Subject: REVIEW: Aminet Set 1 CD-ROM set
From: [email-masked] (Lars SFX Eilebrecht)
Date: 23 Feb 1995 17:50:45 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Aminet Set 1, January 1995

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	The Aminet Set 1 is a snapshot of (nearly) the complete Aminet,
the worldwide Amiga file network. Snapshot date was December 18, 1994.
The Aminet Set 1 consists of four CDs.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

   COMPILATION LICENCE

	Urban Dominik Mueller ([email-masked])

   MANUFACTURER

	Name:		Stefan Ossowski's Schatztruhe GmbH
	Address:	Veronikastrasse 33
			45131 Essen
			Germany

	Phone:		+49-201-788778
	Fax:		+49-201-798447

	EMail:		[email-masked]

DISTRIBUTION

	The main places to buy the Aminet Set 1 currently are:

	Germany:   Stefan Ossowski's Schatztruhe GmbH and GTI GmbH
	Denmark:   Fribert Consult, v. Kenneth Fribert
	Italy:     C.A.T.M.U. s.n.c.
	USA:       Amiga Library Services

	You can order also from any bookstore: ISBN 3-86084-253-6

	(I have given only a short overview. More information is found in the
text file docs/misc/CD-Orders.txt on Aminet.)

LIST PRICE

	Suggested retail price is DM 59,- or $39.95 (US).

	Street prices may vary. The cheapest offer I have seen here in
Germany was about DM 39,-.  That is approximately $26 (US).

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		A computer (Amiga highly recommended) equipped with a
		CD-ROM drive.

		512KB RAM is required. 2MB RAM (or more) are recommended.

		A hard drive is not required, but some of the software
		packages are intended to be used from a hard drive.

		An Amiga with the AGA chipset or a graphic card is
		recommended for accessing the pictures via the included
		picture database.

		Some of the archived software packages that are on the CDs
		may need other special hardware in order to operate.

	SOFTWARE

		AmigaDOS 1.3 or higher required.
		AmigaDOS 3.x is highly recommended, but 2.x works as well
		for basic usage.

		To access the picture database, you need Amiga OS 3.x.

		A suitable CD-ROM filesystem (like AmiCDROM) is required.
		(The Commodore 3.1 CDFS is known to have some bugs, but
		problems may only occur in very rare cases.) 

COPY PROTECTION

	None.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 3000, 2 MB Chip RAM, 12 MB Fast RAM
	Toshiba XM-3401B CD-ROM drive
	Several hard drives
	AmigaDOS 3.1 (Kickstart 40.70, Workbench 40.35)
	AmiCDROM 1.15

REVIEW

	Well, why did I write this review? The idea came from Urban D.
Mueller, who asked me if I would like to make a review about his new Aminet
Set 1.  I said, yes, why not....  Some days later I received a copy of the
Aminet Set for reviewing, and here we go.

	First, I will give an overview of the content of each CD.  I will
critically look at the user interface of the Aminet Set and the compilation
in general and of course say some words about pricing and what new things
users of previous Aminet CDs will get.

INSTALLATION

	There is no installation required. The CDs are pure archive CDs
with no specific setup required, but it is possible to change the
default archivers, viewers, players to your personal likings.

USED FILESYSTEM

	The Aminet Set CDs are mastered in the ISO 9660 mode 2 format with
RockRidge Extensions. Handling on other platforms should be no problem.  The
filenames of the CDs are '8.3' (MS-DOS format) and unique when used with an
ISO-2 compliant filesystem under PC-DOS (I quickly tested this on a friends
PC equipped with a Sony double speed CD-ROM drive running Windows/MS-DOS).
The CDs of the set are not bootable.

CONTENTS

	As mentioned before, the set consists of about four CDs. Every CD
includes a part of Aminet. The Aminet Set is NOT a bundle of the former
released Aminet CD volumes 1-4.

The different directories of Aminet are spread over the CDs as follows:

	CD     Directory     Size in MByte   Contents
	------------------------------------------------------------
	 A     dev           135             development software  
	       util           97             utilities
	------------------------------------------------------------
	 B     docs           37             documents
	       gfx           127             graphics software
	       pix           322             pictures and animations
	       text           84             text software
	------------------------------------------------------------
	 C     comm           82             communication software
	       demo          318             graphic/sound demos
	       game          151             games
	       hard            6             hardware related files
	------------------------------------------------------------
	 D     biz            59             business software
	       disk           12             disk/HD tools
	       misc          104             miscellaneous files
	       mods          339             music modules
	       mus            28             music software
	------------------------------------------------------------
	 total:             1901 (1.86 GByte) of archived files
	------------------------------------------------------------

	(Note: The sizes are given in MByte, which means 1024^2 byte.  All
	       sizes published by Urban Mueller are in million bytes, so
	       please note the difference.  Urban Mueller promised me that
	       on future Aminet CDs it will be marked whether million bytes
	       or MBytes are used.)

