Alchemist News - Issue 15 (1995)(Alchemist Research).tzx

Top 10k strings from Alchemist News - Issue 15 (1995)(Alchemist Research).tzx in <root> / bin / z80 / software / Sinclair Spectrum Collection TOSEC.exe / Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Magazines / Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Magazines - [TZX] (TOSEC-v2007-01-01) /

Back to the directory listing

4 Lloyd Garland
4 Andy Davis
3 Wolfgang & Monika Haller
3 Miles Kinloch
3 Dave Fountain
3 Ben Douglas
2 and when you die
2 Try again.
2 The United Minds Team
2 TRADING POST
2 THE PROGRAM
2 SOFT OPTIONS
2 SAVE *"m";1;"m" CODE 30665,11832:!
2 SAVE *"m";1;"b" LINE 99
2 Robert Skene
2 Paul Westlake
2 Paul Howard
2 NETHERLANDS
2 Mark Harris
2 LOAD "MENU" CODE 58176
2 John Elliot
2 If you saved the entire menu, type:#
2 If you saved only the printer bit:"
2 George Munro
2 Ferry Groothedde
2 FILES READ
2 Christian Aymard
2 By Miles Kinloch
2 Albert Harper
2 ALCHEMIST RESEARCH
2 90 POKE x,PEEK x+a
2 80 LET a=VAL c$(y)
2 6-SUBSCRIPT
2 50 INPUT "Enter 10 figure code ";LINE c$ 60 LET y=14
2 40 PRINT: PRINT: PRINT
2 40 DIM c$(10)
2 4/ Greetings,
2 34 North Drive
2 30 LOAD ""CODE 32000
2 3/ Strange+silly text,
2 20 INPUT "Length of textfile ";length%
2 20 FOR y=1 TO 10
2 2/ Punctuation,
2 2-EMPHASIZED
2 151 Balsusney Road
2 120 NEXT x
2 110 IF y=10 THEN LET y=1
2 100 LET y=y+1
2 10 FOR x=0 TO 3
2 1/ Slagging,
2 1/ Many slaggings off of your group member(s). (no group members-slagg yourself off. Or John Major!)t
2 1-UNDERLINE
2 TASWORD +3 ONLY!
1 |~~__OOGGCCAA
1 youexperience a lengthy delay. You can speedit up by compiling the programs witheither Hisoft Basic, or it's{
1 you Multifacers will have.
1 x key - when the prog is running it is theonly way to stop it. program tends to autorerun.Z
1 worksinconjunction with A1. I didn't feel aneed for another set of italics characterswhen I could have graphics.t
1 withoutscrolling it. The following variables canbe changed before calling COPY: YPOS,XPOS, SPLIT and FSLP. To generate amultiscroll (=several scrollers with sametext) you first have to call SCROLL andthen COPY. The Y-Position MUST be changed,otherwise COPY would only print over thefirst scroller. If you use MC or compiledBasic to drive UNISCROLL you have thepossibility to generate about 8 scrollersat once (with normal high of charset andspeed set at one)!
1 where 'a' (3
1 werecompletely unjustified. One of them wasdetailing a supposed slating I recievedfrom Bob Brenchley of Format. For those ofyou not briefed on this matter, at theheight of the problems between Prism andThe Knights, I wrote to Format and toldthem of the matter and that it wasspreading
1 we look at this dedicated!
1 wa01130507; this is as follows
1 wa00240032; This defines window as wa,this one is the full size of the spectrumscreen.[
1 wa - the w defines it as a window, the ais an identification so that window can becalled or recalled into a print routine,and can be in the range a to z, it can beomitted if there is no need to recall thewindow.
1 verycumbersome... so YSMB provides the 'DEFG_'command. This requires a single stringexpression, followed by eight numbersseperated by commas. The string showswhich graphic is to be defined (a to u)and the eight numeric expressions show theshape the graphic is to take.
1 version of Multiface 128.
1 usual address.
1 usual address
1 useless by a sector error in the!
1 understood +3dos bit' by Ben Douglas,%
1 trustworthy in the Spectrum!
1 trustingbusinesses, your cheques and PO's will notbe cashed until you safely have theprograms. Normally the cheques are cashed14-21 days after sending.
1 tounprofessional bias and conflict in themagazines direction.@
1 to have a giggle at!
1 to encode Tasword textfiles.
1 to the essential DOCTOR and!
1 throughout
1 three great groups - Triad,!
1 thoseorganisations that threaten court actionor other legal proceedings all go away inthe end, and end up not answering theirmail. That really does have to say it all!All those companies say "we'll do this",or "we'll do that", all go away with theirtail between their legs in the end. Why?Well, it's NOT for the reasons why theytell you, it's because they are caughtout, and PROVED to be in the wrong.
1 this issue. A brief description!
1 things as well-if you are careful!%
1 theunimaginable treasures of Xaro himself.Needless to say, your task in the game isto find the treasure - not directly ofcourse. First, the seven parchments ofXaro must be found, which will lead you tothe treasure. But can you escape alive?!
1 thesubroutine. The only drawback with YSMBprocedures is that 'local' variablescannot be used.f
1 their friend Vision's, UNISCROLL.!
1 thecorresponding entry in the table. If, forexample, A$(1,6)= GO TO is entered, thenA$(2,6)="10327" will be printed.w
1 thecomponents shown can be purchased fromMaplins. As you can see from the nextdiagram, a regulated +5v and +12v supplymust be produced. In the past I havetapped the I/O port for these voltagesusing four data lines to operate fourrelays (two YX94C and two DC80B) on my +2avery successfully. Considering the +2aonly supplies 12v @ 200ma, it would seemto be a better option to build you ownPSU, as shown on the next page.
1 thecompetitive. The game screen is prettybasic really, with a scoreboard at thetop, the "crowds" on either side (headswhich occasionally bob about a bit) andthe necessary people: two players, ballboys and an umpire bloke who sits on oneof those things umpires sit on. This gameis obviously 3D, which means that theperson at the back of the screen may findit a bit harder. (Incidentally, it tookyears to get around this problem -finally, Codemasters released a tennisgame with a sort of split-screen effect soboth players could see themselves at thefront. Bet you didn't know that!).
1 thebrilliant 'COLORIS' by the Womo Team.Here, the blocks are all the same shape,but differently coloured, and the aim isto make a line all of the same colour.
1 the SECRET MESSAGES series, how!
1 takesAN15.13: advantage of the 128k and/
1 tA; t selects the font in use, you canchoose from tA , tB,and t 1 to 9.K
1 systemcompletely free in return for helping himtransfer programs!B
1 support software
1 sparselydescribed, I did "get into" this gameafter a while and had a lot of fun playingit - until I got killed by a snake in achest! (It was probably too much to hopefor the treasure...)! There are all sortsof different parchments and things - butthey are unreadable until you manage to dosomething which I won't disclose! If youreally get stuck there is a help filewhich lets you cheat, but I haven't lookedat it... yet! Overall, this is a veryinvolving game which will keep you playinguntil a ridiculously late hour. Definitelyworth getting if you're an adventure fan,or would like to try an adventure thatisn't too hard.
1 somethingconstructive to say, then my address willbe made available to you- just write toAndy and ask for it. If you ARE a wasterthough, you WON'T get my address from Andyso don't waste your postage. I am agenuine AlchNews reader and not some "madeup" person from Andy's imagination. Myname is Lloyd Garland and I live inBristol. I hide from no-one!
1 some work!
1 some new programs! He explains!
1 similar device to the +3 / +2a's!
1 section with his own brand of wit!
1 screencalculating) already take 512 Bytes. ThenI used routines that are very fast, butneed more memory. Some might also wonderabout the fact that I placed UNISCROLL at32768. This was done because many routinesand compilers already use higher addressesand I wanted to avoid collisions withthese.
1 rules of what to expect.
1 rightjustification when editing.
1 revisedinformation sheet. It was while compilingthis that made me think about someguidelines for 8 bit libraries, inparticular the Spectrum. As you know, ifyou have any problems with any program, itis recopied for you free of charge. PrismPD didn't do this for some time and whenone person received his disk back, itdidn't work so reformatted it and sent itback for re-recording. But, all he gotback was an insulting letter accusing himof somehow trying to cheat Prism PD! Quitehow he is doing so by requesting the SAMEtitles is beyond me! I can understand ifhe asked for DIFFERENT titles!
1 reside here.
1 remarkableaccuracy, and lending the game a greatsense of realism.E
1 relatedpublications have appeared since the lastissue of AlchNews, all of which deserve apreliminary mention in the news sectionbefore being plugged in Trading Post.
1 publisher :
1 programming, Roy Benson."
1 programmers.
1 programauthorised for release by AlchemistResearch by the Portugal +3 Owners Club.Y
1 printutilities, ZX printer simulators for IF1 /128 / +D (which makes a full size Epsoncompatable printer behave like a ZXprinter), Spectrum ROMs for the SAM, pluslots of well programmed games andutilities.
1 printer port.
1 pressing a key (a to u) or
1 preliminary tests of our "HEY!
1 powerful graphics / labelling!
