By Michael Webb, Editor-in-Chief, 103165.3700@compuserve.com
Some people may wonder what our motive is. The Amiga's fate is sealed, they say, and there is no point in trying to carry it on any further. Certainly starting a new online Amiga magazine, in this day and age, is absurd and futile. So why are we attempting such an ambitious project?
To put it frankly, it all stems from faith. Faith and hope, among many other thoughts and feelings. It is the same ethereal "glue" that has held us together as a community for so long. Think about it; when else has the word "community" applied so appropriately to a group in our situation? It says something if we have such integrity as a group. I'm sure the phrases "Macintosh Community" and "IBM Community" have been applied in the past, but much more loosely than in this case. The word "community" implies that we have strength in our union, and a common ground from which we begin. The evidence of it is tremendous: Amiga user groups continue to thrive, Amiga users gather together in online forums, and the 3rd-party product support has taken us further than ever otherwise imaginable despite recent stagnating technology.
I'm sure that this ideal has often been misinterpreted. Do we love our Amigas? Are we spiritually bound to a piece of computing hardware? Taken in that light, the whole affair sounds quite silly and meaningless; and the answer is a resounding NO!
Certainly many people enjoy using, and playing and working with their Amigas. Most of us are computer users, in the first place, because we want to be, and in many cases, we chose the Amiga platform because we would enjoy working with it more than any alternative, or because of its various technical strengths. Certainly, though, MicroSoft and Apple have made great strides in the user-friendliness and utility of their software, and the hardware now available for the other platforms sometimes has truly amazing capability. No one can doubt that the last 4 years, in which almost nothing fundamental has changed, has been a time of deterioration for the Amiga's relative standing, and a time of frustration for its advocates. Some people have jumped ship, many software developers among them; but a solid core remains. What is it that keeps us going?
As I mentioned, I seriously doubt that we feel any sort of serious adoration for our Amigas. (if I'm wrong, then there are some interesting Usenet Newsgroups waiting to be created). Seriously, though...I feel that we may enjoy using our Amigas, and that many of us wouldn't trade them for PC's of much higher power; but what we CLING to and LOVE is WHAT IT STANDS FOR!!!!
Yes, the graphics are nice, the animation is fast, the music sounds good, the user-interface is friendly, the video capabilities are convenient, the multitasking is powerful, the motorola chips are easier to program, the Fast RAM is fast and the Chip RAM is chipper!...etc., etc. But the reason we cling together and stand up for the cause of the Amiga is not simply for any technical qualities alone. We stand up for it for what it represents: Individualism! The right to be different! The freedom of choice! The list goes on. The Amiga is a poor, disadvantaged, orphaned child that could have done much better had it been treated better; and we want to MAKE this HAPPEN because WE see the strengths and virtues in IT that we have STRIVED for for all our lives. And THAT is why we continue the crusade. That is why we have survived over a decade of mismanagement, yet still hold out quite reasonable hopes for some level of success.
So no, we aren't in love with our machines; we are in love with the hope, and the ideal. We embrace the cause, and that for which it stands.
So with that, we initiate our effort; The Amiga Monitor has set a course and is now under way. What we hope to bring you, on a monthly basis, is an up-to-date digest of goings-on in the Amiga community, combined with interesting features and insightful editorial. We want to bring you the story, and illustrate it with appropriate analysis and information. This, and more, is what we shall endeavor to do in the years ahead.
The Amiga Monitor is published using a variety of programs on an Amiga 500/GVP A530. It is currently slated to be available in five versions: online in HTML, online in AmigaGuide, HTML archived in LhA, HTML archived in ZIP, and AmigaGuide archived in LhA. The AmigaGuide versions may not be available immediately following publication of Issue 1 in HTML, due to necessary translation times. GIF-format images will be supplied with HTML versions, and IFF-format images will be supplied with the AmigaGuide versions.
The home site of the Amiga Monitor is The Webb Site, Michael Webb's web page on Amigas, Texas Instruments TI-85 calculators, and Music, at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/ HomePages/MikeWebb/. The Webb Site, and The Amiga Monitor in HTML, are both optimized for IBrowse on the Amiga. At this time, an IBrowse demo may be found at http://www.omnipresence.com/. The Amiga Monitor is also subject to becoming available at other locations on the internet. We ask that we be informed of any such locations so as to maintain a corresponding database, and that whatever version(s) of the magazine is/are uploaded/made available is/are done so in its/their entirety.
With all such bureaucracy nicely out of the way, we can get to more interesting matters.
There is actually relatively little to say regarding the origins of The Amiga Monitor. The idea occurred to me in late May of 1996, shortly after I got my web page. June was a time of putting together a staff from the highly knowledgeable regular people in Real Time Conference on the Starship Amiga Roundtable on Genie. Work officially began in the first half of July, with Issue 1's publication date set for the second half of July. The pressures involved in starting a new magazine, however, proved to be too much for such expectations, so we moved the publication date to early August. Now that this process has been established, we expect to have significantly less difficulty in sticking to schedule. So we shall see you monthly!
I shall leave it to each of the other staff members to explain their backgrounds.
I was born in Binghamton in 1979, and I have lived there ever since. I grew up in the 1980's, when personal computers basically came into existence and developed. All 3 platforms -- IBM PC, Macintosh, and Amiga -- got their start in the first half of that decade. My earliest recollection of computers is of the "Word Processors" (at the time meaning not just the software but the whole computer) sometimes given away as prizes on game shows. My uncle had always been involved with computers, however, so I inevitably ended up spending some time around them. It never had a huge impact on me, though, until later when one of the silicon marvels took up residence in our house.
One afternoon, my uncle came over with a small, wedge-shaped computer with a built in keyboard. The classic Commodore symbol was clearly visible on the case; the italicized word "Amiga" was pressed into the top of it.
The monitor was small and delivered colors in terms of grey; the mousepad was an issue of TV Guide (or was it Readers' Digest?). And I was instantly drawn to it. I never knew it could be so much fun to drag around windows and screens...but boy, did we have a riot with it! And also in running about 20 instances of the Clock and various Demos programs, and tiling the screen with them. "It's multitasking" he told me; it meant little at the time (although when we got a PC in 1994 it became very clear just what multitasking was...and wasn't). By the end of the day, I had discovered IconEd and Say, and had the computer saying in it's matter-of-fact, condescending tone "You have sinned against God."
The year was 1987; the Amiga was young, and times were good. Alternative Society had yet to be invented, and society still had some sense of moral direction and decent music...;-). I knew nothing of the Amiga, or even Commodore, for that matter, however; all I knew was that an A500 was a lot of fun to use. And as I discovered soon after that, MarbleMadness!, Crystal Hammer, Deluxe Paint II, and Aegis Sonix were all very fun to use. One day, however, the A500 had to go. My uncle took it to his office in order to use it with his work. It didn't matter too much to me, since I hadn't really gotten attached to it.
But Christmas came soon after, and I was given a new Amiga A500 with a Commodore 1084S monitor, and a Star NX-1000 printer. I continued to tool around with the same old software, and our collection began to grow to include WordPerfect (which my mother once used to crank out a massive printing project of 100's of recipe books from those that our school had compiled and decided to produce in a big way), F/A-18 Interceptor, The Duel: Test Drive II, and Deluxe Paint III, to name some. I continued to use the system for years; twice, we had a hard disk (massive case, 50mb) and SCSI interface c/o my uncle, but it died inexplicably both times.
Eventually, 1994 came, and I was surprised with a new GVP A530 Turbo as a birthday present (it was a lot smaller, but did a lot more than the old HD). To summarize a lot of little details, I was truly off and running with that. I began to seek information in the Amiga community, subscribing to AmigaWorld (I think we did once before...but who knows where the old issues went) and gradually increasing my knowledge through experience. For the first time, I was truly a "computer user," going far beyond anything I had done before.
Then I found myself in late 1995, and a friend at IBM managed to procure a 2400 baud modem for $5. As I knew from a little time spent using the internet at his apartment and at Binghamton University, and from all the massive media hype, there was a whole other world out there. Seeking something to call besides my friend's modem, I attempted unsuccessfully to subscribe to AOL, and then successfully to CompuServe in November of 1995. I joined Genie a little over a month later. I almost immediately discovered the Starship Amiga Roundtable, and soon Real Time Conference, where I began to spend a lot of time. That's where I met Sam Ormes who was in charge of the place, and all the rest, and even Denny Atkin one time. Towards spring, I was fortunate enough to be included among Sam's group of new RTC staff members. Welcome to the Tuesday Night Webb Site! I am WebbMaster@HelpDesk.
The year is 1996, and I still have the old A500, plus a new one, and the first one as well. The 1084S and Star NX-1000 are still here too. I got a web page in May (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/HomePages/MikeWebb/), and towards the end of that month, first introduced the idea for The Amiga Monitor. Then came a long period of getting the project off the drawing board. It's been a busy 2 months!
You can contact me on CompuServe at 103165.3700@compuserve.com, or on Genie at m.webb24@genie.com.
The rest, as they say, is history; best wishes to the Amiga community and industry, and all proponents thereof. We hope to be with you for some time.
I'm the senior man here (in age anyhow!)....born many years ago in Washington D.C. Did military service as a Navy meteorologist during the Korean War (aircraft carrier duty). After a year at the University of Miami, obtained B.A. degree in Mexico City.
The next 20+ years were spent living in Puerto Rico, Panama, Singapore and El Salvador. While spending 12 years in the latter, acquired a wife and 2 sons. What was I doing in those strange places? .....Far East Manager for the Borden Company in the Orient, General Manager in Central America for Bristol-Myers, and then Yardley of London. Forget the CIA stories!
In 1986 created the world's first TV station inside a correctional facility (ICTV - Inmate/Corrections Television) in Miami. Widely featured in national and international media...about to celebrate 10 years on the air.
Television production led me (naturally) to the Amiga in August of 1993 with the acquisition of a brand new A1200. Within the first year of AmigaLife added 9 more Amigas to the arsenal!
In 1994 subscribed to Genie and found yet another new world. By 1995 began writing the Sam Report with inside information from CEI in Miami, a major player in the post-Commodore debacle. Since mid-1995 a HelpDesk sysop on Genie and as of March 1996, assigned responsibility for managing the RTC section of the Amiga Starship on Genie.
My first contact with the Amiga was a friend's A1000. During those days, I was using a Commodore 128 and neither could I afford, nor did I want, an Amiga. Late in the 1980s, after the release of the A2000, this friend persuaded me to go to the AmiExpo in Manhattan. Many stops at the Impulse booth firmly placed the need to own an Amiga in my mind. Their big product was the ray-tracing program Silver.
In July 1988 I finally had enough money to buy a plain Amiga 500 with 512k and OS 1.2. I then joined the Westchester Amiga Users Group, whose newsletter I now publish. I purchased Turbo Silver and have upgraded continuously through Imagine 4.0. From this unexpanded Amiga I now have both an Amiga 2500/020 and an Amiga 1200/030, both with expansion RAM and hard drives. The 2500 also has a Mimetics Framebuffer, an Opalvision, and a 286 Bridgeboard. The 2500 is not the best Amiga in the world, but with the ability to capture frames of video and display 24-bit images, it is a fun machine. Even with all of this continuous computing power since my first Commodore 64 in 1982, I only got into telecommunications when I received a 2400 baud modem from a customer in 1994. I got onto a bunch of pay online services and local and not so local PC and Amiga BBSes to the point where, now, I moderate the Genie Amiga Help Desk on Friday nights where this magazine went from the zygote stage to birth.
I fix and sell MS-DOS/Windows PCs for a living and study at the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. First thing I would normally do when I got home was turn on my 2500 and get into Imagine, VistaPro or Distant Suns. Although I also own an IBM PS/2 Model 60, a Fat Macintosh, and many Commodores, no other machine has been used as much as my 2500. Even though the 1200 with its AGA, two SCSI controllers and OS 3.1 is now the machine of choice for me, the 2500 still finds it uses and is still my favorite. What other computer sold in 1990 could be brought up to pentium speed today?
I regularly hang out online either on Aminet downloading software or on BBSes discussing computers and politics, especially with those that disagree with me. Lastly, I am a member of Team Amiga, a group set up on the FidoNet Amiga echo, first as an answer to Team OS/2. Now, it is a group of people sworn to support the Amiga (http://www.cybertours.com/~rlembree/teamiga.htm). Well, here I am.
Somebody asked me what I could do for the Amiga community, and I really don't have a good answer except that I have been kicking around the Amiga/Commodore community for a few years now and have done a few things to amuse myself. So I thought I would tell you about myself and the fact that I like helping people learn new things because I often learn new things myself in the process and I enjoy learning.
I went to college from 78-80 and learned various computer languages; COBOL, Pascal, PL-1, RPG, FORTRAN, APL, BASIC, LISP, and a couple of others that I don't remember anymore. I then ran out of money and joined the Navy. I wanted a computer system to play with, one I could afford, and take with me to different duty stations around the country. A friend of mine was an owner of a local Commodore products retailer that went out of business. This was due to a customer backing out of a $50,000 order after the products had been shipped, and Commodore selling it's inventory to chain stores like KMart for cheaper prices than the dealers could afford to sell them. So, he sold me part of his inventory cheap.
In 1985, I bought my first computer system for $125.00: a C64, a 1541 disk drive with an installed device number switch and write protect override, and a 1660 300 baud modem. This system led to my involvement in setting up a Commodore user's group of sorts on a United States Navy nuclear submarine. Then, somebody was "downgrading" to an IBM and was selling their C128. So, I bought it and fell in love with the flatter keyboard. My roommate at the time was on QLink, my first introduction to the concept of an on-line system run for profit. Up to that point, I had been calling some local BB's and the university's computer system. I joined QLink and Compu$erve for a while. Then, I ran a BBS system called "FRP BBS System" for a year.
I was not heavily involved in computing from 1988 until 1992 due to being poor and at sea. I joined Genie in 1992 and became staff in late 1992 or thereabouts. During this time frame (since 1992), I like to think I have made up for lost time. I have since purchased and regularly use a CMD HD, Ramlink, FD 2000, REU and SwiftLink, and tried publishing a newsletter (and found out it takes an awful lot of time to do well), and set up and ran another BBS based on the Color 64 BBS software.
I have learned an awful lot in the last couple of years. My current long term computer goal is to become proficient in the C++ programming language so I can write really awesome game programs.
My Amiga setup at the moment is a Amiga 2000HD with a Fusion Forty accelerator (040 at 28mhz) with 8 megs of 32-bit ram installed on it, a Multiface III card (2 serial ports and 1 parallel port), RapidFire which is a DKB SCSI II controller with 4 meg of memory installed on it, a MegaChip 2000 (DKB's 2 meg chip ram expander), ICD's flicker fixer, Emplant Deluxe, and a 386 bridgeboard with a 50mhz 486 upgrade. I have expanded the IBM slots inside so they're all 16-bit slots. I also have an 800 meg HD installed in the drive bay and an internal 3/12 HD installed in the other floppy drive slot. Also connected is 2 CD's: one using 3.1's cdfs, the other using Asim's file system. Also connected to it are a tape drive, a SyQuest, and 2 more HD's. Oh, by the way, I had to boost the power supply up to 300 watts.
I have also used at one time or another AMax II, 2091, Oktagon 2008 SCSI controller. Also in the house is an IBM 486DX 33 MHz computer, 1 Mac SE, 28,800, 2 14,400's, 9600 baud modems, and miscellaneous ancient Commodore stuff like the 8032, minichief HD, 3 or 4 monitors, a couple of 1571's and another RamLink, Turbomaster CPU, C64 and other miscellaneous items I can't remember at the moment. In the real world I am still going to school part time, and I am working as an electronic technician part-time which I have been doing at one place or another for close to 11 years now, I guess.
So I like to think that I can answer a lot of questions about moving files from one platform to another, Emulators, telecommunications and hardware questions in general.
--Greg
Hello & WELCOME to the Amiga Monitor!!
I'm Fred, and your not! 8^)
Seriously 'tho, I'm hopeful that this undertaking by none other than Mr. Mike Webb is a GREAT success, and can bring us Amiga folks together, better than before. In this first article I'm writing I'll introduce myself to you folks, and invite you to introduce yourself to Mike, me, and the other people here. So.........
I'm Frederic Ericksen, (Canadian/French first name, Norwegian last). I was born, and currently still live in Detroit, Michigan and have three major interests in life. Music......... Music........ and, well, MUSIC!! I have 4 Amigas of various sorts, and like Mike, (and most of us) started on an A500. With that machine I put in many an hour with Dr. T's KCS, Roger Powell's Texture, and now I have Bars & Pipes which I'm using with many MIDI keyboards (11), sound modules and drum machines. I also sync up the songs I create on Amiga via SMPTE to a Fostex R-8, 8 track tape deck. I'm really a Sax player by training, but at age 14 or so I became entranced by bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, and ELP. (How did they get those SOUNDS!!!) I started playing guitar in high school, and bought my first Korg synth in '78. It was a cool little analog monophonic machine called a 770. Later, after reading an article in Keyboard magazine, (then called Contemporary Keyboard), I saw Jan Hammer with a modified Moog around his neck. I chopped the Korg up, made a wooden box to house the keyboard, and using a phone cord I hooked it to the main unit. I was out front with the guitar player! Many bands later, I now have a REAL Minimoog, and will NEVER chop THAT baby up like I did the Korg.
Enough about me. I'd like to invite anyone into making music with the Amiga to write to me, and to tell me what you're using, and if I can be of any help to the Amiga music-making community. Let me know what subjects are important, and I'll have a good start on what to write next time. Unless you want to hear more about me...........Naa!
I'm on both CompuServe, 103275.3447@compuserve.com, and Genie, f.ericksen@genie.com.
Until next time,
KEEP MAKING' MUSIC!!
"""| xx @ -Fred
My name is Charles Jefts. I have a Games Forum on Genie, and I love Amigas! The first computer I ever came into contact with was a Commodore Vic 20. I was only one, (1983), but I loved it. I would watch my dad write programs in Basic into the late hours of the night. He made three games for me, and I loved them. Soon I grew older and moved on to bigger challenges. Some of my favorites were Radar Rat Race and Kinder Comp. We had also purchased a Commodore 64 in 1983, but I had previously paid it no attention. I soon discovered the wonders of games such as Forbidden Forest and Aztec Challenge, and found my calling. Over the course of the next five years, I amassed 500+ C64 games. I lived a contented life. Suddenly, in 1989, my mom agreed to let my dad get a new baby. It was a long ride to the Amiga Center. I was filled with questions and there seemed to be excitement in the air. After three hours of riding through bumper-to-bumper traffic, we had finally arrived. Inside the store, I saw more computers than I had ever seen before. Shortly, we were on our way home. I sat in the back with the new Amiga 500. I was more occupied with the small box in my hands. It was the game Superman. We finally arrived back at our house, and shortly the Amiga was up and running. My dad popped in the game. Suddenly a vivid Superman logo, rich in color, and smooth in texture, popped up on the screen. I had never seen anything so beautiful! I quickly went out and bought seven more games, and by the end of the month, I was on my way to having a hundred. I played the Amiga every day for hours at a time. I often spent entire days in the summer playing such games as It came from the Desert. We added onto the 500 a lot. One day we got a 386 PC. I found it's gaming capabilities to be merely mediocre. I preferred the Amiga over it any day. By 1993 I had moved on to a Commodore CDTV. I was astonished by such games as Psycho Killer, and The Labyrinth of Time. I had never experienced games so real. Next I got a CD32 and an SX-1. It is all I use today. As I see it, it is the ULTIMATE AMIGA GAMING MACHINE! I love my CD32's, and will never part with them. To support my excessive gaming habit, I got a gaming forum on Genie. This was mainly done as an excuse to continue to buy games :). Now I sit around playing my little games while the rest of the world raves about a computer who's OS requires 64 times the memory of mine.