![[STA Logo]](../sta/sta.gif)
![[STA News]](../sta/news.gif)
French developers Centek have announced the specification of the Phenix, their Atari compatible computer. Unlike other clones that use patched versions of TOS - such as the Medusa and Hades - Centek are working on a new TOS-compatible operating system for the Phenix.
Initial Specification:
Main Features:
Products available now from Centek include CENTurbo I, an easy to fit 25 Mhz CPU and bus Falcon accelerator with 50 Mhz DSP, FPU and Videl hardware switch; and a screen enhancer called CentScreen that gives resolutions of up to 896 x 672 x 16, 66 Hz, or 1024 x 768 x 16, 99 Hz (interlaced) - it also includes a virtual screen, an Energy-Star compatible screen saver, and a mouse accelerator.
Centek 28, rue des Sorbiers 60290 Laigneville France Tel: +33 02 98 93 11 71 Tel/Fax: +33 03 44 71 55 04 yann.lossouarn@uhb.fr
For version 4.6 of Gemulator some of the core parts of the 68000 emulator have been rewritten (these rewrites were necessary for the 68030 support in Gemulator 5) and in general you should notice a 5% to 20% speed increase in most benchmarks compared to Gemulator 4.5, and it should be a good 100% faster than MagiC PC. At the same time a few long standing 68000 emulation bugs have been fixed - so compatibility is even better. If you have an Apple Macintosh emulator such as MagicSac you can fit Mac ROMs into a Gemulator ROM Reader Card and use Gemulator to run some Apple Macintosh software on your PC! More advanced Mac emulation is being worked on for future versions of Gemulator. Gemulator 4.6 now requires 486 or Pentium, it was necessary to drop 386 support.
The Gemulator 4.6 demo now allows you to try out the DirectX mode - besides being full screen, the screen redraws in Direct-X mode are faster and smoother than in windowed mode. The demo now comes with a utility that lets you copy a ROM image from your Atari computer to try it out with Gemulator 96 (copyright restrictions apply). For details of prices and upgrades see the order form on page 21 of this magazine.
PARX are another French developer with so much faith in the future of Atari computing that they are still developing new and innovative Atari software. Their web site features a number of software products that have never been given any exposure in the UK Atari press.
One of the most innovative Atari products developed by PARX is their M&E Plug-In System, a suite of modular tools that can be used by developers who want to avoid re-inventing the wheel for common application facilities. The M&E modules will load, get, save, export, and warp pictures.
RIM (Reading Image) handles 45 formats including Degas, Neochrome, BMP, PCX, TGA, JPEG (with DSP Brainstorm driver), IFF, (X)IMG, ArtDirector, Spectrum512, etc. There are also drivers for grabbing images from peripherals such as handy scanners, Mustek Paragon A4 scanners, digital cameras (FotoMan), or video card such as Vidi-ST12 and Exposé.
WIM (Writing Image) writes all the file formats handled by RIM as well as printing images to printers, including Epson Stylus Colour, Canon BJCxxxx, HPCxxx, and Fargo photographic colour printer.
IFX (Image effects) applies effects like inversion, mathematical matrix, warping, etc.
Memory Manager - an alternative to the Atari Malloc function, with memory expansions (elastic memory), etc.
TRM (TRaMage, dithering in French) module does dithering operations features, including Burke, Stuki, or Floyd-Steinberg, as well as converting between different colour depths.
The PARX development package is available in English and in French. The modules support C and assembly language programs with some GfA Basic support already available and other language support is planned. There are now 45 developers working with the M&E System and you can see examples of the modules in action in applications like D2M, Piccolo, DForm, Sweetel 2, Swiftel, and Bitmap Viewer 4.0 (all available from ftp.cnam.fr).
Rue du Pin Doré 54 Rue des Abbesses F-75018 Paris, France Tel. +33-2.43.56.92.76 Fax +33-2.43.56.80.47 BBS +33-2.43.53.57.70 plamball@parx.fr http://www.parx.fr
There are some sample pages from the PARX web site, plus a full specification of the M&E System on this month's ST Applications OnLine disk.
This new VME Bus hard disk recording card (for TT, Eagle, Medusa, Hades, etc.) was launched last month at the Atari-Fair in Neuss near Dusseldorf in Germany. It features a DSP-extension (with Motorolaxs DSP 56001-33 plus another extension with a DSP 56002-40) and the XLR-extension.
