Subject: REVIEW: Meeting Pearls Volume I CD-ROM
From: [email-masked] (Markus Illenseer)
Date: 3 Aug 1994 16:28:18 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Meeting Pearls Volume I CD-ROM

	[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  The reviewer is associated with the maker of
	this product but is not making any money from the product's sale.
	See the BACKGROUND INFORMATION section, below, for more details.
	- Dan]

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	The Meeting Pearls Volume I CD-ROM is a compilation of various
software packages taken from the public domain (PD) and freely distributable
(FD) scene.  The compilation contains quite a lot of good and often used
packages.  Shareware CD.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Stefan Ossowski Schatztruhe
	Address:	Gesellschaft für Software mbH
			Veronikastraße 33
			45131 Essen
			Germany

	Telephone:	+49 201 78 87 78
	Fax:		+49 201 79 84 47

	The compilation licence is held by

		Angela Schmidt
		Finkenweg 26
		89233 Neu-Ulm
		Germany

	Main places to buy the CD-ROM in Germany currently are Stefan
Ossowski Schatztruhe (address is above) and 

		GTI Home Computer Centre
		Zimmermuehlenweg 73
		61440 Oberursel
		Germany

		Telephone:	+49 6171 8 59 34
		Fax:		+49 6171 83 02
		BTX:		*GTI#

	In the USA:

		Amiga Library Services
		610 North Alma School Road, suite 18
		Chandler, AZ  85244-3687 
		USA

		Telephone:	(602) 917-0917
		Fax:		(602) 917-0917

	Other dealers will follow.

LIST PRICE

	Suggested retail price is DM 19.80 or about $13 (US).
	Street price will be about the same.

	If you like the CD and the compilation, you are obligated to send a
small shareware fee to support the making of the current CD and a probable
future CD in the series.  There is no set shareware fee -- you decide how
much to contribute.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	HARDWARE

		Any Amiga equipped with a CD-ROM drive.  This includes the
		A570, A1270, CDTV, CD32 or any supported third party CD-ROM
		drive.

		512KB of RAM required.  At least 2 MB RAM is recommended,
		though 5-8 MB is more comfortable.

		A hard drive is required if you plan to copy or install
		some of the software packages on your Amiga.

	SOFTWARE

		AmigaDOS 1.3 or higher required.
		Works fine with AmigaDOS version 2.
		AmigaDOS version 3 is highly recommended.

		A CD-ROM filesystem is required such as AsimCDFS, AmiCDROM,
		Babel CDFS, Xetec CDFS, etc.  The Commodore CDFS, supplied
		with AmigaDOS 3.1, is known to have some bugs with the
		tested CD, but it is suitable to get most of the stuff on the
		disc.  AmiCDROM is 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 (same as Sony CDU-8003A) CD-ROM drive.
	AmiCDROM Version 1.10.

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.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

	Yet another CD-ROM for the Amiga.  "Finally, about time," one would
think.  "Interesting low price:  now what is on that CD for that cheap of a
price?  Can't be any good.  Let's see.  Wow, yet another PasTeX.  Hm, NetBSD
0.9, looks more interesting.  And, hell, 230MB of pre-installed software
packages throughout the whole range of PD and FD software."

	Well, this could have been the thoughts of a potential buyer
reading about this CD-ROM.  As I am involved in the making this CD, I know
about the backgrounds and would like to tell about it to you.

	Let's make something clear right now.  I don't get any money for
writing this review.  If this review makes your mouth water, and you buy the
CD - nobody else than the dealer get's your money.  The CD was assembled for
free - none of the contributors and the creators of the CD actually gained
any money.  All shareware fees are collected by Angela Schmidt.

	But if you pay the requested shareware fee, I probably will be
involved.  With this money, some hardware will be bought, future meetings
will be supported, and more - to make it possible to produce the next CD in
the series, with more and better support and with more ideas than ever.  But
still, we - the small group of freaks - won't get any money for personal
use.  Please support the idea of this shareware CD - high quality is not
free, but it can be made for a small and reasonable price.

