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3 EGBBGEEEBBB 2 J7:A?>A??>>BC 1 no of parts+1 (ie: 1-38+pt 0=39) 1 n()+-/024579;<>@ACEQ 1 n$m$n$m$n$m$n$m$n$m$ 1 mwCCCCBBAAaMH 1 mw>CFECFCEC?A> 1 mw>>CCFFEECCFFCCEECC>>==<<apHJKJKJ 1 mw<<??==>>apJKJNJQ 1 mCCEECCAAA?>>aMOMOMK 1 m>>AA>><<apKJKJHJ 1 m$n$m$n$m$n$m$n$m$n$m$n$m$n$m$n$ 1 f&&o//i+o+i)o)(( 1 dq+&+&+&+&+&+&+&r+ 1 dq&+&+&+&+&+&+&+r& 1 d++++++)() 1 bCCCCBBAAMH 1 a-+)(()(&)(& 1 When Timex pulled the plug, they dumpedall their surplus TS2068s in Argentina. Asfor the number of TS2068s manufactured, Iremember hearing a figure of 60,000 (butI'm not too sure). I have no idea abouthow many were sold by Timex of Portugal inEurope. Maybe someone from there willenlighten us? Here are the features of the TS2068: * Z80A processor clocked at 3.58Mhz * AY-3-8912 Sound Chip (same as 128KSpectrums) w/ clock 1.76475Mhz It isattached to different ports compared withthe Spectrums, so you don't hear AY musicwhen playing Speccy games (of course, itcan be overcome). I mention the clock ratehere because it is slightly different fromthe Spectrum's. * 72K (48K RAM; 24K ROM) which isbankswitched between three internal 64Kmemory banks c 1 There was a big article on this in Crashmagazine (in the UK - around the middle of1986 or early 1987, just after the Amstradtakeover) The Loki designers went on toproduce a games console which eventuallymaterialised as the Konix console. There was also another project (reportedin Crash and Sinclair User) codenamed"Pandora" - this was to be a portableSpectrum. After the Amstrad takeover, thiswas scrapped but eventually materialisedas the Z88 (marketed by Sinclair's newcompany - Cambridge Computers). - BEU -- Bus Expansion Unit for theT/S2068. Was to plug into the expansionbus and offered bank switching RAMexpansion, up to 16 MEGS, and buffering ofbus signals so more peripherals could beplugged in. - T/S2080 printer -- Mannesman Talley dotmatrix printer with bus interface 1 Some things however, like a CD player, asyntheziser, and your beloved Spectrummake sound in quite a different way. Thesoundwave has only two values. Type thisin: 10 PLOT 0,44:DRAW 64,0:DRAW 0,88 20 DRAW 64,0:DRAW 0,-88 30 DRAW 64,0:DRAW 0,88 40 DRAW 64,0:DRAW 0,-88 RUN this, and you'll see what I mean. Andthis is how sound is created on aSpectrum. You can think of the high valueas ON, and the low value as OFF. To createa sound, you send an ON signal, wait awhile, send an OFF signal, wait a while,then send an ON signal and so on adinfinitum. It is quite possible to create sound usingthis method, by using the output port 254.Apart from set 1 SONG BY ST COMPILEJ 1 SONG BY ST COMPILE 1 COPYRIGHTED - NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN! 1 CCEECCAAA?>>MOMOMK 1 AN26.D 1 AN26.C 1 AN26.9 1 AN26.8 1 AN26.7 m 1 AN26.6 E 1 AN26.5 1 AN26.4 1$ 1 AN26.31 1 AN26.30 Y 1 AN26.3 1 AN26.29 1 AN26.28 1 AN26.27 )? 1 AN26.26 1 AN26.25 1 AN26.24 1 AN26.23 1 AN26.22 1 AN26.21 1 AN26.20 1 AN26.2 1 AN26.19 1 AN26.18 m 1 AN26.17 1$ 1 AN26.16 1 AN26.15 1 AN26.14 1$ 1 AN26.13 u) 1 AN26.12 1 AN26.11 1 AN26.10 1 AN26.1 1 AN26.0 2( 1 ALCHNEWS26 1 >>AA>><<KJKJHJ 1 <<??==>>JKJNJQ 1 ;"LOADING INDEX": 1 ;" LOADING PART ";CNT;" " 1 92m togetherwith more than 1 70m) and at the end of the day he'llstill have a 34% holding of Viglen and a24% holding of Betacom (of whom he's theChairman and to whom he just sold all theexisting Amstrad business including thelucrative Sky contract). No wonder he wasto be seen whistling around the buildingyesterday (June 5th)! As far as CPC, PCW and NC computers areconcerned the only small change is thatthe company that effectively owns thetrade names and the design rights isBetacom plc rather than Amstrad plc but itis effectively the same Chairman with thesame engineering department and uppermanagement so, in effect, nothing's reallychanged. All it would take is for someone to