Also available is a Romport card for the Hades, this has three Atari-ST-compatible, switchable cartridge ports - 2 internal and 1 external - and it is compatible with the dongles used by Cubase Audio, Emagic Notator Audio, and other dongle-protected software.
http://members.aol.com/stepwil/index.html email: stepwil@aol.com
Sweet Sixteen is a comprehensive MIDI sequencer for Atari ST and Windows computers that offers features that include Piano Roll, List, and Transform edit pages as well as a dedicated Mixer page you can use for your favourite synthesizer. Two versions are freely available: 1) A demo version which is a complete version of Sweet Sixteen with all file saving disabled, and 2) A lite version which lets the user save files but certain other functions are disabled.
You can download the Atari versions from the Roni Music home page or get them on FaST Club disk MU.509. The full version is available direct from Roni Music.
Roni Music Nybogatan 21, S-212 32 Malmoe, Sweden Tel: +46-40+494411 roni@mbox317.swipnet.se http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-11396
The latest beta version of Imagecopy 4CD is available now. The upgrade is supplied as a patch file (IC401B6.ZIP) that is available from the 'imagecopy' topic in our CiX conference, from the ST Applications web pages, or on FaST Club disk NW.70.
New features:
Makeup, the program that we use to make the upgrade patches for Imagecopy is now freely available. Makeup generates patches that can be used to update program or data files. Makeup creates UPD files which can be installed using Update (this is included with Makeup and is also available separately). The latest version, 1.02, adds support for drag and drop and also responds to AP_TERM events (under MagiC and MultiTOS).
Makeup and Update can be downloaded from our CiX conference or you can get a copy on FaST Club disk NW.70.
Beta release 6 is available now, here's a summary of the new features.
You can get it from: http://www.i-way.co.uk/~c_graham/files.html c_graham@patrol.i-way.co.uk and on FaST Club disk UT.222
Floppyshop have dropped the prices on quite a few of their commercial software products.
EZ-Art Professional £10.00
Easy Stitch £10.00
Family Roots 2 £15.00
Easy Text Pro/Pro Vector £19.95
Oases Multitasking OS £22.00
Oases Developer's Kit £14.00
The Floppyshop PhotoScan service can now digitize pictures from slides and negatives as well as prints. There are some sample scans available from Floppyshop or for download from their new website.
Floppyshop, PO Box 273, Aberdeen AB15 8GJ. Tel: 01224 312756 sdelaney@steil.wintermute.co.uk http://www.netkonect.net/tachyon/flopshop/
The OMEn Multitasking Environment is now known as Oases. Oases includes some smart new features, including Interactive Author, a full multimedia authoring suite. There is a demo of Oases version 3.40 that does everything that the full version can but is limited to only being able to save files smaller than 1Kb, get it from Floppyshop, download from the web, or get a copy on FaST Club disk UT.223. OASES is an operating system that works on the MAC, ST, Falcon -- and a PC version is being developed. All programs made for OASES will work on any computer running the OASES operating system.
There is even a UK Oases User that provides a disk magazine that can be downloaded from their BBS (Athena BBS, 01959-563-968 weekdays 5pm - 10pm, weekend 7am - 11pm) or ordered on disk for £1.50 from the OASES Club. There is a help line between 5pm and 9pm weekdays, and 11am and 10pm at weekends on (0802) 968395 or (0802) 96 WIZO.
Oases User Club Orchard Cottage Court Lodge Westerham TN16 2DH rstreet@mettav.demon.co.uk
Caldera, the new owners of GEM, the part of the TOS operating system that was licensed by Atari from Digital Research, are planning to release the source code to GEM for free non-commercial use. The initial plan is to release just the sources to the PC version of GEM along with the sources for DR-DOS and Novell DOS 7. GEM for the PC could start to challenge the new Compact Edition of Windows, and DR-DOS is expected to be renamed OpenDOS and will be freely distributable. 32-bit versions of DR-DOS and PC GEM may be developed, but it's difficult to see how they can compete with the near total market saturation of Windows and Linux.
GEM made its first big appearance on the Amstrad PC but legal action from Apple crippled the PC version of GEM while Atari managed to keep the Mac-like ST version of GEM unchanged. This re-launch of GEM doesn't appear to have any useful implications for Atari users, though it may encourage some developers to release PC GEM version of Atari GEM software.
To register your support for the release of all GEM sources, including the Atari stuff, send an email to
geneb@web.wa.net
The Hades 68040/060 TOS based computer is now available from System Solutions.
