Path: kernighan.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: markus@tiger.teuto.de (Markus Illenseer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Amiga Developer CD version 1.1 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.programmer Date: 8 Jul 1996 14:41:05 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 293 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <4rr6m1$me7@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: markus@tiger.teuto.de (Markus Illenseer) NNTP-Posting-Host: knots.cs.umass.edu Keywords: CD-ROM, programming, developer, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 19 Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME AMIGA Developer CD V1.1 BRIEF DESCRIPTION Official Developer CD-ROM from Amiga Technologies for the Amiga Computer. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Amiga Technologies GmbH Address: Berliner Ring 89 64625 Bensheim Federal Republic of Germany World Wide Web: http://www.amiga.de/ LIST PRICE DM 25.- (about 17$US) I got the CD for DM 18.- (about 12$US) DISTRIBUTION Main places to buy the CD-ROM currently are: USA: Amiga Library Services 610 North Alma School Road , Suite 18 Chandler, Arizona 85244-3687 USA Phone/Fax: (602) 917-0917 Germany: Stefan Ossowski Schatztruhe Gesellschaft f|r Software mbH Veronikastra_e 33 45131 Essen Germany Phone: +49 201 78 87 78 Fax: +49 201 79 84 47 Web: http://www.schatztruhe.de/ DEMO VERSION None SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Needs any Amiga equipped with a CD-ROM drive such as A570, A1270, CDTV, CD32 or any supported third party CD-ROM drive. Needs at least 512KB of RAM. Recommended are at least 2MB of RAM, best are 5 to 8MB. 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 Requires at least WB 1.3, works fine with WB2.x; highly recommended is WB 3.0 or WB 3.1. Requires a suitable CD-ROM filesystem such as Asimware, AmiCDFS, AmiCD-ROM, Babel CDFS, Xetec CDFS. COPY PROTECTION None. You are requested to accept the Copyrights though. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000/25, 16 MB Fast RAM, 2 MB Chip RAM. A3640 CPU board A2065 Ethernet board AmigaDOS 3.1 and NetBSD-Amiga 1.1 (...and several GB hard drives, CD-ROM, tape, graphic board, etc., not important for the test.) INSTALLATION Other than setting up the CD-ROM device driver on your Amiga is not required to access the CD. REVIEW Version 1.1? I haven't seen Version 1.0 yet! This is about what I thought the first time I got the CD. Although I knew what sort of material is on the CD, and how the CD was created, the CD still left some surprises to discover. The Amiga Developer CD was compiled by Olaf Barthel. Olaf is known for his (in-) famous terminal program "TERM" and of course for lot of other stuff. In the time being, Olaf worked as consulting for Amiga Tech. Among other, far more important subjects, he started to compile this CD-ROM. When the VisCorp deal with Escom came up, his project nearly died. Because of high demand and many requests, a solution had to be found. Stefan Ossowski, publisher of many other CD-ROM projects, such as Meeting Pearls, Gateway!, and Aminet, started to help to make the CD round. During months of legal suits, copyright checks, trademark checks and much more, the CD was again revisited by Olaf. When nobody believed that the CD might come true, it came to the surface. You can imagine that this CD was awaited long ago, and supposed to contain quite a lot of important material. The problem was that most of the material published by Commodore Amiga before was designated for certified developers and not the end user. Some of material of interest for developers is still not on the CD: for example, the ROM Kernel Reference Manuals for OS and KS 3.x. Olaf - and of course Amiga Tech - had to sort out material which no longer makes sense to be on a CD, and to find material which certainly is a must for a developer CD. So, what's on the CD at all? The CD contains 50MB of material "only," most of which is guides, references, manuals, technical notes and such. I will not cite the entire directory structure, but mention the most important areas. - CD32 developer package - including the goodie "BuildCD" CD writer package. - Quite a lot of 3rd party material from well known contributors such as Ralph Babel, Heinz Wrobel, Angela Schmidt, Mike Sinz, Dale Larson and Michael B. Smith. - Information, guides and "codeguide" for upcoming versions of the AmigaOS. Thinking of the PowerPC mainly, this section covers "musts" and "don't!" for programmers. - Developer packages: - BOOPSI gadget classes - (Big) Part of the NDK 2.04 - Complete set of IFF forms, including all IFF packages published by Commodore Amiga. - MIDI developer kit - SANA-II networking developer kit - Installer V43.1 - NDK 3.1, Native Developer Kit - The AmigaMail Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 covering all important stuff for developers from 1987 to 1993 - Includes and Autodocs USAGE The CD is easy to use. The supplied Guide file let you browse through the entire archive without needing to touch more than one icon. All material is well documented, or is documentation itself for a supplied package. The instructions how to use those packages are detailed and explain how to install, program or work with this package. DOCUMENTATION The CD contains a small insert describing the legal nature of the CD. The back describes the content of the CD. There is no explanation how to use the CD, or where to start. It is silently assumed that you know how to deal with CD-ROMs and how to click on a README Icon. LIKES I like the material supplied on the CD. This material was not accessible to non-certified developers before. For instance the AmigaMail and the NDK 3.1 provide you with a huge knowledge base. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS Well, I would have expected more demonstration packets. There are few source code examples supplied, mostly fragments which do not work unless implemented in a real program. I should mention that even if the Includes are supplied, a compiler isn't. You are left alone to get this one. This is not a true dislike, but a mere fact. A suggestion would be to include more debugging tools. I miss important ones. AT missed the opportunity to define "standards" for debugging tools available as 3rd party product. This might be a SnoopDos, ARTM, Xoper, and many more. There is _plenty_ of space on the CD. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS There is only one CD you can compare this one to: the former developer CD. Unfortunately I cannot complete this task because I never was a certified developer and I never got ahold of the CD. I only can compare this CD with developer CD from other computer companies. For instance Apple distributes a CD-ROM to their certified developers which contains by far more material, better revisited and more documentation ever available for the Amiga. The same applies to Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT developer CDs. All these companies live from their 3rd party software developers and did a fine job to support them. The quality of the stuff exceeds the quality of the Amiga Developers CD with ease. On the other hand, you don't often get Developer Material for a computer which is almost dead. BUGS There where no bugs I could find within the few weeks I have the CD now. There is only a saucer-cup full of programs, and they all worked OK. As for the texts, I cannot say whether there are bugs or not - far too much to read. VENDOR SUPPORT There is no such support available. WARRANTY Standard warranty is applied. This means, you get a new CD-ROM if you can prove it arrived with a defect. CONCLUSIONS Hard to say. I expected more. This CD comes too late. But it came. I must admit that the supplied material is what I expected to see, but I expected more than that. I give this CD a rating of 3 stars out of 5. Another star can be achieved if you supply the long-awaited RKM 3. Yet another if they supply more debugging and developing _tools_. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1996, Markus Illenseer This review represents my honest opinion; your mileage may vary, so tell me about it! If you use this review in any way - republishing for example, the author requests at least a copy of the used media. Commercial reuse is prohibited unless written permission is given. You can contact the author at: Markus Illenseer Rathenaustr. 75 33102 Paderborn GERMANY markus@tiger.teuto.de http://www.teuto.de/~markus/ --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator 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 Web site: ftp://math.uh.edu/pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews/index.html