	Wherefrom does this CD come?  Who is involved, what were the
reason for making this CD?

WHO

	The origin of this CD is - surprisingly enough - UseNet.  When
someone found out that a CD-ROM containing 700 Fish disks sold at a price at
a way overpriced $120 (US), he wondered about what to do about it.
Discussions on Usenet (mostly on the German part of the UseNet - high
temperated flamewars even) yielded... nothing.  The frontiers were fixed,
everybody was stubborn, and no real solutions were found.

	Since then, much had changed.  For example it is now far easier to
assemble stuff and make a CD of your own than it was at that time.  Even
recently the most honorable Fred Fish, collecting himself software packages
for the Amiga for years and spreading them on his AmigaLibDisks, decided to
switch over to CD-ROMs.  Yet, even his CD-ROMs are not that cheap as they
might be, when considering the costs of the making of a CD (including his
work to assemble the stuff!).

	The person who got most flamed, and flamed other people during the
discussions about cheap CDs, was Angela Schmidt.  She was, and still is,
annoyed about the very fact that PD and FD is distributed on overpriced
CD-ROMs.  So everyone told her to make a CD-ROM herself, and as cheap as she
claimed they should be!

WHERE

	Flashback.

	Over the years, Amiga-freaks in Germany have gathered for computer
meetings throughout the country.  A considerably small group of German
students who are active on the German Usenet and Internet met there to
discuss about their beloved Amiga computers, about this and that.  They had
brought their computers, set up local networks, worked out new ideas, and
chatted with persons they had never met personally before.  Those meetings
also were a good base to start new projects together - such as making a
CD-ROM together.

	At the last meeting of this kind, organized by Angela herself, a
large hard drive (1 GB) was hooked up to the local network and made available
to all contributors.  Attending the meeting were about 100 well known
people, most of them recognized as FD and PD authors, and sometimes even
commercial developers.  Throughout the whole meeting, the drive was filled
with software packages.  Often, the authors of the packages themselves
installed their products.  Sometimes they even contributed more than they
normally would, because they did not have to bother about disk space.  A
future CD-ROM would contain far more than a standard Amiga floppy!

	All in all, the drive was finally filled with about 400MB of fine
stuff:  the pearls of FD and PD software, gathered at the meeting.  "Meeting
Pearls Volume I" was born.

	As even a 72-hour meeting doesn't offer enough time to make a CD,
the polishing and refurbishing was done afterwards.  Also the CD was filled
up with some new software packages to make use of the capacity of a CD-ROM.

	It was intended to make the CD attractive.  Not yet another boring
archive CD, not yet another boring GNU-compilation, not yet another Demo
collection.  So what's on the CD?

WHAT

	The CD was mastered in the ISO 9660 Mode 2 format (hence no
crippled, MS-DOS-type filenames), but it is not really ISO conformant because
it uses directories at a depth greater than 8, which doesn't affect the
exisiting filesystems though.

	On the CD are 4 different kind of software packages.  You will find
a very recent version of PasTeX (should be renamed to HamTeX, as Georg
Hessmann no longer lives in Passau, but in Hamburg :) with very, very many
fonts - including Faxfonts and 600dpi fonts - ready to run from CD and no
need to install to hard drive.  It is just about 90MB.

	A nice assemblage of NetBSD-Amiga had been compiled during the
meeting.  About 130MB of operating system for the Amiga, ready to install
and use.  Unfortunately, it is not possible to run NetBSD directly off the
CD.  This is due to some problems during the process of manufacturing a CD
and the fact that the CD is intended to have AmigaDOS software packages
ready to run off CD, and not mainly NetBSD.  We will have yet to wait for a
NetBSD CD for that purpose (if you are interested, mail me).  Nonetheless,
this NetBSD archive is almost complete (missing are sources - only kernel
sources are provided), and represents NetBSD-Amiga in a stable state before
the changements started to issue the NetBSD 1.0 compilation (still not ready
at the writing of this text).