decideto rename Betacom to Amstrad and thecompany would effectively be exactly whereit was in 1984 when it designed the CPC -except that this time round it's"blockbuster" p 1 70m incash -then there's his entitlement to the34% of the litigation money (maybe another 1 6m. In1994 it also bought Viglen, a PC company,for 1 6m as a share dealbringing Amstrad's shareholding to 69%(Alan Sugar is already chairman of theBetacom plc board of directors). Part ofthe deal involved the selling of Amstrad'sresearch and development departmentemployees to Betacom together with theextremely lucrative (perhaps 1 60m. During 1996 Psion offered to buyAmstrad for 1 57mfrom Seagate that has already been awarded(plus 1 57.5m ofdamages (dated 1990). With accruedinterest and costs it is expected that thetotal claim will be 1 49mprofit on the deal). This 1 48m of accrued interest). Hopefullythere might be similar money from WD ifAmslit wins its case against them inCalifornia in the Autumn (should that be"fall"?) which now seems more and morelikely. In this "un-bundling" It's because thestockmarket can't really put a value oneither Viglen Technology or the litigationpayout (because Seagate are appealing(well, no actually, they're not in theslightest bit appealing)) that the realvalue of the package and hence the Amstradshares is unknown. However recent reportssuggest that the whole package ranges invalue between 1 37m was a loan repaymentbut even so that means it made a 1 3.92 per share.As of this date the Amstrad share price is 1 220m damages. The trial ended inOctober 96 and judgement came in April 97when the judge awarded Amstrad 1 200m. Alan Sugar promised theshareholders at that time that he wouldtry and free that cash for them in a taxefficient way. Already all Amstrad overseas subsidiarieshad been closed and the operation in theUK had been downsized from about 1,000employees to about 100 over the last 2-3years. In late May 1997 Amstrad annouced that itwas selling all it's remaining businesstogether with it's trade names (Amstrad,Fidelity, Sinlclair, Integra), patents andother intellectual property rights toBetacom plc (which it already had a 66%shareholding in) for 1 200m) BSkyBdigital satellite receiver contract. Finally, it was announced on the 5th June1997 that, subject to shareholderapproval, Amstrad plc will be dissolved on4th August and for each Amstrad share helda shareholder will receive: 1) A loan note for 1 200m cash in bank). Thisis redeemable over 3 years allowingdeferral of capital gains tax to a laterdate. 2) A share in a new listed company -Viglen Technology plc 3) 0.43 of a share in Betacom plc (thebreak up of the 69% holding) 4) A note of entitlement to any proceedsfrom our litigation with Seagate/WD(currently that may be about 55p per share- may rise to 1 200m but on investigationdecided it wasn't worth it (As it turnsout, probably the wrong decision on theirpart!) In April 1997 Amstrad sold Dancall toBosch for 1 2.80 which is therefore probably heavilyundervalued. Also Betacom's share pricemay be heavily undervalued at present asit's price does not reflect the fact thatit has part of the BIB contract. Incidentally as a result of all this,because Alan has 34% of Amstrad shares hisentitlement to the 1 1998 A.Davis & Alch. Research 1 105m but this is nowsubject to an appeal from Seagate.Meanwhile the case against Western Digitalis due to be heard in California in Autumn1997 (it might be expected for there to besimilar damages awarded). In total thismay equate to about 1 100m already held as cashgave Amstrad a cash "mountain" of morethan 1 1.63 notes alone isgoing to let him walk away with 1 1.63 (effectively afraction of the 1 1.10) Alan Sugar will be a non-executivedirector of Viglen Technology holding 34%of it's shares. He is already chairman ofBetacom and will get 34% of the 69% ofBetacom that Amstrad owns (23.4% of it'sshares). Amstrad