** Review CD's 1 page / 815 words **

Suzy B's Software Treasury #1 and #2

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Al Goold reviews another pair of Atari CD-ROMs...

There was a time, not so long ago, when it was said that it wasn't worth getting a CD-ROM player for your Atari because there was no specific Atari CD-ROMs available for it. This is no longer true. There are hundreds of compilations available across Europe, however, the Suzy B Software Treasury is a little unusual because it originates from North America.

In 1989 Susan and Michael Burkley ordered twenty single-sided disks from a major PD disk supplier in the Unites States, but after sorting them and discarding the files that they couldn't use they were left with very little of interest. This prompted them to collate PD software themselves, and nearly two years later Suzy B's Software was born. Their collection was then released as a double CD-ROM set named Suzy B's Software Treasury. Originally this was distributed as uncompressed files. At the time it was claimed to be the most complete PD collection available.

This double set has now been compressed into zip files and has been re-released as a single CD and renamed as The Suzy B's Software Treasury #1. It contains games, Falcon030 specific software, sound files in various formats (and players for the files), dozens of utilities, financial software, demos, educational programs, databases, icons, printer drivers and many more files. In fact there are so many, that even compressed they wouldn't all fit on a single CD-ROM, this coupled with the fact that over the years Suzy B had collected many more files prompted the release of Suzy B's Software Treasury #2.

Suzy B's Software Treasury #2 contains a similar collection of files and also includes more Atari Works sample files and templates, clipart, the entire InterActive shareware collection, bible software, picture manipulation tools and more.

Both CD's share a similar and sensible structure. Files are placed in folders, and every folder has a CATALOG.ASC file explaining exactly the contents of the file. There is also a master catalogue folder on each CD. This adds up to megabytes of ASCII text which take ages to read but it makes it clear exactly what each CD contains and where to find it.

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Each CD contains a comprehensive ASCII catalogue
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Much of the software and files are now dated, with the inevitable problem files which wouldn't run on my Falcon or under MagiC but most worked perfectly on my STFM system running TOS.

Some of the contents will be familiar to you (for example, the InterActive collection), but there are plenty of obscure gems in there. For example AMTERM43 is an Amateur radio packet terminal program by Alan Lennon of Northern Ireland. Another "weird" piece of software is Band Names by Dan Wilga of Gribnif Software. This allows your Atari computer to generate random phrases of text. It is supposed to help bands to come up with a name - strange but true!

For those of you looking for more "serious" applications there are such programs as Play MPEG v.0.70 by Martin Griffiths (1995 vintage). This colour MPEG player uses the Falcon's DSP and 68030 chips in concert to get fast frame animation of MPEG videos, and FINACALC which is the Financial Calculator - or "Variations on the Theme of The Present Value Formula" v.1.0 by Emet C. Quill (October 1996). This program enables you to calculate loan payments, savings which can be made by paying off loans early, and so on.

There is something for everyone on these CD-ROM collections, but you'll need time and patience to try everything out. The decision to archive everything makes casual browsing impossible and leaves you with the feeling you're missing something. I've certainly spent hours checking out files and feel I have barely scratched the surface. Fortunately browsing the catalogues does narrow down the files worth extracting and I'll wager you spend ages browsing through them - I did.

Value for money?

If you were to purchase this entire collection on floppy disk it would occupy thousands of disks and cost a fortune. At œ25 per CD these are certainly more expensive than some of the other collections currently available. But they do represent good value for money, whether you are setting up a file base for a bulletin board, or trying to build a collection of shareware (remember to register shareware if you use it regularly).

** Product boxout **
Suzy B's Software Treasury #1 and #2

Publisher
Suzy B's software

UK Distributor
Floppyshop, PO Box 273, Aberdeen, AB15 8GJ
Tel/Fax: +44 (0)1224 312756
Email: floppyshop@cyberstrider.org
www.floppyshop.cyberstrider.org

Cost
œ25.00 each plus P&P (œ2 UK, œ3 Europe, œ4 ROW)

Pros
The sheer number of files to explore, variety and unusual nature of some of the contents

Cons
No printed catalogue of clipart or images, files archived

83%
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