	As you can see, on disk A are only the directories 'dev' and 'util'
which makes about 232 MB. Due to this, the rest of the CD was filled up with
the newer files from the other directories. Additionally all '.readme' files
are on disk A, which allows you to search and list all archives that are
present on the four CDs.  To avoid problems with BBS software that work with
'.readme' files, they are not stored in the normal Aminet directories, but in
an extra directory.  On disk B you find the 'pix' directory with lot of
pictures and animations.  To survey all the pictures, a thumbnail database is
included.  To get an overview about the games, demos and mods found on disk
C or B, several index guides can be found on the according CDs.  On every
disk are various index guides and tools which occupy approximately 35 MB per
CD.

USER INTERFACE

	The Aminet Set 1 is 'yet another archive CD' set, but there is one
thing that makes it different from other archive CDs - the user interface.
The Aminet Set uses the same access software as the Aminet CDs 3-5.
Various search tools and index guides can be used to access the files on
the CDs.

	AminetFind: Searches a specified string in the complete index
	FullFind:   Searches a string in all '.readme' files
	Find:       Searches a specified string in the local CD index

	DirKit:     Index guide sorted by directory
	NameKit:    Index guide sorted by filename
	AgeKit:     Index guide sorted by age
	ChartsKit:  Index guide sorted by download count
	DeutschKit: Partial index guide with German descriptions
	FishKit:    Fish disk index with references to Aminet files
	SaarKit:    SaarAG disk index with references to Aminet files

	The Find tools output an AmigaGuide window with all files that
matched the search string. In the leftmost column of the guide, you find the
filenames, and in the rightmost column you find a short description of the
file or archive. In the middle, you find information about the directory,
size and age of the archive and on what CD of the set you will find it.  If
you click on the file description, the readme file is displayed, and a click
on the filename pops up an extraction tool where you can specify a
destination directory for extraction. For pictures, texts, mods, demos and
games, an extra gadget in the extraction tool appears that gives you the
possibility to show, play or run the files directly.

	Via a prefs program, the user can specify a default path for
extraction and what LHA archiver should be used. Utilities for viewing
texts, JPEGs and other pictures can be defined separately and also the
player that should be used for playing the modules.  The 'Inspect' tool
tries to be as smart as possible, but sometimes a 'direct' access is not
possible, due to one or more 'unexpected' files in an archive.

	On disk B, we find a picture database that can be accessed with the
program PicZoo (ready to run from the CD). With PicZoo you can browse
through the different thumbnail databases and a click on a picture brings up
the external viewer showing you the full picture.

	Besides the normal guides mentioned above, we find two special
guides for games and demos on disk C. The guide for the games has three
index types. One with 150 of the best games, one for compatible games
(tested with an Amiga 4000) and of course one with all games.  The same
applies to the guide for the demos.

	On disk D you find a special guide about the mods. The first index
is a module list with ratings by Christian Marz, the second index are the
module charts by Oliver Bellmann (ratings are based on public votes), and
last but not least an index with the personal favourites of Urban Mueller.
Additionally you can select one of the random play modes, you can choose
what kind of modules you would like to hear. These are techno, pop, jazz,
instrumental or any.

COMPILATION

	As said before, the Aminet Set 1 is a compilation of nearly all files
that can be found on the Aminet FTP servers. Maybe I should explain why I
said 'nearly all'. When uploading files to Aminet the uploader can restrict
the distribution of the file with the 'NoCD' keyword. This means that all
files that have this keyword set are not included on an Aminet CD.  Urban
Mueller told me that so far are 15 files found on Aminet that forbid
distribution via CD (e.g. the MovieDataBase).

	Furthermore the directories 'util/crypt' and 'pix/irc' are not part
of the Aminet Set. 'util/crypt' was left out, because it is not allowed to
export cryptographic technology from the United States and Canada. 'pix/irc'
was left out to avoid problems with people who might not want a picture of
themselves on a CD (this may happen if the person was not the uploader of
the picture).  But this is only a very small part of Aminet that was left
out. On the Aminet Set 1 we find a total number of 12482 different files
or archives.

	Apart from the files in the various Aminet directories, the search
tools and the guides, we find some installed tools and utilities. For example
MultiPlayer, DeliTracker, PS3M, Movieplayer, BigAnim, Viewtek, FastJPEG,
AmiCDROM, Degrader, TrashMaster, ToolAlias, ARCHandler.

