In This Issue Editors Doormat Optical Storage

Opening the Box Buying an Amiga

Crossword Monitor or Modulator

Port amp Preferences Review -- British Electronics Week

Which Harddisk Review -- The Contractors Show

Review - PC User Show What is the Amiga

Boffins Backroom Motorola 68000 Assembly Language Part 1

The Joy of C -- Part 1 The Amiga and the Small Business Man

Sales amp Wants Read amp Write

ChipChat

EDITORS DOORMAT

WELCOME that is what doormats have written on them and they are found on the threshold This page is the doormat to our magazine as you will have to pass over it to enter

We hope that you will find us better value for money than some of the Amiga glossies on sale in the newsagents this is because all our contributors except the guest contributor are Amiga owners who want to share their knowledge with you Glossies have to make a profit where we are quite happy to break even

As this is our first issue we will begin by telling you a little about ourselves

Tony Miller more of him later is an Amiga enthusiast ever since he bought one of the first MOOs released in this country It was a case of good - bye to

the old Commodore 128 hello new friend A little later he bought a Modem and by using the terminal emulator he found on the Extras disk he started to explore the world of communications Unfortunately or rather fortunately for all current 01- 4 - Amiga BBs users he found that services such as Microlink and TelecomGold all wanted cash for their use Tony decided to start his own board for people who were obviously in the same boat ie had just spent their last penny on their computer and had no more for anything fancy

Thus 01 for Amiga was born

It soon became one of the most popular boards for Amiga comms users

in this country and some from abroad 01 and Tony became synonymous and much sought after Like all good things the board grew and became too large to handle alone It was decided that the small group of people involved in its running would form their own User Group to pool knowledge and skills the Amiga Meditators were then formed

We then decided we wanted to make all our information available to non-modem Amiga owners How A magazine was going to be the only way we could convey the amount of information that we had a small newsletter was just not going to be big enough The success of our magazine depends on you The more subscribers we have the more we can offer Have a look through this inaugural edition and if you like what you see then please dont hesitate to Jam the Amiga Meditators Dont worry because we are London based we have already got many members who live all over the country

And now a short bit on each of this editions contributors

Bill Moore Born and educated m New

Zealand Bill has worked for a number of companies in the electronics and allied industries He has programmed the 6800 6809 and 8501 series of chips in both high level and assembler languages as well as mainframes and microprocessors When not in front of his Amiga Bill is keen amateur Astronomer He is currently the Chief

Scientist for a major electronics company

Richard Hartschorn Born in Leicester Richard attended

Birmingham University taking a course in electronics An active amateur programmer he specializes in Z80 and 68000 assembler His other hobby is Guinness Richard works for a small company in Essex that manufactures refrigerated equipment

Ken Wallace Belfast bred Ken attended the North

London Polytechnic where he gained an HNC in Advanced Electronics Further studies at University College London with the Physics and Astronomy support group led to a career in industry He ran his own consultancy in electronics for seven years then joined a company with a household name in domestic electronic equipment as Chief Electrical Engineer

David Ward A true East Londoner David was to

have followed a career in Photographic Science but the necessary grades eluded him After working in the quality control department for an internationally renowned photographic company he was invited to work for the Rank Organization This is where he was first introduced to computers and production controlled by micro processors He now works for an optical equipment company

Tony Miller Born in the South of England he

soon moved to Grimsby Took Maths and Physics at A level with intention of taking a degree in Computer Science but was lured into joining the Police After many exciting adventures he started his own company in Desk Top Publishing later becoming an Amiga consultant The 01 for Amiga bulletin board soon followed and now he is one of the most sought after Amiga personalities in Great Britain

Pete Symes Born in London Pete left school

at the age of sixteen to start a 5 year apprenticeship with a world renowned gunmaking company He has since achieved the status of ffMaster Gunmaker and has now formed his own business His hobbies include motor - racing computers and becoming comatose at parties but not necessarily in that order

Optical storage

Is this the end of the floppy disk

by David Ward

Reading through the pre - production version of 01 FOR AMIGA I noticed that optical storage devices were getting a fair amount of coverage Consequently this inaugural issue is now our first special dedicated to optical storage

There are several reports in circulation at the moment concerning the growth and marketing of optical storage Each one comes to its own conclusions regarding market size by 19923

A report by Frost amp Sullivan of New York only $990 if you want to order your own copy predicts a market of $1 billion by 1992 This breaks down into $630 million for the drives and $330 million for disks

A group nearer to home BIS Mackintosh of Luton have looked at the present size of the market for imagedocument systems currently $680 million They estimate this to rise to $3 billion by 1992 The US accounts for half the worldwide sales of these systems at the moment but Europe is expected to exceed this by 1992

At the moment there is no set standard for an optical memory system they are magneto - optical phase change and bump - forming media

A magneto - optical disk uses spots whose direction of magnetization changes when heated by a laser This magnetic alignment can then be read in the usual way with a magnetic reading head

Phase - change disks use a medium that crystallizes or decrystallizes at a

particular temperature A laser is used to write or erase the heat of the beam altering the state of the medium at a spot An optical reading head is used It will only detect light reflected from a crystallized spot

In the bump - forming system there are two lasers each set at a different wavelength The disk is made up of two materials dyed to absorb the different coloured light emitted by the lasers To write the lower layer of the disk is heated and as it expands it forms a bump To erase the top layer is heated and softened the lower layer then pulls on it and so the bump disappears Light is only reflected from flat surfaces by an optical reading head

Optical disks are currently nowhere near the versatility of existing magnetic media They have to be erased before overwriting can take place this is a very slow process They are also slow at retrieving data and the mechanisms they use are costly to manufacture The disks themselves are cheaper in terms of pound per Mb than equivalent numbers of magnetic disks Research into overcoming these problems is now underway and in the next four years we can expect to see some of them solved

Workstations and PCs used for graphic applications will be the first to utilise the optical recording systems due to plug compatibility and easy acceptance They will replace the large memories required for CADCAM

and DTP Only later will their storage This is equivalent to more than 1000 capability be used when an accepted magnetic tapes The autochanger takes standard format has been set Their low up eight square feet of floor space I cost high capacity and size make them think 1000 tapes would take ideal replacements for tape and the considerably more Five of these larger hard disks used by main frames devices can be connected to one SCSI The Sony corporation have already interface produced a disk auto changer with a capacity of 50 disks giving a total storage of 164 Gb

Comparisons between 5 14 inch systems

Av access time Data transfer rate Capacity

Floppy disk lOOms 250 Kbs 15 Mb

Hard disk 25ms 1500 Kbs 200 Mb

Optical Disk 195ms 250 Kbs 650 Mb

Magstores optical disk and DAT tape systems (see British Electronics week review)

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ELECTRONIC ARTS

OPENING THE BOX

by

John King

Right youve just got home from the Commodore Show with your new Amiga You can breathe a sigh of relief now because you werent mugged on the tube but wait did you get a box of blank discs Tut tut

Here are a few tips for those of you who havent bought the beast just yet

Firstly buy some good quality branded discs at least 20 to start with and a box to store them in I know this is going to be expensive but you take my advice its worth it You have got the machine all set up and the manual instructs you to make copies of the discs you were supplied with you didnt buy any and its Sunday afternoon Buying discs that have no names on and are only 75p each is not a good idea You dont want to lose a program thats taken two hours to type in just because the disc will not validate Make two copIes of everything the original is best put somewhere dry and safe from magnetic fields The two copies become a 1st copy which will not be touched just available in case and a working copy for mucking about with That way if you need to make another copy you dont have to use the original

Read the manual at least twice before you start anything it will save a lot of problems and soul searching later on Unfortunately the manual was written in American so some of the names they give things may be unfamiliar

However its not too bad as manuals go except that if you are an advanced user they keep referring you to the ROM Kernal Manual one of a set of three costing pound20 or more each Dont buy them if you are a novice some of the computing experts I know cannot understand some of the ideas that are pu t forward in them The Amiga is a complex machine and it may take some time before you get used to it

Let me tell you a storythe company I worked for was a bit strapped for cash but my boss was desperate for a new faster and colour computer We eventually went for the Amiga Our old machine could do less than a Commodore 64 and originally cost close on pound5000 After the initial playing with the new machine came the serious business of programming Have you ever tried to program when it seems that every five minutes someone wants a demonstration of the graphics capabilities Anyway I think I must have popped out to the 100

when one of these persons arrived my boss immediately set about demonstrating the clock his favourite toy When I came backwhere was the program that I had just spent the whole morning working oncome to think of it where was half the contents of the disc In his enthusiasm my boss had crashed the machine thus losing the program which I had neglected to save and had dragged a lot of the icons over the trashcan luckily he didnt know how to empty

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

EDITORS DOORMAT

WELCOME that is what doormats have written on them and they are found on the threshold This page is the doormat to our magazine as you will have to pass over it to enter

We hope that you will find us better value for money than some of the Amiga glossies on sale in the newsagents this is because all our contributors except the guest contributor are Amiga owners who want to share their knowledge with you Glossies have to make a profit where we are quite happy to break even

As this is our first issue we will begin by telling you a little about ourselves

Tony Miller more of him later is an Amiga enthusiast ever since he bought one of the first MOOs released in this country It was a case of good - bye to

the old Commodore 128 hello new friend A little later he bought a Modem and by using the terminal emulator he found on the Extras disk he started to explore the world of communications Unfortunately or rather fortunately for all current 01- 4 - Amiga BBs users he found that services such as Microlink and TelecomGold all wanted cash for their use Tony decided to start his own board for people who were obviously in the same boat ie had just spent their last penny on their computer and had no more for anything fancy

Thus 01 for Amiga was born

It soon became one of the most popular boards for Amiga comms users

in this country and some from abroad 01 and Tony became synonymous and much sought after Like all good things the board grew and became too large to handle alone It was decided that the small group of people involved in its running would form their own User Group to pool knowledge and skills the Amiga Meditators were then formed

We then decided we wanted to make all our information available to non-modem Amiga owners How A magazine was going to be the only way we could convey the amount of information that we had a small newsletter was just not going to be big enough The success of our magazine depends on you The more subscribers we have the more we can offer Have a look through this inaugural edition and if you like what you see then please dont hesitate to Jam the Amiga Meditators Dont worry because we are London based we have already got many members who live all over the country

And now a short bit on each of this editions contributors

Bill Moore Born and educated m New

Zealand Bill has worked for a number of companies in the electronics and allied industries He has programmed the 6800 6809 and 8501 series of chips in both high level and assembler languages as well as mainframes and microprocessors When not in front of his Amiga Bill is keen amateur Astronomer He is currently the Chief

Scientist for a major electronics company

Richard Hartschorn Born in Leicester Richard attended

Birmingham University taking a course in electronics An active amateur programmer he specializes in Z80 and 68000 assembler His other hobby is Guinness Richard works for a small company in Essex that manufactures refrigerated equipment

Ken Wallace Belfast bred Ken attended the North

London Polytechnic where he gained an HNC in Advanced Electronics Further studies at University College London with the Physics and Astronomy support group led to a career in industry He ran his own consultancy in electronics for seven years then joined a company with a household name in domestic electronic equipment as Chief Electrical Engineer

David Ward A true East Londoner David was to

have followed a career in Photographic Science but the necessary grades eluded him After working in the quality control department for an internationally renowned photographic company he was invited to work for the Rank Organization This is where he was first introduced to computers and production controlled by micro processors He now works for an optical equipment company

Tony Miller Born in the South of England he

soon moved to Grimsby Took Maths and Physics at A level with intention of taking a degree in Computer Science but was lured into joining the Police After many exciting adventures he started his own company in Desk Top Publishing later becoming an Amiga consultant The 01 for Amiga bulletin board soon followed and now he is one of the most sought after Amiga personalities in Great Britain

Pete Symes Born in London Pete left school

at the age of sixteen to start a 5 year apprenticeship with a world renowned gunmaking company He has since achieved the status of ffMaster Gunmaker and has now formed his own business His hobbies include motor - racing computers and becoming comatose at parties but not necessarily in that order

Optical storage

Is this the end of the floppy disk

by David Ward

Reading through the pre - production version of 01 FOR AMIGA I noticed that optical storage devices were getting a fair amount of coverage Consequently this inaugural issue is now our first special dedicated to optical storage

There are several reports in circulation at the moment concerning the growth and marketing of optical storage Each one comes to its own conclusions regarding market size by 19923

A report by Frost amp Sullivan of New York only $990 if you want to order your own copy predicts a market of $1 billion by 1992 This breaks down into $630 million for the drives and $330 million for disks

A group nearer to home BIS Mackintosh of Luton have looked at the present size of the market for imagedocument systems currently $680 million They estimate this to rise to $3 billion by 1992 The US accounts for half the worldwide sales of these systems at the moment but Europe is expected to exceed this by 1992

At the moment there is no set standard for an optical memory system they are magneto - optical phase change and bump - forming media

A magneto - optical disk uses spots whose direction of magnetization changes when heated by a laser This magnetic alignment can then be read in the usual way with a magnetic reading head

Phase - change disks use a medium that crystallizes or decrystallizes at a

particular temperature A laser is used to write or erase the heat of the beam altering the state of the medium at a spot An optical reading head is used It will only detect light reflected from a crystallized spot

In the bump - forming system there are two lasers each set at a different wavelength The disk is made up of two materials dyed to absorb the different coloured light emitted by the lasers To write the lower layer of the disk is heated and as it expands it forms a bump To erase the top layer is heated and softened the lower layer then pulls on it and so the bump disappears Light is only reflected from flat surfaces by an optical reading head

Optical disks are currently nowhere near the versatility of existing magnetic media They have to be erased before overwriting can take place this is a very slow process They are also slow at retrieving data and the mechanisms they use are costly to manufacture The disks themselves are cheaper in terms of pound per Mb than equivalent numbers of magnetic disks Research into overcoming these problems is now underway and in the next four years we can expect to see some of them solved