1 otherwiseunpredictable things might happen when youpress the button...!G
1 originalcharacter,you will have to take 128 offthe original value) DE should contain theaddress of the start of the buffer youhave made.(Don't forget to initialise thefirst entry)
1 ordistribution. Quite why I cannot explain,but he clearly doesn't want you the publicto see his letters.i
1 opinion on Spectrum UK, plus more!
1 operatinginstructions.
1 opening, Staff promotions and!
1 one and press a key."
1 on-screentypesetting
1 on behalf of.. er.. Orson!
1 ofworkspace into the screen!
1 ofprofessionalism. I welcome all theirex-readers with open arms where qualityand excellence are guaranteed!t
1 ofacceleration
1 of which work ONLY with Alchemist!
1 of the best and worst Spectrum!
1 of some new hardware plus!
1 numericexpression. If zero, the output will go toscreen, if other than zero, then a usersupplied routine will be called every timea character is output to the screen. Theaddress of this machine code routineshould be stored in the two bytes startingat address 59934. The character to beprinted is supplied in the accumulator andthe routine is terminated by a 'RET'instruction.
1 nothing)otherwise.
1 not forgetting to add one to the addressnext time round in the loop (eg)J
1 not suited for the Spectrum,!
1 noresponsibilities for any keys and / orkeyboards damaged?
1 news from them.
1 n(j)=n(j)+1
1 much more.
1 modernmultiplication code. Ignoring spaces, theoriginal plain text message contained 18characters. These can be stored in a 2*9,9*2, 3*6 or 6*3 array.
1 menu in Tasword 128, plus!
1 makes a typical Spectrum scrolly!
1 losing his touch.
1 likeSpellunkler, BG Services and many more?+
1 last months coverage of Fireview,!
1 l]X]XX]XX]X]XX]XX]X]XX]XX]X]XX]XX]X]XX]XX]X]XX]XX]X]XX]XX]hXl]hXX]XX
1 keyboard and getting the most!
1 isunderstandable, giving A.R. a plug wouldbe like giving me all his readers. In themeantime I am happy to welcome ex-INDUGmembers who are extremely happy with myservice and prompt replies.
1 issue, by J. Blomley
1 issue with a good look at!
1 isdisplayed on screen. The stack can storeup to ten values in all... any attempt toinput an eleventh value will result in thesame error message.
1 isarchieved by not scrolling the textdirectly on the screen but using a definedworkspace in which the text is scrolledand then copied onto screen.
1 into the same window ; r ;
1 interesting method of rescuing a!
1 inspires Miles Kinloch to write!
1 important message ; r ;
1 i$$h$i$h$i$h$
1 horizontally.
1 his new titles.
1 hardware recently.
1 happenings in the PD world from!
1 guide to
1 gives a great tutorial of this!
1 games in it's history.
1 g0f00g0f0g0f00g0f00g00f0g0f0g00f0g0f000g0f0
1 futuristiclawnmower, are based on some of the latestFLYMOW designs which Mr Benson has beengiven exclusive access too.y
1 full-colour
1 form:PUT_f,a,y,x,d,w. Where f shows the way thestored information is to be put back ontothe screen:d
1 finishedcompositions can be output to a compatibleprinter in a range of magnifications up toa maximum of 32 diameters. Printer outputis in the form of strips which are thenmounted together to form the finishedproduct.
1 f=6 Same as f=2 but as above
1 f=5 Same as f=1 but as above
1 f=4 Same as f=0 but current attributes&
1 f=2 Screen is XORed with memory
1 f=1 Screen is ORed with memory
1 f=0 Screen is overwritten by memory#
1 f0g0f000g0f0
1 f0g00f0g0f0
1 f00g0f00g0f0g0f00g0
1 f(sp); f is used to fill, change colour orgo over whats in a window, if it isfollowed with a udg pattern, letter orgraphic character then it will fill withthat.
1 extended Basic program.
1 explanation of INIT.
1 excellent tutorials.
1 excellent tutorials for this!
1 ends at 34433! Also see
1 encounter.Meanwhile, the clock is steadily tickingaway...;
1 editor and designer.
1 editions column, painfully unfunny.#
1 easy-to-use
1 e2; Not a food additive , the letter callsthe border for the window and the 2 is theborder pattern selected.l
1 duringRUN-time:
1 disk which has been rendered!
1 directory.
1 details on connecting a robot or!
1 depending on the size of the
1 demo. Theres also a competition.
1 decode (1) ";x
1 decision to ignore more letters,!
1 cured, latest price guide, ribbon!
1 converter(SPC-8K) has an 8k buffer but will onlywork when connected to a serial port. TryDNCS or any other office suppliers for athird party in-line parallel buffer butexpect to pay at least `60!
1 constantlydescending from the top. You can flip andmove them as they fall, manoeuvring theminto position for when they come to rest.The idea is to make the blocks fittogether, in jigsaw-like fashion, with asfew gaps as possible. When you make acomplete line without any gaps, that rowthen disappears and everything on topdrops down a row. You lose a life and haveto start again if you let the blocks pileright up to the top, and the higher youlet them build up, the harder it gets...
1 connecting between Amigas and!
1 configuring program for the!
1 complaints section.
1 community.
1 classics.Extremely low prices, plus a fast andfriendly service!D
1 charset. If using a normal
1 certain libraries running poorly!
1 carelessattempts at this project. Should any keylugs be broken, a tiny drop of superglueshould rectify the problem but DON'Treplace the key until it's thoroughlydried!
1 called"Transylvanian Tower". Well, I've nowunearthed my other two RSS games, both ofwhich are hard to obtain nowadays. I'vedecided to look at them for the first partof my section this issue.
1 c07; Colour of Paper and Ink (07- blackpaper,white ink.) StandardH
1 bytes/lines) the workspace
1 bycivilisation, ledgend (sic) tells thatthese1
1 by Roy Benson
1 by Orson of The United Minds
1 but it's still probably better than Ziggyfrom QUANTUM LEAP...>
1 both covering some excellent!
1 between two Spectrums without the!
1 bestsettings, nor the most economical, butthey are the best for me.G
1 beinvesting in a device shortly and may beoffering a low price re-ink service forLC-100 ribbons and compatables.u
1 because an increase in more lies!
1 because of adopting guidelines!
1 b0; tA; <stop the tape;2p;24s;
1 b0; b is for border (the one round thespectrum screen), 0 is the colourselected.]
1 available from MaplinElectronics Plc, further details can befound in their excellent value for moneyfull colour 800 page catalogue. Addresselsewhere in this issue of AlchNews!
1 assemblers,
1 article on looking after your!
1 article on transferring data!
1 anddescenders may pass outside Window. IfWindow is against right edge of screen,(R)IGHT-SHIFT isi
1 and"breathtaking entertainment". Strangelyenough, it does. Well, it certainly hassuperb full-colour graphics (Daley ispersonified as a little cartoony bloke),and would almost be breathtaking if itwere not for the numerous bits where youhave to tear your joystick in half. Imean, of course, the famous "joystickwaggling", the bane of a gameplayer'slife. This may help to simulate thegruelling action, but it really knockshell out of your poor little joystick(aah!). Otherwise, this game is reallyquite good and doesn't appear dated,except for the music, a non-masterpiece of48k sound. Why is it, I wonder, that somany pieces of 2-channel 48k music arecompletely tuneless? It's not a compulsorything - some games (ie "Equinox") had nice48k music - but 90% of the tunes seem tohave notes deliberately picked to clashand not to harmonise at all. Or maybemusic wasn't invented until 1985...?
1 and you could even add a hard drive!$
1 and trouble by M. Sherwood.
1 and humour.
1 and double and quadruple sized charactersand a normal option:>
1 and the slightly more elaborate textESCAPE AT MIDNIGHT is:@
1 althoughprimarily designed for use with a modem,will work fine with a null modem cable.Y
1 also.The software market is becoming saturatedwith old ideas and really just souped upgames for the new machine. Would you buyManic Miner for `40 with great newcolours, super speed and sound when youcould have the original AND a computer torun it on for less? I was in Toys'R'Uswith Andy a few weeks ago and he wasconsidering buying ELITE for his "littlenephew's" (It's really his!) Nintendo. Iasked him why and he couldn't reallyexplain, except perhaps a hope of betterspeed. But, other than that it lookedexactly the same as the Spectrum versionbut probably wouldn't let you addMultiface pokes!
1 aid of RS232.
1 again, adding disk syntax if needed.$
1 advice and DIP switch settings.
1 adeliberate plot to blame Andy Davis forthe short comings of SUK -AlchNews hasnever been a month late- and all theorders and questions get posted THE SAMEDAY! I know, I've been there and seen itfor myself, and I'll swear to it in acourt of law. It's just a power struggle Ireckon, nothing more.
1 adding disk syntax if necessary. If youonly want to edit the PRINTER menu, type:S
1 a$(26,4): LET s$="": LET f$=" "
1 ^ (the arrow on key H which you get withsymbol shift), this enters your text intothe bottom left corner of the window, whena line is full it scrolls up andcontinues.