	As said before, you get 2 GByte of files with the Aminet Set, but
what is new on the set if one already has one or more of the other Aminet
CDs?

Urban Mueller published the following table:

	If you already have...       You get an additional...

	Aminet CD 4                  1425 million bytes
	Aminet CD 3,4                1088 million bytes
	Aminet CD 2,3,4               743 million bytes
	Aminet CD 1,2,3,4             701 million bytes

Since Aminet CD 4, 270 million bytes of new files were uploaded to Aminet.
But notice, that these files will also appear on Aminet CD 5 (available
early March)!

USAGE

	You can start to browse through the entire stuff, but likely you
will get lost in the depth of directories, archives, pictures, games, demos,
modules, guides... :)  You get more than 2 GByte of archives, but what to do
with such an immense source of software? Archive CDs are more or less a kind
of backup or storage media, but through the 'user interface' of the Aminet
Set these CDs may get CDs for everyday use (i.e., listening to modules or
playing games from the CD).

	If you are searching a particular archive you can use one of the
various search tools or one of the guides. If you prefer CLI usage you
can check up one of the index files in the Aminet directory.

	The CDs of the Aminet Set 1 are ready to make available on BBS
systems that work with 'files.BBS' files or directly with the '.readme'
files.

PRICES

	I don't want this review to become a discussion about CD prices,
but let me nevertheless say a few words here.

	The former Aminet CDs 3 and 4 were/are available as 'Gold' ($19.95
US) and as 'Share' ($11.95 US) versions. As one may know, the word 'Share'
is an abbreviation of the word 'shareware', which means that the person who
bought the CD _should_ pay a small shareware fee for it. But Urban Mueller
dropped the 'share' concept, because he said that too few people supported
the concept. Neither the Aminet Set 1 nor the Aminet CD 5 (and likely all
future CDs) are released as shareware.  In an interview Jason Compton (Amiga
Report editor) held with Urban Mueller, he claimed that most people bought
the Share CD and 99% of those people have not paid any shareware fee for it. 

	I'm very upset to see such a good concept for the Aminet CDs dying!
I can only encourage people to support other share CDs that hopefully will
come out in future!

	The Aminet Set is shipping for about $39.95 (US). In my opinion, this
is a 'fair' price for four CDs, although other people may say that this is
too much. Indeed, Urban Mueller will earn lots of money with the CDs (he
didn't tell me how much, but estimations are going up to $4 per set), so if
you don't want him to earn money through the CDs then do not buy them. But
if you want him to get a compensation for his work in creating the Aminet
CDs then buy it. You must decide yourself!  (Note: The price of the Aminet
CD 5 will be $17.95 (US).)

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	I really like the user interface of the CDs. In most cases you can
easily find and access files you are looking for, 'directly' start games,
demos, playing modules.... It is really good and easy to use.

	One has lot of different ways to get a view of the files, not at
least with the SaarAG and Fish index. Of course it was a good idea to
include all '.readme' files on disk A for searching purposes.

	But with the guide interface, some problems are left. First of all,
if you click on a file that is not on the current CD you must start
changing CDs. Until a file is successfully loaded/extracted one has to
change the CDs several times. To avoid this you can drag the appropriate
search kit to your Ram or hard disk (this clue is found in several ReadMes
on the CDs).

	The various random play modes for the modules are very nice, but
currently skipping of a module doesn't work correctly. Due to last minute
changes a better random play scheme with ARCHandler was removed, because
the first version of ARCHandler had problems with some system
configurations. Probably this will be fixed in future CD releases.

	The direct access for games and demos is good, but it is
impractical if they have no exit back to the operating system. And even
'compatible' demos or games need not to work with special user
configurations. But the interface tries to be as smart as possible to
avoid problems.

	It is nice that you have, depending on the content of the archive,
the possibility to choose if you want to extract the archive to a
specified destination directory or to view/run the files 'directly', but
maybe it would be good idea to implement hotkey selection for the gadgets
of the extraction tool. In general, the extraction tool and the prefs
program are designed very frugally.

	On some configurations, the AmigaGuide interface seems to have
some problems with certain archives, maybe due to bad links in the guide.
For example, if you try to extract/view 'AmigaFAQ.lha' your system will
definitely crash when you have an Amiga with OS 3.1 (whether using
MultiView or AmigaGuide).
 