Workstations and PCs used for graphic applications will be the first to utilise the optical recording systems due to plug compatibility and easy acceptance They will replace the large memories required for CADCAM

and DTP Only later will their storage This is equivalent to more than 1000 capability be used when an accepted magnetic tapes The autochanger takes standard format has been set Their low up eight square feet of floor space I cost high capacity and size make them think 1000 tapes would take ideal replacements for tape and the considerably more Five of these larger hard disks used by main frames devices can be connected to one SCSI The Sony corporation have already interface produced a disk auto changer with a capacity of 50 disks giving a total storage of 164 Gb

Comparisons between 5 14 inch systems

Av access time Data transfer rate Capacity

Floppy disk lOOms 250 Kbs 15 Mb

Hard disk 25ms 1500 Kbs 200 Mb

Optical Disk 195ms 250 Kbs 650 Mb

Magstores optical disk and DAT tape systems (see British Electronics week review)

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ELECTRONIC ARTS

OPENING THE BOX

by

John King

Right youve just got home from the Commodore Show with your new Amiga You can breathe a sigh of relief now because you werent mugged on the tube but wait did you get a box of blank discs Tut tut

Here are a few tips for those of you who havent bought the beast just yet

Firstly buy some good quality branded discs at least 20 to start with and a box to store them in I know this is going to be expensive but you take my advice its worth it You have got the machine all set up and the manual instructs you to make copies of the discs you were supplied with you didnt buy any and its Sunday afternoon Buying discs that have no names on and are only 75p each is not a good idea You dont want to lose a program thats taken two hours to type in just because the disc will not validate Make two copIes of everything the original is best put somewhere dry and safe from magnetic fields The two copies become a 1st copy which will not be touched just available in case and a working copy for mucking about with That way if you need to make another copy you dont have to use the original

Read the manual at least twice before you start anything it will save a lot of problems and soul searching later on Unfortunately the manual was written in American so some of the names they give things may be unfamiliar

However its not too bad as manuals go except that if you are an advanced user they keep referring you to the ROM Kernal Manual one of a set of three costing pound20 or more each Dont buy them if you are a novice some of the computing experts I know cannot understand some of the ideas that are pu t forward in them The Amiga is a complex machine and it may take some time before you get used to it

Let me tell you a storythe company I worked for was a bit strapped for cash but my boss was desperate for a new faster and colour computer We eventually went for the Amiga Our old machine could do less than a Commodore 64 and originally cost close on pound5000 After the initial playing with the new machine came the serious business of programming Have you ever tried to program when it seems that every five minutes someone wants a demonstration of the graphics capabilities Anyway I think I must have popped out to the 100

when one of these persons arrived my boss immediately set about demonstrating the clock his favourite toy When I came backwhere was the program that I had just spent the whole morning working oncome to think of it where was half the contents of the disc In his enthusiasm my boss had crashed the machine thus losing the program which I had neglected to save and had dragged a lot of the icons over the trashcan luckily he didnt know how to empty

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

Scientist for a major electronics company

Richard Hartschorn Born in Leicester Richard attended

Birmingham University taking a course in electronics An active amateur programmer he specializes in Z80 and 68000 assembler His other hobby is Guinness Richard works for a small company in Essex that manufactures refrigerated equipment

Ken Wallace Belfast bred Ken attended the North

London Polytechnic where he gained an HNC in Advanced Electronics Further studies at University College London with the Physics and Astronomy support group led to a career in industry He ran his own consultancy in electronics for seven years then joined a company with a household name in domestic electronic equipment as Chief Electrical Engineer

David Ward A true East Londoner David was to

have followed a career in Photographic Science but the necessary grades eluded him After working in the quality control department for an internationally renowned photographic company he was invited to work for the Rank Organization This is where he was first introduced to computers and production controlled by micro processors He now works for an optical equipment company

Tony Miller Born in the South of England he

soon moved to Grimsby Took Maths and Physics at A level with intention of taking a degree in Computer Science but was lured into joining the Police After many exciting adventures he started his own company in Desk Top Publishing later becoming an Amiga consultant The 01 for Amiga bulletin board soon followed and now he is one of the most sought after Amiga personalities in Great Britain

Pete Symes Born in London Pete left school

at the age of sixteen to start a 5 year apprenticeship with a world renowned gunmaking company He has since achieved the status of ffMaster Gunmaker and has now formed his own business His hobbies include motor - racing computers and becoming comatose at parties but not necessarily in that order

Optical storage

Is this the end of the floppy disk

by David Ward

Reading through the pre - production version of 01 FOR AMIGA I noticed that optical storage devices were getting a fair amount of coverage Consequently this inaugural issue is now our first special dedicated to optical storage

There are several reports in circulation at the moment concerning the growth and marketing of optical storage Each one comes to its own conclusions regarding market size by 19923

A report by Frost amp Sullivan of New York only $990 if you want to order your own copy predicts a market of $1 billion by 1992 This breaks down into $630 million for the drives and $330 million for disks

A group nearer to home BIS Mackintosh of Luton have looked at the present size of the market for imagedocument systems currently $680 million They estimate this to rise to $3 billion by 1992 The US accounts for half the worldwide sales of these systems at the moment but Europe is expected to exceed this by 1992

At the moment there is no set standard for an optical memory system they are magneto - optical phase change and bump - forming media

A magneto - optical disk uses spots whose direction of magnetization changes when heated by a laser This magnetic alignment can then be read in the usual way with a magnetic reading head

Phase - change disks use a medium that crystallizes or decrystallizes at a

particular temperature A laser is used to write or erase the heat of the beam altering the state of the medium at a spot An optical reading head is used It will only detect light reflected from a crystallized spot

In the bump - forming system there are two lasers each set at a different wavelength The disk is made up of two materials dyed to absorb the different coloured light emitted by the lasers To write the lower layer of the disk is heated and as it expands it forms a bump To erase the top layer is heated and softened the lower layer then pulls on it and so the bump disappears Light is only reflected from flat surfaces by an optical reading head

Optical disks are currently nowhere near the versatility of existing magnetic media They have to be erased before overwriting can take place this is a very slow process They are also slow at retrieving data and the mechanisms they use are costly to manufacture The disks themselves are cheaper in terms of pound per Mb than equivalent numbers of magnetic disks Research into overcoming these problems is now underway and in the next four years we can expect to see some of them solved

Workstations and PCs used for graphic applications will be the first to utilise the optical recording systems due to plug compatibility and easy acceptance They will replace the large memories required for CADCAM

and DTP Only later will their storage This is equivalent to more than 1000 capability be used when an accepted magnetic tapes The autochanger takes standard format has been set Their low up eight square feet of floor space I cost high capacity and size make them think 1000 tapes would take ideal replacements for tape and the considerably more Five of these larger hard disks used by main frames devices can be connected to one SCSI The Sony corporation have already interface produced a disk auto changer with a capacity of 50 disks giving a total storage of 164 Gb

Comparisons between 5 14 inch systems

Av access time Data transfer rate Capacity

Floppy disk lOOms 250 Kbs 15 Mb

Hard disk 25ms 1500 Kbs 200 Mb

Optical Disk 195ms 250 Kbs 650 Mb

Magstores optical disk and DAT tape systems (see British Electronics week review)

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ELECTRONIC ARTS

OPENING THE BOX

by

John King

Right youve just got home from the Commodore Show with your new Amiga You can breathe a sigh of relief now because you werent mugged on the tube but wait did you get a box of blank discs Tut tut

Here are a few tips for those of you who havent bought the beast just yet

Firstly buy some good quality branded discs at least 20 to start with and a box to store them in I know this is going to be expensive but you take my advice its worth it You have got the machine all set up and the manual instructs you to make copies of the discs you were supplied with you didnt buy any and its Sunday afternoon Buying discs that have no names on and are only 75p each is not a good idea You dont want to lose a program thats taken two hours to type in just because the disc will not validate Make two copIes of everything the original is best put somewhere dry and safe from magnetic fields The two copies become a 1st copy which will not be touched just available in case and a working copy for mucking about with That way if you need to make another copy you dont have to use the original

Read the manual at least twice before you start anything it will save a lot of problems and soul searching later on Unfortunately the manual was written in American so some of the names they give things may be unfamiliar

However its not too bad as manuals go except that if you are an advanced user they keep referring you to the ROM Kernal Manual one of a set of three costing pound20 or more each Dont buy them if you are a novice some of the computing experts I know cannot understand some of the ideas that are pu t forward in them The Amiga is a complex machine and it may take some time before you get used to it

Let me tell you a storythe company I worked for was a bit strapped for cash but my boss was desperate for a new faster and colour computer We eventually went for the Amiga Our old machine could do less than a Commodore 64 and originally cost close on pound5000 After the initial playing with the new machine came the serious business of programming Have you ever tried to program when it seems that every five minutes someone wants a demonstration of the graphics capabilities Anyway I think I must have popped out to the 100

when one of these persons arrived my boss immediately set about demonstrating the clock his favourite toy When I came backwhere was the program that I had just spent the whole morning working oncome to think of it where was half the contents of the disc In his enthusiasm my boss had crashed the machine thus losing the program which I had neglected to save and had dragged a lot of the icons over the trashcan luckily he didnt know how to empty

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

Optical storage

Is this the end of the floppy disk

by David Ward

Reading through the pre - production version of 01 FOR AMIGA I noticed that optical storage devices were getting a fair amount of coverage Consequently this inaugural issue is now our first special dedicated to optical storage

There are several reports in circulation at the moment concerning the growth and marketing of optical storage Each one comes to its own conclusions regarding market size by 19923

A report by Frost amp Sullivan of New York only $990 if you want to order your own copy predicts a market of $1 billion by 1992 This breaks down into $630 million for the drives and $330 million for disks

A group nearer to home BIS Mackintosh of Luton have looked at the present size of the market for imagedocument systems currently $680 million They estimate this to rise to $3 billion by 1992 The US accounts for half the worldwide sales of these systems at the moment but Europe is expected to exceed this by 1992

At the moment there is no set standard for an optical memory system they are magneto - optical phase change and bump - forming media

A magneto - optical disk uses spots whose direction of magnetization changes when heated by a laser This magnetic alignment can then be read in the usual way with a magnetic reading head

Phase - change disks use a medium that crystallizes or decrystallizes at a

particular temperature A laser is used to write or erase the heat of the beam altering the state of the medium at a spot An optical reading head is used It will only detect light reflected from a crystallized spot

In the bump - forming system there are two lasers each set at a different wavelength The disk is made up of two materials dyed to absorb the different coloured light emitted by the lasers To write the lower layer of the disk is heated and as it expands it forms a bump To erase the top layer is heated and softened the lower layer then pulls on it and so the bump disappears Light is only reflected from flat surfaces by an optical reading head

Optical disks are currently nowhere near the versatility of existing magnetic media They have to be erased before overwriting can take place this is a very slow process They are also slow at retrieving data and the mechanisms they use are costly to manufacture The disks themselves are cheaper in terms of pound per Mb than equivalent numbers of magnetic disks Research into overcoming these problems is now underway and in the next four years we can expect to see some of them solved

Workstations and PCs used for graphic applications will be the first to utilise the optical recording systems due to plug compatibility and easy acceptance They will replace the large memories required for CADCAM

and DTP Only later will their storage This is equivalent to more than 1000 capability be used when an accepted magnetic tapes The autochanger takes standard format has been set Their low up eight square feet of floor space I cost high capacity and size make them think 1000 tapes would take ideal replacements for tape and the considerably more Five of these larger hard disks used by main frames devices can be connected to one SCSI The Sony corporation have already interface produced a disk auto changer with a capacity of 50 disks giving a total storage of 164 Gb

Comparisons between 5 14 inch systems

Av access time Data transfer rate Capacity

Floppy disk lOOms 250 Kbs 15 Mb

Hard disk 25ms 1500 Kbs 200 Mb

Optical Disk 195ms 250 Kbs 650 Mb

Magstores optical disk and DAT tape systems (see British Electronics week review)

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OPENING THE BOX

by

John King

Right youve just got home from the Commodore Show with your new Amiga You can breathe a sigh of relief now because you werent mugged on the tube but wait did you get a box of blank discs Tut tut

Here are a few tips for those of you who havent bought the beast just yet

Firstly buy some good quality branded discs at least 20 to start with and a box to store them in I know this is going to be expensive but you take my advice its worth it You have got the machine all set up and the manual instructs you to make copies of the discs you were supplied with you didnt buy any and its Sunday afternoon Buying discs that have no names on and are only 75p each is not a good idea You dont want to lose a program thats taken two hours to type in just because the disc will not validate Make two copIes of everything the original is best put somewhere dry and safe from magnetic fields The two copies become a 1st copy which will not be touched just available in case and a working copy for mucking about with That way if you need to make another copy you dont have to use the original

Read the manual at least twice before you start anything it will save a lot of problems and soul searching later on Unfortunately the manual was written in American so some of the names they give things may be unfamiliar

However its not too bad as manuals go except that if you are an advanced user they keep referring you to the ROM Kernal Manual one of a set of three costing pound20 or more each Dont buy them if you are a novice some of the computing experts I know cannot understand some of the ideas that are pu t forward in them The Amiga is a complex machine and it may take some time before you get used to it

Let me tell you a storythe company I worked for was a bit strapped for cash but my boss was desperate for a new faster and colour computer We eventually went for the Amiga Our old machine could do less than a Commodore 64 and originally cost close on pound5000 After the initial playing with the new machine came the serious business of programming Have you ever tried to program when it seems that every five minutes someone wants a demonstration of the graphics capabilities Anyway I think I must have popped out to the 100

when one of these persons arrived my boss immediately set about demonstrating the clock his favourite toy When I came backwhere was the program that I had just spent the whole morning working oncome to think of it where was half the contents of the disc In his enthusiasm my boss had crashed the machine thus losing the program which I had neglected to save and had dragged a lot of the icons over the trashcan luckily he didnt know how to empty