1 ZENOBI SOFTWARE
1 ZAT endured a great many changes in styleand content to fight off the losingreadership but never succeeded, especiallyafter our editor resigned his position andsupport for the magazine due
1 Z X superprint- enter superprint mode.&
1 Your programs, long or short are alwayswelcome to expand our library which isalready the largest of it's kind in theUK. Contributors have free access to thelibrary.
1 Your Thingclair magazine
1 You'll find Theo's programs at AV373-392,ED63-64 and GA182-191.@
1 You will need:
1 You will need, from Maplin Electronics:'
1 You will need to refer to your manual forprinter, and I/O port connections. Datalines from the printer port are connectedto a 7408 quad AND gate. This acts as abuffer, with each line connected to atransistor. When a signal is sent, onetransistor is turned on, activating therelay.
1 You will find that the LEDs will fitdirectly into the circular holes providedin the box - neat eh?! You may like to puta tiny drop of glue around the edge of thehole to hold it in place.
1 You still have graphics M,N,O,P availableif you need them, perhaps you could usethem to change the pich size?q
1 You should now see your textfile appear onthe Spectrum screen.>
1 You may like to type OUT 65533,14 to"officially" set up the port.G
1 You could of course, use HiSoft Basic (ora similar compiler) to compile yourcontrol program. This will give you someextra speed, although use a bit morememory.
1 You could always use a COMMS program fromthe APD library instead of this rather"basic" control program if you wish. Andyhas loads of them, and I'd particularlyreccomend
1 You can run this with the TEST disk indrive one.4
1 You can now type text on the keyboardwhich will appear on the screen. Note thatwhen you reach the right hand edge of awindow the word and colour wrap takeseffect and all the relevant Escape codesare inserted for you.
1 You can format the disks to 83 tracks,1814k. It claims to be faster than anyother interface and uses TAPE commands!{
1 You may find that when encoding anddecoding large textfiles thatM
1 You will notice that
1 Yet, in early December (after AlchNews wasreleased), I received a copy of "PD POWER"magazine (run by Prism PD), dated October1994. This magazine contained at leastHALF A DOZEN attacks on myself andAlchemist Research.
1 Yes, you too can have your own article byBen Douglas, Luxuriantly hand-crafted fromonly the finest ASCII. How, you say? Readon...
1 Yes, it's what's in almost every singledemo made for the Speccy!! This is thestrange bit in a demo where you sayhello/hi/howyadoing/nicetohearfromyou toeveryone you know!! It's also where yousay all that to everyone you dont know,but have heard of. And also to peopleno-one's heard of, even themselves!!
1 YSMB includes a number of commands whichallow the user to directly manipulate theattributes file. 'CHANGE_' is a newcommand that permits alteration of certainparts of each attribute byte, while stillleaving the others intact. The command isfollowed by two numeric expressions,representing the 'mask' and the data. Themask, which is used to show the bits ineach attribute byte that are to bechanged, is best thought of in binary form- if a bit in the mask is one, then thecorresponding bit in the attribute file ischanged. The data shows the changes to bemade. This procedure is accomplished bythe following steps:
1 YSMB has three char sets. Selection iseffected by 'FONT_', and this commandrequires a single numeric expression:y
1 YSMB now provides the Spectrum withprocedures- subroutines which can becalled just by executing their names. Asubroutine's name can be followed by aseries of expressions, if so required.These expressions can be assigned tovariables at the start ready formanipulation by the rest of
1 YS MEGA BASIC
1 YPOS-33280 (96): The Y-Position of thescroller. Position 0 is at the top of thescreen! Possible values are 0-255! Thescroll disappears in the lower border ifthe the value is above about 184(depending on the high of your charset andon SPLIT) and reappears at the top withvalues above about 248!
1 YOU" device featured in AN13.
1 YOU ONLY HAVE A
1 YOU ARE USING MY
1 YE OLDE REVIEWES
1 Y-Position (=CLSCR).
1 XPOS-33292 (1): The X-Position of thescroller. Depending on the width of thescrollers possible values are 0 to 30.z
1 Write up by VIC BISHOP.
1 Wordprocessors, textfiles and
1 Wordprocessors
1 Wolfgang & Monika Haller (WoMo-Team)9
1 With the simple program given it would bejust as quick to perform the coding ordecoding by hand directly from the table.However, once the number of words getsinto the hundreds or even thousands, thetime saving produced by the computer isenormous.
1 With great interest I set off home, and onthe way dropped into Blackpool Centrallibrary. Although they had several speccybooks listed on the library terminal, nonewere actually in stock, however I did findsome other equally interesting books.
1 With YSMB, the whole of the screen is nowused for INPUT instead of the usual bottomtwo lines. You'll notice that all KEYWORDShave to be typed in full (like 128 BASIC).You must enter the KEYWORDS GO SUB and GOTO with spaces otherwise you will get asyntax error message. YSMB was releasedfor the 48k in 1984.
1 Windows This is another powerful optionand also has its own menu bar. The firstthing that you have to do upon selectingWindows though, is to define one. This isdone in exactly the same was as defining atext window.
1 Why would SUK at one time have considereda "merge" with Alchemist Research? Andywas certainly never told of this plan. So,why do they moan when they consider thatAndy is trying to take them over when theyclearly would have liked to merge with AR.At the end of the day, the end resultwould be the same.
1 Why is it that Kobrahsoft's DICE utilityallows you to format +3 3" disks to 203K,and their DB2 program won't back them upto tape?
1 Why do certain "top brass" members ofSpectrum UK want a single outlet for allthings Spectrum I wonder. It wouldn'tmatter who took over who, the end resultwould have been one step closer to thatend, a single outlet for Spectrum stuff.The ONLY thing that would be dependant onwho did what is who would be in POWER, or"control" of the newly formed company.
1 Who is it that wants the Spectrum world tocome under a single organisation? NOW tellme who tried to take over who.r
1 While I was writing this listing andtesting it, I had forgotten to put in thefinal POP BC, and the RET was returning tothe last address on the stack, which waswhatever BC had contained. I also, forsome reason loaded B with 256, which inreal terms is 0 files to be catalogued.Assemble this and save it with:
1 Where you take this experiment from hereis upto you. My personal recommendationsare that you should use guaranteed brandeddisks wherever possible and perhapsunbranded cheap disks for backups, storedin cool dark places, such as a loft. But,not all of us can afford to backup ourentire disk collections. I'd be interestedto know how any of you take this articlefurther.
1 Whenever this is on screen, pressing the'1' key inverses the palette, thus greatlyincreasing the range of possible styles. Asecond press reverts to normal. Pressing'X' will cancel any PRINT, FILL or OVERcommand.
1 When you've finished, simply pop the largespring over the hole and pop on the key.Don't hit it too hard, just a firmkeypress until it locks back onto thekeyboard. After replacing them all, giveall the keys a try to make sure they work.You should find that the keys have adifferent feel and sound to them.
1 When you've finished editing, press EXTand then 4 to put the modified menu intomemory. If you're happy with what you'vegot (scan through with the TRUE VIDEOkey), then return to the main menu andselect SAVE TASWORD option, but don'tforget to alter the Insert, Wordwrap andRight Justify back if you changed them.
1 When you've cycled through all the numberof pokes it found and it still hasn'tworked, you must use the FLIP option andtry a different register.
1 When you've done, simply use the SAVEoption.1
1 When you remove the keys, it is VITALLYIMPORTANT that you take care not to losethe springs from under the keys! Also, tryand keep them seperate otherwise they willlink together and they are murder to part!
1 When you RUN the program, it asks for thelength of your textfile and then loads it(amend for disk system if required). Itthen requests your 10 figure ID code.The program will now encrypt your text andask if you want to resave it.
1 When using letters for named routines, donot mix small and capital letters ,theprogram seem to see them as differentnames! The same goes for calling fontsetc., All commands must be sequential andcomplete or funny things might happen, orbits of your display won't run.
1 When soldered, put a bit of electricaltape over each leg so that they don'tcontact and short out.j
1 When pressing the button, we see we havejust poked 36868 with 0. Press "N" againand repeat the above steps.o
1 When playing, you can save your game oreven ask the computer to give you advicewhen stuck in a tight spot. It couldn'thelp me much when I was checkmated though!Setting up the board is useful as itallows you to place pieces where you liketo examine a problem, like the ones in theSunday papers. This game is extremely old;still, chess hasn't changed over the yearsand the computer will put up a good fight.The graphics are basic 2D pieces which arefine for this game, although later chessgames (like CDS Chess) had a 3D option. Asfor sound, there are a few beeps andthings but they aren't really necessary orvery good.
1 When loaded, insert your damaged disk andpress a key. It will then cheque the disktype, format and the directory. If itfinds a problem here it will automaticallyterminate. If the directory is damagedthen the computer's "guide" to whats onthe disk is essentially lost and so areall the files. You'll have to format yourdisk and check it with DISCKIT to makesure it's ok.
1 When executed try cataloguing the TESTdisk now! As you will see, the disk isrestored.]
1 When completed, it will list the fileswhich were on the damaged sectors and tellyou which ones were completely intact andnon-damaged and any which were corruptedand must be deleted by yourself in Basic.
1 When Tasword has loaded, select CUSTOMISETASWORD and then CHANGE PROGRAM options.On NO ACCOUNT go into the text entry modeand type anything!
1 When George contacted me, he called me aBADGOODFORNOT. But, before I set off totrack him down, he reassured me it meantBe A Do GOOD FOR NOThinger!
1 When 'ENDPROC' is executed, a jump is madeto the statement stored on the stack andits value is removed. Also, if theexpression of an 'UNTIL' command is true,the top value is removed from the stack.If the stack is empty but an attempt ismade to remove a value, then the 'PROCstack underflow' error message
1 When showing, any (P)RINTing will becentred up in the set direction. (Settingsare the cancelled).k
1 When installed into your Multiface,pressing the button will present thescreen over the page. There are fiveoptions, operated key of option is inbrackets.
1 What we need to do is cut off the righthand part of the "U" to make it more of an"L" (I tell you, it is "L" to make theseleads!). When you've done it, it shouldfit into the KEYPAD / AUX socket (but maynot lock into place - don't worry).
1 What we are going to do is remove theactual menu from Tasword itself andre-load it into Tasword 2. Any of you whoown Tasword 2 may have done this with it'sown menu system.
1 What was I presented with? Mr SherwoodHIDING BEHIND HIS ANSWERING MACHINE andnot taking my calls!h
1 What makes this and its predecessor, sobrilliant is the neat twist of turning theoriginal ALS formula into an adventuregame!
1 What gets me is that I made a simplemistake last issue and immediatelyapologised._
1 What do you think? Are you prepared to putPrism PD on the betting table? I certainlyam. Are you? And if not, why not?u
1 What did Andy do that was illegal? Withwhat do SUK intend to charge Andy Daviswith? What potential criminal charge willSUK try to convince their solicitors topersue regards Andy Davis? Why are theycomparing themselves to Prism PD?
1 What are we supposed to do when he saysone thing and then does another?J
1 What I'm saying is this - if not a trucethen a silence. No attacks against eithercompany or proprietor both PUBLIC orPRIVATE. By public I mean any source ofinformation which is available to all,such as tape and disk magazines, demosetc. By private I mean in personal lettersto friends, colleagues, customers andbusiness associates.
1 What I'd like to know is where is it gongto end and when? Already the bubble hasburst on so many computers, many of whichare only a few years old. The firstcomputer to see it must have been the SORDM5. Any of you remember it? Well, howabout Jupiter Ace, Dragon 32, BBC, SharpMZ80, Commodore Vic 20, ZX81
1 West Yorks LS22 4EN
1 West Bridgford
1 Well, until next time.
1 Well, that's where the good news is...They are making a total rebuild of thespectrum, a new ULA, and using the (Nowpublic domain) Spectrum ROMS. I hear thatthe first model they will rebuild willalso have extra ROMs in it to emulate thespectrum at its original speed. It willsupposedly be like the Spectrum +3, withTwo disk drives, one 3" and one 3.5", forcompatability with existing machines. Itwill have a tape socket, and the Auxiliarysocket will have been done away with...Bad news for lightgun owners.
1 Well, he's bee away doing his NationalService with the Army for some time but itnow back and has supplied us with half adozen disks of some of his greats and newtitles.
1 Well, at least he hit the right holetoday, but the little metal cover you geton 3.5" disks is dented on the back, andit won't slide back over the magneticsurface it is suposed to cover when it istaken out of the drive. well, at least itwasn't a 3" disk, and hopefully the dataon the disk won't be damaged. In fact,once I've checked that it CATs OK I'llcopy it. It CATs OK, so I am about tobegin copying the files off one by one,with many 3" disks, the walls ringing withevil noises because there is not a diskcopier that will do a straight disk todisk copy with 3.5" disks on the +3. Idecided to try a different approach...
1 Well, after finally getting round tomaking one, heres my preliminary resultson successfully getting a single output towork. I shall do more work between thisand the next issue and shall hopefullyreport more then.
1 Well, after much experimentation andhassle, I finally abandoned the idea ofusing the RS 232 port because of the lackof a decent file transfer program with alarge data buffer in the APD library.Xmodem was the best, although only gave a20K buffer for data.
1 Well the blurp is all very good, but whatabout the actual game?@
1 Well I'm pleased to say that this gamereally does live up to expectations! Thegraphics, as you can tell from thefollowing screenshot, are fantastic!, andthe gameplay is equally superb!
1 Wel, okay, so that isnt exactly what wewould say to each other, but I dontsuppose I can go around swearing andthings in a respectable fanzine eh??? <No.Ed>
1 Weeks later he writesdemanding an apology. Yet, I have shownhim all his mistakes and he won't evenacknowledge them. Even things as simpleas his counting go ignored. It seems hisphilosophy is ignore it and it may goaway.
1 We'll start with the keys. If you lookunderneath, you'll see a very tiny spring.Give it a spray with contact cleaner or,if you find this easier, spray a bit intoa jam jar lid and dip the spring in. Youcan leave it damp as it will dry itself.
1 We'll start the task of modifying Taswordby dealing with the menu system. I'veenclosed an example of my menu to showwhat you can do.
1 We'll start with the inbuilt featurefirst. It's explained in the manual, butnot featured on the menus at all.u
1 We think you got a very powerful utility,so whats else to say more than happycomputing. Just still another point: Wewant to make a correction about aninformation in AlchNews 14, where Andy haswritten about the sad demise of the SUC.That's an translation error, true is, thata member of the SPC was suddenly died andwe gave him a obituary notice in our mag.So the SUC is still alive. We arewondered, that no one has written aboutour offer for help. Don't you believe it?Too shy? However, we wait for yourquestions.
1 We start this issue inconjuntion with theInput article on secret codes with twoshort routines to encode and decode yourtextfiles. The programs have been run andtested with Tasword 2 files but will workwith normal CODE files from any other wordprocessor or even M/C program.
1 We hope you all have find yourself verywell and full of power in 1995. Maybe youare full of new ideas what to do on andwith your beloved Speccy. So why not writea demo or a new game? In this case we havea nice "little" program for you: Uniscroll2.1 from the legendary Vision of The MadGuys, avaiable from us or directly fromAlchemist PD. By the way some good news:Vision hasn't gone lost. He has a newadress and an Acorn 3010 (Archimedes), buthe also has his Speccy and maybe we willhear news from him soon. We are veryconfident, because Vision is furthermoremember of the SPC.
1 We hope our future issues can compare tothis and apologise in advance to our tapeusers who are already having to reserve aweekend just to read it!
1 We have been asked by many readers to moveto paper but we feel better in controlwith the medium we are familliar andleaders in and also promised otherSpectrum paper magazines that we would nottread onto their territory with anotherpaper magazine (to which we recieved nothanks whatsoever - honestly, it seems youcan do nobody a favour these days!).
1 We have also been informed by Robert Skenethat the same issue ran an article on theforthcoming MIDGET graphics system by AlexLogie which was not written by him!
1 We don't do anything for financial reward,we do it because we love the Spectrum. Ifit wasn't for Andy Davis, AlchemistResearch wouldn't be, and then what wouldyou do? Where would you get support from?The answer is simple, you wouldn't getanything like the service you get now.Why? Well, just take a look at the PDcatalogue, and tell me where you'd getthat range of software from. You may getone or two titles from other libraries,but you wouldn't get them all from thesame place AND FOR FREE! Does anybody outthere honestly doubt that AlchemistResearch has the largest collection of PDsoftware in the UK? If you do, then don'tbe a wimp, tell me so!
1 We could wait forever for the cataloguetrack of the TEST disk to corrupt, sowe'll do it automatically! Do this:w
1 We can go on about RS232 interfacing untilwe are sick of it. At this moment in timeI am because of the way Amstrad messed upthe port (is there anything they didn'tfoul up?). But, what do 48k users do, orusers with only one 128k and one 48k?
1 WOMO / SPC, Germany
1 WINDOW CONTROL
1 WIDTH-33291 (30): Width of scroller.Possible values are 1 to 30. It is usefulto use even numbers, otherwise CLSCRdoesn't work okay anymore. WARNING: Withvalues over 30 UNISCROLL might crash!
1 WHAT ELSE ?
1 WHAT ARE THE PRACTICAL USES OF CODES?%
1 WELL, I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THISBEFORE! Don't be put off, you have goneand spent lots of hard earned cash forthis, (depending which P.D. service yougot it from) so get stuck in, and withthese notes it might take you about fivehours less than it took me to make DLAN dowhat I wanted it to do!
1 WD40 or other electrical contact cleaner Piece of Cloth8
1 WARNING!! DON'T DISCONNECT PRINTER!!.%
1 W ipe window - wipes the window area clear.1
1 View frames This allows you to look atstored frames without corrupting thecurrent frame.b
1 Victoria Road
1 Vic Bishop is on the lookout for a W.H.SMITHS COMPUTER PROGRAM DATA RECORDER,measuring 10" * 8" * 2". If anyone canhelp, or wants to pester him about hisfindings with PowerPrint II contact:
1 Vic Bishop
1 Vfiler 8- Another program like Nsweep,Maxisweep etc.8
1 Version 2.3 15/8/90
1 Variables a,y,x,d and w are the same asthose defined for 'GET_'B
1 VR1 100K LOG
1 VISION of The Mad Guys Corp.
1 VIRTUALLY REALITY?
1 VERIFY is the most powerful tool and willcheck all sectors of your disk, givingtrack and sector details of any damagedareas.
1 V2.1 Update in 1/93
1 Usual Alchemist Research address.!
1 Using procedures, it's possible to split aprogram up into a number of seperatetasks. One procedure being written foreach task. Each procedure can then betested on its own and, finally, they canall be put together to form the finishedprogram.
1 Using Spectrum 128 +2 Grey with DATEL DISKDRIVE.0
1 Using DATEL DISK DRIVE you can also take aSCREEN DUMP by pressing the SNAPSHOTbutton and key 1.e
1 User Guide by Vic Bishop
1 User Process This returns you to theBASIC, and here a frames used feature isdisplayed. It can do whatever you likethough.
1 United Minds and Theo Devil - all!
1 Undo This is a very useful option, itundoes the effect of the last thingselected from the EDIT menu. It can onlyundo one thing though so don't rely on it!
1 Under normal circumstances, when you setup the Multiface to jump directly, itbecomes disabled again on returning toyour program. This happens through the RST0 routine in Multiface ROM, which youwould normally use to return to theprogram you had stopped. The routine usesan undocumented Multiface port, andMF_MAXIRAM works by duplicating the RST 0routine in MF RAM, but modifying it suchthat this port is no longer written to,and RAM between 8257 and 16338 is alwaysleft intact.
1 UT339 or +3 UTILITIES COLLECTION VOL.1&
1 UT336 or +3 COLLECTION VOL.1
1 USING THE TAPE PORT
1 USING MY ERROR
1 USING LIFEGUARD
1 USER DEFINED KEYS
1 UPDATES: An update sheet is available toanyone. If it's been some time since youhad any updates to your existingcatalogue, we'll supply the latest copy toyou.
1 UNITED MINDS are STILL HERE!
1 UNISCROLL offers the possibility to changethe variables SPEED, SPLIT, STOP, YPOS andFSLP from within the text. Furthermore youcan print text invers and clear the scrollon screen plus workspace. Therefore youhave to put textmarks into your text withfollowing parameters, which then changethe value of the variable to the parametervalue. As Textmarks UNISCROLL uses thelast 5 chars of the charset (ASCII Code124-127, see Spectrum manual!).
1 UNISCROLL is a scrollroutine that offers alot of possibilities if compared to"normal" scroll routines. Thisx
1 UNHAPPY: If you are justifiably unhappywith any aspect of the service, your moneywill be refunded.e
1 UNDOCUMENTED PORTS
1 U n-do - Use Immediately after WIPE, KLEAR screen, FILL OVER, EDGE, INVERSE, PRINT or QUICKPRINT to 'UN-DO' what you've just done.
1 Tyler decides to turn up and do!
1 Two pages are devoted to some of thebetter demos available and thres a page ofprogramming tips and pokes. The final pageis dedicated to hardware, detailing theMB02 disk interface and hardware availablefrom Sintech.
1 Tutorial written by J.C.Blomley
1 Tutorial by Dave Fountain
1 Turning it back ON is done with OUT 49149,1.,
1 Try the two passage of text in the nextprogram. Working in reverse direction, ifyou run the program and enter --0--0---000--0--
1 Transferring files from a PC to the#
1 Total Eclipse, Incentive Software's nextrelease, however, more than made up forthe dullness of its predecessors. Thesetting is a pyramid in Egypt, and thetask is to reach the secret chamber at itsapex, and destroy the curse before timeruns out. There are many obstacles toovercome and puzzles to solve along theway, though, and the main task is tocollect a number of 'Ankhs' which open thelocked doors you
1 Toggle This option can actually bedisplayed as toggle, set or erase.Clicking it simply changes the editingmode. It also selects pixel editing mode.Pixel editing is always on when the EDITmenu shows, except in Circle or Line mode.
1 To turn OFF the light, it's all down to asimple OUT 49149,0.=
1 To show how the system will work you needtwo disks. Label one of them TEST and theother ARCHIVE. Format them both and thenput two files onto the TEST disk:
1 To show how Lifeguard works, I tried itwith Starglider to show how easy and howdifficult it is to find lives.r
1 To perform pixel editing, move the cursorto editing area and click the cursor. Notethat, as with lines and circles, textcodes will be displayed unless graphicescapes are inserted. When editinggraphics it is usually a good idea toinsert a line of ESC-W's (white graphics)down the left hand edge of the screen.These can be replaced by colours ifdesired when the graphic is finished.
1 To make effective use of the patterns onthe Style Palette, you need to print textfairly large and 'Chunky', which meansKEEP IT SHORT! If you intend to print longlines of text, you may have to use Style-P(solid black) to ensure legibility.
1 To make print outs ,save screen$ etc,place suitable commands between theRandomize usr and the :stop commands inthe appropriate prog line. If you try tomake an epic extraviganza, keep a check onhow much memory you have available asthings disappear if you overstuff it !
1 To load back into your Spectrum, simplyload your program "name".C
1 To MOVE the window to your chosen positionUSE:- A for UP. Z for DOWN. N for LEFT. Mfor RIGHT.^
1 To put POWERPRINT II onto Microdrivecartride first type in the following shortprogram:-]
1 To my surprise the TV was strangelyentertaining over the xmas period, withITV showing good movies like the ROCKETEERand BBC2 having a 'weird night'.
1 To enter press CAPS SHIFT Z. Ensureprinter is on set Horizontal and Verticalenlargement by pressing a key A to F.y
1 Three great new
1 Though it is nothing special, this programcould be worth acquiring if you don'talready own Nsweep or something similar.6/10
1 Thornton Cleveleys
1 Thomas Eberle, SUC
1 This, and its forerunner Arkanoid, wereinspired by the original Breakout game, inwhich you control a bat, using it tobounce a ball against a wall of bricks,which then disappear when hit. If you missthe ball when it returns, you lose a life.
1 This will give you open and closed squarebrackets on the normal brackers and halfand quarter fractions of "h" and "x" keys.There are plenty of other characters. Toselect them you must take a look at thesecond character set on the Tasword menuand compare them with the code pages inyour Star printer manual. Note down thekey which each character is next to and dothe same as the above.
1 This was one of those occasions when theAmerican producers, decided to set anepisode in good old England. The storylinewas that British VIPs were mysteriouslydying from spontaneous combustion -suddenly bursting into flames of fire forno apparent reason - MI5, at a loss toexplain this, called in the FBI toinvestigate.
1 This was certainly nothing against Thomas,who has been a close friend for manyyears, but simply because he hadn't sentus a copy of the magazine to look at!
1 This tells the PC that you want to set upthe COM port to 9600 baud, 8 data bits, noparity and two stop bits. Ignore what themanual tells you here regarding theSpectrum RS232 port. The Spectrum requiresTWO stop bits, not one (as stated).
1 This resulted in a wonderful new contact -Mike Mee in Wales. He is a big user of theemulator for the PC and is currentlyworking on a CD-ROM of almost everySpectrum title ever written! To accompanythis phenominal effort, Alchemist Researchhas supplied the entire Alchemist PDlibrary and all issues of AlchNews to thecollection.
1 This puts a minimal file header on theCP/M COM file to tell +3 BASIC not to loadit as a basic file by mistake. You alsoneed to do this on drive M: as it doesn'twork on a 720K disk for some reason,whichbrings me to another point. I think thatthe MSODBALL.HED file should have beensupplied in the actual library witheveryhing else because I'll be honest, Idon't actually read the documentation allthe way through. OK, I'll be even morehonest, I won't read the documentationpast where it says what the program isfor.
1 This program will now take the archivedcatalogue from our ARCHIVE disk and put itback onto TEST. As before, put TEST indrive one and ARCHIVE in drive two.
1 This program will be a little bit morecomplicated than the others we have triedso far, in that it needs some extra BASICto make it work... Here's the listing-Bolt it on at MAIN... (Newcomers, getAlchNews 13 and find out)
1 This program seems to be more of a bit offun rather than having any practical use.It has been well written, has gooddocumentation, and is presented well, butthe fact is that it uses memory all of thetime.
1 This one had me foxed until I read thedocumentation. Guess what- no COM files!Not even a SUB! So I have to read thedocumentation properly. This is not astand-alone program, and to use it youmust have Mallard basic. That's alrightbecause all +3 CP/M users should have it.What hapens with this program is that youuse the GENCOM program on side B of theCP/M disk to generate a new version ofMallard Basic with RSX's in it( RSXs areResident System eXtensions). Using upabout 1.5K of Basic Workspace, thisprogram adds about 25 new commands toMallard Basic, which really is extremelyuseful...
1 This one allows the program's run timedefaults to be changed, and lets youchange the work drive to c:. this done, itwould finally work for me. It prints thename of the file it is compressing on thescreen, alongside a display of how farthrough it is compressing. On my disk,containing some runnable files and textfiles, it compressed them to just overhalf the size they were before. This is auseful program, and I quite liked it. 8/10
1 This new game is in fact a remix of theoriginal 1993 mega-hit, which in turn wasbased on the much loved ADVANCED LAWNMOWERSIMULATOR game (a Y.S. classic from 1988).