	About 240MB of pre-installed and all over mostly ready-to-run
programs (only a very small amount among them is not ready to start due to
some hardware requirements or other requirements) of a wide range of
software.  Starts with normal utilities, goes over to disk utilities, and
much much more.  You name it.  Pearls among them, long lost treasures like
Jay Miners original slides and Mike Smithwick's famous AmigaTrek.  Some
recently born and large packages like MUI2.1 (without SASG :-)) or other more
or less Magic Packages.  Linux-archives for the Amiga, GnuPlot with MUI
driven GUI, entire PoV-Ray picture collection, full fledged DaggeX
environment, lot of games, hardware hacks...

	Stuff to make you busy for days.  Really amazing, even for someone
like me, who'd thought he had seen all important Amiga software.  One would
really ask where some of these treasures have been found, possibly on one of
those still existent A1000's owned by a freak attending the meeting. :)

	And then we have 90 MB of something which I would declare as a real
pearl among all CD-ROMs I know of.  Hundreds of amazing and astonishing,
even unbelievable Mandelbrot Sets.  They are so pretty that you wonder where
the hell they hide in the Mandelbrot set.  Some of them are so deep in the
set that the original Mandelbrot would be at the size of our Galaxy - and
possibly larger.  These pictures alone are worth the CD.  Forget all fractal
frenzies you've seen before. :) I have seen some of these pictures before,
but never so many assembled at one place.

	Another 20MB are filled with something which is clearly dedicated to
the many contributors of the CD.  Photos taken on the Meeting, shots from
famous o'hack Amiga freaks from Germany.  Some of them pictures are of a
great quality, as they are taken from a specially made PhotoCD.  A 24Bit
graphic board is really useful for viewing them.

	Something new has been introduced on the CD.  The World Wide Web
(WWW) found a way to a CD-ROM.  The entire CD is documented and illustrated
with the AMosaic package.  For the Non-Internetters among you, this is a
chance to have a look at most recent network technology.  The Guide helps
you to discover the pearls on the CD, gives hints and clues about NetBSD
(original WWW pages have been included), browses you through the most recent
FAQs found on Usenet, shows thumbnail pictures of supplied pictures, and
much more.  It is allowed by the makers of the CD to export the WWW-pages of
the CD on the Internet, as has been already done - quite an interesting Home
Page. :-) If you have an Amiga hooked to the Internet, you can even follow
some of the Internet links which can be found on the home page of the CD.

	During the making of a CD, due to a missing 'feature' of the
ISO-Filesystem which is used on every better CD-ROM, the typical Amiga
protection flags are gone.  To get out of this misery, a full fledged script
helps you to restore the original protection flags once you copied the
software to your hard drive - if you want, either manually or by the supplied
Installer script.  This is very useful for software packages which rely on
the script bit for example.

	Technical note:  It *is* possible to store the missing flags and
filenotes -- ISO-9660 and Rockridge Extension do support this.  But both the
ISO image during creation of CD and the filesystem used to mount the CD must
support that extension.

	Using the Workbench, you will discover that the entire CD has been
nicely snapshot.  Every single window and icon has been fixed to a specific
position.  The original icons from the various software packages have not
been altered but in their place on the WB.  Most of the Icons are intended
for use on a standard 4 color WB, and some of them support most recent
gimmick named MagicWB, so alas they have 8 or 16 colors.  Also, the CD has
been snapshot using a Courier/15 font.  Hence even using smaller fonts, the
Icons are still readable and nicely arranged.

INSTALLATION

	Yes, installation!  The CD provides a nice Installer script (using
the supplied standard Commodore Installer) to help you to use the CD.  You
can choose your favorite picture viewer and your beloved text viewer.  This
is a really superb feature of the CD.  All of the icons associated with a
picture will then use the installed viewer, and the same applies to text
readers.  You no longer have to be annoyed about ugly readers or impotent
viewers - just use yours.  This feature is intended to work from Workbench,
some magic by the makers of the CD. :)  Using the CLI or any file browser,
you won't need this installation.