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

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Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

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And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

and DTP Only later will their storage This is equivalent to more than 1000 capability be used when an accepted magnetic tapes The autochanger takes standard format has been set Their low up eight square feet of floor space I cost high capacity and size make them think 1000 tapes would take ideal replacements for tape and the considerably more Five of these larger hard disks used by main frames devices can be connected to one SCSI The Sony corporation have already interface produced a disk auto changer with a capacity of 50 disks giving a total storage of 164 Gb

Comparisons between 5 14 inch systems

Av access time Data transfer rate Capacity

Floppy disk lOOms 250 Kbs 15 Mb

Hard disk 25ms 1500 Kbs 200 Mb

Optical Disk 195ms 250 Kbs 650 Mb

Magstores optical disk and DAT tape systems (see British Electronics week review)

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OPENING THE BOX

by

John King

Right youve just got home from the Commodore Show with your new Amiga You can breathe a sigh of relief now because you werent mugged on the tube but wait did you get a box of blank discs Tut tut

Here are a few tips for those of you who havent bought the beast just yet

Firstly buy some good quality branded discs at least 20 to start with and a box to store them in I know this is going to be expensive but you take my advice its worth it You have got the machine all set up and the manual instructs you to make copies of the discs you were supplied with you didnt buy any and its Sunday afternoon Buying discs that have no names on and are only 75p each is not a good idea You dont want to lose a program thats taken two hours to type in just because the disc will not validate Make two copIes of everything the original is best put somewhere dry and safe from magnetic fields The two copies become a 1st copy which will not be touched just available in case and a working copy for mucking about with That way if you need to make another copy you dont have to use the original

Read the manual at least twice before you start anything it will save a lot of problems and soul searching later on Unfortunately the manual was written in American so some of the names they give things may be unfamiliar

However its not too bad as manuals go except that if you are an advanced user they keep referring you to the ROM Kernal Manual one of a set of three costing pound20 or more each Dont buy them if you are a novice some of the computing experts I know cannot understand some of the ideas that are pu t forward in them The Amiga is a complex machine and it may take some time before you get used to it

Let me tell you a storythe company I worked for was a bit strapped for cash but my boss was desperate for a new faster and colour computer We eventually went for the Amiga Our old machine could do less than a Commodore 64 and originally cost close on pound5000 After the initial playing with the new machine came the serious business of programming Have you ever tried to program when it seems that every five minutes someone wants a demonstration of the graphics capabilities Anyway I think I must have popped out to the 100

when one of these persons arrived my boss immediately set about demonstrating the clock his favourite toy When I came backwhere was the program that I had just spent the whole morning working oncome to think of it where was half the contents of the disc In his enthusiasm my boss had crashed the machine thus losing the program which I had neglected to save and had dragged a lot of the icons over the trashcan luckily he didnt know how to empty

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

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Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

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And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

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OPENING THE BOX

by

John King

Right youve just got home from the Commodore Show with your new Amiga You can breathe a sigh of relief now because you werent mugged on the tube but wait did you get a box of blank discs Tut tut

Here are a few tips for those of you who havent bought the beast just yet

Firstly buy some good quality branded discs at least 20 to start with and a box to store them in I know this is going to be expensive but you take my advice its worth it You have got the machine all set up and the manual instructs you to make copies of the discs you were supplied with you didnt buy any and its Sunday afternoon Buying discs that have no names on and are only 75p each is not a good idea You dont want to lose a program thats taken two hours to type in just because the disc will not validate Make two copIes of everything the original is best put somewhere dry and safe from magnetic fields The two copies become a 1st copy which will not be touched just available in case and a working copy for mucking about with That way if you need to make another copy you dont have to use the original

Read the manual at least twice before you start anything it will save a lot of problems and soul searching later on Unfortunately the manual was written in American so some of the names they give things may be unfamiliar

However its not too bad as manuals go except that if you are an advanced user they keep referring you to the ROM Kernal Manual one of a set of three costing pound20 or more each Dont buy them if you are a novice some of the computing experts I know cannot understand some of the ideas that are pu t forward in them The Amiga is a complex machine and it may take some time before you get used to it

Let me tell you a storythe company I worked for was a bit strapped for cash but my boss was desperate for a new faster and colour computer We eventually went for the Amiga Our old machine could do less than a Commodore 64 and originally cost close on pound5000 After the initial playing with the new machine came the serious business of programming Have you ever tried to program when it seems that every five minutes someone wants a demonstration of the graphics capabilities Anyway I think I must have popped out to the 100

when one of these persons arrived my boss immediately set about demonstrating the clock his favourite toy When I came backwhere was the program that I had just spent the whole morning working oncome to think of it where was half the contents of the disc In his enthusiasm my boss had crashed the machine thus losing the program which I had neglected to save and had dragged a lot of the icons over the trashcan luckily he didnt know how to empty

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

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euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

OPENING THE BOX

by

John King

Right youve just got home from the Commodore Show with your new Amiga You can breathe a sigh of relief now because you werent mugged on the tube but wait did you get a box of blank discs Tut tut

Here are a few tips for those of you who havent bought the beast just yet

Firstly buy some good quality branded discs at least 20 to start with and a box to store them in I know this is going to be expensive but you take my advice its worth it You have got the machine all set up and the manual instructs you to make copies of the discs you were supplied with you didnt buy any and its Sunday afternoon Buying discs that have no names on and are only 75p each is not a good idea You dont want to lose a program thats taken two hours to type in just because the disc will not validate Make two copIes of everything the original is best put somewhere dry and safe from magnetic fields The two copies become a 1st copy which will not be touched just available in case and a working copy for mucking about with That way if you need to make another copy you dont have to use the original

Read the manual at least twice before you start anything it will save a lot of problems and soul searching later on Unfortunately the manual was written in American so some of the names they give things may be unfamiliar

However its not too bad as manuals go except that if you are an advanced user they keep referring you to the ROM Kernal Manual one of a set of three costing pound20 or more each Dont buy them if you are a novice some of the computing experts I know cannot understand some of the ideas that are pu t forward in them The Amiga is a complex machine and it may take some time before you get used to it

Let me tell you a storythe company I worked for was a bit strapped for cash but my boss was desperate for a new faster and colour computer We eventually went for the Amiga Our old machine could do less than a Commodore 64 and originally cost close on pound5000 After the initial playing with the new machine came the serious business of programming Have you ever tried to program when it seems that every five minutes someone wants a demonstration of the graphics capabilities Anyway I think I must have popped out to the 100

when one of these persons arrived my boss immediately set about demonstrating the clock his favourite toy When I came backwhere was the program that I had just spent the whole morning working oncome to think of it where was half the contents of the disc In his enthusiasm my boss had crashed the machine thus losing the program which I had neglected to save and had dragged a lot of the icons over the trashcan luckily he didnt know how to empty

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

the trash Therefore always regularly save the project you are working on and dont let other people near YOUR computer

Try to remember to cover up your machine when you have finished using it they attract dust like anything

Never ever remove a disc or resetswitch off while the drive light is on this is an easy way to corrupt a disc accidentally

Use the working copies of the discs you have made for exploration see how the directories work and whats in them with the CLI

A real boon for the CLI enthusiast is a public domain (PD) program called PopCLI this allows you to call up a CLI window by just pressing the Left - Amiga and Esc keys no clicking involved Available on Amiga Meditation PD disc 1 PopCLI also has a screen blanking capability this stops burning in on your monitor or TV a problem that affected early TV games and still dogs some modern computers

On the hardware front an extra 512k of memory is of more use than a second drive especially now that Workbench 13 has a recoverable ramdisk but a second drive is still an i tern to get at a later date followed by more memory a hard disk etc etc Good luck

BUYING AN AMIGA HOW TO CONVINCE THE WIFE A TRUE STORY

by Ken Wallace

There I was quite happy with my Apple lIe built (quite literally) up lovingly over a four year period equipped with colour card Z80 card Language card and two (130k) disk drives Then it happened Bill Moore demonstrated his newly acquired Amiga ASOO to me and the beginning of the end set in

Its got much better colour resolution Dear I said putting on the washing - up apron I always wash and dry when Im considering unplanned expenditure

How much came the terse reply as accurately as Eric Bristow on a good night

Financially Dear it represents good value for money The memory size for example is 512K bytes as standard and included in the price is a four channel sound chip of eight bit resolution also the three and a quarter inch disk drive is built in

Look how much is this going to

cost

It was no good my cover was blown I almost gave in under her intense hand on hip pose and the implied threat of the non - stick frying pan in the other and mentioned money However as always happens in

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

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REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

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sono 764 1109 ) 1

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And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

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Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

the movies the cavalry came over the hill in the nick of time and said

lfDad If we get a new computer can I do my school computer work on it Your Apples no good my teacher saysnot combustible or something with our BBe machines

I resisted the compelling temptation to run over and kiss the boy firmly but sensing victory had been snatched from the proverbial fangs of defeat I decided to act casual lean nonchalantly back on the breakfast bar and say

Yes most certainly an important consideration to be borne III mind here

The breakfast bar was three feet further behind me than I realised and I ended up in a heap on the kitchen floor festooned with Marks amp Sparks bargain Sheffield steel cutlery Removing a fork from between my shirt collar and nack I realised a great feat of geographical engineering had taken place namely that Sheffield had been relocated in Taiwan

Well if youre going to perform death defying acrobatics in the kitchen just to get your own way over this I suppose youd better go ahead Its probably going to be cheaper than a new all black rig out Id need for your funeral s aid She - who - must - be - obeyed

And so my life began anew with the AMIGA

Editors note

The Amiga is we believe the only computer that can behave as a pc a BBC and now an Apple Mac

PC emulation can be achieved usmg the Transformer software that was

once available this converts the Amiga into a very slow PC with no graphics capabilities We have heard rumours of a new software emulator in the States which is supposedly better and does support some graphics We await it with bated breath The only other way to successfully run any IBM software is to use a bridgeboard This piece of hardware is really a PC clone on a card The Amiga 1000 had an add - on known as Sidecar which gave it the ability to run PC software in a window The Amiga 2000 has a slot internally for either an XT or AT bridgeboard The AT card runs faster than the XT card Both these solutions are relatively expensive a bottom of the range PC clone with monitor etc could be had for the same price as Sidecar or the XT card Manufacturers are now producing expansion boxes which allow your to fit a bridgeboard and other cards to your A500

The BBC emulator is software but fast in some cases the emulator will run some BBC programs faster than a BBC computer can This is because the Amiga was provided with its own version of BBC basic especially written for operation by a 68000 chip

Now we have a Mac emulator This consists of both hardware and software You also need a Mac ROM chip not supplied and an Apple disk drive

With all of these systems reading disks is a major problem PC software

can be supplied on both 3 12 and 5 14 inch disks or you can get them

converted from one to the other The BBC only uses 5 14 and the Mac a special 3 12 which alters its rotational speed depending where the readjwrite head lS Luckily Miles

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

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Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

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And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

Gordon Technology are about to launch If you cannot afford another disk a range of 3 12 and 5 14 inch disk drive then porting over files may be drives which can be connected to the answer You need a suitable cable different computers by just using the to connect the Amiga with the other correct lead and altering a set of dip computer some comms software or if switches on the back of the unit This you are good at programming then you is going to be a really useful piece of can write you own and off you go equipment for those of you with more Simple as that well nearly than one computer

Computer Croosword Number 1

Across Down

1 I remember (6) 2 See 27 across 4 and 23 Maths assistant (29) 3 A versatile interface (4) 5 Phone library routinely (4) 4 Old form of shell (3) 7 Location found in 1 across (7) 6 Repeats instruction (4) 9 29 and 7 down The Best we bad to get this one in 7 See 9 across

somewhere (235) 8 Commands speech (3) 10 and 26 Big American show (34) 10 Operating the Amiga 1S as easy 11 Short for what the Japanese want in their next as (3)

generation of computers (2) 14 and 13 across What every prisoner 12 One eigth of a mouthful (3) would like (33) 13 See 14 down 16 A Ski instructors code number (5) 15 Friendly TV system (3) 19 and 21 Flashes for your attention 17 IBM PC screen format (3) (53) 18 Strike with the start of a note (6) 20 Compresses Star Trek faster than 21 Beginners language (5) light (4) 25 Moon of Jupiter found in communications (2) 21 See 19 down 26 See 10 across 22 Another name for a programmer 27 and 2 down Unwanted number appears with yoga (5)

lesson (410) 23 Found at the end of a lead (4) 28 Funny parity (3) 24 Transmit (4) 29 See 9 across

by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

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For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

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by

really is no contest between the two a monitor will provide a better quality picture a domestic

set there are no when IS on

cost of pound200 whereas a modulator will set you back about

modulator is a box about the of hvo to It holds a simple circuit

which the output the monitor and stereo sockets on back your Arrliga combines converts them a radio frequency (RF) signal that is similar to that which your television set receives from say

The modulator three sockets they are an aerial output a composite video phono output and an audio output also of the phono type aerial socket IS for connection directly to a set while the other two can used for connection to a video or even a monitor

The monitor port standing for Blue three

has of output most commonly analogue which will the colours available while the other is digital Digital monitors such as those on some of their PCs can only display colours No good us budding artists

The Commodore monitors are in fact made Philips so is the monitor the Archimedes pays your money and you choice

Ward

Do shop around and also an idea of what you may Some monitors allow you to switch between computer and video enabling you to watch on same set not simultaneously that you a Genlock below) have no built - in sound mono when stereo would be One thing to

specifications is dot this your an how

sharp an you might get for instance a 31 dot pitch wiII give better clarity than a monitor with 41 try to compare in the but remember the smaller the pitch the higher the price

Next to the RGB port is a phono socket marked this is for surprIse surprise a monochrome monitor are ideal Vlewmg text and any application where a high quality black and white image is required for computer