1 This month I've condensed all of my stuffinto one or two parts, so that I can getaway with only writing one article. I'llbe reviewing five CP/M programs, Exploringthe +3DOS catalogue command, throwing insome general silliness, putting it all ina lightly greased baking tin, and puttingit in an oven that's been preheated to gasmark 4 for half an hour. (serves three tofour thousand)
1 This issue of PD Power also made a snideattack on Chris Taylor for making his newprograms non-PD, and also myself for beingthe only distributor. He called it "sourgrapes". You will all be happy to knowthat The Knights programs, past andpresent are available from all Spectrum PDlibraries, with the exception of Prism.
1 This is where MF_MAXIRAM comes in. Thisutility programs the Multiface to bypassthe menu when enabling it, and as aresult, becomes available for use, freefrom any danger of corruption. To cancelMF_MAXIRAM and restore normal Multifaceoperation, just press the button whileholding down the Break key.
1 This is the tricky part! Grab the largerspring and gently give it a quick tug.DOn't strech it too far or the effect willnot work. Compare it with an un-pulledspring. Try not to make the spring longerthan 20mm or 3/4". When you've done thelot you can give them a spray if you wishbut only if you've noticed a great deal ofgrime and even rust on them!
1 This is one of those programs some willplay with for a while, then not use, whereothers will love the program, its ease ofuse and possibilities of making reallycomplicated bleeps. I did find it fun, andalthough it had no real technical use, Ihave to give it 7/10.
1 This is going to lead to a society ofagrophobics and that other one - fear ofpeople. <peopleophobic? Ed.> If you'reliving with computer images, how are yougoing to be able to interact with realpeople?
1 This is another one of those programswhere you have an arrow pointing to a biglist of files and you tag those you wantto copy, erase or build a library from.The concept is nothing new, I believe itwas started in 1983 with a CP/M programcalled Nsweep. This program is written in8080 code, and is slower because it lacksthe enhanced instructions the Z-80provides. (Such as LDIR, to name but onevery useful instruction)
1 This increasing computer control may haveit's advantages - certainly in terms ofavoidance of theft and fraud and forgednotes. ventually it may be that every shophas access to your credit rating.
1 This hardly needs any introduction, beinga classic puzzle game which has made itsmark on all the major computer formats andgames consoles, but for anyone who doesn'tknow, it's of Russian origin, and the ideais to fit together all the differentlyshaped blocks that are
1 This game is not really much fun, and istoo difficult for just about anyone withits incredibly obscure puzzles. However,it is very old indeed and came out onlyshortly after the Spectrum 48k itself, andis probably worth looking out for for thatreason - it is a collectors' item due toits age and unavailability in these moderntimes (what did happen to Artic?). Justremember, type HELP as every third commandand you won't go far wrong!
1 This article was submitted to AlchemistResearch for distribution as part ofAlchNews provided it was not altered inany way whatsoever. If you don't like thecontents, my opinions or anything else inthis particular file, then tell ME, notAndy. I wrote it, they are MY opinions,and I am the one responsible for it'sexistance. You got a problem, you come toME! You got something to say, then say itto ME, not your best mate. If you are nota waster and you have
1 This article revolves around my personalpreferences, which have also been adoptedby a few new Star owners, but it's veryeasy to configure your own definitions.
1 This article refers to the Disciple#
1 This article has spawned two new articledirections for AlchNews. You will find theinformation for encoding textfiles in ournew series TASWORD TUTOR and next issueour article will move to protecting basicprograms by adding a coded passwordroutine (thanks to John Thompson for thebasis). We'll also be continuing our INPUTseries of articles, with many thanks toMarshall Cavendish.
1 This all depends on what mode your printeris in. You will note on page 65 of themanual that it works under IBM mode only.To make this effect functional, set EDSswitch A1 to ON.
1 This "real damage" stuff also quoted inthe article is NOTHING compared to thedamage they have done to themselves byletting down their customers. I find itVERY strange that only a few "chosen"people within the organisation knewanything about why the customers were keptin the dark.
1 This is moving towards the 'cashlesssociety' where money is moved aroundwithout being touched. Look at the waydebit cards have infiltrated our society.Being frustrated at card users atsupermarkets and petrol stations, theAlchNews editor swore he'd never use one -now he's never without it!
1 This is indeed NOT TRUE WHATSOEVER.Whether this is purely accidental or donethrough spite is yet unknown but AlchemistResearch will pressure for a publicapology to be issued by Martyn Sherwood tothe team, in PD Power and to AlchemistResearch - the official distributor fortheir titles who are NOT happy that thisinformation has been circulated.
1 These are the same as the above, excepthold CAPS SHIFT before pressing the numberwhilst you are still in "customise printercontrol" mode.
1 These are all neccessary when you want toappear totally out of your head whenwriting text.a
1 Theres an article and circuit diagram ona MIDI interface and a review of somegames available from Sintech Software.z
1 Theres a new members section, featuringme! An editorial and comprehensive CLUBNEWS page, for the SUC club. Theresfurther news from the Spectrum and SAMworld. One article which interested me was"Is Format Publications hindering Sintech?" (Sintech is the business behind theSUC). Thomas explains that Format doesn'tpublish anything from him and that he senta free game which prompted the response"what cassette?".
1 Theres 16 pages, in normal A5 format.Presentation is excellent, as is printquality.\
1 There's also a new command called 'VDU_'that's directly equivalent to PRINT CHR$.Some examples: VDU_2 This makes allsubsequent output appear as standard sizecharacters, whereas the following printsout 'AB': VDU_65,66. Strings of characterscan be printed down the screen of the'DOWN_' command. The command takes theform: DOWN_,y,x,a$ Where y is the line onwhich the first character is to beprinted; x is the column at which thefirst character is to be printed; and a$is the string to be printed. If the stringruns off the bottom of the window then itwraps around and re-appears at the top.
1 There was also an interesting book oncomputer disk formats, which includedcoverage of the 3 inch disk, D-I-S-K Isaid!, this book was quite a laugh as itfelt the 3 inch format was 'likely tobecome the most popular disk formatavailable'!.
1 There must be a buffer that has been setup to recieve the catalogue. It must haveat least two entries in it. An entry is 13bytes long (8 for the name, 3 for thefiletype, and 2 for the length in Kbytes)If the buffer is smaller than thecatalogue, then the routine can be calledagain, and read in some more information.The way it does this is to take the firstentry, and start the catalogue from thefilename that is greater than that. eg. ifthe first entry is (c . ) then (d . ) and(e . ) will be read into the buffer, but(a . ) and (b . ) will not. this meansthat the first time you read part of thecatalogue, you should fill the first entry(known as entry 0) with zeros, so that allof the other entries will be greater thanit. Any time that you want to read thenext part of the catalogue, you should putthe last entry read into entry 0, so thatthe next file read will be the one afterthat and none will be missed.
1 There is only one initial drawback to thisplan. Firstly, as you are addressingsectors yourself rather than through the+D's normal filing system, you will haveto make your own records as to whichcatalogue is stored where on your archivedisk. You also have to be careful not tosave or load any normal files onto thisdisk! This could be helped with UT372DATASHIELD from the APD catalogue. All youneed to do with regard to keeping track ofyour disks is to use a simple databaseprogram. APD will supply one suitablyadapted for this use should anyone requireit.
1 There is also another sound output port,so that leads do not have to be plugged inand out of the tape port too much. The +3sound bug has been cured(IE. the +3 soundbeing crap when the Tape is plugged in)
1 There is a choice of two Oddball formats,one with a larger root directory, and onewhich is more compatible with certain DOSversions but with a smaller rootdirectory. Format 1 made a 0 byte fileappear with a dot as a filename, which wasvery disconcerting, and a bit like an eyewatching me as I eradicated it from thescreen with a CLS command. I triedconverting it back with a test file on,and I got a complaint about a missingaddress mark.
1 There is a circuit diagram somewhere inthis article, and only a few points needbe explained further.i
1 There are two methods of modifying themenu, either manually or through theinbuilt facillity. I prefer the former butit's a little more fiddly and may need theuse of Tasword 2.
1 There are some games in which the crashingsymptom never happens, however many timesthe snapshot button is pressed, and thesealways turn out to be ones which overwritethe BASIC area and put values into23728/23729!
1 There are five libraries of programs onthe disk-3
1 There are 160 tracks on a normal 80T DSDDdisk. A normal +D formatted disk catalogueuses four tracks. This means that 160/4 =40.
1 There are several files which must beloaded, I've renamed them to lessmeaningful names(!):h
1 There was a time, back in the earlyeighties when interfacing your computerwith a robot or buggy seemed to be anecessity. A whle range of fashionableadd-ons existed, from robotic arm toturles...? This was fine, although thecost usually deterred most Speccy owners.
1 There is no doubt that this game'satmosphere and sense of realism is largelyattributable to the Freescape environment,which, coupled with an imaginativescenario, makes a winning combination.
