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The really sad news of this is, along with Specialist Magazines, COMPO
Software [UK] Limited has also gone into receivership. Neal O'nions,
the man behind both companies has put a lot of time and effort into
the Atari market and dispite what the loss of the magazine and one of
the top UK soft/hardware suppliers means to us, we would like to spare
a thought for Neal during what must be a very hard time.
This new policy has enabled Mike to reduce the price of his products;
e.g. his PD Disks are now £1.50 each [£1.25 for subscribers].
There are many old favourites on offer at very special prices. Send an
SAE to Goodman's PDL, 16 Conrad Close, Meir Hay Estate, Longton,
Stoke-on-Trent, ST3 1SW, for a full list, but here are a few examples:
And there's more...
Micro French takes the beginner again up to GCSE standard using 24
programs of spoken and written French. Passages used are taken from
newspapers and signs found in France. Micro German takes the same
approach as Micro French with the German language.
Micro English takes the eight year old to GCSE standard (Crikey do I
need that!) starting with simple spelling and punctuation up to
understanding and appreciating literature. Micro Science covers the
same age range as Micro English and covers Physics, Chemistry and
Biology following the National Curiculum.
There are four modules available in the Kids Academy range. Alvin's
Puzzles suitable for six to eight year olds, Paint Pot 2 for ages four
to ten, six to eight year olds are covered with the shopping Basket
and Which? Where? What? Is great for age ranges four to eight.
Mike is also selling the whole Play and Read series. Titles include
Prof Plays A New Game, Prof Looks At Words, Prof Makes Sentences and
Prof Hunts For Words. Pepe's Garden contains programs suitable for
children between the ages of three and seven. They are graphically
based and the program titles are Garden Games, Paint Pot, Counting
Corner, Alphabet Tree and Creepers.
The famous Magic Story book from Richard Dunn can also be purchased
along with Let's Spell 500. The Three Bears, Magic Maths, Maths Mania,
Better Spelling and Better Maths are titles from School Software LTD.
Contact Mike Goodman on 01782-335650
Designed to compliment Apex edia it's painting capabilities far exceed
the paint functions found in its forerunner. As well as the usual
tools found in a normal Art program you will also find the following
included:
Apex 3 is expected to retail at a price of £99.00 including VAT and
carriage in the UK. If the hardware modification is bought at the same
time as Apex 3 it will cost about £29.95 but this price is yet to be
confirmed.
For further information contact David Encill on 0121-693 6669.
From an open message on CiX
The new pack contains the latest CAB, STiK and CAB.OVL.. all three
which have been improved in some way or another. PPP support in STiK
will hopefully be in the next release of STiK as the routines are half
implemented.
This new release will also see the inclusion of an easy installation
program (programmed by Guy Harrison - swampdog) for STiK.. and there
will be a bigger faq and more scripts to play with.
Also of note is that with this release, the Internet Access Pack is no
more in regard to registrations. It was getting a bit silly and messy
trying to keep track of how much money had to go where.. so from now
on, you will have to register for each component of the WWW pack with
the respective registration point/author.
This means that CAB registrations will go to Joe Connor [InterActive]
directly, and STiK and CAB.OVL ones will come directly to Denesh
Bhabuta [CyberSTrider]. Config program ones will go directly to Guy...
The seperate components will also be archived seperately but the WWW
pack will also be updated as a whole when there are significant
changes to any of the software, although small changes will only be
updated in seperate archives... so for latest versions you are better
off getting them seperately.
Another thing.. STiK is going up in price.. from £2 to £5.
Currently registered users are encouraged and expected to pay the
upgrade fee.
So please hold on to your registrations till the new release for more
detailed info on how to register and how much... I will not be sending
v1.16 out to anyone anymore.
1. The Ultimate Cubase CD-ROM
What has 605 MBs of information, spread across 240 drum loops, 1200
samples, 300 MIDI files and much, much more? Simple. The Ultimate Cubase
CD-ROM.
This awesome CD-ROM is packed with useful files for any musician, but it's
specially tailored to be the ultimate companion for Cubase - on any
platform. All the loops, samples and MIDI files are of professional
quality, covering a vast range of musical styles and tastes.
The loop and samples are available in the standard AIFF format, ideal for
Cubase Audio and the MIDI files are all GM compatible. In addition there
are mixer maps, device drivers and a whole host of other useful files.
And it doesn't end there. The CD-ROM also contains utility software for the
Atari, Macintosh and IBM PC. Everything from patch editors to sample
librarians to audio calculators is included to make the Cubase musician's
life easier.