(CAD) reason why a mono

monitor has a higher resolution is due

to the fact that it three

phosphor in a set to give

the of single

colour such as whereas

one dot is mono gives

a much and dearer image

The of an on a

IS by the quality of that smaller the set the more

any text will become recommend setting the to 60 characters per line if you are using a TV this is done on first page Preferences Unfortunately some programs which use requesters are

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

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sono 764 1109 ) 1

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And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

programs which use requesters are There is one drawback no unable to fit the text into an alert box sound a separate amplifier is while in 60 column mode this can be a necessary for any speech or music definite problem when the program is from either source The Amigas output asking you to enter a word from the is superimposed onto that of manual on Page 3 Paragraph 4 video so you can still wordprocess Li The bigger the screen size the while watching the News Subtitles and more chance of reading the output in credits can be overlaid onto a picture 80 column mode providing you have two video

Cheap genlocks are now available machines one for playback and one they start at pound100 This gives you the for record Another use is when you ability to display the Amigas output have connected a different computer only or that from a video recorder or to the Amiga so that you can port both on a monitor or via another video over text files both screen displays recorder onto a set can be seen at once avoiding the

need to swap cables or use two monitorssect

by

John King

Firstly I should point out that there are 110 versions of Preferences in circulation

Version 12 has an icon which looks like a piece of equipment with a question mark super - imposed on it this is in fact a representation of the original Amiga 1000 which consisted of separate keyboard and processor

With the release of Vorkbench 13 we now have a Prefs drawer which contains the original Preferences icon and several others

Preferences is really a machineuser interface It allows you to alter the system configuration file easily by means of buttons and sliders rather than by typing in YN answers to a lengthy list of questions or fiddling with dip switches deep in the guts of the computer

What is the systemconfiguration This a file which is examined just before the startup sequence it enables your Amiga to select the screen colours and mouse speed settings previously saved as well as informing it to look for the correct printer driver when you are about to print

big advantage that the Amiga gives you over other non multi - tasking computers is the ability to alter a Preference setting while you are running an applications program Previously you had to quit what you were doing run another program to change say the Serial protocol then rerun your original program from scratch

The icons in the new Prefs drawer enable you to go directly to the particular page of Preferences that you want rather than having to go

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

all the screens In addition are two new features in

are an extra screen for control and an icon for

of your systemconfiguration to in dfO

110 ports on the rear arent just for they are much more

that Each is a 25 although none of the can connected to either use these pins

definition of the dictionary is a

issued In parts periodically IS

exactly how the Serial pIece of In the

computer is stored as byte is made up of eight a bit is either a nought or a one byte is therefore a set of Os 1s which describe a number even text is stored in this fashion

Lets look at Serial page In Preferences double click on the icon then click on the gadget If you have 13 drawer and double click on for a telephone ports often use Modem

transmitted through is sent one after peripheral receives this stores it in an area of memory known as a buffer Here the are regrouped back as bytes peripheral processes them at which computer and peripheral and receive data is called the rate it is measured in

and can range from you are looking at the

Change of Preferences you that III addition to the

for Baud rate and are also ones for bits Stop bits Parity

Handshaking Read and Vlrite can

set to either 7 or 8 the latter the most common Stop

when it correct number a byte and Parity IS

what is in the buffer to what has been sent

Handshaking is the tvJO connected

start the flow usually when the full it will signal to stop transmitting until it finished

processing the sent accomplished

through are using

such as packages for

Moderns (Comms) or electrically over a paIr addition to the

transmit data lines wires

indicate of

connected

to

Amiga lists the pim used

In

ParaUel port is one associated with there are a number of manufacturers whose products orJy have a

immeadiately come to others do fit

industrial process units are fitted with an

to allow a host them remotely or

and leave them to on with the job interrogating occasionally to see how are

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

doing We are even this in the home with security systems controlled by a Sinclair Spectrum The Parallel port is a much simpler

affair there are no complex settings to be made it is just a case of plugging in the two ends of a cable and away you go its name suggests data is sent in parallel that is all together Remember how a single byte has to be broken dovm into 8 bits which are transmitted sequentially with an extra stop bit sent as well when transmitting serially You can see that this will be slower than if each byte was sent in one go thats why the Parallel port is the preferred one for a printer its quicker

This ability to receive all eight bits in one go allows the Parallel port to be used for sampling The intensity of an electrical signal measured over a period of time can divided up and each part allotted a value This process is known as analogue to digital conversion and the value can be stored in the computers memory and eventually on disc There are many samplers available for the Amiga Some digitize sound to near compact disc quality allowing you to record speech or music Vvith good software these samples can be

Dont despair there are cheaper ones now they are usually slower and may require three scans of a still picture in order to obtain a colour image I have seen software advertised which

allows you to turn your Amiga into a sophisticated oscilloscope I presume that this also uses an attachment connected to the parallel port to digitize the measured signals This is a useful tool for the electronics hobbyist who needs some of measuring and displaying waveforms but cannot afford the real thing the Arniga does have the advantage of being able to store the results on disc though

Either port can be selected for output from the printer selection screen of Preferences by clicking on the appropriate gadget Finally a word about MIDI it appears

that both ports can be used for one of these devices but make sure your software is compatible Also if your are considering some sort of digitizer I would suggest that you use your printer with the Serial port as this leaves the Parallel port free and saves a lot of swapping plugs at the backsect

manipulated in ways that were only rm~~~~==~~~~~~==~~~~~1 possible by cutting and splicing tape on expensive reel- to - reel tape recorders

Video digitizers are considerably more expensive than their audio cousins and a lot slower too A sound sampler works in real time that is as you hear the sound the hardware is digitizing it Real time video digitizers cost many hundreds of pounds some are several thousand this is due to the considerable amount of processing

has to be done before the image is in a suitable form for storage

vey Repeat Speed SIDI I (iJ Ifast

I

Reset Coiols

that L~==========~-===l=

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

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BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

REVIEW BRmSH ELECfRONICS WEEK

OLYMPIA by CLlspy

I know some of you are asking what this has to do with the Amiga the answer at the moment is nothing but you will be surprised at what work is being done work which will affect all Amiga users

Olympia is big and when I say big I mean it By the end of the day I could have used a couple of stretcher bearers to carry me home I feel sorry for those people who visit the NEC in Birmingham

There were 800 + stands at this show and I think I visited most of them The stands were divided into 12 groups rather like small shows on their own The groups displaying everything necessary from design and fabrication of chips through to complete electronic systems

Entry to this gargantuan event is by free ticket sent to those people in the electronics and allied industries who subscribe to the vanous trade publications and by invitation from exhibitors to their customers Entry at the door is also possible but costs pound5 Only a fool would attempt this method which is devised to keep out the riff - raff and under 16s sorry kids this IS a show for business men yes another suit and tie show

My ticket allowed me In vIa the Fibre Optics entrance your correspondent was given a show guide and a BEW yearbook catalogue This hefty tome carried a cover price of

pound995 It reads like a telephone directory with colour adverts

First stop was the knobs plugs and socket manufacturers I only wanted to know if you could still get the old round three pin plugs I end up with being sent free samples of their latest connector plus a VlSIt from the salesman at a later date so that I can order thousands of these things I tried to argue that I only wanted one or two but he wouldnt listen I gave in eventually just to get away

I had a chat with the boss of a firm of cable and connector manufacturers it emerged that we are being ripped off every time we buy a lead or plug such as a 25 way D plug The costs of these components is really quite low except when you buy them from a well known electronics store or even through your dealer

A few freebies later I was passing a stand which did rather catch my attention This was a firm of liquid crystal display manufacturers What a colourful sight the company is called Stanley an unusual name for a Japanese firm They produce many different types of LCDs with various options of illuminating them This can be the common torch bulb or LED miniature cold cathode fluorescent tube or electro luminescence (EL) The last two methods generate very little heat They also make touch sensitive displays and multicolour dot

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

matrix LCDs If you want to build a lap - top then these are the people to see for a screen On the same stand was a speaking Amstrad no not in the same sense that the Amiga can speak this was an audio digitizer in action A small plug - in card a microphone and loudspeaker plus a wallet lightened by an amount not far short of pound300 and away you go The software accompanying this package allows you to edit the recorded files and reuse them in your own programs you can even control the hardware from your own software as it supports BASIC C and PASCAL I was definitely not impressed with this the microphone and loudspeaker were worth about pound10 so what do you get for the other pound284 A good digitizer for the Amiga will set you back between pound75 and pound100 and they seem to do the same

Wandering on past the seemingly endless cabinets of PC boards I suddenly spotted something odd Here was a board which had most of its chips perpendicular like little black gravestones in a green field Puzzled I enquired of its purpose In reasonably good English the French salesman explained that here was their latest product on show for the very first time a 10Mb silicon hard disk I presume he meant hard card So whats new I thought he then told me the price thats different I thought pound14500 including VAT Mind you there is more to this thing than meets the eye

In a standard hard disk you have a lot of moving parts several readwrite heads stepper motors etc thus the

drive is prone to damage from sudden shock dirt and dust The unit is also bulky and draws a lot of current it therefore gets hot some need cooling with a fan This new concept avoids all these problems by being entirely solid state On the board is a SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) interface an INMOS transputer for memory management and in addition to the aforesaid 10Mb two small batteries One of these is for retaining the memorys contents when you switch the thing off I was assured that data retention of up to ten years is guaranteed do Duracells last that long ( more on that point later) The other battery is the first ones back - up The board is 120000 times faster than the access time of any current hard disk and can transfer

data along its own SCSI bus at up to 5 Mb per second It also has 4 serial links at up to 20Mb per sec for interconnection with sister boards or other computers Not cheap but interesting The company DSID were also showing plug in ram discs of 512k or 1Mb sizes they were pound1800 and 2300 respectively makes the

Commodore ASOl memory expansion look like the bargain of the century at pound150 for 512k

Every stand seemed to be kited out with an Amstrad not a real IBM to be seen I wonder why

Suddenly here was a name I could relate to Commodore The company Kerridge were in the complete systems business The pleasant saleslady explained how they will equip a company from scratch with all that is necessary to conduct stock control payroll and accounts

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

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Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

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clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

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And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

The demonstration machines were Commodore PC40s instead of Amstrads because they found them to be better machines for the pnce All their software operates in a UNIX environment see the article CLIspy comments

Prize draws abounded would I like a new car a holiday in Scotland or even Hawaii how about a bottle of champagne No I didnt win any of them in case you ask

Another familiar name Cherry well known for their digitizing pad for the Amiga Here they were showing their range of keyboards micro - switches and LED displays however at the back of the stand I did spot the famed graphics tablet The salesman leapt at me Can I be of any assistance he asked I told him of my quest for Amiga related items at the show and wondered wether they were going to be bringing out any new products for our machine Sir he replied this is NEW the mark 4 digitizer we released it only two weeks ago Well reading through the leaflet it does seem better than the Km3 but I cannot comment on that as I have never used the Mk3 the Editor is only person I now who has maybe he will review the new one in another issue What I can tell you is that the MkA is expected to retail at around pound450 and that it is a full size A3 drawing tablet with a cursormouse and a stylus It has a high rate of data transmission as well as improved shielding and resolution There is a menu driven easy set up facility plus the ability to configure the tablet from the computer via an RS232 connection

Another Toshiba stand the first was promoting uninterruptable power supplies This one had their recently released 4 inch colour LCD pocket TV set on show but what caught my eye was their latest 65 inch full colour active matrix LCD monitor Imagine a TV screen only half an inch thick it wont be long before we are really going to see the fabled hang it on the wall like a picture TV set

Downstairs in the mam halls were other big names in the electronics industry like Philips NEC and SGS - Thomson but where was Motorola not at this show it seems

Wandering about I came across Sony here was the stand for the computer user I know you probably think of them as only making discs and Walkmans but Sony have new products which are set to make mass storage of data easier quicker cheaper and more compact

You have all heard of CD the new medium which has now begun to outsell the LP as the most preferred method for replaying music CD - ROM is another facet of this technology it enables the computer user to read large amounts of data from a compact and robust source Unfortunately it is not possible to write to these devices Sony produce several drives for CD ROM 1 disc drive size and 4 full size with different options These can include audio out so that the unit can double as an ordinary CD player SCSI controller and Sonys own bus through which when used with the appropriate adaptor card connection can be made to a Pc One feature that I thought was a great

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

improvement on the CD system was Sonys CD - CADDY this is a plastic case similar in appearance to a 3 12 inch floppy disc which holds the CD It prevents damage being done to the disc during handling No matter what the adverts claim CDs are not indestructible

WORMS is a new in - word in the computer industry It stands for Write Once Read Many timeS It is an optical system of mass data storage which as its name implies can only be written to once and therefore provides a permanent uneraseable record Each disc is 12 inches in diameter and can hold up to 32 Gb a Gb or Gigabyte is equal to 1000Mb or 1000 unformatted Amiga discs Sony claim the life expectancy of these discs to be at least 100 years

Now the piece de - resistance a rewriteable optical disc Sony were promoting this new device for incorporation into new computer systems rather than as an add - on Whereas all the Sony systems I have been talking of so far use a laser beam to read the data in the case of the WORMS that beam is also used to write by burning a pit in the disc the new system uses a combination of laser and magnetic fields All magnetic recording systems require a magnetic field to read write and erase a stronger field is normally used for writing and erasing The Sony system needs the extra power that a laser beam can provide to write and erase The disc is read by the laser only this is because changes in the magnetized layer alter the polarization of the reflected laser beam Again the system has a SCSI interface and each disc can store up to 650Mb of data The drives are expected to cost around $5000 and

each disc may well set you back pound50 although this is quite cheap when you consider the cost of an equivalent number of floppies for the same amount of storage

Next to the Sony stand were Citizen They had a range of printers and disc drives on show Their pride and joy is a one inch high 3 12 inch drive ideal for portable computers Sony also had one of this size on display but Citizen were claiming to have got there first Apart from this new drive the salesman would not let on about new products They are on the way though