	I really like the supplied picture database. It is nice to browse
with PicZoo through the different databases. Clicking on the thumbnail
brings up the full picture, but I recommend to view pictures from
collections (several pictures in one archive) not via PicZoo, because the
archive must be extracted for every picture that should be displayed.
PicZoo needs a HAM screen in order to work. We have an AGA and an ECS
version of PicZoo, but I didn't get it run correctly with an ECS Amiga.  The
screen looks a bit weird; on the upper part of the screen the thumbnails are
more or less correctly displayed, but the rest is a mixture of gadgets,
listviews, text....  Urban Mueller already knows about these problems, and I
hope that they will be fixed in future releases. Unfortunately, PicZoo stays
only partly usable for browsing through the databases. Users who are not
familiar with the German language will sadly notice that PicZoo has only a
German doc file.

	The preferences program is nice, but at least not perfect. One can
specify a 'JPEG viewer' and a general 'Pic viewer', but is it not possible
to define extra viewers for ILBM or GIF pictures. The program defined as
'Pic viewer' is used for all pictures formats (except JPEG) as well as for
IFF animations and MPEGs.  A module player can be defined, but defining a
sample player is not possible (as default DSound from CD is used).
Furthermore it is not possible to define an DMS extractor (the version from
CD will be used). Anyway all DMS archives can only be extracted to DF0:, but
Urban Mueller told me that this will be fixed for Aminet CD 5.

	The 'search again' gadget in the AminetFind-guide does not work.
Deja vu! Wasn't this already a problem on the Aminet CD 3?

	Self-extracting '.run' archives are not correctly handled, but this
problem will be fixed for Aminet CD 5.

	During my tests I sometimes tripped over duplicate files or
archives. Some examples are ReKeyIt versions 1.2, 1.2a and 1.3 and BootX
versions 5.23 and 5.23a. Normally, all older versions of a program are
deleted, but in some cases this wasn't done. Other examples are identical
modules, but I must agree that it is sometimes not easy to check up
duplications or older archive versions, especially if the archives have
very different names.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Other multi-volume CD sets are GoldFish 1/2, GigaPD and Ultimedia.
With GoldFish you get two CDs, one with the programs in unarchived form and
one with them in archived form. You can use many of the programs directly
from the CD, but you get less software compared to the Aminet Set (relative
to the number of CDs).  GigaPD is a three CD set with a significantly higher
price and it covers less (up to date) software than the Aminet Set. GigaPD
is in my opinion mostly just 'yet-another-archive-CD'.  The same goes with
the Ultimedia set. It is a two CD set for about the same price as the Aminet
Set, but it gives you no kind of user interface for viewing pictures or
playing sounds.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	Contact Urban D. Mueller if you have questions or comments about the
Aminet Set. You can reach him via email at [email-masked] or
[email-masked].

CONCLUSIONS

	You get nearly a complete collection of all files and archives
found on Aminet. If you really need them all is an other question, but
you will surely find lot of interesting stuff on the CDs.

	The price for the set is acceptable, but you must decide yourself if
you want to invest the money, especially if you already have one or more of
the old Aminet CDs. On the set are newer files than on Aminet CD 4, but
these will also appear on Aminet CD 5.

	I wouldn't say that the Aminet Set 1 is a must for every Amiga user,
but it would be a good deal for people who haven't bought any Aminet CD yet
(e.g., people who just purchased a CD-ROM drive).

	The compilation -- or better say 'the presentation' of the files and
archives -- is for the most part successful.

	Indeed, the user interface has some bugs and restrictions, but
in general its usage is good.

	The Aminet Set 1 is a very good product. I rate it 4.75 out of 5
stars. The last quarter can be obtained by enhancing and fixing the user
interface of the CDs, especially better preference possibilities must be
given to the user. I must admit that currently no better user interface,
like the one found on the Aminet CDs, for an archive CD exists, but if
improvement is possible (and needed) it should be done. Urban Mueller
promised me that enhancements will be made for the Aminet CD 6.

	And last but not least we have one question left:  Will there be an
Aminet Set 2 in the future and what will it be?  I don't know... even Urban
hasn't yet concrete ideas about it.  An addendum CD for the set? A new
double-CD? Again a complete snapshot?  Let's wait and see...

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	All typos made in this review are mine. All mine! ;-)

	This review represents my personal point of view.
(Don't hesitate to contact me, if you have any comments about my review.)

	If you would like to re-publish this review in any way, the author
requests at least a copy of the used media.  (Thanks to AmigaGadget who did
this in the past.)

	Copyright 1995 Lars Eilebrecht.
	All rights reserved.

	Author address:

	   Lars Eilebrecht
	   Glueck-Auf-Strasse 23
	   57223 Kreuztal
	   GERMANY

	   email: [email-masked]
	   irc:   Shadowfox

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