.info
Magazine
A nostalgia page for .info magazine.
The Good Old Days
.info magazine (or INFO=64, as it was known in the
beginning) was a magazine devoted to Commodore computers. Originally
for the C64, we added Amiga coverage when the Amiga was still just
a rumor called Lorraine, eventually becoming an all-Amiga
magazine.
I began writing for INFO=64 as a freelancer in issue #3,
and joined the staff as Senior Editor with issue #8. By the time
.info ceased publication with issue #49, I was listed as
Managing Editor.
As time goes by, I'll expand this site with as much information
as I can about the magazine, its people, and Commodore's wonderful
lilttle computers. I'll start with links to some existing sites
(including the sites of former .info staffers and writers)
and add original material as I can find the time. Thanks for visiting.
A note about organization: I've divided this page into three sections:
The Magazine (about .info itself),
The People (about .info writers and
staff), and Commodore (about the company,
the brand name, the C64, the Amiga, Commodore staff, and whatever).
I'll add my latest entries to the top of each category.
Mark R. Brown
The Corporation
From a legal perspective, .info started out as a sole proprietorship
under Benn in the state of Oregon. When he moved to Iowa, he incorporated
as Info Publications, Inc. A few years later, the company was changed
to a limited partnership. If, for some obscure reason, you're interested
in the legal details, click here
to go to the public records at the Iowa Secretary of State's web
site.
The Auction
 .info's
saddest day was September 20, 1992. Though we'd quit publishing
the magazine many weeks before, this was the day the bank auctioned
off all of .info's assets. People came from hundreds of miles
away to bid on our stuff, but mostly to be a part of the magazine's
last moments. Click the image to see a full-page scan of the auction
flyer. (Most of the 'office furniture' wasn't ours - it was just
added by the auction house to pad the auction.)
First Desktop Published Magazine
 Though
they turned it into a left-handed compliment ("The results are admittedly
amateurish...") Personal Publishing magazine did pay us their
respects in 1987, declaring that our November/December 1986 'Games'
issue "comes closer to total desktop publishing than any other mass-market
publication we've seen". .info WAS the first totally desktop-published
magazine on the newsstands, and it was all done with Amigas. Like
PP said, "They're among the pioneers who blaze the trail." We'll
always have that.
Computer Press Association Award
 The
Computer Press Association gave up the ghost a few years back, but
once upon a time they were very influential in the industry. At
their seventh annual awards ceremony, in April of 1992, they named
.info a 'Runner-Up' in the category of Best Computer Magazine
- Circulation Less Than 50,000. Computers in Accounting won,
of all things, but we tied with NeXTWORLD so we felt pretty
good, especially considering the judges in that category were from
PC Magazine and ComputerWorld. And remember, this
is in a year when there were literally HUNDREDS of computer magazines
on the shelves. Ironically, we were in serious financial trouble
by then, and Benn was desperately seeking someone to buy us out
and keep the magazine running. No such luck. We were dead a few
months later. (BTW, Computers in Accounting and NeXTWORLD
are both dead, too, though PC Magazine and ComputerWorld
are still around.)
Daniel Barrett's UNIX Articles
 One
of the key features Commodore promoted for the Amiga was its ability
to run mulitple operating systems. With the right hardware and software,
a properly equipped Amiga could run AmigaOS, MacOS, Windows, and
UNIX simultaneously on multiple pull-down screens. For awhile,
they really pushed the Amiga 3000 (shown here) as a UNIX box, complete
with X-Windows support (courtesy of original Amiga team member Dale
Luck). The October and November 1991 issues of INFO featured
a two-article series by Daniel Barrett titled "UNIX: Is It For You".
Dan has posted HTML versions of these on his BlazeMonger Web site:
UNIX 1,
UNIX 2.
Rodney Chang Interview (INFO #25)
 Computer
artist Rodney Chang has posted scanned images of the INFO
pages containing the interview Mindy Skelton did with him. Here
you've got a chance not only to read one of Mindy's excellent interviews,
but you can see a few pages of what INFO looked like in mid-run
(#25 out of 49).
The Last Issue
 This
is the cover of the last issue of .info, #49. Click the image
to jump to a page with this image in various sizes. Like most of
our later covers, it was rendered by Publisher Benn Dunnington using
Lightwave 3D.
Partial .info Index
 There
never was an index to .info, so I don't have one. However,
the kind folks over at the Amiga University site have posted a decent
partial index of the major feature stories. (Sorry, no list of reviews.)