Panasonic had a WORM system as well as many different monitors The only problem was that all of their sales staff were indifferent a similar fate was to happen at the British Aerospace stand later on everyone else was only too pleased to talk

Now you may have noticed that SCSI keeps cropping up when I talk of interfaces this system is the preferred one for bus add ons for the Amiga The ST506 is a cheaper interface used by the PCs for connecting hard discs etc At a guess I would say that SCSI is more versatile and that is why a lot of manufacturers are now using it

Scattered around the exhibition were several stands promoting development areas like Wales Wiltshire and Cornwall There was also a recruitment village with numerous well known companies trying to attract staff

Earlier I spoke about batteries There were quite a few companies

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

here Ever Ready Varta and Duracell and many less well known manufacturers like SAFT and Epson yes Epson the printer company Everybody knows of Duracells TV ads that claim their batteries last longer well Kodak are confident that their Ultralife range will last twice as long as the best alkaline

These new cells are lithium based and have a shelf life of ten years they are not cheap to buy but are cheaper to run

Hyundai a name more associated with cars than computers were here with their range of ROMs RAMs and other chips I knew that Yamaha were a big Japanese company into ships bikes musical instruments and HiFi but it appears that Hyundai are just as big in Korea

Another chip company this time of more interest to Amiga owners that I spotted was Micron Technology famous for their RAM upgrades Here they were selling an extensive range of memory chips Only one let down the salesman was an ST owner but I vas in such a good mood that I forgave him for this

I must mention the automatic hardfloppy drive tester that I saw this pound5000 machine was fitted with a variety of connectors and was able to test four different drives at once then report on their possible faults Ideal for the busy repairman

I had now covered all of Olympia except for the Military test equipment section which was by special invitation only Oh well maybe next year

I must say that I enjoyed this event and found all of the staff that I met very helpful and a pleasure to talk to

Sonys Optical disk caddy system

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

Which Harddisk by

Tony Miller

There have been a few harddisks on the market for the MOO all of which have been in the pound600 - pound800 price range Suddenly we are seeing pound300shypound400 hard disks appearing all over the

place Are they as good as the more expensive ones

We thought we would have a look at one and compare it to one of the more expensive harddisks So lets begin the battle of two harddisks

AmiD rive V SupraDrive

The Arnidrive is new and still very hard to get hold of It should be available at the CBM show from the Micro Anvika stand I t is an autobooting harddisk (if you have 13 roms in your Arniga) There is no through port which makes any further expansions very hard to fit And with no option for internal memory upgrades it limits you to the 1 meg internal memory The purpose of the drive is maximun power for minimum price The colour matches the Arniga but the size of it is a little large The interface and harddisk are in the same unit with a separate power supply Available in 30megs and 40megs both for a price of pound399

The Supra Autobooting drive is far more expensive It retails at pound699 But you get a little few extras For a start the interface and harddisk are in two seperate boxes This allows for more than one harddiskmiddot to be fitted to the same interface In fact it allows 7 harddisks to be fitted to one interface

There is also a through port for further expansions and the option to add 2megs of ram vithin the interface The power for which comes from the harddrive and not the Arniga I think though that the main reason that I like the Supra Drive is that when I had problems vith my interface I rang Frontier in the UK and they were so helpful vith a replacement interface on my door by the folloving morning Ok I had to pay for it but still it was service that I will not forget in a

hurry For compatability expandability technical information and backup service I think you would be hard pressed to beat the Supra Drive from Frontier Harddisks available (with approx prices)

SupraDrive 30megs pound699 ArniDrive 30megs pound399

shy

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

SHOV

by CUspy

Those of you who listen to cannot have failed to have noticed the heavy advertising for this show Billed as for the computer professional I thought I just had to go along

This is one of those suit and tie events with the majority of visitors In

their late twenties and early thirties of them earn between pound12000 and

a year are involved In

programming or sofnvare engineering After filling out a questionnaire

concerning who I was what I knew

how much I currently earned etc I was allowed to enter in among the thronging crowds

I was immediately accosted by a pretty girl something that was to happen practically every ten feet I moved

must be my good looks she asked me if this was my first visit and what did I want from the show Replying to

all her questions I was informed that if I wanted to start my own company I should visit stand so and so who were offering the best deals Thanking her I moved on complete with the obligatory carrier bag full of leaflets and a free pen

H this was going to happen at every stand I thought that better have a

cover story no I am not going to tell

you what it was that give the game away

There were stands at this event offering everything from accountancy and agency services to penSIOns and training but most stands were companies after freelance programmersanalysts etc to work on a

contracting basis for big companies If you have the relevant experience then the wodge was waiting for you

I overheard one chap being offered a job in the States at $100000 per not bad eh Sorry no programmers required they were interested ID were people with

knowledge of C and If you know your stuff

are a with Hewlett - Packard or then theres money in them thaI hills I did mention Amiga to one company the girl wrote doVtl1 Omega so they must have heard of it dont you think Everything was going to plan I

now received about a dozen carrier

bags of leaflets a free book on contracting half a dozen pens three key - rings a credit - card holderseveral

beer - mats and a jumbo sized tee shirt when the game was nearly up Here vas a gentlemen who knew of the

machine I was talking about I quickly changed the subject to its operating system ah ha this foxed him he was not familiar with it but was still interested dratl Please in touch have you a business cardhe

handed over one of my specially prepared fakes Phew that was close

he nearly offered me a job Apart from all these city gents and

Yuppies there also appeared to be the cast of AUo no they werent

the real ones but the imitation Helga was of a good likeness she was entertaining a group of jolly red - faced gentlemen at the bar In fact the

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

champagne was flowing if you knew where to go If any of you want to go on a course

Id better warn you that they start at pound100 per day

Getting onto this gravy train appears at the moment only to be possible if you were a college graduate with several years experience at a large firm

I dont think that you would pick up enough of the sort of knowledge these people require just by studying at home or attending evening classes Still there is always someone out there who will prove me wrong

If any of you want to try it then good luck Id rather have a steady 9 to 5 job Contracting pays good money but the contract may only last a few weeks then it is a case of

waltmg for the next job to come along or rooting out that next job yourself There were just under 3500 people at the last Contractors Show probably more attended this one all competing with one another The next one on is in the Autumn

look out for the details in the business computer presssect

REVIEW 1989 PC USER SHOW amp PC CAD OLYMPIA

by CLIspy

This was my second visit to Olympia in two weeks I was expecting an exhibition of the proportions of British Electronics Week this was not to be The PC User Show only took up the floor of the main hall and a quarter of its balcony space However there was a

room set aside for Lotus 1 - 2 - 3 users

Again I did not see a single proper IBM machine every stand had clones I suppose this is what you would expect at a show where the major clone manufacturers are exhibiting but you would think IBM would make the effort to attend a show dedicated to the machine with which they set the ball rolling its like not having the

Commodore stand at the Commodore show

Off I wandered first stop a company called Micropolis hard disk specialists What intrigued me was a poster lamenting the limitations of the ST - 506 interface I was immediately assailed by

a salesman Their main products are 5 14 inch drives up to 200Mb capacity with a range of 3 12 inch systems to be released later in the year as well as larger devices for rack mounting shyup to 15Gb All have SCSI or EDSI interfaces EDSI I had never heard of

that one apparently it stands for Enhanced Small Device Interface is similar to SCSI but more standardized An international SCSI standard has yet to be set this can ca A - x2some

incompa tibili ty problems The performance of their products is quite high for instance the 1670 series of 5 14 inch hard disks can transfer data at up to 4Mbsec with an average

access time of 16ms They also claim a 40000 hour MTBF - Minimum Time

Between Failures Forgot to mention Gigatape it was a

small stand Anyway these people are

using DAT Digital Audio Tape technology to do a faster and more

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

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Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

I

tape back up than streamers will do more about this

boring stands later I came across Disk supplies one of

discount disc sellers at the which I was quite surprised to

see vith Gultronics and of Tottenham Court Road

was now at the back of the main hall all the small stands were

Solidisk well known to and owners

that I didnt see at the were advertising in the

guide were Technologies They have a dongles for the PC and

devices can be used to software from unauthorised access Just send the company they will rush you an evaluation kit

disk abounded add on drives were Magstore Ltd seemed to be the only company with an optical system in use They also had a DAT tape back in operation as well The Magstore uses a 5 14 inch optical with a capacity of 200Mb It is quite slow compared to a hard disc 170ms access and a

transfer rate of average but does have the advantage of uneraseability archive purposes and costs around The drive will take discs and Panasonic who claim a ten year media life and Plasmon who claim thirty years The an

incredible amount of storage capacity 12Gb plus in a small credit card size cassette which can be reused or altered if needs be access time is not of the essence it can 20 seconds to find a file then this is the

device for you providing you a or Mac

you noticed how croppmg up in this article businessman has cottoned on to

that the Apple machines have something to offer over the based Ponder this thought the

uses the same processor similar and front ends as the Mac

are the order of the day subscribe have a free copy register here for your free

dont forget to claim this that but no other

cascades from all the stands about the prices Simple utilities that we take for granted on our are only available to the

user for high prices Graphics sound and animation packages cost the earth usually with the need for an additional because of the hardware I can honestly say that I was not impressed with anything that I saw All the machines capable of quality graphics cost a fortune the I can buy ten A500s for that price It is true that the graphics found on the Sun workstations and the new 286 and 386 processor based are very good much better than Amiga but we are talking about thousands of pounds for a system and not hundreds

Epson had the stand here a comprehensive range of printers and PCs were on display as well as a proud showing of their latest releases These include a new the G05000 two ink jet printers two dedicated colour printers is a 300x300 dpi 6 laser printer with but if you want speed new

SQ2550 132 column 24 ink jet

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

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bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

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THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

is the beez neez - only 594 cps in super draft mode It also has 9 fonts and will cost around pound1350 Colour printing using a four colour ribbon does not come cheap with Epson Their new LQ860 cheapest dedicated colour weighs in at pound770 Id think seriously about a colour ink - jet better quality for a similar price Epson printers are very good but very expensive

Although most of the Epson stand was taken up with printers and PCs they were sharing it with their special products division this company fields a range of lap - top portables and accessories such as mini printer and ROM - packs They also have two types of hand - held terminals for data entry etc They transmit to a host computer via an infra - red link rather like these new transmitter video programmers and have mini printers RAM cards and bar code reader peripherals Apart from the usual keyboard means of entering data the EHT - 10 terminal uses a touch sensitive LCD screen to interact with the user Each unit is about the size of a video tape Printer rivals Brother also had a

large and interesting stand Among the numerous dot matrix machines were a range of PCs a new desktop FAX machine for under pound700 a colour photocopier for under pound5000 and two new laser printers The HL 8E laser has seven built in fonts as well as a plotter font this gives it the capability to produce 56 variations in its printed output styles A Hewlett - Packard CAD jCAM emulation is also included for the pound1995 it costs it does 8 pages a minute However the HL 8D will print both sides of the paper at once for pound2995 The Brothercolor 5500 photocopier utilises the new cyocolor technology recently shown on the BBes

Tomorrows World The process uses special paper coated with capsules of dye these contain contain one of three colours which are sensitive to coloured light When exposed to different coloured light these dye capsules harden relative to the coloured image on them The paper is then passed through a set of rollers to burst the unhardened capsules and therefore impregnate the paper the whole thing is then cooked for a crisp permanent image gas mark 7

Please note that any prices I quote are recommended retail prices and that you can get the items cheaper through a dealer This brings me on to Star Nothing really new here the glossy leaflet tells me that the LC 10 costs pound229 and the colour version pound299 both printers can be bought for about pound40 less in the High St SampS Software are offering a no fix

no fee software recovery service for lost or corrupted data They also have a virus toolkit for sale at pound50 dont tell Steve Tibbet of VirusX fame or hell want to charge a fee Their Chairman apparently said This virus business has been blown up out of all proportion but they are managing to make money out of it An intelligent uninterruptable power supply dont laugh is now available from Galatrek International

The box is connected to the protected computer via an RS232 interface In the event of a power failure the UPS instructs the computer using special software to close and save files and shutdown the system before the batteries run down Neat

The best thing that I picked up at the show was from the Seikosha company It is a little booklet called

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

the Alternative Computer Show Guide you can probably guess this is a

comical publication It includes methods for getting into shows such as these for free and when you are in there a guide for spotting the hazards and freebies

It was now time to VISit the CAD village it wasnt worth the effort of climbing the stairs All that was on show up here was repeated down below

Commodore were noticeable by their absence I thought they were trying to corner the market with their cheap range Arch rivals Atari were here though The transputer village was as

impressive as the CAD one had been -it was dull When you demonstrate an Arniga to a PC user you always get the Arniga effec you know their jaw drops especially when you tell them that an A500 only costs pound350 Well none of these transputer based machines had that sort of effect on me The Atari stand only really caught my

attention because of the large video screen showing their new Folio pocket Pc The new folio I exclaimed to a salesmanUgh he replied I think he was disappointed that the expected demonstration models had not arrived for the show even though a display cabinet with the hopeful sign Watch this space was ready and waiting This new pocket looks like a serious contender for the electronic filofax market Psion Organiser watch out The Folio has 63 keys 128k RAM and a 40x8 character LCD display There is an expansion bus for extra RA1 up to

640k and peripherals No disk drive the Folio uses 32128k memory cards A built in speaker can be used to dial a telephone according to the video narrator have doubts about this

facility being available in the the beeps on the demo video sounded distinctly American Your correspondent has to admit a liking for the enemys new toy Atari were also demonstrating their