have been sueing both Seagate andWestern Digital in separate cases for hugedamages as it is cited that it was thefailure of their hard disk drives thattainted the Amstrad brand name andparticularly the Amstrad 2000 series PCrange and prevented Amstrad from becominga major player in the lucrative businessPC market with huge amounts of subsequentlost business. In the London based Seagate trial Amstradclaimed 1 1.10 per share valueentitlement when Amstrad is dissolved. So what will be left after August 4th is: 1) No Amstrad plc 2) Betacom plc just as before but insteadof 69% owned by Amstrad it will be ownedindividually by the 200million odd holdersof Amstrad shares (so that actually meansthat Alan, who's already chairman, willhave about 24%). Effectively this is the"new Amstrad" as most of the employees areex-Amstrad and the chairman is Alan Sugar. 3) A new Viglen Technology plc that willown Viglen Limited and a new companycalled AmsLit who's only purpose in lifewill be to litigate (hence the name) withSeagate and WD to try and get th 1 00000000`00 1 - Aerco disk system -- for 2068, usesWD1770 controller. Supports up to 4 IBMdrives of any size/density, RGB i/f,optional parallel or dual RS-232 ports.Has 64K RAM bank which can run CP/M.Models also available for ZX81-T/S1000 - A&J Microdrives -- Model 1000 forZX81-T/S1000, Model 2000 for T/S 2068. Aninterface that plugs into the computerexpansion bus, offers a parallel port andports for up to 2 "stringy floppy" or"wafer" drives. The Model 2000 has aStringy Operating System (SOS) in an EPROMmapped into the extension ROM address. TheSOS is called when a filename is precededby the "@" character. Wafers wereavailable in sizes from 14K to 85K. Datais loaded at approximately 11,000 baud. Ifthe program was well matched to the wafer,the load time compared favorably to manydisk systems such as the Commodore 64 andAtari 8-bit computers had. - Rotronics Wa 1 &&o&+i+((& 1 "Enter Part:";cnt: 1 SETUP PARAMS 1 LOAD PART 1 LOAD INDEX 1 CHOOSE PART 1 Back in time with Arnold Yates I thought for this issue we could take alook at some of the many hardware gadgetsthat were available in the hectic spectrumdays of 1985 or there abouts. Let's start with the ZX Interface two. Itallows you to connect two joysticks and aROM software cartridge to your ZXSpectrum. You can use the Interface 2 withany or all of the Spectrum peripherals.You had to connect the Interface two tothe expansion port on the Spectrum beforeyou switched on the computer. It had 2joystick ports and both could be used atonce, there was a slot in the top pice toallow a ROM cartridge to slot in to,butyou had to remember to switch off thecomputer before inserting the ROM. I canremember 2 of the ROM cartridges around atthe time and they weren't cheap. One wasthe game 'space invaders' and the otherwas 'Horace and the spiders'. I shouldimagine they a 1 The CHRIS PILE Interview In late December 1997, David Ledbury ofPERSONA had a visitor to his web site; achap called Chris Pile. I got in touch andthis interview is te result of many emailconversations we had about the Spectrum,his past work, and his current release,ASTEROIDS, which Chris kindly allowed usto out on the disk. HIFORMING AD: HIFORM was brilliant! Do you knowabout the new developments with the +3 andexternal drives? You can now read andwrite PC and +D disks on it, you can evenload and run a .SNA snapshot from a PCdisk in BASIC! CP:Sounds great! Sadly I have neither aSpeccy or SAM any more. However; if youhave a .SNA/.Z80 (Etc.) of a littleMissile Comman 1 THE RITMAN INTERVIEW By kind courtesy of EMULATE! magazine Our roving reporter, Blood, has trackeddown a Speccy God - Jon "Head Over Heels" Ritman! I'll hand straight over to him! "One of the things missing from thecurrent computer scene is the 'famousprogrammer'. Back in the good old days ofthe Speccy, everyone knew the name