Also an update for the greetings program ´Bekuna´ Version 1.9R4 from Kuno Naumann is available for download. The program has many features like greting depending on daytime, display of date, time, summertime, moonphase and sign, and reminder of birthdays and events.

The new port is one of the climaxes of the Computex. More and more manufacturers of mainboards, controllers, and hard drives have products with the successor of IDE and E-IDE (up to UDMA-133) in the program. Serial ATA should replace the parallel ATA complete until February 2003.

The advantage of SATA is the easier and more stable connecting. Timing problems are history. Also the new cables with 4 to 8 poles ease the circulation of air inside the tower because they are not blocking the stream.

SATA uses up to 4 direct point-to-point connections between controller and one device per connection. This doubles the maximum of possible devices. Problems with jumpers and bus-termination are no longer expected, because every wire is terminated at both ends in the chip. A defective device will not effect the others.

SATA is designed for using period of 10 years with two duplications of performance up to 600 MB/sec. At start a transfer rate of 150 MB/sec is supported, slighlty less than LVD-SCSI with 160 MB/sec. Some of the other features are the break through of the 137 GB limit of harddrives, "hot-plug"-abilities, and 1st-Party-DMA.

The first devices will maybe available in third quarter 2002, but some manufacturers of mainboards have started to implement it into their chipsets.

• 11.06.02 new: M1 Tank Platoon (Microprose) done by JOTD
• 11.06.02 new: Killerball (Microids) done by JOTD
• 11.06.02 new: Guy Spy (Ready Soft) done by JOTD
• 11.06.02 improved: Road Wars (Arcadia Systems) supports another version, new icons
• 10.06.02 new: Dream Web (Empire Software) done by Dr.Zarkov
• 10.06.02 new: Invasion (Sector Software) done by Codetapper
• 10.06.02 improved: Deuteros (Ian Bird) supports another version
• 10.06.02 new: Blasteroids (Tengen/Image Works) done by Psygore
• 10.06.02 improved: Super Cars (Gremlin) now compatible with emulators, manual included
• 05.06.02 improved: Battle Isle (Blue Byte) minor changes

editors note:
We are not able to say something about the differences between the above version and the one reported by Amiforce on 08.06.2002. If you anything about it feel free to tell us.

Update 12.06.2002:
David McMinn explained us the difference:

I saw your note on the AmigaNews site, that you could not see the difference between the different AmiBlitz distributions, so I thought I would clarify.

First of all, Bernd Roesch has updated the editor and compiler greatly, and convinced Acid software to release Blitz Basic 2 for free, under the name AmiBlitz2. However, Bernd did not provide a ready-made package for users to download and use, only updates.

I decided to create an user distribution which would provide everything a person needs to start programming in AmiBlitz as I have been maintaining the Blitz2000 site for a few years. Of course, since AmiBlitz is free, anyone can do this if they choose, such as CJ Stroker has done on the AmiForce site.

The differences between the distributions on the Blitz2000 and AmiForce sites are that they have different contents and are aimed at different people. For example, the distribution provided by AmiForce does not seem to have the acidlibs and deflibs files, so you already need a working installation of AmiBlitz to use it (they might have it in other archives on the site though, I have not looked through all of them). The AmiForce site is also more useful for German speaking programmers, as a lot/most of the documentation they have is available in German (for example, the AmiBlitz manuals). The distributions on the Blitz2000 site are available in different sizes and have all the documents for the libraries included in the archive, as well as useful tools and the library files mentioned above.

The only thing which would be nice to keep the same between all distributions is the default set of libraries that are provided. Bernd suggested this as it makes everything easier from the viewpoint of everyone has the same libraries to start off with.

Sorry for the long mail, but I hope this clears the situation up :)

• Dillo--a Web Browser as Fast as Lightning, by Matthias Arndt
• Cracking open proprietary envelopes, by Adrian J. Chung
• Help Dex, by Shane Collinge
• Compiler Design with Python, by Dinil Divakaran
• A Linux Fax Server for a Windows Network, by Pedro Fraile
• Writing Your Own Toy OS (PART II), by Krishnakumar R.
• The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers, by Mike Orr
• Improving Hard Disk Performance with hdparam, by Piter Punk
• Qubism, by Jon "Sir Flakey" Harsem
• Getting started with PIC 16F84 on GNU/Linux, by Jerry Sebastian
• A Framework For Writing Application Servers In C++, by Rob Tougher

• mcp1_39.lha (912K)
• mcp1_39u.lha (450K)

• Screenmode requester
• GadTools user interface
• Most requesters operable via keyboard
• CAMD library
• New 32 colour design
• Localisation
• German catalogue included
• and much more

• Goal!
• Dizzy Dice
• Beam
• Police Quest 2
• Starball
• Night Dawn
• Streetgang
• Khalaan
• The three Stooges
• Silent Service II
• Seek & Destroy
• Their finest Hour
• Christoph Kolumbus
• Jurassic Park

1. Scans of software, of which there are no pictures available yet.
2. Supplemental informationen about software in the Little Book of Amiga Software.
3. Information about software not yet mentioned on the pages.
4. Software instruction manuals.

The game by Ventzislav Tzvetkov requires an Amiga with 1 MB RAM and is available for download on Aminet.

The start make some cosmetic changes that had taken most of the time. Many errors had been removed and especially the selected colours got a change after some criticism. Whether it looks better now may be judged by everybody on his/her own. ;-)

Amiblitz:
There's now a new, error reduced version of Amiblitz 2.26 in the Amiblitz section. It's again an update archive that contains next to the English version also the German one. A new Image.res that enhances Amiblitz with further graphical possibilities is also included. GlowIcons are now used and bring the boring old fashioned look to an end. As the old archive contains the new one bilingual docs.

Download: amiblitz2.26.lha (658 KB)

Furthermore there's a little 3D tutorial in the Amiblitz section included. This will be removed in the near future again, though, as it will be completely revised and expanded with example sources. Soon will a beginners course be started that will then lead to different areas. The 3D part will be done by Sterix (a programmer and my best guy) who is training at present on Amiblitz. The first sources look really great. In this direction there'll come quite some things. ;-) Some examples (demos) that could make people very interested in Amiblitz will follow, too.

Softguide:
The softguide section had been opened, too. The beginning is done with Amisat. For this there'll be soon a detailed manual in the helpguide rubric released. The other sections will be updated again, too.

Forum:
Amiforce has now a new forum, too. All interested are invited to enter. Almost all contributions of the old forum had been taken on. So it's not a start at zero. Thanks go to Matthias Münch for his support.

New for this version (40.40) is the support of MacBinary MS-Word files.

There is also the latest version of FindFile in the archive. A new fast, easy to use file finder application that offers search by name, size, date, and even file type.

All customers who have entered their names in our new product registration will get the access to the current version and files. Customers who still did not register can make up for it: Registration.

Because PageStream 4.1 now finally is complete including the German documentation, German localisation (except the Mac-version) H&P presents a special for new customers. For a limited time the full version of PageStream will be available to a special price for all versions. PageStream is one of the few products which is available for three platforms (Amiga, Windows, Macintosh) with the same version number.

• HP Deskjet 6x0C (now with compression and installer script) version 40.12
• HP 870C (now with installer script) version 40.21
• HP 900C (now with Installer script) version 40.12

• Adding objects
• Determining start position
• Controlling the editor

• Adjustments of traffic lights
• Pedestrians
• Route modus
• Barring roads
• Transmission ways

• Own textures
• Area defenitions
• Allocation of textures
• Change of rise

So these data may become representative if the program will be distributed as much as possible. Because of that I decided to put this program on my homepage for download. Please directly send the data to Olaf (please read the documentation before!).

The last possible data for sending in it is the 16th June 2002. Please do not send any reports after this day. This day is the deadline and then all reports which I have got up to this date will be analysed. Please join numerously...
Thanks a lot in anticipation, Mario.

PS: For all those who doubt that this program is "clean" I added the source code to the program. So you can see what it makes.

The comment function can be found under the screenshots in every demo. For the voting you must register (username and password). In the future we'll make the user data editable, so if a user would like to express more about his interests (email address, homepage, system specs) he can do that.

If you have not yet signed the petition, then please do so now! Please help spreading the word by linking to AmigaPOP.8bit.co.uk. It's not too late to save our favourite OS and a unified POP-based hardware market!

1. (3) Payback - 164 Pts.
2. (2) Napalm - 135 Pts.
3. (1) Quake - 130 Pts.
4. (9) The Settlers - 100 Pts.
5. (4) Earth 2140 - 100 Pts.
6. (10) Heretic 2 - 97 Pts.
7. (5) WipEout 2097 - 84 Pts.
8. (19) Freespace - 74 Pts.
9. (17) Worms / Worms DC - 73 Pts.
10. (7) Sensible World Of Soccer - 66 Pts.
11. (12) Shogo - 64 Pts.
12. (8) Foundation - 61 Pts.
13. (6) Slam Tilt - 55 Pts.
14. (45) Beneath A Steel Sky - 48 Pts.
15. (27) Cannon Fodder - 47 Pts.
16. (11) Civilization - 45 Pts.
17. (31) Dune 2 - 44 Pts.
18. (24) Wasted Dreams - 40 Pts.
19. (96) Another World - 39 Pts.
20. (38) Flashback - 39 Pts.

• Scud Buster
• Spacewar
• ZapTris

Changes since version 0.59:

• Created a basic RTF plugin.
• Removed Printer settings from the preference GUI. Instead of opening the printer device, it will now open a file using the PRT: device instead. The other method was causing problems with TurboPrint. Please use the Workbench printer preferences instead.
• Fixed a bug. Was updating menus while they were still in use when loading or closing a file. Thanks Jean Marie :).
• Images within EvenMore, e.g. Hand image when you quit EvenMore, will now be loaded through icons in the icon folder you are currently using. They will support NewIcons/GlowIcons as usual.
• Created a basic Becker2text plugin.
• A new PowerArt ASCII plugin has been created by aGGreSSor of team PowerAmiga, along with a new Russian locale!

Download: aiffdt41.lha (6 KB)