Transputer Workstation Contrary to popular belief this is not a souped up ST it is in fact a completely separate computer housed in a very large box The only part the ST plays is as an interface between the user and the box of tricks An unofficial spokesman explained the role of the ST as merely a cheap off the shelf ready made keyboard mouse and IO subsystem which is capable of operating independently of the host I would suggest the same result could be achieved by connecting an A500 to the same big box and voila a Commodore Amiga Transputer Workstation The system has four resolution modes from 512x480 in true colours to 128Ox960 in 16 colours (from 4096) Intermediate video modes have a palette of 16 million colours A good monitor is therefore necessary

I had now covered the whole show except the Lotus village and could find no reason to go round again British Electronics week was more fun and more interesting than todays effort Perhaps it will be better next year as the show will incorporate European Unix user

CLIspy comments

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

WHAT IS THE AMIGA by

Tony Miller

Currently there are two models of the Amiga the lower priced ASOO and the top of the line Amiga 2000 The first one to be marketed the Amiga 1000 is no longer produced but is still available if you know where to look At the time of writing there was about to be released a third version of the Amiga the Amiga 2500 With a bit of luck it should be available at this show

Two main characteristics set the Amiga apart from any other computer available on the market in this price range One is the incredible graphics with an ability to display up to 4096 colours on the screen at the same time The second is its ability to do multitasking - the capability of running simultaneously - several different programs

Other features of the Amiga are

- Four channel true stereo Output

512K RAM on the Amiga 500

1 megabyte on the Amiga 2000

Both models are expensively expandable

- Built - in disk drive with a capacity of 880K

- MC68000 microprocessor the same one used in the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST

Amiga ASOO The Amiga ASOO is the smallest and cheapest of all the Amigas

The technical specification of the Commodore Amiga 500 sets new boundaries in the word processing file management and the combination of text and graphics

Sensational graphics facilities let you draw quickly with the mouse enlarge reduce and move images change colours from a palette of 4096 overlay logos all at the touch of a button

A dedicated four channel synthesiser chip will produce digitised sound effects in stereo So the audio facilities match the graphics And the Amiga 500 can interface with video and musical inputs - the creative possibilities are endless

For the business user a multitasking environment lets the operator do more than one Job at once Thus although the Amiga 500 was primarily designed as a superlative games machine it is ideal for creating presentation documents 3D simulation and animation graphic design layouts and archives This magazine was put together on an ASOO

Amiga 2000

The objective of the Commodore Amiga 2000 it to provide the optimum design for the business or professional user by allowing the user the flexibility to configure the system to meet current need and to modify or expand the system as these needlt change Flexibility is inbuilt in the areas of memory storage

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

output and even in the area of co processing with another Operating System and a growing range of Commodore and 3rd party board) and peripherals will be made available over the coming months

Compatibilty with existing Amiga software seven internal expansion slots MS shyDOS capability and genuine multi-tasking make the Commodore Amiga 2000 the most flexible business micro computer ever to sit on the comer of a desk these were taken from the official Commodore promotional literature

I have used both machines myself and find that out of the two I much prefer the Amiga 500 There isnt an internal fan in the ASOO which means that I could word - process in peace and quiet The A2000s fan was very distracting when one is trying to concentrate on that important lettermagazine article As for the software compatibilty again I was dissapointed to find that there is software around that refuses to run on an A2000 I believe that there is a problem with the keyboards control location in memory which results in some games not been able to run

And the last thing that put me off the A2000 was the size of it and the cost of it It takes up far more room than the ASOO and costs nearly three times the amount Although the machine is far bigger internally there is not that much more room (If that makes sense) To add a hard disk to the A2000 there are two options Add a Hardcard that takes up the room of two expansion boards or add a hard disk that takes up the room of the second floppy drive or the drive If you want to add a second harddisk then get the hacksaw out On the other hand to add a harddisk to the A500 just plug the interface into the expansion port and away you go Of course you lose more desk space for every expansion you add

Specifications - expandable to 9Mb

256Kb of Rom (Kickstart 12) - Motorola 68000 714Mhz

Connectable Peripherals-- up to three disk drives - up to three disk drives - Printer

Harddisks - Genlock - Frame grabber - Audio digitiser - Midi Interface - Modem - etc

t~

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

Boffi 00

If you have any problems that you need the answer to then just write to us and we will worry about it

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

1 IVIOTOROLA 68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE by Richard Hartschorn

The 68000 Assembly Programmers Model

The 68000 has

8 general purpose 32 bit accumalator registers DO to D7 called Data Registers

7 general purpose 32 bit pointer registers AO to A6 called Address registers

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register A 7 or SP called the Stack Pointer

1 special purpose 32 bit pointer register PC called the Program Counter

1 special purpose 8 bit flag register CCR called the Condition Code Register

The majority of the instructions you can code in 68000 Assembly involve at least one of these registers as either the source of a number or as the destination of a calculation Motorola who originally specified the 68000 microprocessor defined a syntax for their Assembler that allows most possibilities of source to be used as a destination too

The 68000 machine code uses 16 bit opcodes and externally the 68000 chip has a 16 bit data bus

The fundamental unit in 68000 Assembler is the 16 bitWord As a general rule any 68000 instruction that uses Wordsize will run smaller and faster than another size and the only reason to use Assembly language is to have your program small and fast Internally the 68000 has a 32 bit data bus which permits ordinary arithmetic on 32 bit numbers called Longwords

All of the standard Assembly language instructions are available on a 68000 Unlike other processors you must always specify whether an instruction is to work as on Byte Word or Longword data by appending B W or L onto the end of the instruction text The size you specify

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

for the instmction is forced onto the source and destination of the data

If an instmction directly uses an Address register as a source or destination the 68000 processor forbids you to use the extension Motorola decided that its naughty to use the Byte size with address registers and if anyone can think of a reason for this Im open to suggestions The Data registers are allowed to use all three sizes and there is no technical reason why Address registers shouldnt

EFFECfIVE

In the 68000 Motorola have tried to combine all the addressing modes older 8 bit processors use in order to specify the source and destination of an instruction The location of any number is called its Effective Address This is not necessarily an address in the memory of the 68000 although usually it is

Once you have mastered all of the possible Effective Addresses in the 68000 you will find that most programming techniques can easily be implemeneted in 68000 Assembler

The whole range of Effective Addresses the 68000 uses is tabulated below for reference

EA NAME ASSEMBLER TEXT

$00 DATA REGISTER DIRECT DOl D11 D2 middot D5 D7I

I I$08 ADDRESS REGISTER DIRECT AO A2 AS A7 $10 ADDRESS REG INDIRECT (Ai) 1 (A2 ) (A3 ) (A7 ) $18 ADDRESS REGPOST INCREMENT (AO)+( )+ (A7)+ $20 ADDRESS REG PRE DECREMENT (AO)-(A) (A7) $28 ADDRESS REG WITH DISPLACEMENT $OOOO(AO) $FFFF(A7) $30 ADDRESS REG WITH INDEX $00 (AO I DO w) $FF (A 7 D7 L) $38 ABSOLUTE SHORT $0000 $39 ABSOLUTE LONG $00000000 $FFFFFFFF $3A PC RELATIVE $OOOO(PC) $FFFF(PC) $3B PC RELATIVE WITH INDEX $OO(PCDOW) $FF(PCD7L) $3C IMMEADIATE BYTE pound$00 1 pound$01 pound$FEI pound$FF $3C IMMEADIATE WORD pound$0000 0001 pound$FFFF $3C IMMEADIATE LONG pound$00000000 pound$FFFFFFFF

boggle at the number of variations of Effective Address spot the conventions

$ says a hexadecim31 number follows pound says a number ( not an address ) follows 1234 IS

different to pound1234

(x) says x is the address In memory of the number that the processor is to use

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

POST SCRIPT

The 68000 chip is microcoded The processor fetches each machine code word from memory and translates it using tables stored in its microcode ROM The Z80 is designed with hard wired logic so that each instruction fetched from memory directly controls the chip registers Using a high level language you may have seen the difference between interpreted and compiled code The 68000 interprets its machine code the Z80 runs its machine code directly When Motorola sees fit to release a hard wired 68000 we may see a truly remarkable increase in speed of our machine code

C -by Bill Moore

OK so how does one go about wntmg a regular column about C The answer is With trepidation because there is a very real problem The problem is you lovely people out there

Half of you drive a C compiler everyday of your lives and are far more expert than I shall ever be Half of you dont OgtTI a C compiler but wish you did Half of you see nothing wrong with BASIC and are only reading this to confirm your belief (Arithmetic was always my weak subject) Actually AmigaBasic is not a bad language but it does have limitations Indeed I dont think the Amiga would be your favourite computer if AmigaDOS were written entirely in BASIC

So what I shall do is this I shall start to write this column in such a manner that each issue starts simple so anyone can read it but gradually gets deeper as you go on to parts aimed at people with compilers So lovely people with each issue start reading this column and when your brain begins a hurt turn to another page But keep this series so that when you do get a compiler you will be able to come back to it and hopefully it wont be so bad after all

A simple program in C

Programs written in C can be very long or very short Here IS a short one which is also quite friendly

mainO printf( Hello Darling)

Yes that is an entire program Probably you can see what it does But unless you have already met C you will not find it imrneadiately obvious why it is written the way it is But before I explain in detail

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

I should make it clear that unlike most other languages takes no notice of the ends of lines It just carries on from one line to the next as if there were no break the above program could be vritten this way

finclude lt stdioh gt mainO printf( Hello Darling)

This layout makes the structure of the program more visible

The most important concept in is that of a function function consists of a name followed by round brackets Here are two functions

mainO

printfO

The program defines one function mainO and uses the other function printfO It does not need to printfO because is already predefined in a library of functions supplied with your compiler Some details about the function printfO are however useful to the compiler so the line poundinc1ude lt stdioh gt II is added to tell the compiler how to find these details

Hello Darling is a string which is supplied as an argument to printfOmiddot

PrintfO(Hello Darling) is a statement complete with a semi - colon to denote the end of the statement This statement proceeds to display the string on your monitor This particular statement asserts a function printfO but there are also other types of statement So to use a function you include it in a statement

defining a function is a bit more complicated than that You also have to define the body of the function that you have to define what the function is to do

So the example

lt stdioh gt more about header files in the future

mainO defines the name of the function

indicates the beginning of the body

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

printf( Hello Darling) is a statement in the body

indicates the end of the body

So all the program does is define a function called mainO This is indeed the main function of any program since when a C program is run AmigaDOS locates the function mainO on the appropriate file and runs it Mark you it does prefer you to first compile your lovely neat program into a string of gobbledegook that only a computer in this case the Amiga can understand

The above program is a modification of a famous C program used by the inventors of the language Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie in their book The C Programming Language second edition The difference is that the word World has been replaced by Darling to make it more user friendly

To run the program it must first be compiled Lattice C v50 and Manx C are the commonest compilers for the Amiga Unfortunately they dont come cheap

To compile in Lattice you would first use an editor such as ED (or LSE supplied with Lattice C - LSE is more user friendly) to create a file called for example Darlingc containing the code listed above Enter

Ie - L Darlingc

and the compiler will create a file called Darling To run the program just enter the word Darling in the eLI

In future issues I shall expand this program so it becomes a very useful little utility which if added 10 your startup - sequence will remind you of any birthdays coming up This can really save you from getting into trouble particularly from anyone called Darling This utility lives on my word processor disk which is very fulL Had I wanted 10 write it in BASIC there would have been no room for it and AmigaBasic on the disk

However before I treat you to Birthdays I shall give you the opportunity to compare how fast the Amiga runs in BASIC and in C I shall give a listing in the next issue of the Sieve benchmark in both languages So a race between C and BASIC] I suspect I know who will win but I admit I dont know by what margin Watch this space

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

VROOM SPUTTER bull SPUTTER00

~ ltgt~ltgt

Lattice AMIGA C COMPILER

AMIGA880K

Disk 1

~1 3middotC-4shyI~r 3~2-7

euro C for the Amiga

Introducing new Lattice C for Amiga DOS Version 50 In recent hlnchmarks Lattice C S() was off to the

races hefore lanx 56 was even olTthe starting linl In fact statistics prme that no other language no other compiler gives you faster more efficient programs Period And it no SUPPOl1S 68020 and 68881

BVfE Benchmark Lattice C 50 Manx C 36 Difference

dhampSl()IWS 424 627 )2

clhryslones -ee 1605 1017 iH

matrix manipulation 157 50A 6HxJ

scbigrd 702 H2H 15

sono 764 1109 ) 1

sieve Yi4 405 1)Yil

And its thl most comprehensive exclamation point lothing else gies you such a complete programming Cmmiddotironl1llnl All these tools md utilities are included in the Lattice c 50 package Lattice c COl1lpiiltr Compillf Companion [lilitils Sourcv Lnvl 1)1Ihllgglr (CodvProilc) bull C()de profilcr Cloi1al Optimizer jih c FUllction Lii1rlrici Blink

I

OHTlay Linker Asslmhler Disassembler bull Lihrtrian

bull Sample Files 8 Examples bull Lattice Screen Editor bull Inshystallation Program bull Comprehensive Documentilion

Our new easy-to-use Source Level Dubugger CodeProhe SUppOI1S both C and Assembly language and multi-tasking dehugging And our new Glo])iI Optimizer will actually ellbClllceyourpropmmspershyorllwlIce lip to 401]1)

So choose Lattice if you want to program on the fast track Or choose Manx and finish at the hack of the

pack To purchase rallice C 50 oror IIore ilj(mnti()ll

see yo 11raU() ritc s(jiuClrc supplier

I~lllicc Incorporated 2S00 S Highland Avenue Lomhard II 60Imiddot1H Phone HOOiSdmiddot))77