It starts with issue #8 and includes every issue through #47. This
is the index I'll start with if I ever get real fired up to do a
complete index. (Yes, I do still own a fairly pristine complete
set of .infos.) Click the (fuzzy) image to go to the index
page.
Amiga Magazine History
 This
European site has a short blurb on all the Amiga magazines it could
find, including .info. (Scroll down for the poop on others.)
Includes a short quote by our reclusive Publisher Benn Dunnington.
Info Photoset on Flickr
 I've
started digitizing a fistful of photos I've got from the 'good old
days' at .info. They include pictures of the .info
staff and offices, and some photos of Commodore computing luminaries.
They're posted up on Flickr,
where you can view them individually or as a slideshow.
Benn Dunnington
 Benn
founded .info in his bedroom and the rest, as they say, is
history. For awhile after the magazine went down, Benn worked doing
3D animation for the University of Iowa's Advanced Driving Simulator
project. Nowadays, believe it or not, he's a realtor in northern
Minnesota. My brain still can't quite get its folds around the cognitive
dissonance that image conjures up.
Anna Folkers
 Anna
Folkers was .info's Advertising Manager for the last couple
years of operation. She recently stumbled across this site, and
wrote to let me know she's married now, has two incredible kids,
and is the Marketing Manager for a Midwest-based software company.
Great to hear from you, Anna!
Bob Lindstrom
 Bob
was .info's music columnist after we went to an all-Amiga
format. He is married, living in California, and still writing,
as well as editing books. Click his photo for a link to the (believe
it or not) Cinemaware site, which has posted an old interview with
him.
Bob Baker
 Robert
W. Baker wrote a line or two for .info in its day, but Bob
goes much, much further back in Commodore history than that. In
fact, along with Jim Oldfield, Jim Butterfield, and a very few others,
Bob is one of the original experts on the old PET computer. He transferred
his vast storehouse of knowledge to the C64 when it came out, and
became one of the top experts on the C64 as well. Bob is now selling
a zipped file on his web site which includes many of his early original
magazine articles, programs, and programming ideas for the Commodore-64.
For $5 you get a 10MB bundle of PDFs of the articles, and for $10
you can get the PDFs plus a zip file that bundles C64 disk images
of the accompanying programs. Click the picture and follow the link
if you still have a C64 system up and running. This stuff is gold!
.info Staff Photo
 The
staff of .info magazine as it was at the end of publication.
Front: Megan, Krista, Anna. Back: Mark, Benn, Tom, and Tony.
Carol Brown
 My
wife, Carol Brown, was Advertising Director for .info for
much of its run. She tragically passed away in May 2004 due to a
bad heart valve. We miss her.
Gregory Conley
 Most
fans of .info were also fans of Gregory Conley's Bryce
comic strip, which appeared in .info for at least 18 issues.
Gregory's cartoons were offline for awhile, but now he has posted
18 complete Bryce strips on his site! He also waxes nostalgic
about the Amiga and .info. And, oh yeah, he also features
other samples of his professional artwork, which is incredible.
Bradley W. Schenck
 Brad
Schenck was .info's Graphics columnist. He's still doing
computer artwork, and features a wide selection of his eye-popping
art—including some free-use graphics— on his Web site.
Harv Laser
 Still
own an Amiga, or just feeling nostalgic for the good old days? Harv
Laser, .info's Multimedia columnist, is still at it, an indefatigable
supporter of the Amiga platform. They'll probably bury Harv in an
Amiga box, if they can find one big enough. Anyway, a subscription
to the AmigaZone Web site lets you tap Harv's seemingly bottomless
fount of wisdom. You can also chat with fellow Amiga aficianados
(including many old-timers and familiar names) and check out their
library of online information. All that for cheap, and you get free
stuff for joining. Such a deal!
Megan Ward
 .info's
Art Director Megan Ward is still designing stuff. She has migrated
to the Mac and is creating Web sites for equestrian businesses.
If we know Megan, she's doing about 1,000 other things at the same
time.
Peggy Herrington
 Peggy
Herrington was .info's most excellent Music & Sound columnist
for many, many issues, covering both the C64 and Amiga. She's still
writing about computer music and sound. The link takes you to a
page on her site that includes the full text, with illustrations,
from one of her .info columns.
Jim Oldfield
 When
the venerable Midnite Software Gazette folded after many
stellar years of reviewing C64 products, .info fulfilled
their subscriptions and Editor and Publisher Jim Oldfield began
writing for .info. For several years now Jim's been the Publisher
over at Abacus Books, which currently specializes in books and add-ons
for simulation software.
Harv's Boing Ball Ring
 I've
been meaning to post this for quite some time, and have just forgotten
until now. Harv Laser, .info's multimedia columnist and the
proprietor of The Amiga Zone (see link above), wears this
bitchin' ring made from a classic Boing Ball logo plate mounted
in sterling silver. The Boing Ball, as most people know, was the
subject of the very
first Amiga demo. The ball rotated and bounced and looked incredibly
cool, and really showed off the early Amiga's graphics capabilities,
especially when you compared them to the nearly non-existent graphics
on the Macs and PCs of the day. What most people don't know is that
the Boing Ball was supposed
to be on the logo plates for the Amiga, but at the last minute
Commodore management decided to go with the checkmark
logo instead. So Amiga employees ended up with several boxes
full of brushed aluminum Boing Ball logo plates. There were long
rectangular ones for the keyboards (these also say "Amiga"), and
smaller square ones for the monitor and the mouse. The only way
you could get one of these was to have someone on the original Amiga
development team hand one to you. I don't know if Harv's ring is
the mouse or the monitor plate (both were square, but the mouse
plate was slightly smaller). I've got just a few of each, and am
holding on to them. These things are definitely the ultimate Amiga
collectible. But I want a ring like Harv's. :(
The C64 DTV Joystick
 Commodore
computers never die. The Amiga just keeps on going (see below) and
now the C64 has been resurrected, this time as a game joystick.
The C64 DTV has an entire C64 with 30 games on a tiny circuit board
inside a joystick. All for $30 list, $15 regular price, and apparently
some people have picked it up on sale already for $10. Ten bucks
for a Commodore 64 and 30 games. And a joystick. Ain't technology
great? Anyway, I've got one and I've written an article on hacking
the thing for the current issue (#2) of MAKE
magazine. It's extremely hackable, because the designer, Jeri Ellsworth
(a very cool self-taught engineer chick who really digs the C64),
put solder pads on the board so you can solder in a power supply,
PC keyboard, and 1541 disk drive and turn the thing into a full-blown
Commodore 64. Really. Is that cool, or what? Click the pic for a
link to one of the C64 DTV hacking sites that have sprung up on
the web.
Amiga OS
 Since
Commodore gave up the ghost, the Amiga brand has been owned by several
companies, most of which never did anything with it (I'm thinking
'Gateway' here). But the Amiga trademark has been owned by
a German company for several years now, and they have been developing
an operating system they call Amiga OS. Version 4.0 has apparently
been in pre-release for almost a year. I'm not sure how much, if
anything, Amiga OS has to to with the Amiga, but they are using
the Amiga Boing Ball as their logo, so at least that's cool. They
also promote something called Amiga Anywhere, which seems
to be some kind of game development system primarily for the PocketPC.
I'm confused. But it's interesting to me that while most old computers
just disappear, the Amiga seems to have become The Computer That
Wouldn't Die.
Amiga History
 There
are many sites which bemoan the fate of the Amiga, and several which
deliver up a capsule history. This German site is as good as any,
and gets the nod here because they quote Benn.
Amiga Emulator
 If,
to you, the Amiga isn't dead and never will be, you have plenty
of company. Besides die-hard Amiga fanatic Harv Laser's minions
at the AmigaZone (see above), there is the indefatigable group of
programmers who have produced Amiga Forever. This is a fantastic
Amiga emulator for Windows which is now up to version 6.0. You can
download it from their site for $29.95, boot your Windows machine
into Amiga mode, and pretend that those bastards at Commodore
never killed the best computer ever created by the hand of man (or
God, depending on just how strongly you feel about Jay Miner).
If for some reason you just can't live without a C64, there's a
(free) PC emulator for that, too, at: computerbrains.com.
And don't forget the free C64 emulator called Frodo
which is available for many different platforms, including Unix,
the Mac, and the Palm PDA. I've got this running on my Sony Clie,
and I still can't believe it when I boot up that familiar blue screen
on a device that fits in my pocket. The home site for Frodo seems
to be down, so I've linked to the site for the Palm version. You
can find download sites for other versions via Google.
The text and some images in the main body of this page
are licensed under 
and are copyright © 2004-5 by Mark R. Brown.
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Last Update: 22/06/2006
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