2. The Atari Compendium - on CD-ROM
An adventurous foray into electronic media has produced The Atari
Compendium [see our
System Solutions now offer you the chance to buy these hard disk drives
from the people who know about your Falcon. Each drive includes a 2.5" to
3.5" connector cable kit, as well as a power supply cable (soldering
required). The 1GB drive is £249, the 1.6GB drive £299 and the 2GB drive
£359.
8. ATARI 6 Speed CD-ROM
System Solutions are now selling 6 Speed CD-ROM drives to go with their
CD-ROM Cartridge Interface. This is a simple way to connect ATAPI (IDE)
compatible CD-ROM drives to any Atari computer, via the cartridge port. You
don't need a SCSI host adapter, although if you already have one you can
still use this cartridge interface. As it's going straight through the
cartridge port data throughput is *very* fast.
All of System Solutions' ATAPI CD-ROM Kits are designed to be complete
packages. They include a boxed drive, the CD-ROM Cartridge, software
(including an AudioCD player), all the required cables and the Mega Archive
2 CD-ROM. The software and drives, are multi-speed, multi-session, AudioCD
and PhotoCD compatible.
The brand new 6 Speed CD-ROM Kit costs £249, including VAT. The 4 Speed Kit
is £229 and the 2 Speed Kit is £189.
9. SCSI CD-ROM SPECIAL OFFER!
For a limited period only System Solutions are offering 3.4 Speed SCSI
CD-ROM drives for the blisteringly low price of £239. These boxed, external
devices are built around the excellent Toshiba CD-ROM mechanism and offer
multi-session, AudioCD and PhotoCD compatibility. Included in the price are
all the required cables (SCSI 2 and power) and the Mega Archive 2 CD-ROM.
Stocks are limited so hurry to take advantage of this limited offer.
[I kinda wondered about that "3.4 Speed", so I asked for
confirmation. Indeed they are 3.4 Speed (three point four)
Toshiba drives. FFF]
For more info send an sae to Alasdair Goold, RoisBheinn, Overton
Crescent, Johnstone, Strathclyde. PA5 8JB
"Atari Corporation and JTS Corporation today agreed to merge the two
companies. Atari is the pioneer in multimedia video entertainment and
JTS is a manufacturer of computer disk drives."
The chairmen of Atari Jack Tramial said of the merger "This merger
puts us in a great position to capitalise on a very experienced
management team and a rapidly growing disk drive market. JTS is using
innovative technology, particularly in the 3 inch disk drive market
and we are excited about its prspects."
Tom Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of JTS also
commented by saying "Our partnership gives us the ability to expand
out capabilities and pursue new opportunities. Dataquest has predicted
that 115 million disk drives units will be shipped world wide in 1996
and it is a great time for us to be participating in this market."
Under the terms of the agreement the new company will operate under
the name of JTS. Atari and the JTS disk drive businesses will operate
separately inside the new company. A $25,000,000 bridging loan has
been extended to JTS by Atari. Atari stockholders will hold about 60%
of the shares in the new company. The merger is expected to be
finalised in the second calendar quarter of 96. It will not be
confirmed until shareholder and regulatory approvals and other
condition are carried out.
JTS was founded in 1994 and they develop and manufacture hard disk
drives. They have recently launched a 3 inch drive for use with
portable computers. Their headquarters are in San Jose California with
their manufacturing facilities based in India. They employ 1300 people
world wide.
The JTS management team includes some famous names in the computer
industry. Jugi Tandon will become chairmen of the board. He is well
known for developing innovative products in the computer storage
industry. Tom Mitchell was co-founder of Seagate Technology. He was
also the president and chief of operations of both Seagate and Conner
Peripherals. Both famous names in the Peripherals market.
What does this merger mean for Jag owners and Atari Europe? Kev
Beardsworth spoke to
Peter Walker the man responsible for Atari's PR in this country. He
assured us that there would be no changes in the foreseeable future.
All announced Jaguar games will be released as promised. On the
subject of new Jaguar games he future is not as bleak as past rumours
suggest. Mr Walker said that Atari are watching the console market
very closely and as Jaguar prices are now below £100 they feel well
poised should the console market place really take off. Another Atari
spokesman put it this way "We're not closing anything, Jaguar will be
supported for the time being and new software will be launched for it
in time for Christmas. If it sells in 1996 it will be maintained well
into the future."
Going by Atari's past record we'll just have to wait and see. The new
company will be called JTS Atari.
If anyone's interested in taking over the full time running and
ownership of Power PD they should send their offers to 3 Salisbury
Road, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 2TY.
Just to prove Top Byte say what they mean two new products will be
launched in the near future. The first is called Computer History.
