CU Amiga Magazine CUCD woes
Hi people.
Sorry to disappoint you but because of the way CUCD4 was created this time,
there's no soap opra-like readme files here this time around.
Since this is the first CD created within a single month as our first
regular CD, the way CUCD was created had to change dramatically.
Firstly we recruited Neil Bothwick to do the bulk of the work on the CD.
Most of what's here has been compiled by him. Thankfully this allowed
me time to resume writing and such forth for the magazine.
Two people working on a CD is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
Fortunately the Zip drive handled the quantities of data without a problem
but exactly who does what and how to avoid overwriting what someone else did
took some getting used to. In fact we still haven't sorted it out but near
the deadline things came together nicely, or rather 'better'.
I'm writing this on the very last day of the CD. Even with the previous CDs,
despite the months of work that went into them, I was in the same position
as I find myself in now. I know there's a lot of stuff to put on, a lot of
stuff to fix, icons to clean up, assigns to add and lots more besides. But
at some point it has to be finished so the next CD can be worked on. We hope
you'll understand this if you find problems with the CD.
Also we hope you'll like CUCD4 for what it is, Neil and I should be able to
do even better for subsequent CUCDs but remember it takes more than just
our hard work to make a CD.
We need YOUR input and YOUR own pictures, modules, programs and anything
else you can give us. It's unlikely CUCDs will ever be 100% full of data
like their predecessors but at the end of the day this matters far far less
than the quality of the material contained here and that's largely up to
you.
Whether you're an amateur looking to show off your work to other Amiga
enthusiasts or whether you're a serious programmer with some shareware you'd
like to gain wide distribution, we need your goods and we'll do what we can
to ensure we do the right thing by you.
Please write, fax, E-mail us your suggestions and material, Neil and I need
every bit of help we can get!
Enjoy!
Submission details;
Suggestions;
CD Editor
CU Amiga Magazine
Prior Court
30-32 Farringdon Lane
London, EC1R 3AU
United Kingdom
or cucd@cu-amiga.co.uk (This goes to both Neil and myself)
Mail contributions;
CD contributions
CU Amiga Magazine
Prior Court
30-32 Farringdon Lane
London, EC1R 3AU
United Kingdom
FTP contributions;
ftp.cu-amiga.co.uk/users/cu-amiga/incoming/
Note! We far prefer this over MIMEd/UUencoded mail submissions which must go
to cd-submit@cu-amiga.co.uk if you insist.
A word on material sent in;
Far far far far faaaaaar (get the idea?) too much material sent in is based
on floppy disks. By that I mean floppy disks designed to boot, show their
pictures, play their modules or launch the game etc. It's a CD we're making
and from experience users of the CD do NOT like to unpack DMS archives just
to check something out. So PLEASE make an effort to send in your material
in a stand alone format so it can be bundled with everything else in that
category. If you send in bootable floppy disks, we'll either ignore it or
strip out the pictures/modules etc but only if we have time. You see this
takes time and we get sack fulls of floppy disks.
So... If you send in a picture, send it in as picture.iff or picture.gif or
picture.jpg. Call it that please, no spaces in the filename, no other funny
characters. This is especially true of modules, why not call your file
module.mod so it's instantly apparent to us what it is? Don't XPK or
otherwise compress your material unless it's in an LHA/LZX archive with NO
subdirectories so that it can be simply extracted to the CD.
Of course this doesn't apply to games and utilities. In this case you
obviously get a directory of your own but PLEASE try not to require an
assigns or assume the media the software is installed upon is read/write
capable. Programmers should investigate the use of the PROGDIR: assign which
is virtually foolproof and negates the need for any tom foolery on our side.
If your files are stand alone, it would REALLY help us if you could include
a text file stating who you are, what you need to use/view/here the file and
anything else relevant. Call this file file.txt. IE send in file.iff and
file.txt, then we only need to copy it on and Neil and I can jump up and
down in sheer bliss and get on to the rest of the problems creating CDs
provides.
Mat Bettinson - CD Editor and Senior Staff Writer for CU Amiga Magazine
P.S. We'll see what we can do about one of those nice little soap .readmes
for the next CD.
>date
Friday 27-Sep-96 13:53:50
Ok there is a woe. Last day of burning the CD. Lots needs doing but I have
no time. Discovered serious bug with MasterISO with directory depths, the
package gurus out when it scans the web stuff. I try every trick in the book
including some Bodgy Arexx TM to delete stupidly long path names. No joy.
Getting desperate. In the end I move it into the root directory of the CD
which seems to fix the problems. The CD is set to write at precisely 6pm.
Not normally a problem but there's a drink up for Alan Dykes departing CU
Amiga in the pub next door. Obviously I have to be there. I shoot next
door, few pints and come back up to check out the CD. It didn't work.
missing files, gurus the CD32's (crap) CDFS on boot... Oh dear. Bugger that,
I'm going back to the pub. I'd be no use half drunk anyway.
Next day, amazingly hungover. By that I mean that I am really to sick to be
at work. Yes it was that good a night and I remember whisky being brought
out at some point. Not a good sign. Oh yes, we bought Alan a bottle of
Jamesons' Irish Whisky and a model BMW to replace the company car he'll
loose moving to the 'other' company <grin>. A boardroom meeting is extremely
untimely, I crawl along while I really should be working on the CD.
Entertaining being asked about the CD to shrug and say, "Well yes our CD
will be better than the competition... If it works." :-)
Found, amazingly, that I'd forgotten to put Blobz on the CD. Also the CD
hadn't been virus scanned properly. Oh dear. This is rectified hurredly or
at least as hurredly as possible when one is extremely ill.
Now, I think I've identified that MasterISO isn't burning the CDs properly
and that the ISO image itself is fine (checked with a cool fake CD driver
mounted which reads the ISO image). If this is the case I'll use a Unix port
hacky thing to write the CD. If that works, this will be the last entry on
this file. God, will making these things ever get easier?
>date
Friday 27-Sep-96 19:53:09
10 disks binned. Wasted, the Unix rubbish doesn't write it properly either.
Just now I listened to the audio tracks... They were stutted with digital
corruption (that nearly blew out my ear drums). Suddenly it occured. This is
digital corruption. Data isn't getting to the CD-R properly. I've sinced
tried a new MasterISO BTW, Asimware were very keen to help out. Nice guys
they are. Mail them on suppport@asimware.com to tell them I told you to say they
were nice guys. :-)
You know what the problem was?
The 4000Ts SCSI controller had been set to Fast SCSI-II and Synchronous
operation. Something I KNEW the HP didn't like. The dip switches were
changed to test out a new 540MB removable media drive. The bizarre missing
files were corruption in the ISO image on the CD. THIS is why the fake ISO
mount worked but the CD did not!
I feel so stupid.
This is the worse day of the year for me, I'm still sick, everyone went hope
hours ago on a Friday night. Of course even when it DID work I found a bug
that would stop the web pages from working. :-/
Well at least when it's done I'll have a weekend of relaxation.
I promise I'll try make the next readme a little less depressing next time.
:-) Man, I wonder if the security guard will order me a pizza...