oftheir favourite programmer and often itwas who wrote the game rather than whopublished it that affected the sales themost." "One such programming genius was JonRitman, the man behind (amongst manyothers) classics such as Match Day, Batmanand Head Over Heals. These days Jon isstill around (although not programming forthe Spectrum any more!) and is still verymuch involved in the industry." "Putting on my 1 INDEX (1/3) AN26.0 : This index. AN26.1 : NEWS. What little is going on is mentioned here. AN26.2 : THE CHRIS PILE INTERVIEW. Slagged off by many a newspaper and magazine, we talk to one of the nicest and best Spectrum programmers around! AN26.3 : AMSTRAD DEAD - LONG LIVE BETACOM. How the closure of Amstrad will help them continue. (Like we care). AN26.4 : BETADOS BUG. It's been a while, but Miles is back with another bug fix. AN26.5 : THE THIRD NSS SHOW. Not as good as th 1 CREDITS Greatful appreciation must go out to allwho helped in the production of this finepublication. Notable thanks must go to: Editor: Andy Davis Bsc Sub-Editor: Desmond Tyler Assistant: Sian Hartley Original Programming: Dominic Morris Later Programming: Andy Davis United Minds Paul Howard Miles Kinloch 128K Music: Agent-X Chris Taylor United Minds Dave Fountain Technium 220 1 JAN. 1998 1 TRADING POST Victoria Road SHIFNAL TF11 8AF (Spctrum +2a / +3 hardware and spares UK supplier of SINTECH games) ZENOBI SOFTWARE 26 Spotland Tops Cutgate ROCHDALE OL12 7NX (Leading adventure software house) ZX FILES Paul White 30 The Rowans WETHERBY LS22 5EB (The best Spectrum magazine around!) Z88 Emulator Jeroen Van Den Bilt Keteldiepstraa 1 Sinclair Computer Hardware Factsheet ------------------------------------ Version 1.2 "Uncle" Clive Sinclair, inventor of thehandheld pocket calculator, digital watchand small screen TV pioneer, foundedSinclair Research and developed the ZX80microcomputer in March of 1979. Within ayear, he had the ZX80 in the Britishmarket, selling for about 100 Britishpounds. In 1981, Sinclair Researchdeveloped and marketed the improved ZX81.Both computers were available in kit form,and had a dramatic effect on prices ofcomputers that were available to home andhobbyist users. Other computermanufacturers were forced to lower pricesdrasticly, which put more computers inmore homes in a shorter span of time.Indeed, the Sinclair line of computers,nearly forgotten by all except a dedicatedremnant of hobbyists in this Pentium era,were a catal 1 BETA DISK - THE FORGOTTEN SYSTEM OK. hands up all you who remember BetaDisk, I see not many. Quite a few of youknow about Opus and virtually everyoneknows +D and the +3 but know I'm going totell you what little i know of Beta Diskare you sitting comfortably, then I'llbegin. I acquired mine by chance when I wasbuying a plus D last year it got thrown inas an extra. There was no system disk ormanuals BUT then I recalled anothercontact offering one for a fiversuggesting it was outdated a waste of timeHowever I rang him up and asked if he hadthe manual, he said yes and also a fewdisks, so I bought it. I tried it initially and managed to load afew games but was rather unimpressed, thismonth I gave it another whirl set up on amore permanent 1 3RD NSSS TARNISHED BY 'STAY-AWAY' CONTROVERSY By James Waddington, CLASSIX magazine A usually well-attended computer show forSpectrum and SAM Coupe fans has beendubbed 'disappointing' by many of themajor groups who participated in it. The 3rd Northern SAM and Spectrum Showheld in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, isusually one of the highlights of the yearfor fans of the 8-bit computers. However the latest gathering - which tookplace on Saturday September 20th - wasshrouded in controversy after it wasclaimed that a leading SAM Coupepublication had earlier announced thatthere would in fact be no show. Held as previously in the Methodist Hall,the turnout wa 