Letters @~The contributors' end-of-year prizes went down very well with @~those who received them; here are letters from the first and @~second prize winners. From Brian Burke, Nottingham It was with some apprehension that I opened the parcel postmarked 'Dartford'. Who did I know in Dartford? Had the Reader's Digest moved offices? What on earth was in it? Needless to say, comprehension soon dawned that against such stiff competition such as John Barnsley (whom I have revered for many a long year for his seemingly endless list of solutions) and The Grue (an Infocom and text adventure legend), as well as the Bitmap Kid, I had triumphed in the size of my contributions to SynTax. My feelings go out to Roy Sims who came so close to my total so commiserations to him. Sad also to reflect that Ken Dean would have probably beaten us both. The Myth and Magic figure, together with its inscribed wooden base, sits proudly in my lounge. They act as physical proof to my long-suffering family that the many hours spent in front of the monitor have, at last, provided some tangible evidence to reward the cursing and complaining that often ensues in the pursuit of solving this or that puzzle. The figure itself, that of a Wizard sitting on a throne and holding aloft a crystal which catches the light splendidly, is very attractive. I will certainly be trying to add a partner to my Wizard next year wand give Ron Rainbird, Neil Shipman, Richard and the other guys fair warning that I'll be after them despite the flying start they have. Thanks again, Sue, for the prize. Thanks also for devoting the time and effort required to produce a quality adventure magazine for adventurers. From Roy Sims, London I'm just dropping you a letter to say many thanks for the Myth & Magic King Arthur figure I was awarded as runner up SynTax contributor of the year. I had no idea it would be as heavy as it was! He (I don't think he likes being called 'it'!) is now sitting on my bookshelf guarding my Dragonlance books. He's not too happy about being next to Roger Rabbit though (who's almost as big as he is!) Thanks again. @~Without readers' contributions, there wouldn't be a SynTax @~magazine so it's my way of saying "thanks" to the most @~enthusiastic contributors for their help. I'm glad you were all @~so pleased with your prizes. Buying the figures has tempted me @~to start collecting them myself! But I think I'll restrict @~myself to some of the earrings they're doing ... no, I don't see @~myself wearing skulls, but a pair of flying dragons might look @~good! @~Now some comments on last issue's Falcon article. From Richard Hewison, Luton Having read the latest issue of SynTax (issue 23) I felt I had to write regarding the Falcon 030 article. I've gone through it a couple of times now and I have a question to ask: has the author actually used an Atari Falcon 030 or an Amiga A1200? I got the impression from reading the article that all he has done is cobble a number of articles on the Falcon and the A1200 together from various magazines and regurgitated them. The whole thing felt like one of the old school playground "my machine is better than yours" style arguments that did the rounds a few years ago and I'm surprised to find an article of that nature in SynTax, which has managed to avoid it up until now (excluding the occasional little joke here and there!) Writing as someone who has actually used both an 030 and an A1200 (as opposed to having only seen or read about them) all I can say is that each machine is the natural progression from the old Atari ST and Commodore Amigas. Whilst the Falcon is technically superior on paper, the brand name 'Atari' is now almost a dirty word in the industry and the machine is unlikely to get any more share of the market than the Acorn Archimedes did when it appeared over five years ago. NONE of the major software publishers in Europe are developing for the machine, which isn't true of the A1200. It's a shame, but like the technically superior Betamax video format, the Falcon is ultimately doomed to failure. (It doesn't help when the manufacturer ships out development machines without the multi-TOS and then changes a few things internally which makes some of the software being developed incompatible with the machine in its final form!) I'm sure the author of the article was commenting on what he hopes will happen (in an ideal world) but realistically I'm sorry to say that it won't. I'd like to be proved wrong though! @~I guess we've all got our favourite machines (I'm certainly a PC @~convert now) but, I agree, I don't want SynTax to turn into a @~magazine which knocks other people's choice of machine. There's @~nothing wrong with a bit of enthusiasm though! ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~The story so far ... I sent Bill Commons a copy of the Amiga PD @~mapping program, AmiGraph, to review but he got in touch to say @~the disk was corrupted, so I sent a second disk to replace it. From Bill Commons, Margate I am sorry but I can't review AmiGraph for you as there is a disc read error on one of the files and the program crashes if I try to open that file. All is not lost, though, as I have spent some hours experimenting with it and I have taught myself a bit about how the Amiga files and folders work. I have also had a mini adventure with the first disc and I felt too foolish to tell you about it until now. When I received the first disk I noticed that the metal sliding cover was bent but I thought, "No problem, I will just copy it onto a new disc." The disc does not have the usual icon that I could click onto to open it so that is why I thought it was corrupted. I then tried to get it out of my drive only to find that it was stuck. In our adventures, all we have to do is pick up a piece of wire and our problems are solved so I fiddled about with a pair of tweezers. When I finally got it out it was minus the metal cover! I continued with my fishing and at last I got it. Alas, the disc drive no longer worked. I took it back to the shop and thankfully it was repaired free of charge. I found out how to open the second disc through the workbench disc and I have since checked the files on the first disc and both have the read error on them. If you want to use this letter in SynTax to warn others not to be so daft you can, though I doubt if many would be so silly. @~I think we've all done what we'd call daft things on the @~computer; I certainly have ... and had accidents with it. The @~worst I did was getting a hair caught under the shutter on a @~disk which jammed it in the drive and caused me to lose all the @~data on the disk! I've heard of people doing terrible things @~to their computers to get jammed disks out. Anyone like to write @~in with their own tale? I'm just glad your drive was repaired @~for nothing. Kerry Francis checked out the original AmiGraph @~disk and thinks it may not be 'plus' compatible. I'll let you @~know what happens. ------------------------------------------------------------------ @~Finally, some comments on the new Amiga version of SynTax from Nigel Parker, Basingstoke (extract) May I start by saying a big thank you on behalf of Amiga owning SynTax subscribers for the new self-booting disk. Oh, how I used to hate using the ST emulator. This is a big, big improvement! @~Glad you liked it! Don't forget, loading screens for the Amiga @~version will be very welcome.