1 There are five programs on this diskanyway, and I find that they are a prettyfair bunch._
1 Theorganisation is run by two very nicegentlemen, Eddie and Arthur and run itvery much in the way of AlchemistResearch. They cover all the older 8 bitcomputers, including ALL
1 Theo obviously has an interest in dinos,as when you load up the prog, and select adinosaur you want to learn about, itpresents you with a beautifully drawn picof the dino in question, and then presentsyou with a screen of info.
1 Theo has made it clear that the programshe has sent are NOT Public Domain and mayonly be distributed in the UK by AlchemistResearch only.
1 Then, the public lies. I cannot recallany libellous or vicious attackingarticles before PD POWER came along. Iremember it started with a public attackof Alec Carswell, and then ridiculousmemos in FISH magazine to myself. If hewanted to say something to me, why nottell me personally rather than a publicmessage like that? For his information, aMEMO is classed as a personal internalmessage - not given to a third party.
1 Then you get the problem of writing theinteresting bit that everyone wants toread!!! Well, I cant tell you much aboutthis, because as we talk complete nonsenseall the time, we dont know exactly whatbits are interesting. We've been told byreliable resources that our texts are'funky' 'really funny' and 'mad'. Most ofthis came at the time the intro toCEREBRAL was watched, and who wrote thatstrange text?? It was I, me, myself, moi,Orson, (and any other words used todescribe me - usually "fat git" & "bowlcut" from Dok).
1 Then I got the shock of my life, a bookentitled - Introduction to PC computing,MS-DOS, GEM, and BASIC on the PC200 and PCcompatables - by Patrick Hall.
1 Their catalogue contains thousands oftitles, all at very low prices. Besidesnew titles, he can also get some classicstoo. Theres even provision for +3,Microdrive, Opus and +D programs. For acatalogue, send an IRC to:
1 TheAN15.6: final part, broken down into two-
1 The whole point of transferring files wasso that somebody with a Microdrive and a+D system could transfer files between thetwo different storage media. Of course,because of the ROM conflict, using the twodevices on the same machine at the sametime was out of the question. Splittingfiles longer than 20K into two or moreparts was not really an option either, sosome other form of data communication hadto be found.
1 The whole point of DB2 is to give youthe power to back up all your disks toanother disk or tape. It doesn't copydisk based files to tape, it copies a diskimage, which is a far better way to goabout it.
1 The way in which user-defined graphics aredefined on the Spectrum isL
1 The way I see it is that as soon as weawaken we will don our helmets and liveour lives alone. It doesn't matter if it'slight or dark, our reality headsets willguide us around our house. Want to movethe furniture? Simply use your cursor andmove the furniture. Shopping? Turn on the"Sainsbury's" program and walk around acomputer generated store for your goods tobe sent later.
1 The upshot of this is that the screenbuild-up is slow, and though there is agood help page, after each read of it, itbuilds up the screen again, printing eachfilename from scratch, instead of using anLDIR copy instruction to put the screenback after itself.
1 The unit can't have cost more than a fewpounds to make and, thanks to theexcellent skills of Lloyd Garland, itlooks neat and VERY professional and notout of place whatsoever.
1 The two new char sets are stored in RAMand thus can be altered if so desired. Thepseudo BBC char set starts at address48000 and the AMSTRAD at address 45000(CHR$ 32 - CHR$ 127)
1 The trick is to save the catalogue fromyour disk onto an archive disk with theaid of sector saving. Since you won't beusing the normal disk catalogue of yourarchive disk, the entire 160 tracks couldbe at your disposal.
1 The thing to remember is that the programis not articficially intelligent andcannot instantly find something it knowsnot what it's, or even we, are lookingfor. It's simply a case of trial anderror.
1 The textmarks:
1 The textmarks themselves don't appear inthe scroller itself but are exchanged by aspace. The parameters are left out, soeven with parameters, the gap between twowords is always one spacechar. So you caninsert the textmarks without disturbingthe look of your scroller!
1 The textmarks are registered when a newchar would normally appear on the rightside of the scroller. So to stop a word inthe middle of the screen, the textmark hasto be set some chars after the word. Theexact postion must be tried out!
1 The tape port seemed the best bet, seeingas how the port was tailor made for filetransfer, even though it was to a tapedeck! Software is available that willtransfer Microdrive files to tape, and soare programs to transfer tape basedsoftware to the +D system.
1 The system is semi-Opus and +D compatable,and will copy from this format to MB02.Q
1 The start of a procedure is defined by an'@'symbol, followed by the proceduresname. The 'define procedure' statementmust be the first statement on a line; ifparameters are to be passed into asubroutine then the 'define statement'must have an underlined character followedby the required parameters, after theprocedures name. The parameters should beseparated by commas.
1 The spec sounds pretty bad doesn't it?,'
1 The spec for the PC200 was :-
1 The same issue of SPC also contains amulti-size formatter for the Opus,allowing upto 935k per disk! It also alloschoosable track and sector numbers and"sampling without hardware" over thecassette port.
1 The routine to catalogue a disk lives at11Eh. It is entered with the followingconditions...a
1 The program really depends on how luckyyou are and how the game is programmed. Ihave found the counter for Hard Drivin 48to stop the clock and "OFF ROAD" timer andfrom this I was able to analyse the gamevia GENIE and then find the same pokes forthe 128k version (Lifeguard doesn't accessthe memory pages of the 128k).
1 The program comprises of a small suite ofdisk utilities for the Spectrum +3. Whenloaded, you are presented with a littlered menu. You should now enter the diskyou wish to work with.
1 The price is sadly `100 but includes allsoftware, power supply, cables andinstructions.a
1 The price has also not been decided yet.(
1 The price for this superb magazine is only`1, or 80p & SAE.;
1 The pointer will then reappear and you canselect one of the options. Clear clears awindow. Invert inverts one (this does nothave much releva nce to text blocks but isuseful for graphics). Seleecting moves youanother cursor. When you position andclick it, the window will be copied there.Clear and move is self explanatory.
1 The operational structure of this programsimply provides a counting mechanism. Inthe first phase of the progrAm, 28 indexvariables are set to zero. These are usedto store the frequency counts of the 26letters. The final two variables areincluded in case you want to amend theprogram in order to produce percentages orother summary statistics.
1 The only problem then, was how to boostthe mic signal sent from the Spectrum to atape deck. A small amplifier was built,and the problem was solved!
1 The only mistake which has been made isthe incorrect name featured in issue 14,to which I ALREADY SENT OUT AN APOLOGYbut he blatantly ignored.
1 The only drawback with the Star printer isthe lack of space in the help page toaccomodate all functions!m
1 The only drawback is the speed. While itis a good idea and to transfer files the"middleman" of a tape recorder iseliminated, it's still only 1200 baud.But, there are plenty of turboloadroutines to take advantage of. As thequality isn't degraded by tape decks andcheap tapes, it may be possible to use afar faster speed rate than a normal tapedeck can handle!
1 The only drawback as I mentioned earlieris that it's trial and error. If theMultiface POKEs a vitally important areawith zero, you may see a spectacularcrash when you return to the game!
1 The official supplier of CP/M material toAlchemist PD. They can supply it on 3" or3.5" format and have thousands of programscatering for all tastes. Send a blank diskfor their introduction volume, featuringhelp file, order details, a complete listof their library, plus sample programs andutilities.
1 The next game which I am going to look atwas released by the same company (Ocean),round about the same time. Clue: it's afootball game. Yep - "Match Day". This hasthe same sort of packaging, but is in abigger box (the writing down the side isin the same colour, font, type of box,etc). I also have this game on the BBCMicro (or it might be "Match Day II"), andit doesn't have any of the Speccy bits,like the way the (blocky) players marchonto the pitch or the team coloursselection menu. Anyway, the Spectrumversion: there are lots of menus beforeyou actually play, in which you move ontothe appropriate option by repeatedlypressing the same key, rather than havingnumbered options. The game is a goodfootball simulation, with nice bigsprites, good graphics and some soundwhich isn't too bad.
1 The new commands detect if the Multifaceis either disabled or not attached, andwill then just stop with an error report.This side effect can be useful in itselfwhere you simply need a means ofdetermining the status of the device. (Seethe start of MULTIDEMO 3 as an example.)
1 The most hardest part of the unit iswiring the BT plug. Quite why BT decidedto use such an outdated, difficult,uncompatable plug is beyond me but I'msure that above term could describe BT asa whole!
1 The machine will still be CP/M Compatible,and it is being considered whether toupgrade the graphics to a higherresolution in more colours. It is alsopossible that another sound chip will befitted, to work alongside the AY chip, butwith 12 channel stereo sound.
1 The line editing capabilities have beengreatly enhanced by YSMB and, as a result,some keys produce different effects tothose found on the standard Spectrum.
1 The latter contains SEVERAL Disciple unitsfrom only `35 - an ideal alternative tothe +D.[
1 The last option on the text menu barsimply returns you to the main EDIT menu.Alternatively simply click the editingarea with the pointer cursor.