It's a three disk product containing details of over 1500 different
computers. You can search for a particular computer and find out when
they were made, their specifications, their uses and their history
among other details. The information is accessed through custom
written shell and will retail for £11.99. It requires 2 megabytes of
memory. Kyrptonite Data is the second. Described as a cross between a
shoot 'em up and a sci-fi flight simulator. You have to control a tank
or plane and try to save fellow humans from kidnapping evil alien
hordes. It's in 3D and contains some of the fastest routines of this
type ever on the ST. It will cost £19.99 and should be available
within the next month.
Despite there being
no "official" notification as yet we can tell you the sad news that
Specialist Magazines Limited, the publishers of Atari World, are in
the hands of the receivers. This means that issue 11 was the last to
be published. While this is very sad news for all Atari owners there
are strong rumours that the title may be purchased by a consortium
headed by Karl Brandt of System Solutions. Hopefully we will have some
more news on this by issue #2 of AtariPhile.
ATARI WORLD CLOSES
Goodman's PDL have announced a new pricing
policy for all the products they supply. They are now making a two
tier postage/packing charge. £1.25 will be charged for orders under
£19.00 and £2.50 will be charged on orders above £19.00. These charges
are "per order" not per item.
GOOD NEWS FROM GOODMAN'S PDL
Goodman's PDL now have a wide variety of educational packages available.
Starting with several in the LCL course range. The Primary Maths
Course covers ages three to twelve and is made up of 24 programs. Next
comes the Micro Maths course. Designed to take the user from simple
topics such as averages and ercentages all the way up to vectors and
matrices. The idea behind this course is to take the eleven year old
up to GCSE standards. The topics covered are common to all examining
boards.
Black Scorpion Software have announced a new
Art Package called strangely, Apex 3. Why strangely? Well from the
name you could be mistaken from thinking that Apex 3 was an upgrade to
Apex Media but you would be wrong. Apex 3 is a stand alone art package
in its own right.
APEX 3
Apex 3 will run on any Falcon and will take full advantage of any
hardware modifications available such as the BlowUp FX card. With this
in mind Black Scorpion have, at the prototype stage a cheaper
alternative to the FX. The modification should be easier to fit
(Scorpion say most people should be able to carry out the refinement).
It will accelerate the Bus and CPU to a speed of 24Mhz and push the
DSP up to 48Mhz. Apex Meda and Expose users will also benefit from
this hardware modification especially where DSP operations are
performed. There will also be an increase in Expose's capture rate.
Figures of 25 frames a second at 256x160 are being quoted.
Some news that you
have all been waiting for... A new WWW
pack has been released.
ATARI WWW PACKAGE
System Solutions have a
plethora of new releases this month. You can get in touch with
them on 0181-693 3355 or aim your browser at http://www.ssolutions.com.
NEWS FROM SYSTEM SOLUTIONS
The WeST of Scotland Atari User Group, a new
Atari user group formed after the Atari World shows in December have
had their first meeting. Held at the Railway Inn Howwood on
Tuesday the 20th of February it was a great success. Dates for future
meetings are as follows: 19th March, 16th April, 14th May, 11th June,
9th July, 6th August, 3rd September, 1st October, 29th October and the
26th November. There will be no meeting in December and the AGM will
be held on the 21st January 1997.
WSAUG's FIRST MEETING
Rumours of an Atari Merger were confirmed on
February the 13th when Atari released the following statement.
ATARI MERGER
James Mattews has closed Power PD to
concentrate on his commercial company Top Byte Software. This will
give Top Byte more time to focus attention on the development and
release of new commercial titles. They feel the Atari market needs
another commercial supplier more than it needs another PD libray. Top
Byte stress they are still 100% Atari and will be for a long time to
come.
POWER PD CLOSES
BATTLE BOWLS ![[Screenshot]](battlebo.gif)
Frontier Software will make available from
March a new game called Battle Bowls. It's for the STe and Falcon
and is designed to be the most "attractive reflection game ever on the
Atari computer". Designers say it will push your brain to its limits.
Mastery of your joystick will also be essential to win the challenge.
It can be played by one or two competitors and includes over 100
levels. Features included are: 32 colours on screen, two megabytes of
arcade quality graphics, over 300 sprites, 600 kilobytes of sounds and
music, a fully animated intro sequence and smooth animation. Prices
and release dates have yet to be announced.
Are you going on a cycling holiday in Scotland
this year? If so Harry Henniker may be able to help you. Using his
trusty ST and a copy of That's Write 3 he's just published a 230 plus
page book detailing 101 cycle routes around Scotland. The publishers
are Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) LD, 7 Albany Street,
Edinburgh, EH1 3UG. The ISBN is 1 85158 758 3.
101 BIKE ROUTES IN SCOTLAND
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