Suhidiary of SAS Institule Inc In Illinois )121lt)1()middotI(()(l

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

THE AMIGA AND THE SMALL BUSINESSMAN by Pete Symes

I run a manufacturing company in South London and it didnt take me long to realise that to run it more efficiently the purchase of some kind of computer was going to be necessary Initially I just wanted a Word Processor to handle my correspondence The choice of WP was mainly due to the fact that I didnt have a secretary at the time and I was like most other males in business a two fingered typist So off I went to my local electrical store and bought an Amstrad pew 9512 Now as a word processor it was very good albeit a bit on the slow side but nonetheless a very good entry machine for the novice As time went by and a lot of reading of the PCW magazines I realised that I could computerise a lot more of the business hopefully to make it more efficient and my life that bit easier So off I went and purchased some more software accounts database spreadsheet that sort of thing For a while everything seemed to be fine a little bit slow bu t more or less useable

As the business became more profitable I decided to treat myself Being a fan of computer games I decided to buy the best games machine around of course the first choice was an Amiga 500 So there I was PCW at work and an Amiga at home It didnt take me long to realise that the Amiga was not only a very good games computer but with its multi tasking capabilities it could also be a superior business machine

I decided to do a bit of research and discovered that a lot of the serious

business software was now available for the Amiga The idea seemed sound sell the Amstrad (Good idea - Ed) and use those funds to finance the necessary software for the Amiga That is what happened and the Amiga was duly installed in the office

In order to run the recently acquired software at its full potential more memory and a second disk drive were a must Cheque book in hand I rushed round to the local computer store Happiness once again ruled in the office

Meanwhile the business had risen dramatically I was now handling more clients so the demands upon the various programs had risen also The Amiga was coping more or less ok but it was beginning to be a chore and also very slow swapping disks continuously The nature of my business means that I have to have instant access to my accounts database information and correspondance

Due to the increase in business (couldnt afford to do it otherwise) off I went now under the much appreciated guidance of the Amiga Meditators and purchased a Supra 20 meg hard disk complete with the necessary interface (The interface is the reason why they are initially more expensive than their IBM counterparts)

At last I thought the perfect setup - a 1 meg Amiga 500 two floppy drives and a 20 meg hard disk However for those users who dont know no offence intended as I didnt

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

know either is that when you hook up a hard disk to the Arniga and partition it the way I have that is with four partItIOnS primarily for ease of maintenance and a bonus of greater speed it takes up memory So from being used to having 1 meg available I was now down to about 650k It was ok though I was able to do what I wanted and the hard disk was perfectly reliable so what more could I ask for

Well as you no doubt know the more you use the Amiga the more you realise what it can do As I recently read it is only limited by your own imagination I would like to add to that though the size of your wallet also helps I am very fortunate to be able to finance my now very strong interest in computers via the company

It had come to a stage where I was now having to think of new ways of producing my product to keep one step ahead of the competition Being a predominantly engineering based company the possibilities of CADCAM (Computer Aided Desigm and Manufacture) were very appealing However that old problem of the Amiga being a very memory hungry machine reared its head again The need for more memory in the near future was very apparent

When I purchased the Supra drive the thing that sold it to me apart from its reliability and user support was the facility of adding a 2 meg ram board to the interface Admittedly I could add the extra memory externally but if you knew my office and the space constraints that I work under you would understand that the internal option would be preferable

I ordered the extra memory and four months later it arrived This was not the fault of Supra The need to keep

up with their competitors had caused Supra to redesign the board to accept an auto - booting ROM and that coupled with the well known lack of DRAMs had slowed delivery

Installing the board was not as simple as the instructions lead me to believe After disconnecting the interface power off of course I found that the internal interface board was of a different design and didnt have the through power supply connector There I was after waiting four months the proud owner of 2 megs of memory I couldnt use So when in a panic phone 01- 4 - Arniga They asked me to bring the unit round possibly the first one in the country

After stripping the interface down and carefully exannrung it they told me that everything was there apart from the 2 pins needed to feed the power through to the new board So they soldered the two pins kindly donated by an old RS232 connector onto the board With bated breath we connected the interface up to a machine and 10 and behold the extra memory was recognised

I did call Supra to make sure that the soldering of the pins was the correct thing to do I know that sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but they assured me that it is what they would have reccomended The system has now been running for a month with no problems whatsoever

I hope that you have found this little tale not only entertaining but also useful If you are looking for a hard disk and more memory I would suggest that you take a serIOUS look at the Supra system It is not only very easy to install but also very reliable I cannot praise Supra

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

Frontier Software and the Amiga Meditators more highly for their very friendly and helpful support w

01 for AmigaEditors note

The Supra system with a 2Mb RAM board fitted works out about pound150

(08cheaper than buying a separate hard disk and external memory expansion In effect you are only then paying pound50 more than you would for an equivalent PC hard disk Very cost effective

Sales and Wants

If you would like to advertise here then please send your ad to the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Sales amp Wants

Unfortunately we cannot accept any advertisements for pirate software disc swapping parties or anything in the least bit naughty If you want a box number then we can arrange that

For Sale B2000 with Rom 13 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor 3 Megs of Ram and a 1 meg unpopulated ram board 2 harddisks a ST506 20meg and a SCSI 40meg All inside the B2000 and working Retail value pound4779 Want pound2000 Reply box 1

For Sale A2000 with Rom 12 2 floppy drives A1084 Monitor IBM - XT Bridge board Retail value pound2200 Want poundI500 or prepared to swap for ASOO with 2 drives and harddisk Reply box 2

Read and Write

This is the page to air your views or have a go at the editors

If you would like to have your say then please write to us at the address in the front of the mag Mark your envelope in the top left hand corner Read and Write

IliA Amiga A2000 Single Floppy Disk pound109000 Amiga A2000 Double Floppy Disk pound118000 Amiga A2000 Single Floppy Disk 1084S Colour Stereo Monitor pound139500 Amiga A2000 Single Floppy Disk 2090 Hard Disk 1084S Monitor pound175000 Amiga A2000HD Single Floppy Disk 2094A 40Mb Hard Disk 1084S pound250000 Amiga A2000 A26020 Single Floppy Disk 1084S Monitor pound290000 Amiga A2000 A2058 A2094A AGA-Flicker Fixer 14 High Resolution Colour Monitor pound405300 Amiga A2000 A2058 A2094A AGA-Flicker Fixer 15 FST High Resolution Colour Monitor pound416600 Amiga A2000 A2058 A2094A AGA-Flicker Fixer 21 FST High Resolution Colour Monitor pound608000 Amiga A2000 A6820 A2090A AGA-Flicker Fixer 21 FST High Resolution Colour Monitor pound655600 Amiga A2000 A6820 A2058 A2094A AGA-Flicker Fixer 21 FST High Resolution Monitor pound817000 Amiga Air Miles Pack Inc A500 A520 Easyl Disk Wallet Star Ray Nebulus Who Framed Roger Rabbit Spritz Paint 500 AIR MILES FREE pound49900 Amiga A500 TV Modulator Spritz pound37500 Amiga A500 1084S Colour Monitor pound65000 AmDri ve 30Mb Hard Disk (A500) pound39900 Integrator 11- 30Mb Hard Disk Floppy Diskl Mb RAM Expandable amp SCSI Controller with Thru port pound64900 Amiga 1084S Monitor pound29900 NEC Multisync II 14 Monitor pound53500 Amiga 15 FST Colour Monitor pound85100 Amiga 21 FST Colour Monitor pound273700 Philips 8833 Monitor pound27900 A2086 XT Bridgeboard pound53000 A2286 AT Bridgeboard pound86900 A2058 2Mb RAM pound69900 A2090 Hard Disk pound39900 A2092 Hard Disk 20Mb HS DOS pound40000 A2094 Hard Disk 40Mb pound117500 GVP Hard Disk 45Mb (A2000) pound79900

GVP Hard Disk 80Mb (A2000) pound120000 HardFrame (A2000) pound21900 Supra 30Mb Hard Disk (A500jA1000)pound69995 Amiga 1010 Disk Drive Ext 325 Disk Drive Thru Port ampSwitch Standard External Disk Drive 8-UP FastRAM (un-populated) EXP 1000-1Mb RAM (A500) Starboard2 2Mb RAM (A500jA1000) Starboard2 1Mb RAM (A500jA1000) ProRAM A2000 (un-populated) A501 512K RAM Minigen Genlock A2300 Internal Genlock (A2000)

pound14900

pound 9900 pound 9000 pound14900 pound49900 pound69900 pound49900 pound14900 pound14900 pound 9900 pound28600

SuperPic Genlock ampFrame Grabber pound59900 Hagni 4005 Genlock (A2000) pound166700 Neriki Pro Genlock (A2000) pound115000 A520 TV Modulator pound 2400 AGA Flicker Fixer pound39900 Flicker Master pound 1295 A2620 68020 68881 amp68851 pound160000 CMI Accelerator Board pound17995 CMI Accelerator Board + 68881 pound35000 Mouse Time (A1000) pound 2295

BUSINESS SOFTWARE - DATABASESPREADSHEET

Acquisition Analyse Data Retrieve Day by Day Digi Calc Home Accounts Maxiplan 500 Maxiplan Plus Micro Fiche Filer + Superbase Professional Superbase Personal 2 Superplan The Director Toolkit

pound24995 pound 7995 pound 5795 pound 2995 pound 3995 pound 2995 pound 9995 pound14995 pound 00 pound24600 pound 9995 pound 9995 pound 2995

BUSINESS SOFTWARE - WORDPROCESSINGDTP

City Desk pound11495 Cygnus Editor Professional pound 8995 Excellence pound21900 Kindwords V2 pound 4995

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Professional Page V12 Pagesetter Publishers Choice Shakespeare Text Craft Text Ed Plus TextPro The Works (Platinum Edition) Write ampFile Word Perfect

BUSINESS SOFTWARE - CAD

Draw Plus Draw 2000 IntroCAD Pro-Board V20A Pro-Net XCAD XCAD Designer

GRAPHICS - ANIMATION

3D Modeller AnimatorImages Animate 3D Animation Effects Animation stand Animation Flipper Animation Multiplane Animation Rotoscope Deluxe Paint III Design 3D Fantavision (PAL) Forms in Flight V2 Movie Setter Page Flipper Plus FX Sculpt Animate 4D Sculpt Animate 4D Jnr The Director

Turbo Silver V3 Turbo Silver Terrain Videoscape 3D Zoetrope (PAL)

GRAPHICS - PAINT

pound24600 pound 999~ pound 999 pound149 pound 5600 pound 599 pound 575~ pound19995 pound 999 pound229 9

pound1840v pound22425 pound 579 pound1399 pound13995 pound4850~

pound 999

pound 699J fl0300 pound1290 pound 359 pound 3595 pound 399 pound 469 pound pound 7995 pound 799 pound 399 pound 6995 pound 699shypound1199 pound39995 pound 9991 pound 579

pound13995 pound 199 fl490 pound 9995

GRAPHICS - PAINT Sculpt 3D pound 7995 Benchmark Simplifier pound 7995 F-BASIC pound 6995

Comic Setter pound 6995 GRAPHICS - HARDWARE GFA BASIC pound 6495 Comic Setter Clip Art pound 1995 Hisoft BASIC pound 7995 Deluxe Paint II pound 6995 Cherry Graphics Tablet A3 pound63200 HiSoft DevPac V2 pound 5995 Descartes pound 3495 Digi Droid pound 7495 K-Seka Assembler pound 4995 Digi Paint pound 5900 Digi View Gold (A500A2000) pound12995 Lattice CV5 pound21995 Express Paint V3 pound 6995 Easyl Dravling Tablet (A2000) pound37900 Lattice C ++ pound35650 Photon Paint V2 pound 7995 Easyl Drawing Tablet (A500) pound32890 MCC Assembler pound 6995 Print Master Art Disk I pound 2995 Summasketch Plus 12 x 12 pound45800 MCC Cambridge LISP pound14995 Print Master Art Disk II pound 2995 Summasketch Plus 18 x 12 pound68800 MCC Pascal V2 pound 8995 PRISM Plus pound 5995 Modula 2 (Developers) pound14995 Professional Draw pound13995 MUSIC PACKAGES Modula 2 (Standard) pound 9995 Seasons ampHolidays pound 995

Adrum pound 3995 UTILITIES GRAPHICS - VIDEO Aegis Sonix pound 5795

Audio Master II pound 6995 A-Talk III pound 7995 Deluxe Video pound 6995 Deluxe Music Construction Set pound 6995 BAD pound 3995 Lights Camera Action pound 5750 Dr T VI6A pound21900 Butcher V20 pound 2900 Photon Video Cel Animator pound11995 Dynamic Drums pound 5495 CLImate pound 3495 Photon Video Trans Controller pound19995 Dynamic Studio pound 6995 Disk Master (PAL) pound 3995 Pro Video Plus (PAL) pound24995 Hot n Cool Jazz pound 995 Diskwick pound 3995 Pro Video Plus Fonts Set 1 pound 9995 Instant Music pound 2495 Disk 2 Disk pound 3995 Pro Video Plus Fonts Set 2 pound 9995 Life Cycles pound 2995 DOS 2 DOS pound 3995 Video Effects 3D pound13995 Music X pound19995 Encore pound 4995 TV Show pound 6995 Opus-1 MCL pound 9995 FACC II pound 2995 TV Text pound 6995 Rock n Roll pound 995 Family Tree pound 3995 Videotitler (PAL) pound11000 Sound Oasis pound13995 Fine Print pound 3995 Video Generic Master pound 6995 Studio Magic pound 6995 Flipside pound 2995

Synthia pound 7995 Gizmos V2 pound 5600 GRAPHICS - FONTS GOMF V3 pound 2995

MUSIC - HARDWARE GOMF Button pound 5995 Ashas Fonts pound 5995 Grabbit pound 2995 Caligrapher pound 8995 Future Sound 500 pound 7995 Interchange pound 4600 Fancy 3D Fonts pound 4995 Pro Sound pound 7995 Interchange Modules pound 1995 Font Works pound ECE Midi Interface pound 5495 Pixmate pound 4995 Interfont pound 9995 Eidersoft Midi Interface pound 2495 Powerwindows V25 pound 6995 KaraFonts pound 5995 Eidersoft Keyboard pound 9995 Project D pound 3995 Lion Fonts pound 5995 Quarterback V22 pound 4995 Masterpiece Fonts pound PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES Ruby ViewComm pound 9995 ProFonts I ampII pound 2495 Superback pound 4995

