lecturer and writer on CD-ROM issues (the book also includes about 20 pages on making a CD-ROM filesystem) Michael J. Folk - is currently a Senior Software Engineer at the National Center for Supercomputing applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana. For the last three years he has been responsible for developing general purpose scientific data file formats. Prior to this, Dr. Folk was a Professor of Computer Science for 15 years at Oklahoma and Drake Universities. That is a short overview of the book's highlights with most coming from the back of the book. It seems like everyone I have talked to about filesystems at work, Compuserve and Internet always have this book in their list of top 3 on filesystems/file structures. Hope that helps. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 43 Tue Aug 31, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 05:35 EDT Albert, It sounds like someone could write a "module" for MultiTOS for this type of CD-ROM, if there were enough demand. Since I don't currently use SUNs at work (anymore) and the disks didn't cost me anything, it's not worth my trouble. Thanks for the great book review thought. Sounds like a good item for the AEO Programmer's Journal. . Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 44 Tue Aug 31, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 11:08 EDT Lee, Speaking of Rock Ridge ... July 1993 issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal had some example C source code that read Rock Ridge disks. So its already been done. All one has to do is modify the appropriate drivers. Its all in C so it should be easy to port to the Atari. If you have any more comments on AEO-PJ. Feel free to send e-mail or post in (CAT #15, TOPIC #20). We welcome all feedback!! It somewhat strange the Kodak's photo CD software/CD-ROM software doesn't format Rock Ridge compatible disks. It seems like it would be a standard since it is running on a SUN SPARCstation. But I suppose it would be another additional cost to add to the $100K price. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 45 Tue Aug 31, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 21:16 EDT I found the information about Kodak Photo CD Portfolio provided by Greg and Albert highly illuminating, and the information in AEO_0201 even more so. Perhaps comparing Photo CD Portfolio with CD-R will portend the future for owners of the Falcon030. CD-R (CD Recordable) is the name given to the hardware/software used to record CD-ROMs one at a time. There are 4 or 5 manufacturers producing systems for this purpose, which range in price from $9,000 to $18,000. The recordable CD media (blank discs) cost about $30. The reason these systems are so expensive is because it is new technology and tremendous R&D costs must be absorbed by a very small industrial market. The technique for recording a standard ISO 9660 format CD-ROM disc is fairly straight forward. Basically, you just organize the files on a hard disk in the same sequence you want them on the CD-ROM. The authoring software creates the directory used on the CD-ROM. Once this "premastered" image has been created on the hard disc, it is then transferred continuously and in real time to the CD-ROM writer drive which burns the data into the CD-ROM disc blank. The disc writing process takes about 1 hour when recording at single speed, and 1/2 hour if the disc writer has double speed capability. These times assume the full 650mb capacity of the CD-ROM disc will be used. There is nothing super special about a CD-ROM writer which would make it expensive. The laser diode is more powerful than a CD-ROM reader, and the prisms and mirrors are layed out differently allowing it to both read and write - and it needs different firmware to handle the writing instructions. The point is, if these were produced in mass quantities the cost would be in the same ballpark as a standard CD-ROM reader. I liken it to the cost of adding stereo hi-fi capability to a standard VHS VCR. The CD-R systems currently being marketed all include a large, fast hard disc in the same console with CD-ROM writer. Because the premastered image must be recorded without interruption to the CD-ROM, and because the capacity of the CD-ROM is 650mb, this necessitates a hard drive with at least that much capacity. These commercial systems include a 1 or 1.2 gigabyte hard drive in the console, which contributes to the lofty price. The significance of Photo CD is that this extension of ISO 9660 has multisession recording capability. Simply put, this eliminates the need for a giant, expensive hard disc. There is no need to record the whole disc continuously; the capacity can be filled with small chunks of material over a period of time. Photo CD Portfolio uses ADPCM audio, which is a digital sound format where the signal is compressed and interleaved with visual data. The term "XA compliant" when used in relation to a CD-ROM player means the device can decompress and read the interleaved audio. XA compliant requires special chips on the drive's controller board. The main benefit of ADPCM is that the audio takes up less disc space because it is compressed, and the interleaving allows recording a continuous soundtrack on the disc. Standard ISO 9660 discs don't use ADPCM, and can only attach short sound bites to individual or groups of images. To summarize and in my opinion, the backbone of Photo CD is software - not expensive hardware. Granted, the sophisticated equipment required to scan and process photographic slides and negatives into high resolution digital images is almost magical. But recording VGA quality computer graphics to a Photo CD is a totally different matter. Because multisession recording capability eliminates the need for a giant hard disc and continuous recording, the only hardware requirement is a computer and a CD-ROM writer/drive. As best I can determine, a CD-R blank recordable media disc and a blank Photo CD are exactly the same. The remainder of this post requires a great stretch of the imagination, and demonstrates a fondness for connecting coincidences which may be totally unrelated. But here goes .... Atari has shown interest in CD-ROM going back to 1985, when a CD-ROM player was shown connected to the original 520ST. The only CD-ROM drive Atari ever marketed, the CDR-504, was withdrawn without explanation at about the same time Kodak began developing their Photo CD technology. When the Falcon030 was displayed at COMDEX shortly after its introduction, the most prominent demonstration was Photo CD capability - revealing a very high priority in early applications development. In Bill Rehbock's summary of the latest CEbit show, as reported in the July '93 edition of ST Informer Magazine, and I quote "Color Concepts - .... Philips, Kodak and Toshiba were all very impressed and surprised that we had such a full implementation of Photo CD on the Falcon. No other platform has complete support for interactive/Portfolio Photo CD yet." I should mention that Philips shares the patents for CD-ROM technology with Sony, and that it was a Toshiba CD-ROM drive used with the Falcons at COMDEX. My favorite edition of ST Informer is from October '92, with the article describing the Falcon's introduction to the Boston Computer Society. On page 31, there is an inset piece titled What Is Personal Integrated Media, copyright 1992 Atari Corp. This article is Atari's description of how the Falcon030 will be used, which I will quote briefly and in part: "Consumers will be able to use the Falcon030 as a color videophone, communicating in sound and pictures with other Falcon owners. The system makes it possible to create home videos complete with text and music, record lead vocals on a favorite rock 'n roll classic with the original musicians playing along; narrate and score a family photo album, produce a visual family tree, invent and play an adventure game set in a childhood home, and much more." I suppose one could use the Falcon to "narrate and score a family photo album" on video tape, but I don't think that is what they were alluding to. To "invent and play an adventure game set in a childhood home" seems to me an ideal application of the interactive capability of Portfolio Photo CD. But the real coincidence in this passage is the bit about the "visual family tree," which seems to be lifted directly from the Kodak publicity statements which Greg posted here several messages back. While there seems to be a dearth of Falcon specific hardware coming to market, Migraph was somehow pursuaded to develop a color hand scanner - which would be vital for such things a building a visual family tree or an adventure game set in a childhood home. Anybody got any photos of their childhood home? Okay, is it just me or does Atari have big plans for Photo CD Portfolio? How about a "dumb" CD-ROM writer/drive that used the Falcon's internal circuitry to reduce cost, and force purchase of the Falcon to make it work? Wasn't this idea tried with the Atari laser printers? Can the Falcon's DSP be used to process ADPCM audio, thereby eliminating the need for dedicated chips in the drive itself? I have no idea if Atari will ever again market a CD-ROM drive. But if they do, I'll bet dollars to donuts that it will be able to write to Kodak Photo CDs. As one Atari official stated "we see this computer as exceeding all of the multimedia expectations of the computer buying public." Well.... I'm still waiting, and buying more stock in Atari Corp. to pass the time. Gene *Certain passages copyright Atari Corp. and ST Informer Magazine, where noted. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 46 Wed Sep 01, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 06:38 EDT Al, By all means let's add to the $100K mastering system's price. Thanks for the info. Gene, Great post! Take Care, Lee B. Middle Georgia Atari User's Group (MGAUG) Newsletter Editor ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 47 Wed Sep 01, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 11:01 EDT LEE, Your welcome. GENE: That was an excellent summary. Pinnacle/Micro has CD-ROM/Audio maker or writer for $3995. Its probably not a double speed unit however but the price is very attractive. This includes software too. Most pre-mastering software ranges from the low $2000 to $10,000+ depending on its capability. Pinnacle/Micro (800)-553-7070 is you want more information. Multi-Session is not specific to Photo CDs by the way. Multi-Session can be used with any type of data CD-ROMs. Only audio CDs can't be used unless you developed your own proprietary way of mastering the audio and writing your own drivers. Multi-Session is part of the Orange-Book specification - [PART-II] CD-WO. Also when it comes to recording CD-ROMs it is required that the data stream be continuous. If there is a slight delay you have a new $40 frisbee. Some systems like Young Minds CD-STUDIO creates the files on your computer and then dumps it to the studios 1 gigabyte hard disk. Then the studio's hard drive/small computer handle all interaction with the CD-Writer. So the chances of making a frisbee is much, much lower. A good UPS (uninterruptable power supply) is something good to have as well. There was some code on internet which was supposed to allow one to read Photo CDs. Kodak lawyer helped to persaude the sites that is was not a good idea. I suppose if you had that information or just reversed engineered the Kodak Photo CD information you could probably create your own Photo CD disks. Since all the CD-Writer is seeing is a long bit stream or image of a CD-ROM. I'm sure Kodak would use the appropriate persuation techniques to keep you from marketting such an item. Photo CD has done quite a bit to raise the public's awareness of CD-ROM in general which is very good for all users and developers alike. If they could get the CD-Writers to under $1000 that would make me happy. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 48 Thu Sep 02, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 07:53 EDT I strongly believe the price of CD-ROM writers will fall, and perhaps fairly quickly. The authoring software, well...er, that's a different matter. The Sony MiniDisc system uses recordable media. The main difference between MiniDisc and CD-R is the size of the disc media and the data compression technology, i.e. ROM chips. I recently saw a Walkman sized portable Minidisc recorder/player advertised for $679. When ordinary audio CD players were first introduced they were about $1,000; when VCR's first came out they were close to $1,500. I remember buying a lot of ordinary blank VHS tapes for $35 each. Again, there is nothing in the hardware or manufacturing costs that would make a CD-ROM writer cost any more than a drive that can read only. If CD-ROM writers were to become a mass produced consumer item, economies of scale and competition would drive down the price as with all other electronic consumer gadgets. On the other hand, how many consumers will want to create their own CD-ROMs? Making "visual family trees" and "adventure games set in a childhood home" may be good advertising hype, but for most consumers this not going to replace dancing or watching football on TV. How many consumers really want to be multimedia authors? In any case, SONY MiniDisc is priced for consumers and they are currently developing the product for computer interface/data storage. MiniDisc needs a competitor, and Photo CD Portfolio seems to fit the bill. At the Summer CES, Kodak demonstrated a $400 portable Photo CD player that externally looks just like a SONY DiscMan - but its twice the price. Who would buy this thing, except someone wanting to take interactive multimedia presentations on the road? Kodak is marketing Photo CD related computer software applications under their own name. In a recent RTC, Bob Brodie mentioned that a Falcon030 had been shipped to Kodak and that they were a registered developer. Heck, I think there's good reason to be optimistic about the future of the Falcon030. Gene ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 49 Thu Sep 02, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 11:23 EDT The Sony recordable is lossy compression. Only good for pictures and audio. I don't think it would be useful for important computer data. I don't know if they have compared the quality (audio) wise to a DAT and see if its close or not. CD-Writers in general are still not plug in and play yet. Users still need to be careful about choosing their hardware so everything will work together. I keep reading about some hard drives that perform automatic calibration at (the drives convience) so some people were making quite a bit of $40 frisbees. Even still making your own custom CD-ROM is still relatively inexpensive. Walnut Creeks $200 CD if you supply the data on tape of 600+ floppies is not a bad deal. -- Alebrt ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 50 Thu Sep 02, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 19:14 EDT Albert, I think Walnut Creek's $200 CD-ROM offer is a tremendous bargain. For most people, it will always be more economical to use someone else's equipment rather than buy their own. CD-ROM authoring is a creative endeavor, and most of us will run out of creativity before we can justify the cost of owning our own writer. Gene ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 51 Thu Sep 02, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 20:27 EDT Gene, Walnut Creek is probably the only company that I know of that will take 600+ floppies. Most of the others seem to require 8mm exabyte tape or a 4mm DAT tape for your data. Or others say you can send floppies but only a maximum of 10. It would be great to have all the START, Analog, Compute's Atari ST and other software all on a CD-ROM. It would have to worry about the data loss much less. Kodak had a release on how long their CDs (Kodak brand) will last before failing ... 100 years was the estimate at the very least. I don't know how long the audio or other CDs will last ... I don't recall seeing any data on those discs. I remember being a strong critic of CD-ROM but after I was forced into the technology I learned how great it was. In my interview with Scott Brownstein (of Kodak ... or rather used to be) I never thought og of the CD-WO being being both writeable and pressible. One CD can be made every 4 to 6 seconds ... thats not bad when you need 680 megs fast and in quantity. That one of the many important things I learned 'in that conversation. Also a sound understanding of how Multi-Session works at the low-level (e.g. TOC). From a programmers perspective CD-ROM is probably the best gift to come along in a long time. With all the room it provides and having tons of source code for a good price it simply amazing. C Users Journal (disc made by Walnut Creek) is only $50 versus $3500+ for the same code on floppy disks. Dr. Dobbs Journal is coming out with theirs for $80. This includes 5 and 1/2 years of articles and source code (published and unpublished). This is probably one of the few times the articles are included most CD-ROM that I have seen don't include articles but only source. There are many others on the way from other companies as well. The CUJ would be over 400 discs which I would not like to keep track of either. I'm sure Dr. Dobbs (DDJ) would be similar as well on pricing. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 52 Thu Sep 02, 1993 R.NELSON48 [Grouch (:{] at 23:28 EDT Help Help I am trying to access my CD ROM, maybe some of you professional types will be able to set me on the right path. I have TEXEL DM-3024 internall SCSI hooked up to a Falcon as device ID 2. I am running photo show driver giving Q2 as logical drive and ID. MultiTOS loads MiNT ok and shows driver installed. If I try to access a DOS type CD application the light on the CD turns orange, flickers and then goes to green but nothing comes up on the desktop. Shouldn't I get a directory at least? Will Photo Show driver give me a directory of an application other than a photo CD? I have tried ICD's CD ROM driver but it tells me SCSI device 2 is not responding. If I run ICD's ID check I get ID 2: Texel CD ROM DM xx24 k. If I use the control panel to access adSCSI.CPX and use the Einloggen command to install devices then when I double click on Q I get the message "no such device" Anybody know what's going on here? This is the sort of thing that makes me a =-= Grouch (:{ =-= ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 53 Fri Sep 03, 1993 J.RENNER1 [Kheldar] at 00:03 EDT Gee that's too bad that Kodak is making falcon software. Their Windows programs are some of the worst applications i have ever seen. Kheldar. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 54 Fri Sep 03, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 00:06 EDT Albert: I understand the going rate for a one-off CD is from $150 to $250, weighted towards the $250 end. $200 is a pretty good deal. All you need is about 680M of data to fill up a CD... -dmj ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 55 Fri Sep 03, 1993 GREG at 00:08 EDT Try opening the drive several times with the driver included with Photo Show. It sounds like the drive is timing out. A second or third try may work. Also try ejecting the disc and then reopening the desktop directory. The Photo Show driver has been tested with the NEC-38 and Toshiba 3401 drives. Both are double speed drives. If your drive has a SCSI / SCSI-2 setting, use the SCSI-2 setting. A DOS CD rom or Photo CD rom disc both look exactly like a very large hard drive in your drive directory window in TOS. It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 56 Fri Sep 03, 1993 GREG at 00:12 EDT J.RENNER1: If you are looking for Photo CD software for Windows that is better than Kodak Access, check out our Virtual BookMaker for Windows. Leave E-mail to GREG with your address and I'll get a flyer out to you. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 57 Fri Sep 03, 1993 SAM-RAPP [<>] at 01:11 EDT Gene, MiniDisc has a competitor. It's called DCC (Digital Compact Cassette). I probably don't follow the news as much as you, but I think it will be YEARS before a recordable 5.25 inch CD will reach consumer price levels. It sounds promising now, but hey, remember bubble memory? -----------------> Sam ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 58 Fri Sep 03, 1993 REALM [Joey] at 05:34 EDT I don't think it'll be years before a 5.25 inch CD hits the shelf. The recording stuff is already there, SONY just went to a different size and method. The actually writing device should remain the same as your only recording 0 and 1's to the actual disk. I would guess they went to a smaller format for marketing reasons. They can now take the 2.5" disk system and use it with computer products such as laptops, camera's, electronic books and such where a 5.25" disk would be bulky. The smaller size is probable easier on battery life as well. Even if Sony's 2.5" format has terrible compression it's still cheap. Lets say you can only get 20megs of data on a disk for 8$. What if Sony says you can buy a drive for your computer that will record 70minutes of music or store 20 megs of data. The drive is $300 and the disks are about $8 each. What if they do a combo 3.5" and 2.5" drive? Anyway, I think it has the potential to at least replace the 3.5" drives if handled correctly. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 59 Fri Sep 03, 1993 STEVE-J [Steve @ NLS] at 05:54 EDT AEO.1 - MiniDisc is just a media format. While audio MDs use lossy compression algorithms (and no, it's not that close to even CDs, let alone DATs!), it can be used (w/o any compression) for data applications -- and they are already working on MD data drives for computers. Also, as far as digital audio is concerned, Phillips' DCC is actually better quality sound-wise, but MD is more versatile. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 60 Fri Sep 03, 1993 T.ZENTHOEFE1 [Tom Z.] at 08:09 EDT Albert, the one drawback to putting the programs from the defunked Atari magazines is is that the programs published belong to the original programmers and would have to be contacted for permission. Also some of them never received contracted for payment for the publication. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 61 Fri Sep 03, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 09:07 EDT DMJ: Finding 680 megs would be the easy part. Steve: I never heard of computer data being stored on Minidisks except for lossy compress things like audio and pictures (using jpeg or something along those lines). How recent did they (Sony) say "normal data?" Also did they say it could be used specifically for backup or just for use on a computer system? Tom: That would be fun attempting to track down all of the programmers and re- writing contracts. Greg: I seem to recall that some CD-ROM drives have problems going from a Photo CD to a normal CD for some strange reason. Of course this could just apply to single session drives (for using Photo CD). Grouch: Do you have the latest firmware from Texel? I think they have released 'several different versions recently. The newest one was supposed to fix some problems and support multi-session fully. It was a $20 upgade or something relatively inexpensive. Also is your CD-ROM drive properly terminated (SCSI)? What version of ICD's software are you running? The newest is 6.2.0 in their library. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 62 Fri Sep 03, 1993 R.NELSON48 [Grouch (:{] at 23:02 EDT Albert - I am using ICD's latest, but the CD Rom driver on disk B has not been changed for a while. The drive comes factory set to SCSI ID 2 and that is the ID it returns for the ICD ID check and that is the ID it should have as it comes after HD 0 and HD 1 but before HD 3. Termination is off, HD 3 provides termination. I shall try double clicking on my drive icon a bunch of times instead of giving up so soon. As to firmware, whatsat? Is it like a hardware upgrade? These folks have a Santa Clara phone number, that makes them area code neighbors so to speak, so I will give them a call. Thanks for the suggestions. If I keep plugging away I'm bound to stumble on the right combination of actions sooner or later or even later than that. right? Grouch (:{ ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 63 Sat Sep 04, 1993 STEVE-J [Steve @ NLS] at 03:46 EDT AEO.1 - The compression used in MD -- PASC -- is specifically for audio data. If you bypass the compression (which a data MD drive would), then you basically have a 150MB (or whatever) magneto-optical drive. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 64 Sun Sep 05, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 02:02 EDT Grouch, Firmware upgrade is just a chip/rom upgrade. I know that people were complaining about some problems with its multi-session support. But a rom upgrade solved the problem. I guess you should call Texel and see if you have the latest version. They were performing the upgrades(you send Texel the drive) for $20. Steve, Okay that makes sense an MO drive with lossy compression capability. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 65 Mon Sep 06, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 08:51 EDT Al, Do you have any contact information for Walnut Creek ? Are they on GEnie or The Internet ? Damien, I _know_ you've got 680 MB of GIFs laying around! I've got over 300 diskettes worth of "archives" myself. The last hundred or so are 1.44 MB each too. Maybe someday I'll have a CD-ROM pressed. Sam, I remember bubble memory - in fact I've _used_ it. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 66 Mon Sep 06, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert] at 11:23 EDT Lee B., I don't have contact information for Walnut Creek off the top of my head. It was in AEO_201.LZH and the first issue of AEO Programmers Journal. I'm sure they have an internet address as well but not sure if I listed it or not. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 67 Mon Sep 06, 1993 GREG at 13:23 EDT There is now a Falcon 030 true color demo of the capabilities of the Falcon and digitized images. The file is PHOTOSHO.ZIP, File #29880, in library 10 here. It's a big file that unzips to over 1.4 meg. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 68 Tue Sep 07, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 11:42 EDT Lee B, Phone number for Walnut Creek is 510-674-0783. They have a nice color advertisement in the August issue of PC Magazine listing a variety of material on disc. Typical is as follows: *GIFs Galore CD-ROM - $24.95. Over 6,000 full color images! There are dozens of categories including art, aviation, birds, cars, fantasy, fish, flowers, fractals, military, people, places, sci- fi, space, swimsuit, etc. Arrays of reduced images are provided on the disc for quick previewing. Viewers and utilities are provided for MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari-ST, and Unix. Gene ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 70 Thu Sep 09, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 18:27 EDT Albert, Thanks I'll look in AEO PJ for Walnut Creek. Gene, Thanks for the info! Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 71 Tue Sep 14, 1993 GREG at 01:38 EDT I uploaded a few FTC files to use with the Photo Show demo in the libraries here. A zipped FTC runs around 100K or less. If you have gotten some great PCD pics back from Kodak, how about putting some of the better ones up in library 5! ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 72 Tue Sep 21, 1993 GREG at 22:51 EDT It was nice getting a chance to meet all the online names that we have communicated with on GEnie at the Glendale show last weekend. Our booth was right across from Compo and I got a chance to pick up their Studio Photo. The program does some nice effects and supports Photo CD too. We got some nice feedback on Photo Show at Glendale. A thanks goes out to everyone who stopped by to say hi. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 73 Wed Sep 22, 1993 GREG at 00:05 EDT The following drives are now also confirmed as working with Photo Show and the Version .6 XFS drivers included with the program: NEC CDR-55 NEC 38 NEC CDR-84 Toshiba 3401 The NEC drives have been tested for single-session only. If you have had success with other CD rom drives, please leave E-mail to GREG here. The above drives will read both 9660 and Photo CD format on the Falcon and the TT running the release version of MultiTOS. It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 74 Wed Sep 22, 1993 REALM [Joey] at 05:04 EDT Greg, Wish you would be quit, your making me want a CDROM.:-) Got a spot just begging for one! I don't know that much about them though. Do CD ROM's have a standardized format? Could I buy clipart disks for the MAC and IBM and use the GIF's and TIFF's just like I can with a floppy? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 75 Wed Sep 22, 1993 SANDY.W [sysop] at 14:01 EDT Joey - I'm sure Greg can answer your questions, but for an excellent article covering CD-ROMs and the Atari, check out the first AEO, file #27193. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 76 Wed Sep 22, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 23:50 EDT Sandy, Thanks for the plug. Were you at Glendale I must have missed you 'if you were. Greg, I noticed the Kodak has a new CD Writer that 6x ... and can produce a CD in 10 minutes. Also Yamaha has a new CD-Writer that is 4x too. Kodak is also releasing the portfolio format script language too. Its supposed to be at the freely available to anyone. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 78 Thu Sep 23, 1993 SANDY.W [sysop] at 10:26 EDT Albert - I was very much at Glendale! Where were you?? :-) ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 79 Thu Sep 23, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 20:13 EDT Sandy, I was running around getting upgrades. I kept running into people from my old user group too. But I was amazed at how good the Photo CD pictures looked on the TV set (by Photo show). Calamus SL had Photo CD too. Its just amazing how nice that technology (Photo CD) really is. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 80 Thu Sep 23, 1993 GREG at 22:51 EDT AEO.1: Saw an ad for a $3995 CD rom WRITER in the new issue of Byte magazine. Best price I have seen so far. REALM: A CD rom disc looks just like a very large hard drive to TOS. The AEO article was very good. Make sure you read it. I would suggest a double speed drive as a minimum. See my previous post for the list of drives tested soo far with the Version 0.6 XSF driver included with Photo Show. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 81 Fri Sep 24, 1993 REALM [Joey] at 05:10 EDT Greg, If I pick one up it'll definately be one that works.:-) I'll get the AEO artical. I've got some other stuff on my wish list first but this is quickly climbing the chain! ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 82 Fri Sep 24, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 09:59 EDT Greg, Those prices are really dropping on CD-Writers ... that Kodak 6x writer will really drop the prices some more too. Maybe if they can have one for under $1000 I would strongly consider it. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 83 Fri Sep 24, 1993 SANDY.W [sysop] at 11:24 EDT After reading Albert's article I got a lot more interested in CD-ROMs. Then I saw the photo CDs and got even more interested. It is definitely on my wish list. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 84 Fri Sep 24, 1993 GREG at 23:27 EDT AEO.1 Let me know where to mail my check for a $1,000 CD writer. :-> SANDY.W We've got quite a bit of use from our CD rom drive. There are quite a few .FLI animations available that can't be had any other way due to size. The ANIMTOOL program posted in the libraries here does a nice job displaying them on an Atari machine. In fact they look and run better on our Falcon than they do on the 386. There are also several sound disks that are very good. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 85 Fri Sep 24, 1993 GREG at 23:31 EDT HELP I'm looking for an image editor that displays all 16 bits of the Falcon's 16 bit true color mode. I'm currently using Studio Photo and have found that a bit of color is either missing or misplaced on the screen image. A color count by Photo Lab of the disk image done with the Photo Show Photo CD converter module shows 57,000 shades. A color count of a Photo CD image converted with Studio Photo comes up with 20,000 shades. For example, when viewing the "Lady in Red" on the Kodak Access sampler disc, a very noticeable posterization occurs on the right side of the lady's face. Using Gem View 2.13, the same posterization occurs on the Falcon. Photo Show does not show this posterization to the same degree. Neither the Photo Show nor Studio Photo version of the image displays with posterization in 24 bit color modes. Does anyone know if True Paint shows an image using all 16 bits of the Falcon palette? Does it save as 24 bit color? Are there any other image editors for the Falcon's true color mode? It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 86 Sat Sep 25, 1993 GREG at 00:11 EDT Kodak Press release........... KODAK WILL PUBLISH SCRIPT LANGUAGE FOR CREATING PHOTO CD PORTFOLIO DISCS WIESBADEN, Germany, Sept. 22-Eastman Kodak Company plans to publish the Kodak Photo CD Portfolio description language, allowing developers to incorporate Photo CD Portfolio authoring capability in their applications at no charge. Kodak described the announcement as a first step in its comprehensive strategy to enable users to author Photo CD Portfolio discs. The company said it expects to provide more details about the strategy next month at the Seybold San Francisco conference. Visitors to the Kodak exhibit here at Intermedia Europe (booth 9209) will see technology demonstrations of two software applications that output the script for authoring Kodak Photo CD Portfolio discs, a format designed for interactive CD-ROM publishing. Once the Kodak software is developed as a product, the company said, it will make the Photo CD Portfolio script language available to software developers free of charge. Strategy Overview Kodak's strategy is designed to allow the broadest possible range of users to author Photo CD Portfolio discs-just as almost any computer user with a compatible CD-ROM drive now can read and display Photo CD images, using Kodak software or Photo CD- enabled products from other companies. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 87 Sat Sep 25, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 09:29 EDT Greg, Do you have a version of ANIMTOOL that will display .FLI animations directly ? I've been using FLICONV to convert them to .TATs and displaying them with ANIMTOOL... Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 88 Sat Sep 25, 1993 GREG at 17:23 EDT L.W.BENJAMIN: I'm using the ANIMTOOL FLI to TAT converter that you had suggested to me a couple of weeks ago. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 89 Sat Sep 25, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 20:52 EDT This probably isn't the right place to post this but I downloaded the Photo Show demo and when I try to run a script I get two bombs and my resolution gets all screwed up. I'm running a Falcon 030 in hi-res 256 color 80 column mode with a VGA monitor. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 90 Sat Sep 25, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 23:06 EDT Greg, I think we have something like the portfolio format already. DO you know anything about Photo Show? ' -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 91 Sun Sep 26, 1993 GREG at 00:00 EDT O-ZONE: Try the demo from either 16 or 4 color mode on the VGA. That should do the trick for you. You should have at least 1.7 meg free when running the program. We have had reports that the program bombed in 256 color with VGA only. It should run with any other combination of color depth and monitor outside of monochrome. I'll track the problem down and let you know when a fix is ready. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 92 Sun Sep 26, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 08:26 EDT Greg, Okay, I just wanted to know if you had something that would show .FLI animations directly. We may have one _someday_. Thanks. The only problem with converting to .TAT is disk space. I've got two 50MB drives and one has a partition on it that's going flaky on me, and it was the partition with all the free space on it. :( Oh well. I guess I'm just interested in too many other things or I'd make some space for the .FLI conversions too. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 93 Sun Sep 26, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 11:18 EDT Lee, Have you run Diamond Edge, Hard Disk Sentry or Clean-up to see if there are any problems in your fat, directory structure? On the drive that is acting flakey. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 94 Sun Sep 26, 1993 GREG at 15:24 EDT L.W.BENJAMIN: Viewing FLI files in the works for View II along with a Photo CD viewer add-on for the program using Falcon 16 bit color. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 95 Sun Sep 26, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 16:01 EDT GREG, Nope. Bombs in 16 and 4 color modes also. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 96 Sun Sep 26, 1993 SAM-RAPP [<>] at 22:42 EDT Flakes.... Do you have FPATCH1.PRG in your auto folder? Are you running on a VGA or SC1224/TV? ----------> Sam ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 97 Mon Sep 27, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 06:51 EDT Albert, I've run Clean-up several times and each time it finds more and more bad sectors in that one partition "O:". I reformatted the drive two or three times and each time I'd get a few more errors. Then the drive would seem fine until it started throwing code 17 errors (recoverable reads) then finally code 11s (unrecoverable reads). I think it's a bad place on the media. The drive is used, but in a "rebuilt" warranty. The only problem is that I need the space at least until I finish my newsletter since PageStream is on drive "N:". I may just buy a 150MB drive and then send off the 50MB drive. Thanks for asking. Greg, I wasn't sure I should mention the View II capability since I'm a beta tester for it! I'd forgotten about the DMJ-IAR relationship at the time. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 98 Mon Sep 27, 1993 J.HOOD9 [Jim] at 08:13 EDT R. Nelson Re: Texel CD-ROM drive DM-3024 & Photo CD. I know how you feel. Here's what I have learned. I bought Calamus SL with their Kodak Photo CD Import Module and tried to use it with a Multisession compatible Toshiba drive, using METADOS.PRG, but could not read anything from a Photo CD. After talking with DMC, they sent me TOSHIBA2.PRG which was supposed to get my TT and the Toshiba communicating. I still couldn't get directories or anything from Photo CD's. A dealer showed me his TT reading Photo CD's with a Texel DM-3024, so I bought it. I then spent a couple of weeks learning about SCSI cables, termination and a bunch of stuff that could screw up my system. Eventually I found with METADOS.PRG, CONFIG.SYS and TOSHIBA2.PRG in my AUTO folder I could click on the ISO9960 icon and get a directory showing me the 1st session files on my Photo CD's. Calamus SL would load these fine. I could not get my TT to recognize subsequent sessions. (My TT usually timed out before it made contact with the Texel DM-3024. TOSHIBA2.PRG would then go in and pound on the door until the Texel drive finally answered. A message would then display saying there was an error sending the Toshiba MODE SELECT; but it did get the TT and Texel talking. I called Texel and found I had a "pre-Multisession" ROM chip in my drive. The Multisession ROM is identified by a sticker on the case with a "K" on it. The "k" in your ICD SCSI ID check indicates your drive is Multisession. I sent Texel $10. They sent me the upgrade chip and a disk with upgraded driver software for DOS & Windows machines. I installed the chip & METADOS would no longer recognize the Texel drive. It is my understanding that METADOS is not Multisession aware anyway. About that time Atari released CDROMx##.XFS to use with MultiTOS in place of METADOS.PRG & CONFIG.SYS. This combination seems to work fine with some CD-ROM drives. Greg, of It's All Relative, has been posting lists of drives that work. I was able to read files from all sessions on Multisession Photo CD's with a Toshiba drive & MultiTos/CDROMx##.XFS, but I continued having trouble with my Texel DM-3024. With no disk in the Texel, it initializes immediately and my TT recognizes it, but can't determine if it's ISO9660 or High Sierra format & hangs up if I then put in a Photo CD & click on the CD disk icon. With a music disk in the Texel, it initializes in about 4 seconds, the TT recognizes it & I can then put in a Photo CD; wait for the Texel busy light to go off; and get a directory of the 1st session files. With a Photo CD in the Texel, it initializes in 12 to 15 seconds and the TT won't recognize it unless I run TOSHIBA2.PRG in the AUTO folder before MINT.PRG runs. In that case it will again only recognize the 1st session files. So I suspect that MultiTOS & CDROMx##.XFS don't pester the Texel drive long enough to force it to find the subsequent session files. As you can see from the above initialization times, the Texel is quite slow reading info off of Photo CD's. A clone owning friend also has a Texel DM-3024 and after we installed the Texel Windows driver upgrade in his machine it was able to access all files on Multisession Photo CD's. In summary: If you boot with a music CD in your Texel and run MultiTOS, with CDROMx##.XFS in the root directory of your boot partition, you should be able to access 1st session files on Photo CD's. If you boot with a Photo CD in your Texel, you need to have TOSHIBA2.PRG ahead of MINT.PRG in your AUTO folder. In both cases, make sure the busy light is out on the Texel before booting your Atari, and make sure it is out after changing disks when trying to read a directory. Texel doesn't support Atari's, so a driver fix for their CD drive will probably depend on Atari. I may sell the Texel & get the Toshiba. *S Jim ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 99 Mon Sep 27, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 18:58 EDT OK, I got it to work. Was a CPX or a limited memory conflict. It is an impressive demo. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 100 Mon Sep 27, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 19:27 EDT Lee, I would try running Diamond Edge v1.1 and see what you come up with. The results I have gotten with the Clean-Up are strange and never seem to be repeatable. I assumed you checked your cables (power and scsi/dma are secure) and working. Also make sure your total cable length is under 3 feet I believe. I was having some really strange intermittent problems that could not be reproduced very well. Read and write problems, drive doesn't exist, unexaplained crashes ... and it was all the result of the combined total of the DMA cables being too long. Jim, That is an interesting problem you experience with Multi-Session discs. It would be nice if the drivers were configurable so one could change the the amount of time it takes to timeout, the number of retries to read a sector, etc. Maybe it does have some configurability but since I don't use the drivers on my machine I'm not certain. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 101 Mon Sep 27, 1993 POTECHIN [Nathan @ DMC] at 21:59 EDT Excellent post Jim. Thanks for sharing it with us all. Nathan Potechin - DMC Publishing ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 102 Mon Sep 27, 1993 GREG at 21:59 EDT Single-session Vs. Multi-session Photo CD There appears to be some confusion on the need of multi-session CD rom drives for use with Photo CD. Most Photo CD processors will make a single session disc for you if you request it. As an example a Nec-38 drive that is currently single-session with the latest XFS driver. A Nec-38 drive retails for about $399. The possibilty even exists that a multi-session driver will be available in the future. A Toshiba 3401 is multi-session and retails for about $599. The difference between the two drives is $200. For Photo CD processing, most developers have a media charge of somewhere between $5.00 and $10.00. It would take between 20 and 40 rolls of film before a multi-session drive makes financial sense. Very few people go through this much film in a year or two. Before you invest in a CD rom drive, run the calculations and see what is the best value for your situation. Getting a CD rom drive from your local Atari dealer makes sense too. You know exactly what you are getting and can have an expert help you with cables and software. If you think connecting a CD rom to an Atari Falcon is confusing, try doing an installation on a fully carded PC! Setting DMA, Int, Irq, jumpers, and MSCDEX settings right can be tough. With the Falcon all you need to do with the RIGHT hardware is rename your CDROM##.XFS file to the drive letter and device ID. Drop the file in your MULTITOS folder and reboot. We have a mutli-session drive and still put one 24 or 36 exposure roll of film on a CD as it makes it easier to organize our graphics. After all, you don't keep all your negatives and prints in one big box :-> ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 103 Tue Sep 28, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 06:44 EDT Albert, I would try Diamond Edge if I _had_ Diamond Edge. I'll have to figure out if I want to buy Diamond Edge or another drive and Diamond Edge . Thanks for the advice. Whoever, I wrote to Bill Rehbock about getting the CDROM##.XFS driver, but I haven't heard anything back yet. I don't understand why the don't just post it in the libraries. I understand a MultiTOS update is in the works. Perhaps they'll include it with that. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 104 Tue Sep 28, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 17:21 EDT Lee, Have you checked your cable length too?? -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 105 Wed Sep 29, 1993 GREG at 01:33 EDT L.W.BENJAMIN: The most current XFS CD rom driver is actually a third party driver that requires a license fee per copy as part of the Kodak Photo CD Toolkit package. I've found it to be very solid compared to all alternatives at present. I believe it is included with the Calamus Photo CD module (Nathan, am I right?), our Photo Show, and in the next version of Studio Photo. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 106 Wed Sep 29, 1993 POTECHIN [Nathan @ DMC] at 10:29 EDT You are correct Greg. I just checked to verify. We also ship the XFS CD driver with our Kodak Photo CD import driver for Calamus SL. Nathan Potechin - DMC Publishing ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 107 Wed Sep 29, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 18:58 EDT Upon further research I have discovered that the Photo show demo will not load a script and run unless you have no AUTO, DA programs running or you are running Multi-TOS. I don't know if this is widely known but I don't much like Multi-TOS because it slows things down so much. How about a version of Photo show that will run without Multi-TOS installed but allow you to run AUTO and DA programs? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 108 Wed Sep 29, 1993 GREG at 22:55 EDT O-ZONE: If you don't need Photo CD access from CD rom, you can run Photo Show with or without MultiTOS. MultiTOS is required only for CD access using the XSF driver for CD rom. If you are having problems without MultiTOS, chances are an AUTO or CPX program is misbehaving. Running MultiTOS shields Photo Show from the offending program. E-mail me your AUTO/CPX list and I'll see if I can track the offender down for you. ALL: A check with Atari today verified that the version .6 XFS driver is the most current version. We have had reports of trouble using it with Texel drives. Atari verified that the Texel drives do use a slightly non-standard form of SCSI-2 communication. results with Texel drives can be flaky, your milage may vary. NEC-38, NEC-55, NEC-84, and Toshiba 3401 have all been tested as working with the version .6 driver and the Falcon. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 109 Thu Sep 30, 1993 GREG at 00:08 EDT I checked the Kodak and CD rom forums on the other service tonight and found six threads on problems with using a Texel CD rom and Trantor or Corel SCSI-2 cards on the PC. A user also posted that Texel had problems reading Photo CD and the factory was aware of the problem. The offer an adjustment for $20.00. Another user posted that the Texel would not read any CD on his PC after getting it adjusted by the factory for Photo CD. Until we hear otherwise, I would put the Texel CD rom drives on the "not suggested" list for interface with Atari. Does anyone have a reliable Texel setup with an Atari computer? If you do, what hardware / driver combination do you use. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 110 Thu Sep 30, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 06:46 EDT Al, My cable length is OK as I have one 18" cable, and the disk worked fine for a couple of months. I bought the drive used, but it's got a warranty. After I finish my newsletter (within two weeks) I'll pull out the drive and send it back. Greg, Thanks for the info on the XFS driver. Do you know if that can be run with the 0.95 version of MiNT, or does it require MultiTOS ? I have MultiTOS, but if you happen to know it'll work with 0.95 MiNT, others might be interested. I got my copy of MultiTOS for $47 retail from "The Computer Studio" (S.WINICK on GEnie). A pretty good price, I'd say. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 111 Thu Sep 30, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 19:04 EDT GREG, The crash occurs when I run ANY auto program or DA without MultiTOS and then try to run Photo Show. It doesn't matter which one or how many. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 112 Thu Sep 30, 1993 D.NICOLAU [David] at 22:20 EDT Single-session Vs. Multi-session Photo CD- Why waste a CD with only 24 or 36 pictures when you can get around 100 +- on it. If you think about the pictures you put on them, you can still organize them fairly well. Who care about RETAIL price, Street price for the Toshiba 3401 is under $400. And the speed is one of the fastest. A single session CD is only if you put one roll of film on the CD. Once you put the second roll on it you go to Multi-session. This is just my thoughts. David ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 113 Thu Sep 30, 1993 GREG at 23:38 EDT D.NICOLAU: Two reasons for one disc per set of graphics: I always get nervous when I send the "only one" of anything away to someone else. What if your disc gets lost or misdirected in the mail. What happens if you damage a disc? Putting a lot on one makes it worse. We've tried a damage test on a disc, and a few deep scrathes in the right places can do harm. Murphy's Law states that something like this can only happen to your most valuable or irreplaceable disc. L.W.BENJAMIN: I haven't tried it myself, but have been told that XFS drivers require MINT to run, they do not require MultiTOS. For most users, MultiTOS is their only access to MINT. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 114 Fri Oct 01, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 00:33 EDT Greg, The Toshiba 3401 (bare) can be had for $385 or so which is the lowest I've seen on that drive. Also the Chinion 535 drive is under $300 and it is supposed to be SCSI-2, double speed 300k/s, Multi-session Photo CD compatible. Microsoft is bundling it with Visual C++ too. It will be interesting to see what type of reviews the Chinion 535 receives overall. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 115 Fri Oct 01, 1993 MIKE-ALLEN [NM~SysOp] at 02:46 EDT Anyone know anything about the TEAC CD-50? Specs say 300k/sec and Multi- session. I believe SCSI2. Have seen it in Computer Shopper at very competetive prices. Mike Allen ST HelpDesk~Sysop Written: 11:55 PM Mountain Time Thursday, September 30, 1993 ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 116 Fri Oct 01, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 18:18 EDT Mike, Teac CD-ROM drives are repacked Texel drives I believe. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 117 Fri Oct 01, 1993 GREG at 22:39 EDT MIKE-ALLEN: I have not heard from anyone using Chinon with the XFS drivers. We do know that the Texel drives have problems both on the PC and Falcon. Currently tested as working with a Falcon / MultiTOS .6 XFS driver.... NEC-38, Nec-55, NEC-84, and Toshiba 3401. If anyone has a system up and running with any other CD rom drive and the .6 XFS driver, please post the information here or in E-mail to GREG. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 118 Sun Oct 03, 1993 R.NELSON48 [Grouch (:{] at 00:30 EDT I can absolutly confirm that the TEXEL is a bad Bad BAD choice and that the NEC-55 works quite well with a falcon system. Took my TEXEL back to the vendor after reading message 98 from J.HOOD9 (Thanks a heap, Jim!) and made a swap for the NEC-55. Brought the NEC home, stuck it in the system where the TEXEL was, fired up the Falcon, ran MiNT and BAM! POW! was getting directories with no further nonesense. All my problems were related to the drive, not my set-up. Thanks for all the help. Now, will someone please tell me how to run the CD encycloepdia, etc. that came with the drive? (:{ Grouch ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 119 Sun Oct 03, 1993 M.EASTER [Mike] at 09:09 EDT Grouch - re run the CD encyclopedia See cat 4 top 19; but the answer isn't there. :-) ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 120 Sun Oct 03, 1993 GREG at 22:16 EDT R.NELSON48 Glad to see you got the NEC-55 up and running so fast. Are you using the Version .6 XFS driver with it. You may want to check out the Nautilus CD rom magazine for the PC. Each issue is loaded with sound and graphics files that can be heard and viewed on the Falcon. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 122 Thu Oct 07, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 19:47 EDT Flakes, That is a very interesting announcement on the 3X speed and that one can play audio CDs fromt he front panel without a computer! Thanks for the update on the NEC CD-ROM drives. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 123 Thu Oct 07, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 21:39 EDT Flakes thanks for the information! However, this message too has been deleted. We try to avoid duplicate posts. Pointers to the full post is better. Thanks again for your time and uploading the information. Everyone, please see message 116 in topic 19 of category 4 for information on a new line of NEC CD-ROMS. ~~Brian..Written on Thursday 07 October 1993 at 09:57 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 124 Fri Oct 08, 1993 GREG at 01:39 EDT RE File #30297 RESFOOLR.ZIP If you use RESFOOLR.ZIP with Photo Show on the Falcon, it will cause your images to appear on the broadcast TV in an eleongated manner as the TV out on the Falcon does not have the same aspect ratio as the RGB out. With RESFOOLR, you can stretch your images to fill a full TV screen with- out the need for a RGB adapter plugged into the monitor out port. For VGA owners looking to record to VCR in cases where aspect ratio is not important, this could actually be a handy way to stretch the image to full screen. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 125 Fri Oct 08, 1993 R.SATTLER [Mr.X] at 10:22 EDT I'm kinda confused... do you have to run MiNT to use a CD ROM drive with the Falcon? Also, are there any Atari or (better yet) Falcon-specific CD's available? Someone also mentioned an encyclopedia, will it work with a Falcon? Thanks for any answers! ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 126 Fri Oct 08, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 20:30 EDT The CD-ROM driver requires MiNT. -dmj ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 127 Sat Oct 09, 1993 D.NICOLAU [David] at 00:01 EDT GREG GOOD POINT (s) !! !! ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 128 Sat Oct 09, 1993 STEVE-J [DrHfuhruhurr] at 05:05 EDT R.SATTLER - Unfortunately, yes! For some stupid reason, Atari has decided only to support CD-ROMs for MultiTOS users. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 129 Sat Oct 09, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 12:19 EDT DrHfuhruhurr: The reason the CD-ROM driver requires MultiTOS is that it requires MiNT's ability to work with "alternate-format" drives. The way MultiTOS is set up, it should(?) even be possible to write a driver to let you access Mac hard drives without Spectre. Writing a CD-ROM driver for MiNT is relatively easy. Writing one for TOS (without using MiNT) is quite a bit harder. -dmj ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 130 Sun Oct 10, 1993 STEVE-J [DrHfuhruhurr] at 09:37 EDT DMJ - I know all of that -- I was just pointing out that Atari apparently has decided ONLY to do MultiTOS/MiNT CD-ROM drivers, effectively dropping CD-ROM support for non-MultiTOS users (i.e. no updates to Atari's broken MetaDOS for CD-ROM support). ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 131 Sun Oct 10, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 12:09 EDT Dr Hfuhruhurr: It makes no sense for Atari to fix the "broken MetaDOS". What MetaDOS was supposed to do, MultiTOS does much better. While it would be nice to see a CD- ROM driver for those of us who don't (or won't) use MultiTOS, I can't see Atari doing it. -dmj ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 132 Sun Oct 10, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 12:26 EDT DMJ, I thought one could just run MiNT and have access to the CD-ROM driver used in MultiTOS? -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 133 Sun Oct 10, 1993 GREG at 20:38 EDT I posted the following open letter to Dale Strang, publisher of Amiga World, in the Amiga area on CIS............ While browsing through some magazines at a news stand this weekend, the October 1993 issue of Amiga World caught my eye. The cover featured a Kodak Photo CD disc and a CD rom player. As I wasn't aware that Photo CD was available on the Amiga, I bought a copy to see what was new on the Amiga. The text of the news on Photo CD follows.... "Photo CD has unofficial support on the Amiga because of a renegade software effort from the internet network...." I've always considered Amiga World to be a reliable source for honest information. I was surprised that they would feature on their front cover "renegade software effort from the Internet network". Is Kodak aware of the "renegade software" available for the Amiga? Is the Internet network aware of copyright? As a developer, I would have second thoughts about developing for a system that is so proud of their "renegade efforts" that they would herald it as a cover worthy news item. I'll have to pick up the November issue of Amiga World to see if they publish an updated Pirate Bulletin Board List. I can see why software support for the Amiga is faltering. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 134 Mon Oct 11, 1993 STEVE-J [DrHfuhruhurr] at 05:32 EDT DMJ - I'm not slamming MultiTOS at all. I'm just saying that Atari SHOULD support CD-ROM on their platform without the need for MultiTOS. After all, even Atari has recommended having at least a TT030 or Falcon030 for using MultiTOS. Then again, since the ST/STe is no more, it's not surprising Atari doesn't plan on supporting those users for things like CD-ROM. GREG - From what I've heard, Commodore hasn't been able to justify officially licensing PhotoCD from Kodak. Many of their users and developers are upset with them about it. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 136 Thu Oct 14, 1993 GREG at 00:12 EDT We have had several reports this week of problems with the Chinon CDX535 drive and reading of Photo CD disks. We are trying to sort out the problem and will post our results as soon as they are available. The approved list for the version .6 MultiTOS XFS driver is still Toshiba 3401 - 9660, Photo CD XA, and Multi-session. NEC-38, NEC-55, and NEC-84 - 9660 and single-session Photo CD XA Texel - Not suggested ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 137 Sun Oct 17, 1993 JKUEHN [John] at 07:04 EDT AEO.1, Yes, you can run the Mint operating system and have access to Kodak Photo CDs (PCDs) only. But, unless you are running an accelerated ST or Falcon, the thruput is so slow that frustration soon sets in if you are doing any serious work with the large amounts of data contained in the PCD image pack file structure. , What are the specifics of the Amiga PCD renegade effort? I am curious, because, I know of a similar 'renegade' program, for the Atari ST, that converts PCD pictures to QRT 24 bit true color .RAW format files. These are readable/viewable by the QRT and PHOTOCHROME3 programs, as well as being convertable to SPECTRUM. The results are quite good, within the limitations of the SPECTRUM 512/4096 and .SPX limitations. I know that the program would be made available here if possible?? John K. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 138 Sun Oct 17, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 14:41 EDT John, I wasn't sure of the throughput on the CD-ROM thanks for the update. I don't know any thing about the "renegade" PCD efforts at all. I know someone had some code of Kodak's PCDs on internet (it was very temporary due to Kodak's legal team ). -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 139 Sun Oct 17, 1993 GREG at 20:14 EDT JKUEHN: The latest version of Photo Show requires about 20 seconds to access a full screen image off the Photo CD disc running under MultiTOS on the Falcon 030 machine. This is as fast or faster than most other platforms that support Kodak Photo CD. If your running our software and not getting similar times, give us a voice call and we can help you with some tweeks to MultiTOS to increase your PCD access times. It's All relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 140 Mon Oct 18, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 11:56 EDT The NEC Multispin 3Xp CD-ROM reader that I mentioned earlier is available from Publishing Perfection at 800-782-5974. The price is $429 or $538 with parallel to SCSI interface. Would I need this interface or, since I don't use a printer on the Falcon, could I just get a DB25 cable and connect the CD-ROM reader to the parallel port, assuming that the reader has a parallel port? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 141 Mon Oct 18, 1993 AEO.1 [Albert Dayes] at 19:19 EDT Flakes, Even if you do hook up your CD-ROM drive to the parallel port what software drivers will you use? I don't know of any hard drive/cd-rom drivers that support it. I suppose you could just use a DB-25 cable but the parallel/scsi cable has a parallel port pass thru. I'm assuming it is the Trantor Cable by the way. -- Albert ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 142 Mon Oct 18, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 20:39 EDT Flakes, Are you saying that this drive isn't standard SCSI. If it is you should be able to hang it off your SCSI port on the Falcon... or add it to he existing SCSI chain if there is one. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 143 Tue Oct 19, 1993 GREG at 00:01 EDT O-ZONE: I haven't seen the NEC 3Xp CD rom yet. If it runs off the parallel port, I don't believe there is ANY CD rom driver for the Falcon using this port. (If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.) See my previous post on the drives that have been tested with the Version .6 CD rom driver included with Photo Show. We may be able to add the NEC-74 to our approved list shortly. ALL: How much extra would it be worth to include a demo Photo CD with Photo Show? Most users have run out and bought Kodak Access to get a demo disc of graphics to play with till their own photos are ready. We are thinking of including a demo Photo CD with Photo Show, but it would bump up the retail price. I'm curious to see what an end user thinks a demo disc is worth. L.W.BENJAMIN: Not all SCSI-2 drives use the exact same command sets and have the same access and read times. Just because a drive can be plugged into a SCSI-2 port doesn't mean it will work with any CD rom driver. The drive and driver must be matched. When it comes to CD audio, the differences can be even greater. When it comes to SCSI-2 Standard drives, the word "Standard" should be footnoted in most cases. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 144 Tue Oct 19, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 21:29 EDT The thing is that they sell the thing at one price and then a SCSI to parallel adapter at a higher price... Hey, wait a minnut! Maybe the thing has s SCSI port and they sell the adapter for the other way around... yup, just checked the liturature... stupid me! Oh, well... as Emily Latella used to say... Guess it's time to order one! In granite gray to match the Falcon! ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 145 Tue Oct 19, 1993 C.LABELLE [Tintin] at 21:45 EDT Flakes, NEC faxed me the information about the new 3Xp, as I too am very interested. IT IS SCSI-1 / SCSI-2 switch selectable. So we don't need the parallel to SCSI interface. All we need is a cable, or maybe only an adaptor since the cable is included. And connect to the Falcon SCSI port. The real question is, will the XFS driver work well with that new drive? We know the Multispin 38 does, but what with that new drive? I prefer the 3Xp for: 1) Audio functions 2) Triple speed 3) Access time Tintin ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 146 Wed Oct 20, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 05:45 EDT Greg, I understand all too well as in the past I've worked with the so- called RS-232 standard. :) I was just trying to get the discussion of parallel ports out of the picture. I think the demo Photo CD should be an option. At swap meet type computer shows you can purchase Photo CDs for about $20, even if you're not supposed to be able to. I imagine the NEC '74 drives are getting less expensive fast as it's an older drive, but a good one. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 147 Wed Oct 20, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 19:19 EDT Tintin, Although the unit comes with a cable I don't think you should attempt to use it. Atari puts +5V on pins 11 and 38, one of which is a SCSI 2 standard ground or something of that nature and I remember hearing someone's horror story (I think it was in the HD topic) of how he shorted out a couple of hard drives before he discovered this. I may be wrong but best to check with the experts before hooking it up. Pehaps someone from Toad Computers could tell us as they do offer a Falcon 030 SCSI cable. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 148 Wed Oct 20, 1993 C.LABELLE [Tintin] at 21:59 EDT Flakes, Buying the proper cable is preferable, I agree. I would also buy from a dealer to whom I can return the drive at no cost, should it not work with the Falcon driver. Tintin ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 149 Wed Oct 20, 1993 R.NELSON48 [Grouch (:{] at 23:47 EDT RE: the demo disc of graphics bundled with photo show - I have been looking for the Kodak demo disk without success. I wish you did bundle it with the software. As to how much I would pay, well I hate to go over $100 on any software package. Screenblaster just squeeked by under the wire. (:{ Grouch. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 150 Thu Oct 21, 1993 GREG at 00:35 EDT R.NELSON48: What true-color resolution do you run Screen Blaster in? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 151 Thu Oct 21, 1993 GREG at 00:36 EDT Our new Photo Show Christmas demo is now available for download in the libraries here as file #30444, XMASDEMO.ZIP. The Christmas demo requires a Falcon computer with at least 2 meg of free memory. It consists of a series of Falcon true-color graphics and background digital sound. Be the first to have your TV decorated this year! The files may be freely distributed without restriction and included in user group or PD libraries. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 152 Thu Oct 21, 1993 R.SNYDER6 [Roger S.] at 06:02 EDT The catalog I just received had the NEC 3Xp, 3Xe, and 3Xi. The 3Xp is a portable and they sell seperate interfaces for it for IBM and MAC. The 3Xe is a fancier and quicker version, and the 3Xi is the internal (IBM) model. The same interfaces are sold for them (NEC 16-bit CD-ROM interface card & cables, MediaVision 16 bit MPC kit with audio board and CD-ROM SCSI interface, and a MAC interface for $35 that must be just a cable). I do notice that the 3Xe and 3Xi bundles include a interface (with a lot of CDs) but the 3Xp does not. I believe someone posted rather complete information on these drives a little while back. --Roger ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 153 Thu Oct 21, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 18:41 EDT Greg, Does a CD-ROM driver come with photo show? If so do you write it into your assign.sys file as a certain device number? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 154 Thu Oct 21, 1993 GREG at 23:31 EDT O-ZONE: All you need to do to install a supported CD rom drive with the XFS driver included with Photo Show is to copy the XFS driver to your MultiTOS folder and rename it according the instructions in your manual. That's all there is to it, no muss, no fuss. With the right drive and cable an installation takes about two minutes. No need to do anything else. It can't get no easier. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 155 Sat Oct 23, 1993 JKUEHN [John] at 13:04 EDT Greg, What PCD screen size and Falcon rezolution are you accessing in 20 seconds? And, by accessing, do you mean only the reading of the PCD data, or is that the time from selecting the picture, through CD read, and display? (On the Falcon?) As far as supplying the PCD sampler. It seems that, since the normal turn aroung time for film to PCD is only three days through Kodalux, the point seems moot. I would tend to believe that unless someone already had photo source materiel already waiting 'in the wings' I doubt that anyone would be considering purchasing Photo Show. An interesting side note. The cost for reducing the three day film-PCD turnaround to two days is $50 and for next day it's $100. Kodak is definately in the 'buisness'. end of this all. Current pricing for transfer of pre-developed slides or negatives to PCD is 10-24 images 1.79 per image 25-49 1.69 50-74 1.59 75 or more 1.49 minimum order (10) 17.90 developing and converting to PCD at the same time is somewhat cheaper single roll transfer (Includes $.74 per image transfer plus processing and mounting charges) 24 exposure 23.60 36 exposure 34.30 Multiple roll transfers -(Includes $.58 per image transfer plus processing and mounting charges) 24 exposure 19.90 36 exposure 28.76 I just did an 88 slide to PCD transfer and the cost was $131.12. To add images (append) to an existing PCD there is a $2.00 or $3.00 depending on which price schedule you look at. Of course there are price schedules for PCD disk duplication, and printing of prints from the film. They have a slide/negative organizer kit called the "Photo CD Custom Album Kit" for $5.00 for 'large' individual transfer orders of 25 or more pre- processed negative strips or slides. This includes Acetate negative and slide holders, paper negative sleeves, peel off number sheet for sequencing, a limit of liability statement, and a $5.00 off Imaging Kit rebate coupon. Using the rebate coupon makes the kit itself free. I am not currently an owner of your Photo Show...Yet. But I do have a couple of questions. Given appropriate CR-ROM drivers: Will Photo show run on a non-Falcon ST? Can Photo Show be used without Multitos (again excluding the metados driver problem) And finally, what resolutions does Photo Show support? At one time I was lead to believe that there was an information flyer about Photo show. I wonder if I could get a copy at: John Kuehn 14303 Merton Ct. Rockville, Md. 20853 ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 156 Sat Oct 23, 1993 GREG at 16:34 EDT JKUEHN: To answer your questions: The 20 second time is the total time for reading and viewing a PCD image on the Falcon in true-color mode with version 2.02 of the program. Photo Show will run on the Falcon with or without MultiTOS. You will need MultiTOS to use the XFS driver for CD rom included with Photo Show. Photo Show views images in the Falcon's true-color overscan mode on a RGB, TV, or VGA monitor. It can do file conversions of up to 3072 by 2048 on any Atari machine. Files can get quite large at this size. A 3072 by 2048 color EPS file is over 36 meg in size. A TIF is over 16 meg. Not very practical for everyday use. No viewing facilities are provided for machines other than the Falcon. PCD images can be converted to FTC format. This is a true 16 bit color format. Once converted, scripts can be written that read the images and sounds directly from a hard disk. Access times for FTC format are under 1 second on the Falcon. The XMASDEMO.ZIP now in the libraries here has a version of Photo Show included that will do everything but read a PCD file from disc. All FTC, AVR, and scripting functions are fully enabled. It is FALCON ONLY. Photo Show maintains aspect ratio on all three monitor types. Your images do not appear elongated or squashed no matter what monitor you are using. Photo Show also uses ALL 16 bits of the Falcon's true-color mode. I've found that some other viewers only make use of 15 bits of color. I'll get a flyer in the mail to you. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 157 Sun Oct 24, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 07:42 EDT Greg, Could I get a flyer for our club, please ? Take Care, Lee Benjamin Middle Georgia Atari User's Group (MGAUG) Newsletter Editor 3549 McKenzie Drive Macon, GA 31204 ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 158 Sun Oct 24, 1993 SAM-RAPP [<>] at 21:32 EDT A quick check at the local SAM's Warehouse shows that they do Photo CD transfers of existing slides/negs for about $80 per 100. This is A LOT cheaper than all the other prices I have seen elsewhere.... ===========> Sam ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 159 Sun Oct 24, 1993 GREG at 23:20 EDT SAM-RAPP: Sam's and Walmart both offer Photo CD processing through Kodalux. We have had a couple of users make use of the service and they were satisfied with the results. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 160 Mon Oct 25, 1993 DARLAH [RT~SYSOP] at 08:39 EDT Greg: Is Walmart a nationwide chain? If so, who owns them? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 161 Mon Oct 25, 1993 AEO.MAG [!] FSU #1 [!] at 09:35 EDT Darlah, WalMart is very nearly nationwide here in the US. It was founded and owned by Sam Walton, who has passed on. I believe it is owned by his heirs now. (Sam was at one time, the wealthiest person in the United States.) Sam's Club (it goes by variations on the name) is another retail chain started by Mr. Walton and I presume is still tied close to WalMart. --Travis ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 162 Mon Oct 25, 1993 DABRUMLEVE [kidprgs] at 11:04 EDT We actually have a Walmart right here in central IL! ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 163 Tue Oct 26, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:23 EDT Darlah, What Travis said. Walmart is the #1 chain in the U.S. now. We have TWO. Gosh! Al ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 164 Tue Oct 26, 1993 DARLAH [RT~SYSOP] at 08:26 EDT They have surpassed K-Mart? Quite impressive. Now we need to get back to Kodak CD but do they also own Sam the Record Man stores too? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 165 Tue Oct 26, 1993 GENIELAMP.ST [John G] at 18:03 EDT Dot, That's right next to the SAM's in Champaign, right? It's a 'must do' trip when we journy out to Pesotum on Thanksgiving (well, that and Jummer's Castle)! John ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 166 Tue Oct 26, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 21:40 EDT I just got the November issue of COMPUTER SHOPPER and there are two ads for the NEC multispins. One from COMPUTABILITY and one from USA FLEX. Both sell the 3Xp (available in Granite Gray to match the Falcon) for $429. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 167 Tue Oct 26, 1993 GREG at 22:00 EDT O-ZONE: As soon as we see the 3Xp in action, we will post the results of our testing on it. Looks like you really turned into a 3Xp fan. It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 168 Wed Oct 27, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:46 EDT Darlah, Yes, they surpassed K mart (that's the actual corporate spelling style - really odd) and Sears. And no, Sam the Record Man isn't owned by the same folks. Al ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 169 Wed Oct 27, 1993 E.WINDELL [GENE] at 10:24 EDT GREG, I recently acquired the Philips CD-I software catalog, and found it contained the following entries: PHOTO CD: HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH NATURE A simple point and shoot camera and the useful tips in this disc are all you need to take great photographs. Learn how to shoot flowers, close-ups, animals, and landscapes from photographers Ralph Clevenger and Charles Campbell. As you view 120 of their wonderful pictures, you'll feel as if they're by your side. Cat.No.310690224-2 Order No. PP024 GA $24.95 PHOTO CD: A NATIONAL PARKS TOUR Take a visual hike through the trails of three national treasures: the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. Journey through each park with an informative narration describing its natural wonders, or take a musical tour heightened by an evocative DeBussy score. This disc features over 120 breathtaking Photo CD images. Cat. No. 310690225-2 Order No. PP0225 $24.98 PHOTO CD: THE FLOWERS OF ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE Robert Mapplethorpe's images of flowers stand among the finest floral paintings and photographs in modern art. Take an inspiring Photo CD tour at your own pace, enjoying over 60 images, each paired with chamber music selection which captures its unique mood. Commentary by Mapplethorpe expert Robert Sobieszek. Cat. No. 310690223-2 Order No. PP0223 GA $29.98 Coming Attractions '93 BABY ALBUM AND VACATION ALBUM (PHOTO CD) The CD-I Baby Album and CD-I Vacation Album allow you to create your personal Photo CD albums. Place your favorite photos in customized picture frames and backgrounds, and choose captions and music to make your album one-of-a-kind. Prices and title availability subject to change. Call 1-800-824-2567 for CD-I title information. Greg, you've probably anticipated my question. How well can your Photo Show program play these discs? The Baby Album thingy sounds to me like PCD Portfolio. Do you have anything in the works to handle the portfolio playback features? BTW, I'm amazed at the prices of these discs. One might expect to pay that much for the blank media. Gene ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 170 Wed Oct 27, 1993 DARLAH [RT~SYSOP] at 14:00 EDT Al: Amazing. I visited a Walmart recently in Leesburg, Va. It was open at 7 am. It had everything from suits, to appliances and everything inbetween. I liked it better than K-Mart. I still haven't truly figured out why. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 171 Wed Oct 27, 1993 O-ZONE [Flakes] at 19:42 EDT GREG, It has just the right features at a good price. Recently my Sony CD player STB so I'm in need of a portable CD player with its own transport controls. The 3Xp is a dream come true... I hope! ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 172 Wed Oct 27, 1993 GREG at 19:43 EDT GENE: Most likely, the actual programs on the disc are CD-I programs. It is also likely that the data is stored in standard PCD format. If it is, the discs would be useable on the Falcon. The Corel image discs are viewable with Photo Show and the Falcon. Kodak has not yet released its Portfolio format. The Portfolio format will allow applications cross-platform access. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 173 Wed Oct 27, 1993 GREG at 19:46 EDT O-ZONE: NEC states the same drivers that work with the NEC-38 will work with their 3X series of drives. They will be sending me more information on the drives. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 174 Wed Oct 27, 1993 C.LABELLE [Tintin] at 22:14 EDT Greg, Call me 3Xp fan #2 :-) I enquired today at my dealer. They don't have canadian pricing yet. I've seen your demo Photo Show. I am very interested in it. I could use both the slide show and conversion utilities. Do you know how much memory takes a PCD at 1536x1024, and how much it can be compressed to, in a different format? Gene, A blank CD costs $9.99 canadian. Tintin ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 175 Wed Oct 27, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 23:25 EDT A 1536x1024 image, 24-bit, requires only 4.5M. Depending on what format you store it in on disk, it might take 500K or it might take 9M. Which format you use depends on your needs. -dmj ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 176 Wed Oct 27, 1993 GREG at 23:56 EDT C.LABELLE: If your near Toronto, Replay Entertainment will have a Photo CD setup at their special show this weekend. They are at the Mall on the Grange, 71 McCaul Street, Toronto. Call (416) 598-1992 for more info on the show. The convert module with Photo Show will make a 3048 by 2072 24 bit true color image. This is what is known as a BIG file. The veiwing facilities of Photo Show make use of the Falcon's true color mode and create files under 190 K in FTC format. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 181 Thu Oct 28, 1993 C.LABELLE [Tintin] at 22:19 EDT dmj, My specific need at the moment is to take a PhotoCD picture to a service bureau to have it printed for a calendar. The printed size should be around 12" X 11". The leading service bureau in my city do not support PhotoCD CD- ROM, so they require a diskette or Syquest. Since I don't have a removable device, is there a way to fit such a picture on HD diskettes, and what format is best? Greg, Thanks. Toronto is a 4 hours drive from Ottawa. By PhotoCD display, do you mean with Falcon? Tintin ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 182 Thu Oct 28, 1993 GREG at 23:19 EDT C.LABELLE: The Syquest cartridge with a TIF true color image in 24 bits may be the best way to go for printing. Nathan, what do you suggest? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 183 Fri Oct 29, 1993 GREG at 01:05 EDT I just patched DMJ's SPIN_DRY module into Photo Show and made what I think is the world's first Photo CD ready spinning screen saver. It's a really great effect with true-color images on the Falcon using the Falcon's built in overscan mode. I'll be checking with Damien to see if he will do an "official" version for us using FTC graphics. SPIN_DRY runs on the Falcon in any mode and any monitor type with or without MultiTOS. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 184 Fri Oct 29, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 06:13 EDT Greg, Is this a Spin_Dry routine or the EOS module ? Interesting that it's MultiTOS compatible since Warp 9 isn't. I guess the screen saver stuff is independent of the screen accellerator. Neat! Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 185 Fri Oct 29, 1993 M.DRYSDALE [Drys] at 06:51 EDT NEC has also announced a quadruple speed drive, cleverly called the 4x. Availible early '94 $995. Mike, GenTech and POWER Computers ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 186 Fri Oct 29, 1993 POTECHIN [Nathan @ DMC] at 13:15 EDT We can handle the Photo CD picture, Tintin, by importing it into Calamus and outputting it at high resolution. You could send it to us via modem if you'd like. How large is the file? Do you have Calamus perchance? If so, just create the CDK you want and we'll take it form there. If not, perhaps you can fax us the layout you had in mind? Nathan Potechin - DMC Publishing ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 187 Fri Oct 29, 1993 C.LABELLE [Tintin] at 18:35 EDT Greg, Thanks. I wonder if it is possible to zip a TIFF? then break it up to several floppies? Nathan, No, I don't have Calamus but PageStream instead. I already made the layout for the calendar half, and saved it in Postscript. You see, it's going to be one of those calendar that unfolds. The top sheet is a picture only, and the bottom sheet is the month. So there will be 13 individual pictures that will be full-page. These are causing me problems because of their size. I only have 4MB and no Syquest. I know I should upgrade, but DTP is a side business for me, and until I have more sales, I can't afford the 14MB+Syquest just for this job. So I don't need to bring the Photo CD in DTP. I just need a way to save it in an appropriate format and bring it to a service bureau. I don't know the cost of sending those to you through high-speed modem, I'm sure they will be quite sizeable in TIF format. Tintin ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 188 Fri Oct 29, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 20:06 EDT Tintin: You can ZIP a TIFF, but your mileage may vary. TIFFs can use LZW compression, similar to what's in ZIP (and ARC and LHarc), so you may not get much out of it. If you take a Photo CD image at 3072x2048 and save it in TIFF format, but don't compress it, it will be around 18M. Compressed, it may be between 5M and 10M. As a Photo CD file, it will probably be between 3M and 6M. As far as I know, ST Zip does not handle ZIP files spanned across disks. PKZip for the PC does. -dmj ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 189 Fri Oct 29, 1993 GREG at 22:56 EDT L.W.BENJAMIN: I took the SPIN_DRY program and made a call to it after flipping to true-color overscan, and loading a Photo CD image from disc. Very nice effect. Flipped back to the old resolution when I was done. SPIN_DRY runs as a program under MultiTOS because DMJ followed the rules for updating or stealing screens under MultiTOS. We will have a VIEW_PCD module for View II in the very near future. In fact I've been having a great time clicking and viewing PCD files tonight. It will show a PCD on a Falcon running in any resolution and color depth with anything except a SM124 monochrome monitor. It also will support viewing FTC images too. The images are displayed using all 16 bits of color and maintaining aspect ratios on all three monitor types (RGB, VGA, TV). C.LABELLE: There is a file splitter available in the libraries here. Can anyone tell me the file number and name? It's All Relative ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 190 Sat Oct 30, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 00:15 EDT Greg: One thing to keep in mind is that while Spin Dry is running, multitasking in MTOS is shut off. I didn't do this deliberately, but it is rather a side- effect of the Spin Dry routine running in supervisor mode. -dmj ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 191 Sat Oct 30, 1993 POTECHIN [Nathan @ DMC] at 09:24 EDT Tiff would be your appropriate format then unless your service bureau could take Kodak Photo CD files from you off a CD? In that case, just get the pictures put on CD. If you are speaking of full size 300 dpi color images, the files are definitely going to be LARGE! ;-) Nathan Potechin - DMC Publishing ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 192 Sat Oct 30, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 09:34 EDT Greg, Great minds think alike. I've used VIEW II to look at several pictures and let SPIN_DRY play with them. Neat effects, especially if there is a dither pattern, the spin can cause the pattern to appear to change as it rotates. The PCD module for VIEW II sounds great! If they're still selling Falcons when I can afford one. Damien, Thanks for the info about MTOS and Spin Dry. Take Care, Lee B. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 193 Sat Oct 30, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 10:22 EDT Tintin, Any file, of any kind, can be broken up and put back together again. Theer are a few utilities in the libraries to do that. Al ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 194 Sat Oct 30, 1993 T.ZENTHOEFE1 [Tom Z.] at 13:28 EDT Also K-Mart offers Photo CD processing through Kodalux. ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 197 Sun Oct 31, 1993 L.W.BENJAMIN [Koloth] at 08:13 EST Darlah, Yes, Sam's Club is similar to Price Club or PACE, etc. They all probably offer film developing and Photo CD processing via Kodalux. -KOLOTH ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 198 Sun Oct 31, 1993 DARLAH [RT~SYSOP] at 15:42 EST I find support or knowledge of products in those type of stores at a low. I can see taking film into developing but I think they are only the inbetween person that handles it, don't you think? ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 199 Sun Oct 31, 1993 C.LABELLE [Tintin] at 19:51 EST dmj, Greg, Nathan, Al: I'll call different service bureaux this week. There should be one that accepts Photo CD or a broken TIFF file on diskettes. Thanks a lot. Tintin ------------ Category 7, Topic 9 Message 204 Fri Nov 05, 1993 GREG at 02:39 EST If your a registered owner of Photo Show, a VGA monitor, and ScreenBlaster, leave me E-mail and we will E-mail back a test version of Photo Show for the ScreenBlaster. It will be a small file of about 25K. The interface isn't complete, but we need to test the actual screen output on a variety of VGA monitors. It seems that the true-color modes of ScreenBlaster use everything but a square pixel and we need to make sure aspect ratios are correct before releasing the program. ScreenBlaster does manage to get a sharper, although somewhat smaller, true- color image on the screen than a stock Falcon 030 using a VGA monitor and Photo Show. E-mail to GREG It's All Relative ------------