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%% Emulation Rambler                                  by  Jason Compton  %%
%% A bit of a slow week...                         jcompton@bbs.xnet.com %%
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IMPORTANT!  KEEP READING TO SEE A UNIQUE CHANCE TO
HELP THE RAMBLER IN A WAY THAT WOULD BE MUCH APPRECIATED!

Well, let's just say I haven't DONE much, but it's not for lack of trying.

My wonderful friend Katie Nelson just got her Vortex 486SLC2 emulator
board.  Unfortunately, we've had nearly zero success getting it up and
running on her 4000...it seems that just about every command we can
give it crashes either just the emulation or the emulation AND the Amiga.
This is not good.  We'll work on it, though, and find out how good GMR's
technical support REALLY is. :)

The SX-1 made it out of alpha and beta boards are being built this week.
I'm calling Thursday to confirm the status of mine.  When I asked about
the results of the alpha boards, I was told by Jerry at Paravision,
"There's too many damn wires," and that they had a few problems 
getting around CD32 design flaws that apparently violate Commodore's
own standards.  I'll keep you posted.

My MaxDOS package is shipping now.  If I haven't mentioned it, or you
haven't heard of it, it's basically a Macintosh file system for the Amiga,
meaning you can access Mac disks and hard drives as AmigaDOS devices and
files.  Not a bad idea, is it?  When I get it, I will of course give you 
a comprehensive review.

My summation of the Emplant/A-Max review series has met with some
criticism on c.s.a.emulators, particularly from those who feel that I was
too easy on A-Max IV for supporting far less 24-bit video boards than
the Emplant.  To that, I say that I gave the evaluation that I felt was
deserved.

I will readily concede that I could have done a more thorough job if
I had 24-bit boards at my disposal, but STILL, no company has
been interested in providing one for review, or at the very least
has actually come through with the goods.  I do my best.

Chris Hames has been talking about V3 of his PC-Task IBM
software emulator.  No release date has been set yet, but an
important addition will be support for 286 code meaning <drum roll>
you can run Windows 3.1 on it!  <cymbal crash>

Finally, V1.1 of Kevin Kralian's moderately controversial Apple 2000
emulator has been released.  He still doesn't mention me in the doc
file. :)

Seriously, he claims to have sped up some routines a bit and has
added support for two things:
1.  Support for the "generic disk image" format, which is popular on
    Apple II FTP sites.
2.  Support for the A1020 5.25 inch drive, included as a separate
    utility written by Ron Menelli, for transferring Apple II disks to a 
    usableimage.

Finally, I suppose you're interested in finding out what it was I was
talking about above, in terms of helping me out.  Well, I'm in the market
for a new bridgeboard-preferably a Commodore 386sx, but that's
negotiable.  My net address should be listed around the magazine,
but for repetition's sake, here's all of my important information-

Jason Compton
1203 Alexander Ave.
Streamwood, IL  60107-3003
jcompton@bbs.xnet.com
Fax: (708) 741-0689.

Thanks for your time.  Keep the emulators warm, and sell me a bridgeboard.