Absoft AC BASIC 3 pound14995 X-Copy pound 2995 GRAPHICS - DESIGN Absoft AC Fortran pound29500

Arexx VI 3 pound 3995 PRINTERS Architechtural Design Disk pound 3495 AssemPro pound 5995 Deluxe Print II pound 4995 Aztec CProfessional pound19995 Hewlett Packard Future Design Disk pound 3495 BBC Emulator pound 4995 Human Design Disk pound 3495 Benchmark Modula 2 pound13995 Deskjet Plus f74500 Interiors Design Disk Microbot Design Disk

pound 3495 pound 3495

Benchmark CLibrary Benchmark IFF Library

pound 7995 pound 7995

Deskjet Paint jet

pound54900 pound94900

Prices correct at time of going to press 2nd June 1989 Commodore Show We print new price lists regularly For an up-to-date price list contact us at any of the addresses below

220A Tottenham Court Road 251 Tottenham Court Road Showroom 13 Chenies Strel London W1P 9AF London W1P 9AD London WClE 7ET

Telephone (01) 636 2547 Telephone (01) 636 2547 Telephone (01) 636 2547

Fascimile (01) 631 3667 Telex 94016414 ANV

CHIPCHAT Four years and $20 million have

enabled Motorola to develop a new range of chips for use in microcontroller applications the 32 bit 68300 series The new 68332 contains 422000 transistors and operates at 16MHz The architecture is based on a 68020 processor core with 2k of on - board ram a second RISC processor and two serial IO sub - systems Brian Wilkie manager of Motorolas Advanced MCE Operations said tl the new chip will give the computing power of a Macintosh in in the size of a business card An extensive range of support software has also been made available

By the end of this month Toshiba will be in full production of their 4Mbit DRA11 This is the second time the company has lead the market with such an innovative product the first being the 1Mb DRAM Initial price of this chip is expected to be about pound250

Mitsubishi are currently delivering samples of a floppy disc drive with 16Mb unformatted capacity Rather than using a servo loop to position the readwrite head Mitsubishi have opted for a control interleaved with data The drive has a SCSI controller disc mechanism controller and data controller contained in 3 ICs

The company have also developed an optical Neurochip our source believes it to be a 3 dimensional 32 bit processor

Mitsubishi have launched a revolutionary manmachine interface called the 1000 Flat Visual Terminal It IS a programmable device

similar in both function and looks to a digitising tablet However the work area of the tablet is formed from an eleven inch LCD touch screen This allows the user to select functions and menus using the provided stylus or a finger high resolution screen of the will display the image of what is being drawn or digitised on the tablet in addition to the host computers display The company sees many possible applications for this device

As you read this Atari are marketing their laptop PC Demonstrated at the spring Comdex show in Chicago the Portfolio has a reduced keyboard 8x40 character LCD screen and 128K of memory This is expandable to 640k The computer is slightly larger than a video cassette and will retail for $399 There is no disc drive the machine will use 230K

smart cards for storage A suite of programs including a word processor spreadsheet and business management system are built in modem is also available as an extra

British Rytrak of Liverpool have just announced an ability to mass produce colour LCD TV screens of up to 14 inches in size Developed in association with a large electronics firm and two universities Rytrak hope to go public later this year in order to secure additional funding to complete the project

NEes Multisync monitor has been upgraded The Multisync 3D is a 14 inch digitally controlled monitor with a maximum resolution of

1024x768 It also has an increased scan frequency range and a reduced dot pitch (028mm)

Parrot the UKs only fully integrated floppy disk manufacturer went into receivership in mid - May The receiver has cut the companys workforce by 142 to and is seeking a buyer for the

manufacturing facili ties in Vales was formed five years with

help from the Government

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has refused to consider the task of standardizing the + + language even though it is widely promoted by major companies such as

Microsoft and Zortech Without standardization there will be incompatibility problems in the software industry this will lead to a lack of necessary widespread acceptance required for the language to succeed similar problem was encountered back in 1983 with C

Coming soon

June

Alphatronix have launched Inspire an erasable optical disk storage system Using standard 525 inch disks marketed by 3M Sony and others the magneto - optical drive can be plugged into eXIstmg systems without any conversion to hardware or software This is because the unit is based on internationally accepted standards defined by ANSI ECMA and the Japan Study Committee 23 Each disk can hold 650Mb

Fuji Photo Film is now marketing its R5000H Hi Band still video recorder m Japan The unit is capable of capturing still images from TVs or video cameras and saving them to disk There are four playback modes shyautomatic frame by review and continuous five frames per second An optional interface allows connection to a computer Price about pound1450

6 - 8 European Unix User Show Alexandra Palace 6 - 8 Computer North - G - Mex Manchester 9 -10 Northern Contractor Show - New Century Ball Manchester 13 - 15 Software Tools 89 - Wembley Exhibition Centre gtIlt

14 - 16 Electrical Products 89 - Olympia 15th Intel Super Chip Seminar - Cambridge YIoat House)lt 27 - 29 University of

September

5 - 6 EuroBus 89 - Novote Hotel London

October

27 - 28 Autumn Contractor Show - Connaught Rooms London

Entrance by ticket only

We have a limited number of EuroBus 89 you would like SAE to us at 01 for Amiga First come first Sorry

the professional user

tickets for Leetronex Electrical Products 89 and one and you are over 18 then please send a

about the limit these are really shows for

Te - - - -- shy

ET ih~t n

nf~M I 01

n to JDIn

Group rat apG1cimi

islfuW sa poundiB

t amp 1

th I yaLl wi I IIliJ_L a LA-f10lLhlYr1agarinoe tull of r i~WSf hlots and L PIS worldwide news uun-etitioOEI

nd artlcl Fr to th fli-(shyAM b u 1 1 t i -1 u a ell 4 d l 5 s JP eo 0 i ZI II 5trttons PI sal twsar~ aod 0- J loR h1gt JUst hon-I oat aw~y ~ II

I

CHIPCHAT Four years and $20 million have

enabled Motorola to develop a new range of chips for use in microcontroller applications the 32 bit 68300 series The new 68332 contains 422000 transistors and operates at 16MHz The architecture is based on a 68020 processor core with 2k of on - board ram a second RISC processor and two serial IO sub - systems Brian Wilkie manager of Motorolas Advanced MCE Operations said tl the new chip will give the computing power of a Macintosh in in the size of a business card An extensive range of support software has also been made available

By the end of this month Toshiba will be in full production of their 4Mbit DRA11 This is the second time the company has lead the market with such an innovative product the first being the 1Mb DRAM Initial price of this chip is expected to be about pound250

Mitsubishi are currently delivering samples of a floppy disc drive with 16Mb unformatted capacity Rather than using a servo loop to position the readwrite head Mitsubishi have opted for a control interleaved with data The drive has a SCSI controller disc mechanism controller and data controller contained in 3 ICs

The company have also developed an optical Neurochip our source believes it to be a 3 dimensional 32 bit processor

Mitsubishi have launched a revolutionary manmachine interface called the 1000 Flat Visual Terminal It IS a programmable device

similar in both function and looks to a digitising tablet However the work area of the tablet is formed from an eleven inch LCD touch screen This allows the user to select functions and menus using the provided stylus or a finger high resolution screen of the will display the image of what is being drawn or digitised on the tablet in addition to the host computers display The company sees many possible applications for this device

As you read this Atari are marketing their laptop PC Demonstrated at the spring Comdex show in Chicago the Portfolio has a reduced keyboard 8x40 character LCD screen and 128K of memory This is expandable to 640k The computer is slightly larger than a video cassette and will retail for $399 There is no disc drive the machine will use 230K

smart cards for storage A suite of programs including a word processor spreadsheet and business management system are built in modem is also available as an extra

British Rytrak of Liverpool have just announced an ability to mass produce colour LCD TV screens of up to 14 inches in size Developed in association with a large electronics firm and two universities Rytrak hope to go public later this year in order to secure additional funding to complete the project

NEes Multisync monitor has been upgraded The Multisync 3D is a 14 inch digitally controlled monitor with a maximum resolution of

1024x768 It also has an increased scan frequency range and a reduced dot pitch (028mm)

Parrot the UKs only fully integrated floppy disk manufacturer went into receivership in mid - May The receiver has cut the companys workforce by 142 to and is seeking a buyer for the

manufacturing facili ties in Vales was formed five years with

help from the Government

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has refused to consider the task of standardizing the + + language even though it is widely promoted by major companies such as

Microsoft and Zortech Without standardization there will be incompatibility problems in the software industry this will lead to a lack of necessary widespread acceptance required for the language to succeed similar problem was encountered back in 1983 with C

Coming soon

June

Alphatronix have launched Inspire an erasable optical disk storage system Using standard 525 inch disks marketed by 3M Sony and others the magneto - optical drive can be plugged into eXIstmg systems without any conversion to hardware or software This is because the unit is based on internationally accepted standards defined by ANSI ECMA and the Japan Study Committee 23 Each disk can hold 650Mb

Fuji Photo Film is now marketing its R5000H Hi Band still video recorder m Japan The unit is capable of capturing still images from TVs or video cameras and saving them to disk There are four playback modes shyautomatic frame by review and continuous five frames per second An optional interface allows connection to a computer Price about pound1450

6 - 8 European Unix User Show Alexandra Palace 6 - 8 Computer North - G - Mex Manchester 9 -10 Northern Contractor Show - New Century Ball Manchester 13 - 15 Software Tools 89 - Wembley Exhibition Centre gtIlt

14 - 16 Electrical Products 89 - Olympia 15th Intel Super Chip Seminar - Cambridge YIoat House)lt 27 - 29 University of

September

5 - 6 EuroBus 89 - Novote Hotel London

October

27 - 28 Autumn Contractor Show - Connaught Rooms London

Entrance by ticket only

We have a limited number of EuroBus 89 you would like SAE to us at 01 for Amiga First come first Sorry

the professional user

tickets for Leetronex Electrical Products 89 and one and you are over 18 then please send a

about the limit these are really shows for

Te - - - -- shy

ET ih~t n

nf~M I 01

n to JDIn

Group rat apG1cimi

islfuW sa poundiB

t amp 1

th I yaLl wi I IIliJ_L a LA-f10lLhlYr1agarinoe tull of r i~WSf hlots and L PIS worldwide news uun-etitioOEI

nd artlcl Fr to th fli-(shyAM b u 1 1 t i -1 u a ell 4 d l 5 s JP eo 0 i ZI II 5trttons PI sal twsar~ aod 0- J loR h1gt JUst hon-I oat aw~y ~ II

I

1024x768 It also has an increased scan frequency range and a reduced dot pitch (028mm)

Parrot the UKs only fully integrated floppy disk manufacturer went into receivership in mid - May The receiver has cut the companys workforce by 142 to and is seeking a buyer for the

manufacturing facili ties in Vales was formed five years with

help from the Government

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has refused to consider the task of standardizing the + + language even though it is widely promoted by major companies such as

Microsoft and Zortech Without standardization there will be incompatibility problems in the software industry this will lead to a lack of necessary widespread acceptance required for the language to succeed similar problem was encountered back in 1983 with C

Coming soon

June

Alphatronix have launched Inspire an erasable optical disk storage system Using standard 525 inch disks marketed by 3M Sony and others the magneto - optical drive can be plugged into eXIstmg systems without any conversion to hardware or software This is because the unit is based on internationally accepted standards defined by ANSI ECMA and the Japan Study Committee 23 Each disk can hold 650Mb

Fuji Photo Film is now marketing its R5000H Hi Band still video recorder m Japan The unit is capable of capturing still images from TVs or video cameras and saving them to disk There are four playback modes shyautomatic frame by review and continuous five frames per second An optional interface allows connection to a computer Price about pound1450

6 - 8 European Unix User Show Alexandra Palace 6 - 8 Computer North - G - Mex Manchester 9 -10 Northern Contractor Show - New Century Ball Manchester 13 - 15 Software Tools 89 - Wembley Exhibition Centre gtIlt

14 - 16 Electrical Products 89 - Olympia 15th Intel Super Chip Seminar - Cambridge YIoat House)lt 27 - 29 University of

September

5 - 6 EuroBus 89 - Novote Hotel London

October

27 - 28 Autumn Contractor Show - Connaught Rooms London

Entrance by ticket only

We have a limited number of EuroBus 89 you would like SAE to us at 01 for Amiga First come first Sorry

the professional user

tickets for Leetronex Electrical Products 89 and one and you are over 18 then please send a

about the limit these are really shows for

Te - - - -- shy

ET ih~t n

nf~M I 01

n to JDIn

Group rat apG1cimi

islfuW sa poundiB

t amp 1

th I yaLl wi I IIliJ_L a LA-f10lLhlYr1agarinoe tull of r i~WSf hlots and L PIS worldwide news uun-etitioOEI

nd artlcl Fr to th fli-(shyAM b u 1 1 t i -1 u a ell 4 d l 5 s JP eo 0 i ZI II 5trttons PI sal twsar~ aod 0- J loR h1gt JUst hon-I oat aw~y ~ II

I

Te - - - -- shy

ET ih~t n

nf~M I 01

n to JDIn

Group rat apG1cimi

islfuW sa poundiB

t amp 1

th I yaLl wi I IIliJ_L a LA-f10lLhlYr1agarinoe tull of r i~WSf hlots and L PIS worldwide news uun-etitioOEI

nd artlcl Fr to th fli-(shyAM b u 1 1 t i -1 u a ell 4 d l 5 s JP eo 0 i ZI II 5trttons PI sal twsar~ aod 0- J loR h1gt JUst hon-I oat aw~y ~ II

I