	This feature to be able to use your favorite viewer is a very good
idea, but has a small problem:  you need a viewer capable of showing all used
filetypes:  GIF, IFF, JPG.  For that purpose, a copy of VT is supplied.
Unfortunately VT is not able to show 'oversized' pictures on all graphic
boards.  Simple solution:  if you know you want to look at JPEG pictures,
assign the viewer to your best suited JPEG viewer (i.e., FastJPEG or
ViewJPEG). Of course you can still use AdPro, ImageFX or HamLab for that
matter.

	The required Assigns can be added to your S:User-Startup to make
them (almost) eternal and unnecessary to re-install the CD.

	The installation also provides a way to copy entire directories
from the CD to your hard drive and restore the original Amiga protection
flags of the copied files.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	I really like the CD.  It's a saucerful of secrets, a box of
pandora.  Amazing stuff.  Most Amiga related CDs are, but this one has a new
concept.

	The only real dislike I have, is that it is clear that the CD is not
intended for the international market.  There are too many German texts on
the CD.  Not that I find that bad - I am German, but I would love to share
these pearls with my foreigns friends.  Fortunately those texts are not
really important and it won't do any harm if they aren't read.  On the other
hand, there are quite a lot of texts that are available only in English....

	Another potential dislike could be that this CD is not intended to
be used from BBSes - no archives on it.  But as I don't have a BBS....

	Missing is a tool to find software packages on the CD and either
start them instantly or copy them to hard drive.  Fortunately there is a 2MB
large index file supplied on the CD, so that you can find stuff without
using the slow Search command.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Let's see.  We can compare the Meeting Pearls CD with the most recent
and maybe most-sold CD for Amiga market:  AmiNet-CD.  Meeting Pearls is
maybe cheaper and contains only non-archived stuff.  AmiNet-Share should be
available for the same price as MP, and Aminet-Gold for some more money
(remember AmiNet-Share and AmiNet-Gold are bit by bit identical, and that
paying a shareware fee does yield more money to AmiNet than buying the Gold
Edition, where only about $3 are going to AmiNet...).  AmiNet-CD in general
contains only archived stuff which has to be installed on extra media.
Waste of time in my eyes, if you want only to check out a package.  On the
other hand, it contains so much stuff that it is useful to have the stuff
in archived form.

	Almost directly concurrent to MP is the Fresh Fish CD Collection
from Fred Fish.  Unfortunately, I have only the first Fresh Fish dated
October '93, and I must say that that CD was never as useful as the MP was
in the last few days for me.  I never used the supplied GCC nor the GNU
tools.  Also, I found it difficult to use the CD from Workbench.  Price is
higher than MP's.

	Other CD's like Almathera or GigaPD are way overpriced to be
compared here, and are mostly no more than yet-another-archive-CD.

CONCLUSIONS

	This CD shows that the media CD-ROM can actually be quite useful to
have ready-to-run software *packages* on a CD.  Either for 'just checking'
or 'I won't use that one more than once in a year, but when I need it I have
to delete 27MB on my hard drive just to install it'.

	It also shows that it is possible to issue a cheap CD with some
high-end and revisited (first hand, directly from the authors) stuff on it.

	A reliable product that is very usable and offers much for its low
price.  I'd rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

	Another quarter star can be achieved if the texts are all translated
into English (and respectively, German) and maybe even other languages.

	The last quarter star can be achieved when a tool is supplied to
help to find software packages on the CD.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	This review represents my honest opinion.  Your mileage may vary -
tell me about!

	Copyright 1994 Markus Illenseer.  All rights reserved.

	You can contact the author at:

		Markus Illenseer 
		Kurt Schumacherstr. 16
		33613 Bielefeld
		GERMANY
		Voice: ++49 (0)521 103995 

		[email-masked]

---

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