Prospero Software has announced the availability
of Pro Fortran-77 for the ST. Although primarily of interest
to professional programmers and developers it is likely to prompt a
new generation of software for the ST, Pro Fortran77 will enable
developers to recompile existing mini and mainframe software to run
on the ST and should open up a whole new area of software such as
CAD/CAM for the ST. For further details contact Andrew Lucas of
Prospero on 01 741 8531.
New software from Mirrorsoft due later in the year
- BIGGLES based on the film to be released this year.
Due to be released at the end of March, although
seen only in demo form at the time of writing is a superb adventure
called The Pawn from Firebird. From a graphics point of view,
this is probably the finest graphics adventure to have been released
for any home micro with 'pull down' pictures drawn with Neochrome of
such detail that they will take your breath away! No filled in line
drawings or 'computer' style pictures on this one, what you have is
a series of true paintings to illustrate various stages of the
adventure. They tell me also that it has one of the most advanced
parsers as well. It should retail at £34.95 and, if the demo is
anything to go by, will be an essential buy for anyone interested in
the 'state of the art'.
Already widely reported elsewhere are Atari's
new ST machines launched at The Atari Show in March. The 1040ST
has 1Mb of memory with a built in 1Mb drive and retails at £919 for
a mono system or £1149 for colour. These prices are slightly higher
than might have been expected but who knows what will happen when
the Amiga is launched? The 'low end' machine is the 520STM which is
the old 520ST with a TV modulator to allow it to run, in 40 columns
only, on a normal TV. Strange beast this one. It retails at £399
but you will need a disk drive to use it for anything other than a
straight telecommunications terminal which will set you back another
£150 so it is not quite as cheap as it seems. Still add an Atari
mono monitor for £150 and you have a £50 discount on the old (and
now defunct) 520ST.
DEGAS, reviewed last issue, is now
available through Ariolasoft (their review copy arrived just after
the review of the 'imported' version had been written) at £39.95.
Ariolasoft are 'delighted' at the response to their first ST product
and so they should be for DEGAS is a fine program. Batteries
Included promise more enhancements to the program which will
hopefully come to the UK via Ariolasoft.
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