1 FITTING A NEW Z88 KEYBOARD MAT The Editor After the mention that PCW Magazinegreatfully gave to Alchemist Research, MrAlan Postgate got in touch andkindly donated TWO Z88 machines, completewith RAMs and EPROMs and magazines, towhich we gave a donation to a charity ofhis choice. The machines, after cleaning andinstalling new batteries, worked verywell. One even had the expansion port onthe side! But, both were well used and therubber keyboard in a poor state. One evenhad the number '4' key glued back on! A phone call to Bill Richardson on monday22nd and he got me two new mats for just`15. They arrived on the 24th! Thanks,Bill. 1 Internal Z88 Memory Expansion By Frank Davis Many thanks go out to Don Walterman, along time friend, for these instructionstelling you how tp upgrade your Z88'sinternal RAM to 128K or 512K. This is notto be done by the faint hearted or thebeginner at soldering/desoldering. "I've always wanted to add more internalmemory to the Z88 (they can already easilyhave external memory added). I got startedwith the Z88 a bit late in it's life, so alot of the products I read about were nolonger available. reading back through oldmagazines, I noticed some advertisementsfor internal memory expansion kits. sincenone of them are availble any more (exceptfrom FWD Computing in the USA and from Wm.Richardson in the UK just recently) Idecided to make a do-it-yourself project." 1 Converting files between the PC and the Commodore Amiga Lloyd Garland On the face of it, it seems very difficultwithout some form of cable linkage via theserial ports, but there is a simpler wayprovided that the files you want totransfer are not too large. There is a disk available in the publicdomain called "MessySid V2". This is aprogram that will both read and write 720KMS DOS disks on your Amiga. MessySid has restrictions, but it issimple and reliable in use, and is similarin many respects to X-Tree Gold - aprogram that many PC users have used andloved for years now. The restrictio 1 Amstrad is dead, long live to Betacom (06/12/97) by Cliff Lawson In recent years there have been somedramatic changes at Amstrad plc. In 1992Alan Sugar made an offer of 30p ashare totry and buy back the complete shareholdingand take the company private again underhis direct control. Unfortunately,although he owns 34% of the shares thatattempt failed as some vociferousshareholders thought that 30p undervaluedthe company. (At that time they wereprobably wrong). Because it had a large pile of cash fromdumping PC2000 stock (see later aboutSeagate/WD court case), subsequent to thatfailed attempt Amstrad bought Dancall, amobile phone company, in 1993 for 1 DTP/+D BREAK KEY FIX (48K) By Miles Kinloch This article is for the benefit of 48Kowners with a +D, who would like to takeadvantage of the Break-key fix included inmy 128K conversion of PCG's DTP Pack. Theprocedure described here will allow you toadd this facility to the 48K version ofthe software. All +D users of the DTP Pack willdoubtless be aware of the problem, whicharises when Break is used to quit printingin Wordmaster and Typeliner. This forcesan exit to BASIC with the 'BREAKrequested' report, with the result thatwhen you enter RUN to restart the program,any text files that were present are lost.The problem occurs because Wordmaster wasnever intended to exit to BASIC duringprinting, and is caused by theunconventional 1 ALCHNEWS SOFTWARE INDEX Like our articles index, we have beenrequested to compile an index detailingwhich free software came with which issue.So here it is: ALCHNEWS 9 ZX-FX. Simon Goodwin ALCHNEWS 10 AXEL-F. Qjeta RAMDOS. TASWORD UTILITIES ALCHNEWS 21 (September 1996) BOUNDER. Gremlin DEFLEKTOR. Gremlin DIZZY 8. PA So 1 A Brief History of Life ----------------------- By Matthew Westcott ------------------- Back in the days when England stood achance of winning the World Cup, thereweren't actually