Hades 040 64Mhz/4MB/1000IDE/ PCI ET4000 - £1995 inc. VAT
Hades 060 50Mhz/4MB/1000IDE/ PCI ET4000 - £2395 inc. VAT
The latest version of the System Solutions hard drive software package has a much re-worked interface, easier to use and more intelligently grouped functions. There is now a highly configurable disk formatting mode -- including support for media with different physical sector sizes, like magno-optical drives. The partitioning has been revamped so that you can now create DOS/Atari compatible partitions, delete individual partitions, repair partitions, etc. In addition there is a new Auto Configuration option, which automatically tells the driver which devices are connected to your computer.
If you're upgrading from an earlier version of HD Driver there are even more new features:
HD Driver v6 - £29.95
Upgrade from v3 to v6 - £20
Upgrade from v4/5 to v6 - £15.00
Tel: 0181-693-3355 Fax: 0181-693-6936
Version 5 of MagiC adds long filename support, multithreading, an improved desktop and file selector, support for up to 128 concurrent programs and windows and compatibility with DOS hard disk partitions.
Upgrade from v2 - £39.95
Upgrade from v4 - £19.95
MagiC v5 - £69.95
Donald A. Thomas, Jr. who wrote the Did you hear anyone say Goodbye? resume on the end of Atari (STA67) has followed up with a piece about the state of the video games industry.
"So who is buying these great new video games in stores today? Do none of these people watch television or read newspapers? Why is it that the video game industry is so huge, but new product releases and great top-notch programmers hardly ever rate in the entertainment sections? Where is Warren Robinett lately? Who's he dating? Is he married? Children? Why isn't he ever in the celebrity round-up section of USA Today? (Please don't tell me you don't know who he is. You'll really make me sob.)"
The rest is on this month's ST Applications OnLine disk.
Ray Cross of CGS ComputerBild was at the recent AppleExpo exhibiting a range of Mac software, including Future Splash web animation software. At the same exhibition Jeremy Hughes was pleased to see his work at SoftPress (www. softpress.com) bear fruit when their page layout package, UniQorn, won an award.
Andrew Wright (aw@dial. pipex.com) has followed up his career with Atari User, ST Review, Computer Shopper, and Atari World with a sideways move into the post of Features Editor on the EMAP magazine Boat Fishing.
Release 005 of Geneva is now available as a downloadable patch program. The upgrade includes new version of GenevaRun, a shareware program launcher, plus a demo of the Geneva Macro Editor 2.0. The Macro Editor works with Geneva so that you can easily create and edit macros to automate typing and mouse movements. Macros can now be started automatically at predefined dates and times, and even repeated periodically.
The upgrade patch and the demo version of Geneva can be obtained from the Gribnif web site or on FaST Club disk NW.84. Also on this disk are Neodesk 4 Secrets and Geneva Secrets - sets of hints and tips on getting the best from Neodesk and Geneva.
Gribnif Software Tel: (413) 532-2434 gribnif@pair.com http://www.pair.com/gribnif/
In the UK Gribnif products are handled by Titan Designs (0121-693-6669)
The British Film Institute have started a video game archive, and since appealing to the public for old games last April they have received a staggering response. If you think you have a game the Archive might want, write to Tony Hetherington at the BFI.
To get a hands-on experience of older computer games you should pay a visit to The Museum of the Moving Image to see their 'Re-Play' exhibition. The exhibition not only recounts gaming history but also presents visitors with a chance to play old favourites. Designed to appeal both to gaming fans and non-fans alike, the exhibition explores how games are programmed and designed, investigates their variety, and assesses their social impact. The exhibition is open until 15th May 1997.
British Film Institute 21 Stephen Street, London, W1P 2LN Tel: 0171 957 8919
Systems For Tomorrow has obtained a limited quantity of new 19" Monochrome TT monitors and is selling them at just $299!
Tel: (816)833-4738 Fax: (816)252-3611 sft@sound.net 11006 East Winner Rd Independence MO 64052 USA
In the latest issue of Sound On Sound magazine there are a number of adverts for new C-Lab Falcon MkII computers with 16Mb RAM, a 540Mb HD and Cubase Audio 16 for an amazingly cheap £499. Contact Carlsboro in Norwich (01603 666891) or Sheffield (0114 264 0000).
The Swedish Atari Club NoCrew are organising another Nordic Atari Show for Friday, June 13 until Sunday, June 15. Planned events include: exhibitions by dealers, distributors, shareware programmers, a swap meet, a soldering-corner for getting simple repairs done, a Hackers Hall, and competitions like "A-Z on the Keyboard", network games, juggling, and hard disk throwing.
