** News / 3 pages / 2020 words ** ** Recycle company logos to fill up if necessary! ** UK Atari Shows 97 News Following the success of the 1996 Atari Shows, Mike Goodman has organised not just two but three events for dedicated Atarians this time round! Mike puts a massive amount of effort into organising these events, as do all the companies who attend, so do come along and show your support for the companies and individuals who continue to support the Atari scene. Floppyshop With five new product releases - and some projects they're keeping under wraps until the last minute I expect they'll be a few late nights up in Aberdeen before the shows. Positive Image 2 should be ready in time for Birmingham and London - or if not it should make its debut in Glasgow. DTP+ is a new Atari CD-ROM aimed at DTP enthusiasts compiled by Floppyshop and John Weller. DTP+ is a collection of 3600 fonts, over 8000 clip art items, DTP support programs, 300 printer drivers, printer utilities, labelling programs, word processors, image processing packages, vector graphics packages, demos of DTP related commercial programs and even some brand new releases of the latest Shareware programs direct from the authors. Everything is uncompressed and ready to run direct from the CD. Over 90% of the contents are in English and there's an easy to use catalogue which gives an overview of each and every program on the CD along with the full directory path to the relevant program/file. DTP+ costs £35 + P&P (UK £2, Europe £3, RoW £4). Power Up is a commercial racing car game from MC Soft. The game is seen from an overhead perspective looking down on the track. Power Up runs on any Atari computer but makes use of the blitter and DMA sound if available (STe/TT and Falcon). There will be 12 different tracks with five different scenarios each. Font packs and Clip Art is always popular and Floppyshop have four main collections on offer: ** Bulleted list ** * OXIEWare Fonts, Swedish semi-professional Calamus fonts spanning 16 disks * The Bournemouth PostScript Collection. These fonts are the basis of John Weller's Bournemouth Collection. It's main strength being the number of complete font families instead of the more usual single fonts. Supplied on 16 disks * The Bournemouth CFN Collection includes over 300 fonts on 20 disks based on John Weller's PostScript font collection but converted for use with Calamus. * Vector Clip Art collection by John Weller in Calamus AVG format ** end list ** ** BC on ** Tel: +44 (0)1224 312756 URL: http://www.netkonect.net/tachyon/flopshop/ Floppyshop, PO Box 273, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. AB15 8GJ ** BC off ** Titan Designs and Black Scorpion Software ** bulleted list ** * The Thought! Ideas Processor v2.2 has been reduced in price to £49.95 + P&P * The Afterburner040 MC68040 Toolkit has been upgraded to v4.09 * The essential APEX Viewers are currently being updated to be fully compatible with Videlity and Nemesis high-resolutions * APEX Media development continues and will be available for demonstrations during the shows * AGATe, Anonymous GIF Animation Tool, is a new PD utility for the Falcon, which enables Flic animations (such as those created using APEX Media) to be transformed into Animated GIF's - making it ideal for the creation of animations in Websites! * BSS DEBUG, The only true Falcon debugger has now been upgraded for full compatibility with MagiC, Afterburner040 and Videlity. Can now also be used as a direct replacement for MON. Upgrades cost £5.00 including P&P in the UK, or £10 including P&P to other destinations. ** CLAB.JPG here ** * C-Lab MK.X are now shipping, these are superbly engineered complete with a separate Atari keyboard at no extra cost (either Mega ST or TT-style). Price £199.00 + £15.00 P&P. The fitting service has also been revised to include the full audio line input attenuation. Contact Titan for details * Videlity is now shipping and includes full compatibility with Screenblaster 1 & 3 and BlowUp Hard 1 & 2 to provide even higher resolutions * SCSI CD ROMS, Toshiba 12-speed at £199.00 or built into a Pearl Series case for an additional £50.00 * SCSI hard drives, Seagate 420Mb hard disk drives mounted in Pearl Series case, includes a 50-way Centronics terminator, £169 * Pearl Series cases. Purpose built, extremely compact, incorporating PSU, SCSI ID switch, 2 x 50-way Centronic sockets and a small, quiet fan with removable dust filter. ST owners can purchase the Translator ACSI/SCSI host adapter for an additional £59.95 * Falcon 14Mb memory upgrade at £129.95 - unless SIMM prices change again! * 15" and 17" monitors, BABT/CE approved 33.6K and 28.8K modems and more! ** end list ** Nemesis upgrading Titan will not be performing Nemesis upgrades during the show but can take a limited number of Falcons back to base to be fitted and shipped out after the shows. If you want to take advantage of this service we'd recommend getting in touch with Titan before the show so they have some idea of numbers. Machines must be pre-packed in suitable packaging for transit, Titan cannot accept any responsibility for damage due to inadequate packaging. ** BC on ** E-mail: 100345.2350@compuserve.com Tel: +44 (0)121 693 6669 Fax: +44 (0)121 414 1630 URL: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/TITANWEB/ Titan Designs, 6 Witherford Way, Selly Oak, Birmingham, B29 4AX, UK ** BC off ** HiSoft HiSoft will be launching TermiteTCP, an easy-to-use TCP/IP stack from Oregon Research along with a complete internet pack for Atari computers, called Net&Web, which includes TermiteTCP, an E-mail program, an FTP program and a web browser. ** NETWEB.GIF here ** Bob Luneski at Oregon Research reckons TermiteTCP is a serious contender for the "best TCP stack on a personal computer" at the 1997 Academy Awards. Termite is written in hand-optimised assembly code (about 80 percent of it), which means it's fast and small - only about 200k total. It's also designed to be nearly idiot-proof! So long as you know your ISP telephone number, their domain name, and your login name and password, you should be able to fill in just those blanks and get connected immediately. For power users (and tweakers), there are "hidden" configuration screens to set all sorts of variables, but since Termite complies with all of the latest RFCs (and is based on the NetBSD stack design), most users will not only never see the extra screens, they'll never need them. HiSoft also plan to release Papyrus 5, the graphical document processor, along with special show offers on software, CD-ROMs, samplers, digitisers and more. For more details contact: ** BC on ** URL: http://www.hisoft.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1525 718181 Fax: +44 (0)1525 713716 HiSoft Systems, The Old School, Greenfield, Bedford, MK45 5DE, UK ** BC off ** 16/32 Expect lots of new CDs and Falcon games including Aazhom Krypht £35, a Mortal Kombat clone, Operation S.K.U.M £35, Multi Brique £29. CDs include Calamaximus £25, Atari Forever volumes 1 & 2 £19.99 each, CD-ROMs are crammed with clip-art, photos, sound files and utilities. Initiale £16, and Initiale & Monogramme £19 is another pair of CD-ROMs, featuring collections of fancy characters and other DTP paraphernalia. ** BC on ** E-mail: 16-32@premier.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1634 710788 Fax: +44 (0)1634 295895 16/32 Systems, 173 High Street, Strood, Kent ME2 4TW ** BC off ** Electronic Cow ** ECOW.GIF here ** Refreshed and invigorated by the positive vibes of the Sound Chip Synth review in Atari Computing #2, Danny McAleer and the team at Electronic Cow are about to release an update. Most of the new features revolve around the Sample Export feature. There will be a choice of wave types (square, triangle, and sawtooth), plus 16-bit sample resolution! The MIDI implementation has been improved and the program now works properly when in the Falcon's two-colour mode. Another update is being planned to coincide with the Spring Atari shows, featuring DMA playback. an option for 25KHz samples and pulse width and pulse width modulation. For more news and info contact: ** BC on ** Tel: +44 (0)1426 281347 E-mail: abi91@dial.pipex.com URL: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/abi91/cownet.htm 350 Broadwater Crescent, Stevenage, Herts, SG2 8EZ, UK ** BC off ** IMAGE Applications This new kid on the block is the sister company to Calamus User Publications and is now the sole UK distributor of Calamus SL (for TOS based platforms). The new version of Calamus SL, besides the usual system refinements, now includes most of the additional modules in the basic package at no extra cost! These include modules covering Line Art 1.5, StarScreening, Blend, Toolbox, PhotoFX and the External Clipboard. In addition to these there are also two new modules, Histogram and Helplines (coloured guidelines etc). Prices include VAT and P&P: ** bulleted list ** Calamus SL 96 Retail: £ 199.00 Special Launch Price: £ 179.00 109/1.09n to SL96 upgrade £ 159.00 S/S2 to SL96 upgrade £ 139.00 SL 92-95 to SL 96 upgrade £ 129.00 ** end list ** Not content with picking up Calamus IMAGE Applications have also been appointed as the European distributor for the Homa House Systems Atari Scanner software for use with the TT and Falcon, and any SCSI interface card. The SCSI scanners supported and software options, including VAT and P&P, are: ** Tab separated table ** Make Model Price Mustek 6000cx/12000cx/600sp/1200 £ 100.00 Hewlett Packard HP IIcx/3C/4C £ 100.00 Microtek E3/E6 £ 50.00 Umax £ TBA ** end table ** For more details contact: ** BC on ** Tel: +44 (0)1304 369364 Fax: +44 (0)1304 369364 E-mail: caluser@cix.co.uk Unit 3, Wellesley House, Walmer Castle Road, Deal, Kent, CT14 7NG, UK ** BC off ** System Solutions The English release of the long awaited Texel spreadsheet program should make its UK debut at the shows and at £79.95 should prove popular. ** TEXEL.GIF here - please use this one ** ** Caption ** Finally a spreadsheet program in the same league as Lotus 123 and Excel for the Atari platform ** end ** StraTos is a new C-Lab product. It's an ST on a standard PC plug-in card. It features "real" MIDI in/out, serial and parallel ports and shares the screen, floppy and hard drive of the PC but uses its own on-board memory. Notator SL users will be able to use their original dongle, even LOG 3 works and the program runs more than three times faster! The cursor now follows the score notation in realtime, and the MIDI timing is as good as on the original Atari. Availability is April/May priced at £299.00 including VAT. The RSVE hardware/software serial port modification has been reduced to £29.95. With low cost high speed modems becoming commonplace the 19200 baud serial port on standard STs isn't fast enough. The RSVE enables connection speeds up to 115,200 baud - although 38,400 is a practical limit on standard STs. The redesigned RSVE board now only requires four connections from the RSVE board to the computer. Hades StarTrack is a new VME card designed for use with Hades (although it also works on a TT) which enables direct to disk recording managing 99 audio tracks. The Hades 060 processor can handle up to 14 live tracks without DSP. StarTrack will be shown for the first time in the UK at the Atari Shows. ** EASE5.GIF here ** Ease 5 is now available. This version features a new manual, Windows'95 compatible long file name support and resolution changing on the fly. For more details contact: ** BC on ** http://www.ssolutions.com/ Tel: +44 (0)181 693 3355 Fax: +44 (0)181 693 6936 E-mail: ssolutions@cix.compulink.co.uk ** BC off ** Snippets Lottery companion v4.1 Mark Butler is shortly to release version 4.1 of his feature-packed program which now works under MagiC thanks to the inclusion of a User Configuration menu that nails some bugs we pointed out in our review in Atari Computing #2 (and some we didn't, for example the "Write Protect" feature that gave hard disk users a tough time) LC4 incidentally, coped easily with the introduction of the MidWeek Lottery draw. With Beta Test versions doing the rounds, expect a full release by the time you read this. TT emulator? According to the Acorn Cybervillage website Berlin based developer Riscy Bits is working on a Motorola 68030 co-processor card for the Risc PC to provide Atari TT emulation! The card might even include support for the DSP chip to offer Falcon emulation. APEX Media on a RISC PC anyone?