1 The larger message: DEPART FROM PARIS ATMIDNIGHT ON SATURDAY ARRIVE AT ROME ATDAYBREAK ON SUNDAY is coded asZ 6867790075 12128 26569 6783 27921 68719 1212823874 12128 70355 69783 48553. Theencryted text: 74891 22317 12128 26569,translates to SEND MONEY AT MIDNIGHT.
1 The graphics are simple, the animation issomewhat jerky and the sound is aboutaverage for a 48k game, but I would stillhave enjoyed this game, was it not for theappallingly slow game speed. To be frank,this game reminds me of something Ihalf-wrote a few years ago in BASIC. Ittook me ages but I eventually abandoned itdue to its slowness. The programmer herehad no such aversion to lack of speed andreleased it anyway. I haven't really gotvery far in this game as when you diethere is a frustrating wait of a fewminutes as the computer builds a new map.This is better than the same one eachtime, but I would have thought part of thegame's size could have been sacrificed forextra speed. Ah well... I wouldn't buythis game, except for my collection,perhaps, but look around at sales and youmight pick it up for a non-financiallydepriving amount of money (maybe 10p?!).After all, a lot of my rarest games camefrom car boot sales along with old rubberkeyed Speccies
1 The funny thing is, a few pages beforethis attack is a report about two newsources of Spectrum software. The softwarewill only be availble from Prism PD in theEXACT SAME METHODS as the way he has justattacked!
1 The function of OUT (63),A is to disablethe Multiface, and is used by the RST 0routine before returning to the program.OUT (191),A is also interesting, thoughperhaps less useful, except for theinternal workings of the Multiface'soperating system. What it does isre-enable the red button before returning,and if by any chance you should ever findyourself in a sitaution where the buttondoesn't seem to respond at all, it couldbe because this OUT wasn't executed forsome reason. Instead of resetting theSpectrum to rectify things, try typing OUT191,0 and you'll probably find thatrestores it to action!
1 The font in question is similar to the oneused in the hit tv series 'MidnightCaller'.\
1 The first thing you'll need is a "nullmodem" cable, and details on how to buildone should appear somewhere in this issue(provided I can get Icon Graphics 128 tobehave!) For those of you already familiarwith RS 232 comminunications should notethat the Interface 1 (and the +2A/+3machines) all have their serial portswired as a TERMINAL, and so my diagramshave been drawn to show this. When youwire a connector between two machines thatare wired as a terminal, then you connectthe TX line to the RX line of the othercomputer and so forth. Not the case with aPC and a Spectrum though, as the TX linefrom the Spectrum goes to the TX line onthe serial port of the PC, the RX linefrom the Spectrum goes to the RX line onthe PC etc.
1 The first thing to understand, is thatit's okay to actually have a one-sidedconversation with the viewer, but it'sbetter to talk with another member of yourgroup. If you're not in a group, then allyou do is simply make someone up!! Or youcould just talk to yourself, it's up toyou.
1 The final game I will review this time isanother adventure - this time text only.This was released by Artic in 1981 for the48k Spectrum (a true oldie!) and is called"Inca Curse". Sounds promising? Well, youraim is to go into a temple, grab sometreasure and get out again. This adventureresponds quickly, a very important thing,and though text only, presents a challengewhich makes it a lot more playable than itseems. Text only adventures can sometimesbe as good as graphical games!
1 The end of the text is marked by the byte0. In most cases this comes automaticallyafter your text (as whole memory is filledwith 0). If this isn't the case you haveto poke a 0 at the end of the text. IfUNISCROLL recognizes the end of the text,the scroller restarts.
1 The end of a procedure is defined by the'ENDPROC_' command. Once this command isencountered, the computer will resumeprocessing at the statement after theprocedure call. To aid legibility it ispossible to tag the procedure name ontothe end of the 'ENDPROC_' command.Example:
1 The diplayfile table might of course beused for own purposes too. Therefore youcan use the following MC program:u
1 The cursor keys (caps 5-8) will allow youto move the text cursor around thescreen. DELETE deletes characters andbackspace. (It is destructive, unlike thePrestel delete.)
1 The capacitors should be rated at 16 voltworking or greater.=
1 The amplifier was built on stripboard andhoused in a small aluminium case. Poweredby a small PP3 type battery, the unitdidn't require yet another plug socket onthe wall either!
1 The alien landscapes are well drawn and aspecial mention should be given to thelawnmower screen$, I'm told that therepresentations
1 The advances in technology are far toofast for any of us to take in at any pace.Now it seems that Virtual Reality devicescan be easily purchased to fit to your PC.
1 The address across from it is the addressof the last command, say "DEC A" which hasbeen NOPped (POKEd with 0).o
1 The Window expands from the right andbottom edges. You may first need to MOVEthe Window up/left to achieve a desiredsize. All 8 keys are live so you can, forexample, press A and X together to expandat the top.
1 The Update
1 The United Minds explains what!
1 The Spectrum UK Affair - My opinion#
1 The PSU will have been beefed up a bit tocope with all of these extra features ofcourse. It will still have TV and Monitorsockets, but best of all, it will have aStandard Parallel port at the back so youcan use a PC centronics printer lead. Alsothe serial port has been changed to anormal 9 way D plug, so possibly it'sHayes compatible modem time. The +3DOSwill probably have to be rewrittenslightly, to accomodate fo the 1.44M diskdrive, and it is unknown whether thedecision has been made to include a harddrive option in the package.
1 The PC will ask you for the PRN device, towhich you respond with COM1:. Run theprogram on the Spectrum, and hit RETURN onthe PC.
1 The New commands are preceded with a hash(#) and are letters to save memory- forexample #b will beep #f,n Flash screen ntimes #g,x,y prints hi-res graphic pointat x,y and the most useful is probably #cwhich will clear the screen. There is alsoa locate command amongst them, someprinter things and a command to draw awindow. I had a few tries at this newsystem and I love it. It's everythingMallard basic should have been. It's worththe 1.5K it takes up, because more thanthat in a program would probably be takenup with escape codes otherwise. I alsohave got to mention that it intercepts thedrop back to CP/M when a disk erroroccurs. This program is excellentlyprogrammed, and I have to give it 10/10.
1 The MAXIRAM routine itself occupies from8257 to 8360, leaving you with 7978 bytesof RAM at your disposal, starting fromaddress 8361. N.B. It is vitally importantNOT to overwrite the area 8192-8360 whenMAXIRAM
1 The LC-100 isn't short of options, it hasno less than 20 settings, all can make itoperate in varied conditions. So, heres mychoice of settings and why I chose them.they aren't necessarilly the
1 The Demon Hacker!
1 The Demon Hacker moans, groans, gripes and*
1 The Decoder routine is the same as theencoder, but with the plus symbol in line90 altered to a minus.j
1 The BLUE rectangle in the middle of thescreen is the PRINT WINDOW. Think of it asa sort of adjustable RUBBER STAMP that youcan set to any SIZE or POSITION. Wheneveryou press the PRINT control, any text youhave previously entered expands to FILLTHE CURRENT WINDOW.
1 The 1995 CATALOGUE
1 The 'SWAP_' command allows one attributeto be swopped for another. It's followedby two numeric expressions, first the newattribute and second the old. Theattribute file is searched and if an 'old'attribute is found then it's replaced bythe 'new'.
1 The 'PUT_' command is the direct oppositeof 'GET_' and;
1 The 'MODE_' command can be followed by oneor two numbers just like CLW (n=windownumber). When using Mode 4, it's possibleto introduce a feature called 'stippling',which allows the chars to appear shaded.The type of pattern used is defined by thecommand 'STIPPLE_'. The command word isfollowed by a single number that indicatesthe pattern. Values should fall betweenzero and 15, the higher the value thedarker the shading. The value of zeroresults in the 'printing' of blank spaces.
1 The 'INVERT' command is very simple inthat all it does is invert the wholescreen.[
1 The 'FADE_' command can produce some veryspectacular effects.>
1 The 'Ben Douglas' Piece of Alchnews#
1 The "HEY YOU" device
1 The "Four Seasons" demo by The Kinghts(formerly Triad Developments) is nowcompleted. The suite of four demos costsjust 1p, +media & SAE.
1 The reason for spring pulling is tore-tension the keys. After thousands ofkeypresses, the springs will obviously getcompressed and this method restores themto their almost-natural state.
1 The program is especially useful forchecking disks before you subject them toa sector repair program, like DOCTOR.y
1 The output (OP) of the amp should beconnected to a small jack socket on thecase to allow connection to the EAR socketon the computer, although you can use asmall loudspeaker should you only want a"beep booster".
1 The other magazine to retreat is theexcellent SPELLUNKLER, the last Spectrumonly adventure magazine on the market.It's editor, James Waddington blamedpeople who promised plugs into certainareas which never worked. He has passedall his work onto Alec Carswell ofMotivation (late of Venturesoft) who isplanning a new Spectrum paper magazine tocontinue where Spellunkler left. Alec hasyet to supply details of his project. Weare hoping to keep James in the public eyewith some work with Alchemist Research.
1 The movement of the reels is veryrealistic, and it also sports many of thefeatures of a real machine, such as Holds,Nudges, