Path: news.uh.edu!barrett From: markus@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE (Markus Illenseer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: SAAR & AMOK CD-ROM, Volume II Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc Date: 10 Nov 1994 17:47:27 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 406 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <39tmbf$kog@masala.cc.uh.edu> Reply-To: markus@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE (Markus Illenseer) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: CD-ROM, collection, programming, freeware, shareware, commercial Originator: barrett@karazm.math.uh.edu PRODUCT NAME SAAR & AMOK CD-ROM, Volume II BRIEF DESCRIPTION This CD-ROM contains the complete (German) SAAR-AG and AMOK PD series which covers freely distributable programms, pictures, text files and so forth. The entire CD is directed to the German speakers among you. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Compilation License S.A.U.G. e.V. Manufacturer Kreativ Marketing DISTRIBUTION Main places to buy the CD-ROM currently are: Germany: Stefan Ossowski Schatztruhe Gesellschaft f|r Software mbH Veronikastra_e 33 45131 Essen Germany Fon: +49 201 78 87 78 Fax: +49 201 79 84 47 and Saarbr|ckener Amiga User Group e.V. (S.A.U.G.) c/o Martin Schulze Parkstr. 14 66806 Ensdorf GERMANY Fon: +49 6831 506171 BBS: +49 6838 84739 other dealers will follow. You can also try to command the CD in your local book store: ISBN 3-86084-240-4 LIST PRICE Suggested retail price is DM 39,90; approximately $27 (US). Street price varies in a wide range, please compare. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Any Amiga equipped with a CD-ROM drive such as A570, A1270, CDTV, CD32 or any supported third party CD-ROM drive. 512KB of RAM required. 2MB or more recommended, with 5-8MB best. As some of the software package are intended to be copied or installed to hard disk if used more than once in your lifetime, you would be in need of a hard drive. SOFTWARE AmigaDOS WB 1.3 or higher required. Works fine with AmigaDOS 2.x. AmigaDOS 3.1 is highly recommended. Requires a suitable CD-ROM filesystem such as Asimware, AmiCDFS, Babel CDFS, Xetec CDFS or the Commodore CDFS of AmigaDOS 3.x. AmiCDFS can be found on the CD itself. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000, 2 MB Chip RAM, 12 MB Fast RAM Several hard drives Apple CD300 CD-ROM drive (same as Sony CDU-8003A) AmigaDOS 3.1 (Kickstart 40.68, Workbench 40.35) AmiCDFS Version 1.14 REVIEW In a general overview, I would like to explain the why, what and wherefrom of this CD-ROM. I then will review the installation and the compilation of the CD. GENERAL Well yes, I am back. Another CD, another review, another critical test. This time I was bribed. I got a free CD from the SAAR-AG club and was asked to write a review. Here it is. Looks like UseNet makes names famous. Let me use my text tool construction kit for CD-ROM reviews. :-) The name of the CD is composed with the names of the two of the biggest and most active Amiga clubs or groups in Germany: S.A.U.G. e.V. and AMOK. Both have different goals but share the interest of distributing their material to the interested public. Together they make available a large found of software. SAAR-AG, Saarbr|ckener Amiga User Group .e.V. (SAUG for short), was founded by Gerhard Seitz in 1989, and is the successor of several smaller groups. The SAAR-AG group distributes a floppy disk based PD and FD series that, in contrast to other series, contains mainly German material for those souls who speak little or no English. Over the years, they assembled 800 disks full of Amiga programs on all topics and applications. AMOK, Amiga Modula and Oberon Klub, is directing their series to Modula II and Oberon users and (of course) programmers. The history of the AMOK people is not explained on the CD, and I know only a little of the background of this club. What I do know is that some of the important people in the Modula and Oberon Scene are involved. Guys like Friedjof Siebert (programmer of the Oberon Compiler, one of the best Oberon Compiler available outside the world of the Oberon Machines at ETH Zuerich), Hartmut Goebel, Kay Bloay and maybe Claudio Nieder do contribute some of their programs to the AMOK series. AMOK has a very strict, fixed guidelines for all contributions to their series. All programs must be made available with source or at least link modules, must be Style Guide compliant, and must have good documentation. (Whether all submissions actually stick to those guidelines is another story). For Modula II and Oberon Fans, this disc is a must. BACKGROUND ABOUT PRICE The manufacturer is claimed to be 'Kreative Marketing'. In fact, this is still the 'Schatztruhe GmbH' who also produced 'Meeting Pearls', 'Aminet 3', 'Aminet 4' and other Amiga-only CD-ROMs. You might know that the other CD-ROMs are available for a low price - about DM19.80 ($US 13). The SAAR-AMOK CD is made available for DM 39.90 ($US 27), which in my opinion is a high price. The 'Schatztruhe GmbH' somehow seems not to be happy about this price, too, and decided to release the CD under another name. I really wonder what the SAAR-AG and AMOK Klub are doing with the money they earn. It is quite a lot, and they don't say a word about this. SAAR AMOK CD Vol II This CD is a compilation of two floppy based series. All original floppy disks are on this CD. I cannot check whether the original content of the disks is also on the CD, but I doubt it. Every floppy disk is made available on the CD in archived form (lha archives), and some of them in unarchived form (normal directory structure of the disks). The CD contains disks 1-800 of SaarAG and disks 1-106 in archived form, and disks 601-800 of SaarAG and disks 91-106 of AMOK in unarchived form. This makes a total of 420 MB of archived and 200 MB of unarchived material. The CD was mastered in the ISO 9660 Mode 2 format with Commodore extensions. I couldn't locate any directory level deeper than 4 or 5, so the CD is ISO-compliant and will work with almost every ISO filesystem, even on UNIX or a PC. The CD was tested and been declared usable under NetBSD-Amiga on the above described system; normal users can fully access the CD, unlike 'AmiNet 3' for example. The CD has not been tested on a PC clone system. I doubt that the CD will work correctly there. There are too many files on the CD whose names are longer than the allowed "8.3" filename scheme. During the making of the CD, due to a missing 'feature' of the ISO-9660 filesystem used on every better CD-ROM, the typical Amiga protection flags are gone. The only (supplied) way to resurrect these flags is using the supplied lha archives in the BBS directory. This applies to flags like Script, Archive, Execute and also Filenotes. This makes it impossible to run shell scripts directly from the CD if they make use of the S (Script) bit. Fortunately, there are not many tools on the CD depending on this. Technical note: It *is* possible to store the missing flags and filenotes; ISO-9660 and Rockridge Extension do support this. Both the ISO image during creation of CD and the CDFS to mount the CD, however, also have to support that extension. INSTALLATION There is no installation required nor provided. Some programs on the CD do require a special environment though, and it is up to the user of the CD to set up the required Assigns and expand the search Path. USAGE What to do with such immense source of programs, goodies, tools, pictures, sounds, texts and source code? I was asked not to use the sentence 'Yet another boring archive CD' - hum, ok, I'll try :-) Yet another floppy disks based series on CD. A 'Frozen Fish' clone. Great source code collection. Cheap and well sorted backup media - move your fantasies on CD. Indeed, the purpose of an archive CD is limited. It can be seen as a large and useful backup medium, or as useless, hopelessly outdated trashcan. Your mileage may vary. For many among you, dear readers, this CD is probably a nice chance to get never-seen material. One could just browse through the entire stuff - a man-life of work - and get lost in the depth of icons, directories and documentation. One could search for specific stuff. For that purpose, four methods are provided. Let me mention right here that all supplied databases for described search tools only do cover the SAAR-AG series. AMOK has not supplied any tool to search data - or at least I couldn't locate any. The first search tool is KingFisher. This program is a big one; the entire library has been catalogued, classified and merged together in this database program. 'Unfortunately' the supplied version is quite old, and supplied databases are not in the new format; thus, the new, more powerful KingFisher cannot be used instead. Nonetheless, KingFisher was very suitable for my searches - I even found out that some of my very old programs are on the CD. The database covers only the archived part of the CD, but it is very easy to find the same stuff in the non-archived part of it. The second search tool is 'SaarCat' (in fact 'FishCat') - I was not able to search for specific programs. SaarCat only allowed me to search for disks and then see the contents of the disks. No idea if this is my fault or a faulty installation on the CD. The third search tool is 'MegaFish'. It crashed my machine immediately (and reproducibly) when I ran it. I have no idea why. It is left to the author to fix this problem. (After some chats, I found out that the tool opens in an AGA screenmode which is of course nonexistent on my A3000.) Last but not least, you can browse through the contents files using your favorite editor, viewer or search tool. A very useful thing for CD32 and CDTV users is the 'Tools' directory on the CD, which holds archives of most recent tools like 'compress', 'lha', 'DMS' and 'Installer'. The corresponding binaries can be found in the C: directory on the CD. A possible drawback is that ParNet or other 'network' tools are not provided. At least not pre-installed. The unarchived part of the CD contains most of the stuff assembled in the way the original floppy disks contained the packages. This is even the way the authors or submitters send the material to the clubs. I can't review the material on the CD - it's hopelessly large. Just let's say: too much stuff on it. :-) The stuff is well chosen, contains a minor set of AmiNet goodies, and has also material which never made its way to the Internet. This does not mean that the material is useless! LIKES AND DISLIKES I like that all supplied text files had an Icon and that the default tool uses 'Sys:utitities/more' instead of a stupid or useless text viewer. You can use the (supplied) ToolAlias to select your favorite text viewer. I don't claim to be a Workbench user, as I barely use it, but I don't like the look of the CD on the Workbench. Sometimes the windows open at random positions - even those snapshotted by the manufacturer of the CD, and not by the submitters of the material. Icons look fancy, shiny or are unusable. But then I must admit that this is the way the material was submitted by the authors and it never was an intention of the makers of the CD to change any material. So I must blame the authors. *BLAME* :-) I like the general compilation. Although I have no personal use for the CD, I am sure that many peoples will like the archive. It has much material for programmers of Oberon and Modula II and many uncommon tools. Unfortunately, the CD contains outdated material. This is life. Everything changes. Some of the material is timeless and can't be found elsewhere, other stuff has never been updated since, whereas other stuff is so alive it can't be kept updated at all. I totally disagree with the idea to distribute the CD only in the German-speaking area of the world. NO text on the CD which is important to use the CD - installation, explanations, contents of the disks - has been translated into any other language. Major drawback in my eyes. I am not that comfortable with the price, but I like that it is lower than other - mostly more useless and less interesting - archive CDs. If you are author of any material on the CD, you will get a special price - you have to ask for it yourself though (no, not me, the SAAR-AG group). Being an 'archive CD', a very important matter is missing: BBS.txt. It is not possible to use the CD on a BBS to make material available in a pre-installed way. Quite a lot of work to do so. Only submitted tool to help you is 'GetCDFile'. Another topic is 'copyright' and 'disclaimer'. This topic has been discussed for years on UseNet now and still seems not to be credited in the right way. I found at least one archive which should not be on the CD, the permission was only granted for the floppy based series and it is explicitly mentioned that the archived should under no circumstanced be distributed on CD-ROMs. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS There are quite a lot of other CDs to compare SAAR-AG + AMOK CD with. First of all, I must compare this release with the first release: Quality has increased. Price has been dropped, outfit has been facelifted. The other disk based CD archive is 'Frozen Fish', (or 'Gold Fish') from Fred Fish. Both CD's share quite a lot of material, but the history is different, and Fred had more time to establish his position. Saar-AG though, is - in Germany - the successor of the 'Fred Fish' disks since Fred dropped his (floppy disks based) series. Both series are/were somehow dependent on material found on world wide AmiNet. Due to the lack of English texts on the Saar-AG CD, the CD is somehow fixed on German speakers among the readers. Of course you can work with the CD without speaking German - just you won't understand the supplied contents files. This is a plus of Fred Fish's series. The minus of his series is the higher price. As the last several hundred Fred Fish Amiga Lib Disks and also the last hundreds Saar-AG Disks were sometimes a subset of material found on the AmiNet (world wide Internet Library for Amiga), I should compare the CD with the existing AmiNet-CDs, but I think this would yield into some sort of religious argument that is not the object of this review. (A careful reader of my reviews will see similarities in the above text parts, and will hence know that I always try to write critical but fair reviews....) CONCLUSIONS The CD is for every Amiga User. I don't admit it is a 'must' - this is reserved for Oberon and Modula freaks and of course to the German readers (not everyone speaks and reads English... but, hm, I guess then he won't even be able to read my review :-)) among you. Either for personal use, for shared use with friends, to be made available on BBS or via FTP - this archive will fit into your needs. A reliable product, which is quite usuable. I'd rate it 3.75 out of 5 stars. The last quarter star can be achieved if the CD becomes cheaper - but this is up to you. Support the makers of Amiga specific CDs and make it possible to issue large amounts of CDs. The higher the amount, the lower the price! The other full star is a *MUST* in my eyes: translate important information texts into English! Not even the cover of the CD contains English or may be even Spanish or French texts. This makes the CD difficult to use for our world wide friends. A shame in the times of EU and world wide networks. You may wonder why this costed the CD a full star - I fought hard with myselfon this, but I cannot be asked to write a review on the international UseNet (hence English) for a German CD even though the CD contains lot of very useful and nicely arranged material. But even if I would have published a review of this CD in a German Amiga Magazine I certainly would have been bothered about this fact. COPYRIGHT NOTICE This review represents my honest opinion - your mileage may vary. If you use this review in any way, such as re-publishing it, the author requests at least a copy of the used media. Special thanks to disk magazine 'Amiga Gadget' who did so in the past. Copyright 1994 Markus Illenseer. All rights reserved. You can contact the author at: Markus Illenseer Kurt Schumacherstr. 16 33613 Bielefeld GERMANY markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews