
                         Trojan Products Review
                         ----------------------

Just  back  from  the  Computer  Shopper  Show at Olympia!  Wot a f*cking
surprise no Amiga stuff :(

Well, it'd be a VERY short article if that woz all!  Luckly I went to the
show to see a customer of mine:  Griffin Distribution Ltd.  Just recently
they've  moved into computer bits & bobs distributing a range of products
from  a  German  company  called  Sunnyline.   Also they've picked up the
distribution for Trojan...

Trojan  started  up making lightguns and lightpens for the old Speccy and
C64  in  the  '80s.   A  few  years back they released a lightpen for the
Amiga.   As  Trojan  have  just finished a PC version they're pushing the
Amiga lightpen and lightgun out again.

Griffin  were  selling the PC version at the show so I enquired after the
earlier Amiga version and it just so happened they had a few of the Amiga
lightpens and lightguns in the back room...

Right, down to the reviews!


Trojan Lightpen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The  lightpen  is  a  small  oblong  box  which,  while not exactly being
"ergonomically-designed",  is  still thin enough to hold like a pen.  Two
buttons are mounted at the front which duplicate the left and right mouse
buttons.  The lightpen plugs into the joystick port meaning the mouse can
still  be  used.  Supplied with the pen are two programmes:  the lightpen
driver and a simple art program called Kwikdraw.

The  driver  is  a small (3k) patch which hooks into the operating system
and moves the mouse pointer when the lightpen is close to the screen.  If
you  put  the lightpen down you can still move the pointer about with the
mouse.  All "system-friendly" programmes with thus work with the pen.

The  Kwikdraw  program  is pretty basic but I expect most serious artists
would have DPaint etc.  anyway.  It works with DPaint IV BTW :)

Okay, sounds good so far, so wot are the bad points?

Well,  being  a  lightpen  it obviously gets a bit confused if you run it
over  dark  areas  of  the  screen.   Not alot you can do except turn the
brightness  up  on  your  monitor  or  use  lighter colours.  This IS NOT
Trojan's  fault  this happens to any lightpen.  The nice light colours on
Workbench 2 onwards work very well.

A  slightly  trickier problem is the lightpen driver.  As it has to patch
into  the  video  hardware  it could interfere with with other programmes
doing  the  same.   So  far  the only thing I've found is that some music
players use the Vertical Blank (VBL) signal for timing (as opposed to CIA
timing).   Either  the player screws up or the pointer goes mad :( Again,
to be fair to Trojan, this is the fault of the music players.  The VBL is
different  for  PAL  (50Hz)  and  NTSC  (60Hz) so the naughty programmers
should use the CIA timers instead.  This applies to some Workbench games.
Colonization seriously screws up the lightpen driver :(

Anyways, all you have to watch out for is playing music while you draw ;)


Trojan Phazer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The  phazer  is  just  the  same  lightpen in a fancy gun case.  Again it
simply  plugs  into  the joystick port and away you go.  The phazer comes
with two games (if the thing sells well maybe more will appear).

Skeet  Shoot  (clay pigeons to you and me) is a simple game where you try
to tour the world by qualifing in shooting competitions.  It's simple but
fun.

Orbital  Destroyer  is in the Space Invaders style, i.e.  kill the aliens
as they appear on screen.  Again, simple stuff, but fun.

The  crunch  here is whether more games will appear, either commercial or
PD.   Badger  Trojan  (NOT  Griffin)  for some example source code; Skeet
Shoot was written in AMOS!


The End Bit
~~~~~~~~~~~
Well  then  m8ys,  it's  coming  up to Christmas, where can you get these
goodies?  All the Trojan products are available from:

        Griffin Distribution Ltd.

        Tel: 01279 721 269
        Fax: 01279 721 379

The  PC  version  is out now for 49.99.  The Amiga lightpen and lightgun
are  just coming out now so the prices are unconfirmed.  A mark 2 version
of  the lightpen (for the PC and the Amiga) is under development and will
have a more "ergonomical" case.

As  well  as the Trojan stuff Griffin also sell the Sunnyline range which
includes  disk  boxes,  mice & joysticks (mostly PC though), disk labels,
copy  holders,  dust  covers, monitor & printer stands and cleaning kits.
Also  now  selling are a wide range of novelty mouse mats with a nice lot
of  graffiti style ones imported from America.  I woz also impressed with
the novelty mice in the shape of footballs and hamburgers.

If  you want to use PC serial mice there are some P.D.  drivers around to
allow connection to the Amiga.

Wow!  That's quite a plug ;) Anyway, if you give Griffin a ring, say Andy
sent you.  If you speak to Trevor or Alison they like good jokes ;))))


Cheerio for now people

 \|/
(O.o)
 \=/
Andy Pandy

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