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ESSENTIAL FOR ALL THOSE ACORN TECHIE-TYPES OUT THERE... • ACORN MACHINES • AMIGA USERS • VCR CONTROLLER • STAR TREK SPOOF & more! Spring 1997 Issue 12 £0 123> Index: Page 2 . Index. Page 3 . Editors Page. Page 4 . Review of a dozen. Page 6 . Amiga Owners. Page 10 . Who’s standard? Page 11 . Currency. Page 12 . VCR controller. Page 14 . Acorn machines. Page 19 . Millenium. Page 20 . MTerm (A) r2v2. Page 21 . Santa? (and JAVA announcement). Page 22 . Ster Trak Credits: Editor . Richard Murray. Contributors . Richard Murray, Quintin Parker, Philip R. Banks. Santa article posted by Geoff Love. Java article posted by Stuart Halliday. Graphics . Richard Murray. You may print and/or distribute this document provided it is unaltered. The editor can be contacted by FidoNet netmail as “Richard Murray” at 2:254/86.1 or ‘[email protected]’. See back page for more information. Feel free to comment or send submissions. Back issues, stylesheets, notes, logos and omitted articles are available from Encina BBS — netmail editor if you are interested. The contents of this magazine are © Richard Murray for legal reasons. Full Full credit is given to the individual authors of each article. All copyrights and/or trademarks used are acknowledged. All opinions stated are those of the article author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Frobnicate, BudgieSoft or Richard Murray. All reasonable care is taken in the production of this magazine, but we will not be legally liable for errors, or any loss arising from those errors. As this magazine is of a technical nature, don’t do anything you are unsure of. Reliance is placed in the contents of this magazine at the readers’ own risk. Frobnicate is managed by “Hissing Spinach”, the publishing division of BudgieSoft UK. FROBNICATE ISSUE 12 - Spring 1997 Page 3 EDITORS PAGE Welcome to a dozen issues of Frobnicate, and instance, the list of Acorn to a year and a half. machines. I bet you ain’t heard of half of ’em. There’s a bit about Can anybody remember where Frobnicate the year 2000 (is that when Scully came from? Well, back in late 1994, a and Mulder hit the sack together?) discussion began in the ARCHIMEDES echo and as if that isn’t enough - about a magazine relating to Acorn computers, bounce to page six for a total in some kind of ’techie’ capacity. The two major slagging of Amiga lusers. Best players were myself and Ian Kershaw. The rest thing if you ask me! For the geeks is, well, history. out there, you can hook up your video to the serial port. Die-hards I wonder what became of Ian. Those were the might even get this working on a days when the ARCHIMEDES echo (Fidonet) PC... Hahaha! And there is the was slacking if the daily message count usual eclectic assortment of other dropped to two digits. Now, it seems as if three stuff. digits is pushing it for a year’s worth of chat. The Internet seems to have claimed half of the Yo Rick. I don’t want a video players. The other seem to have grown up and wobbly thing. I want my Acorn just drifted off. I’m still wondering about Daniel computer to be able to brew the Aston. After discussing a few hacks to his perfect beer... preferably from !YouWhat door (around Summer 1994?) he recycled copies of Arch <hic> World suddenly vanished. and other junkmail. Robin Abecasis I know about, but I somehow How about it, huh? doubt he’ll poll for Fidomail from hot and humid Singapore. In fact, a recent posting has stated he’ll not be using his RiscPC. Something to do with the humidity causing it to fail. Sounds like Here’s a plea from me to you. Use the kind of weather I could do without. :-) MTerm. ANSI is dead boring. I’ve been hacking for yours and every time it gets dowdier. Hehe... Just Oh shut up ya boring pratt... like DOS! Hiya! Demented hacker here. Anyway. That’s enough from me. I can see this absolutely gorgeous I heard some of you were pining for beaver walking by and my hormones me whilst I was on vacation, so I are splitting the atom. Outta here! thought I’d come back and crash this party. Where’s the beer? Hmmm... Doesn’t leave me enough room to Right. Well, this totally excellent sign off! Pah! maga-thing features a few truly Well, until next issue... wicked articles. Take, for Richard (who isn’t boring!!!) 1st February 1997 FROBNICATE ISSUE 12 - Spring 1997 Page 4 REVIEW OF A DOZEN Don’t you give me no Buick people. No updates to it as though we are on release Son, you must take my word 12 of the block drivers, there isn’t much more to If there’s a God up in heaven say. I may later cover getting them to work with C He’s got a Silver Thunderbird as it is, well, “non–trivial” to say the least. You can keep your El Dorados Internet legislation rumours... Well, the Americans And the foreign car’s absurd went ahead with the communications decency act. People are still reporting on sex and sleaze on–line. Me? I wanna go down... It’s all a load of political spin–control if you ask ...in a Silver Thunderbird. me. In this issue we have a little article regarding the “standards”. It revolves mainly around HTML, Me? I wanna go down... but if you take it as an abstract concept – it could ...in a Silver Thunderbird. apply to many many situations... Tornado. Ah yes. Well, Niall Douglas has seen Sorry... Sidetracked slightly. :-) sense. He now programs in C on a RiscPC. No more hand–coded assembler under RiscOS 2. :-) Tornado This section will look back over the first ten itself appears to have been ported to Windows issues and comment on various ideas, (NT?). Something about a thunking layer? I dunno. concepts and issues raised. Unlike the news at 10, I don’t wish to report good articles with no The article on becoming a fidonet point is due to be follow–ups. So here is a look back over the last updated, next issue? nine issues of Frobnicate, with follow–ups where applicable. ArmBBS? Well, I think we can say it has toppled ArcBBS. There are around 20–30 installations (not all paid for, mind you) and it offers LOADS of ISSUE ONE features. Hugo would have to do some serious Well, I’m still playing with telephony. A later coding to keep ArcBBS up to date. Will Hugo ever article will detail have you can make a short-range release the ArcBBS sources so we can update it? listening device for a few quid. BABT approved? Probably not, but I can keep hoping. :-) Get real! No real follow–ups here. ISSUE THREE Presented The Finishing Touch. A promising looking series of articles written by James ISSUE TWO Larcombe. Sadly, it appears that James has The DIY serial port was a nice one, but sadly we’ve wandered off to bigger things, like the Internet. not had much chance for DIY. A harddisc upgrade and this, the serial upgrade. No nifty stuff like building a 5th ROM or upclocking or ISSUE FOUR custom–designed podules (though a dual 6522 I/O More on Tornado. A guide to the SysOps of the podule is in planning). Acorn world (as it was then) and a nice bit about copyright. Nava Whiteford presented ANTS which The serial blockdriver article has helped a few was a look into a kind of pseudo–intelligent “life”. FROBNICATE ISSUE 12 - Spring 1997 Page 5 A follow–up article in more depth is really what is ISSUE EIGHT needed here... Nava? Also a detailed breakdown of featured my first foray into a world wide web... The the Frobnicate readership. The readership itself has gizmo responsible for all this “HTML” madness. dropped due to a lack of text/graphics versions. I I, being me, went to look at America’s most wanted. hope to post Steve Pursey a floppy with I dropped by Bill Clinton and then the X-Files. text/graphics versions on. I can’t really afford to What a combo huh? upload it everywhere any more. The last phone bill was waaaaay over budget and, well, if mom didn’t I recently wandered around “the web” and may love me <slush slush> then I’m sure I’d be six feet even be setting up my own home page. More details under around about now. later. This issue also introduced the article “Qu’est–ce Issue eight also introduced us to the overly que c’est, ça?” where I can rant/rave/comment on stereotyped student anarchist with a grossly cynical all sorts of things. :-) outlook on life. Yup, this is the demented hacker. Bizarely, it seems to have become a bit of a cult character insofar as the Frobnicate readership goes. ISSUE FIVE He took Christmas off, and boy oh boy did I ever Sported a lovely picture raytraced by Emlyn Owen. get a roasting for that. Okay, panic not. He is back Straight into the debate about BBSs and porn. Then and unlike previous instalments, our demented a review of on–line games (which needs updating hacker is taking a lesson from The Simpsons and is too) followed by quite a popular article, “The highlighting a few of societies inadequacies in his Invisible SysOp Debate”. ever–anarchic way. The debate, started here and carried through in the Follow–up on the exclusive article (the one with all next issue seems to have died a death.
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