To find out more about the show there is a mailing list that you can join by sending a "subscribe nas-users" email to nas-users-request@tripnet.se. There is also a full run-down on the planned events on this month's ST Applications OnLine disk.
www.tripnet.se/sak/nas STraight BBS on +46 31-336 39 73
There is a collection of photographs of never released Atari hardware on the Atari Vapourware web site. The site is run by an Atari owner who has two prototype ST Pad Stylus pen-driven computers and he is on the lookout for technical data and spare parts for them and pictures of any other Atari hardware that never made it into production.
http://members.aol.com/Cvendel/vaporware.html cvendel@aol.com
The Wessex Atari Group web pages have been revamped recently; check them out at:
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/rgoring/wag/
Being rather disappointed about Hensa, I have been looking around for other places to download from. I found a French site providing a fairly up to date selection of Atari software. Anybody with a browser can easily download from CNAM since it based on sets of ordinary web pages. CNAM is the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a large technical university in France. (Paul Dion)
http://web.cnam.fr/Comp/Atari/
As suppliers of new Atari software fall by the wayside there is a growing interest in the second-hand market for software and hardware. In the UK, 16/23 Systems have a regular mailing of discontinued and hard to find Atari kit. In the USA Bravo Sierra Computers supply classic Atari 8-bit and ST hardware, software, books and accessories.
16/32 Systems 173 High Street Strood ME2 4TW Tel: 01634 710788 nharlow@cix.compulink.co.uk 16_32@premier.co.uk Bravo Sierra Computers Tel: 503-256-9974 bensmith@teleport.com ftp.teleport.com/vendors/bensmith/ www.teleport.com/~bensmith/bscomputers.shtml
Afterburner040 owners now have a mailing list for the support of their machines. The list is maintained by Johan Klockars of MGIF fame.
To join the list send an email the word 'subscribe' as the subject to:
falcon040-request@rand.thn.htu.se Postings to the list should go to: falcon040@rand.thn.htu.se
There is a new version of the phone cost logging utility CoSTa. Version 1.50 now supports Semper, the new STiK dialler from Peter Rottengatter.
Gary Priest gary@the-gap.demon.co.uk http://www.the-gap.demon.co.uk/
This is a numerical analysis program with 3D modelling of mathematical shapes that has been developed by French Atari fan Francois le Coat. With Eureka it is easy to make movies that show the evolution of a formulae in 3D - rotating, morphing from one shape to another, etc. Data files can be loaded so that you can manipulate series, or even have stereo/mono sample files manipulating sounds. Images can be produced using formulae such as the Julia or Madelbrot set fractal equations. You can even map these images onto a 3D surface.
Eureka can export 3D2 Raw and VRML data so that you can see virtual reality demonstrations of objects, and movies or images produced with Persistence Of Vision.
The latest English version of Eureka is available for download, and on FaST Club disk NW.85.
http://www.ief.u-psud.fr/~lecoat/ ftp://ftp.cnam.fr/pub/Atari/Applications lecnmoat@ief.u-psud.fr
Issue 39 The Atari Programmer's User Group magazine ICTARI is now available online at:
http://www.elis.demon.co.uk/
The Czech Portfolio User Group have moved their web pages to a new site. They can supply both software and hardware for Portfolio computers, and if you are into long-distance transactions they can also do repairs and upgrades.
http://www.port-home.com
The latest version of NoCrew's MPEG Audio PLayer II real-time DSP player for the Falcon is out now. New features in version 0.95 include:
It can be downloaded from:
http://noring.org/mp2 ftp://ftp.nocrew.pp.se/pub/nocrew/
or you can get a copy on FaST Club disk NW.86
For a great collection of Mpeg-format music files check out:
http://www.iuma.com ftp://ftp.iuma.com
The biggest ever issue of AtariPhile is available for download from CiX and the 42BBS, or on two DD disks (IN.704 and IN.705); this magazine is also available to ftp from:
ftp.netkonect.co.uk/pub/atari/atariphile
This issue sees Domhnall Dods join Kev and Colin on the editorial staff, Joe Connor and Kev Beardsworth take a look at replacement desktops, and Martyn Tidd has written an excellent article on Multitasking (MagiC 5 and Geneva 05). Owen Philp now has a new regular feature - MidiPhile, Keith Turner-Cairns [of Cubase CD fame] has written an article on Scoring on Cubase, and David J. Williams starts a new series of articles to help you to get the best Music In MIDI.
On the review side they have Papyrus 4 as an upgrade, the Infopedia CD encyclopedia, and the final part of the Positive Image review. There is a preview of Videlity, the very impressive screen enhancer from Black Scorpions and a pre-preview sneak look at an Apex Alpha screenshot.
Dave Munsie has moved onto developing games for the PC and has decided that his entire range of shareware ST games can now be released as freeware. This means that the pre-registered versions of Asterodia, Frantik and Square Off that used to be exclusively available from LAPD are now available at normal PD disk prices.
The latest version of Papyrus -- probably the last Atari wordprocessor still being developed (not quite, see below, Ed.) -- now offers full colour support for creating and printing documents in colour. Papyrus 4.25 uses the HiSoft EFMS system of modular load/save modules to give support for graphic files in IMG, GIF, TIFF, JPEG and Targa formats. This version of papyrus is also faster at handling long documents and searching, and the limit on the number of vector fonts that can be used has been lifted.
HiSoft now have the demo version of the English version of Papyrus 4.25 on their web pages, and it is also available on FaST Club Disk WP.507.
HiSoft Tel: 01525-718181 http://www.hisoft.co.uk/products/atari/
Protext for the ST is back on the market. Version 6.6 features improved graphics printing and support for printing colour graphics, a new manual, print preview, auto-correction, and lots more. There will be a full resume of the new features in the next issue of ST Applications.
Because all customer records went astray when the distribution of Protext was sold to Compo Software there isn't an upgrade option for existing users - but the good news is that the price for Protext is now just £49.95.
Protext Software Harrowden, 39 High Street Sutton, Ely, CB6 2RA Tel. 01353-777006 cam1@cix.compulink.co.uk
There are now two aids to make it easier for Atari users to create HTML pages for the www.
Home Page Penguin is a wizard-style tool that can generate pages without the user knowing anything about HTML - just fill in the dialog boxes and you will end up with a page of text, pictures and links.
WebSpinner is a much more comprehensive package that generates lines of HTML code from the data that you enter into its dialog boxes - saving the user having to learn the syntax for all HTML commands. WebSPinner is a shareware demo that requires a £5 registration before you can use it to save your HTML files to disk.
Both tools are available on FaST Club disk NW.87.
The CyberSTrider fee for registering ESS-Code and MasterBrowse is now just £5.00, a drop of £9.
MasterBrowse is a text browser with various powerful search and cut-and-paste features. ESS-Code is a file encoder that will encode and decode files in UUEncode, Mime/Base 64, Ship and BTOA formats. It can also split and join files into user definable segments -- useful for taking home large files you have downloaded on your work computer.
Version 5 of UDO is now available in English. UDO is a software that converts its own format into ASCII, ST-Guide, Pure C Help, LaTeX, HTML, Texinfo, Windows Help, Turbo Vision Help, Manualpage and RTF. UDO is shareware and available for TOS, DOS, Linux (next week) and HP-UX. It's now available via WWW:
http://members.aol.com/UDOENG/index.htm http://www2.wildnet.co.uk/~dbhabuta/support.html micros.hensa.ac.uk:/micros/atari/tos/q/q182/ Or on FaST Club disk WP.206
After a series of disruptions, when Danny moved house and took up a new job, the CyberSTrider shareware scheme is now back up to full speed and registrations and emails are being dealt with promptly.
www.cyberstrider.org danenesh@cyberstrider.org
Version 2.51e of Kandinsky is out now. Kandinsky is a shareware vector graphics art package that creates GEM Metafiles using GDOS (or alternative). Kandinsky has enhanced feature under NVDI , supports multitasking, clipboard, Drag&Drop, Freedom, iconify, Calamus CVG and PostScript, AV, XAcc, MyDials, OLGA and font selector protocols. New and changed features compared with v2.50e include:
The regsistered version of Kandinsky costs £30 via InterActive (£16 for upgrades), the shareware version is on FaST Club disk GR.206.
The Atari web browser CAB is still being developed by Alexander Clauss and the next version is expected to have full support for frames. Keep an eye on his web pages for availability details.
http://www.student.infomatik.th-darmstadt.de/~aclauss/iak_e.html
One way around the dreaded "Runtime 163 Errors" that CAB throws up with tiresome regularity when accessing some sites appears to be to use an annonymizer service. Try:
www.anonymizer.com (Web Page) www.anonymizer.com/open.html (To just type in any URL) www.anonymizer.com:8080/ftp://ftp.cnam.fr/pub/Atari (direct to cnam)
The registration fee for the ToDo list manager has dropped from £13 to £10.
Version 2 of Freedom is now available in German, the English version is being worked on. The registration is £36.00, or £21 if you are already a registered user of version 1.
InterActive 65 Mill Road Colchester CO4 5LJ 01206-852602 jconnor@cix.compulink.co.uk www.compulink.co.uk/~inactive/
![[Next Article]](../sta/next.gif)
![[Back to Contents Page]](../sta/back_c.gif)