any computers around(almost). So we'd better skip a few yearsto 1970, when a mathematician at CambridgeUniversity called John Conway came up withthe Game of Life, a spook mathematicalpattern generating thing. It provided theopportunity to stare aimlessly atconvoluted, rapidly changing patterns.What a shame he'd just missed the 60's. I suppose it's pushing it to call it agame really. But then again, that's whateverybody said about Pit-Fighter. What Imean is, there's no aim to it, and thecomputer does most of the work. However,being a demo coder, I'm always attractedto pointless t 1 Z88 HINTS AND TIPS J.E. Lawrie The :RAM.- bug The Z88 operating system can create twofiles which go in :RAM.- They are S.sgnand K.sgn. If they stay there they cancause a failure which will require a softreset (only suspended files are lost) or ahard reset (everything lost!). You can goto RAM.- periodically to check that it isempty. A better way is to type thefollowing on the top line of a Pipedreamfile - save it with a name like CLEAR.CLI,as plain text. To clear :RAM.- you go to the RAM whereyou put CLEAR.CLI, put your cursor overit, press TAB, press <> (diamond) Eand XThe CLI will g 1 SINCLAIR ARCHEOLOGY THE COMPLETE PHOTO GUIDE TO COLLECTABLE MODELS Published by: Hove Books/Brighton/U.K Around 130 pages in A4 format Author Enrico Tedeschi Now if you have just a passing interest inour Sir Clive Sinclair and his inventionsor obsolete electronics or just plainnostalgia then this is the book for you. The book has everything from the micromidget receiver to the C5 electrictricycle. The book is divided into periods (orages): Publishing Age Radio Age HiFi Age 1 Another BetaDOS Bug Miles Kinloch When experimenting recently with theBetados facility to create extendeddirectory formats, I discovered thatthings go wrong when the file capacityspecified exceeds 255, affecting thecatalogue display and file positionreferencing. I traced the cause to thefact that the DOS uses a single-bytesystem variable (at location 15874) forthe directory slot number, which althoughadequate for the 80-file format for whichit was designed, can only cope with amaximum possible value of 255. Since tosubstitute a two-byte system variablewould involve extensive reprogramming ofthe DOS, and since a practical limit of240 files (the nearest value correspondingto a complete set of directory tracks)still offers a generous capacity, theeasiest way may be just to accept theseconstraints an 1 The 3rd NSS SHOW By Andy Davis and his trusty Z88 Yes, it's that time of the year again,when all the psychos, loonies and generaloddballs from the eight bit world arereleased into the community of Wetherby towreak havoc. Sadly, it wasn't the great success thatthe previou two were, mainly down to theevil Doctor Bob Brenchley of Castle INDUG.As we mentioned in the last issue, he toldhis readers that there was to be no moreNSS shows as Allan Clarkson had gone toAmerica. If he actually knew anythingabout the eight bit world and stoppedshoving SAMs down his reader's throats, hewould have known that George Boyle, secondin command at the previous shows, wasorganising it. Thankfully, Brenchley never turned up. Butthe old favori 1 Z88 and NC-100 LINK UP The Editor I've put off this project for ages, mainlybecause it would involve soldering twoRS232 plugs. Due to losing my +2's monitorcable I had to make another a few monthsago, so I wasn't looking forward to moresoldering in confined spaces (the pins,not my workshop). But, whilst in TANDY looking for a philipsscrewdriver, I saw an interesting item: aSMART2 JOYSTICK EXTENSION CABLE. Part no.270-1705. The part is a ten foot (3m)extension lead for joysticks, featuringa standard male and female plug andsocket, which also happen to be DB-9serial connections. The back of the box indicates that thecable can be u 1 TRADING POST ************** Please enclose a SAE with your enquiry toall services. If purchasing from a privateindividual, make confirmation the articleis still for sale and try not to send cashunless a premium delivery service is used. SERVICES REMOVED: IMPACT SOFTWARE: Closed down. EMILY SOFTWARE : No longer manufacturing. SOFTSELL / SSH : Closed down. If your group isn't listed, please get intouch and we'll add your details. * * * * * ADVENTURE WORKSHOP 36 Grasmere Ro 1 TRADING POST Victoria Road SHIFNAL Shropshire SPECTRUM PRICE LIST Spectrum +2A/+3A Phaser guns with 5 games.(tape or disk) `9.99 Spectrum +2A Motherboards. (new) allchipped up. `24.99 Spectrum +3A Motherboards. (new) allchipped up. `34.99 Spectrum +2A/+3A instruction manual. `9 .99 Spectrum SJS1 joysticks `9.99 Spectrum +2A c 1 Rom Routines Introduction If you've ever read any books on Z80machine code and the like, no doubt you'llbe able to write some limited machine codeprograms. However, there are a lot ofthings which haven't been covered, such asdrawing lines, boxes and circles onscreen, printing sprites or evenmultiplying and dividing numbers. Thesimple reason is because a program to dothese things would be quite complex. But fear not! You are probably aware ofthe fact that your computer has at least16K of ROM, memory which you can read, butnot write to. What you may not know thatin ROM, there are hundreds of smallroutines already built in to do somethinguseful, and can be used in conjunctionwith your main machine code program inRAM. Most of t 1 NUR NUR NUR --------------------- (Otherwise Titled:) "A Short Journey into the unknown land of wild furry Haggisses and far too much spare time." D I S C L A I M E R --------------------- Ignore me, I don't exist. Yes indeedley doody!! It's Orson here onceagain to dribble at you all!! Well, today is Sunday and I've just gottenback from the third NSS S .. sss SSS NNSS Show. Thingy. Yeah, that one!! It was inLeeds you know. Far away place... Umm... So anyway, it is now Sunday nightand I am incre 1 NEW DISCDOS Dominic Morris has revised his DISCDOSprogram. For thoe of you who don't knowit, it is THE program for the Spectrum +3if you have an external disk driveattached. It allows you to read and writeto +D / Disciple disks - IN BASIC. But,he's improved it even more: So, the features are as follows: CATaloguing of discs, to any stream, usingwildcards LOAD of any filetype, including headerlessfiles (ie those produced by grown upcomputers) - a header is created SAVE of all standard BASIC filetypes, withor without a PLUS3DOS header MERGE ofBASIC programs (file header needed ofcourse!!!) 1 CRACK CITY Desmond Tyler Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, UK, 1980 In recent times Britain has played host topotentially one of the most important UFOincidents on record. Certainly in recentBritish UFO history the rendlesham Forestincident has been written about more thanany other and has received worldwide TVand press coverage. It is hard to imagine how a sleepy, littleknown area of Suffolk could be the focusof such international interest, yetsurprisingly the similarities between thiscase and the famous Roswell, New Mexicoincident are quite striking. Both, despite taking place in obviouslydifferent geographical environmentsinvolve areas of great militaryconcentration. 1 NEWS ALCHNEWS GOES THIRDLY In an attempt to give the editor, whocompiles this entire magazine singlehanded, more time, we have taken the boldstep of making AlchNews a thirdlymagazine. That means there will be THREEissues per year, occuring on: JANUARY, MAYand SEPTEMBER. The problem isn't down to lack of material- far from it - but the enormous task ofconverting files and, in some extremecases, having to scan them, re-type themor convert entirely from upper case (ifyou must write in one case, PLEASE belower!) We apologise to all of you who haveprotested and calling the idea 'a sin',but until we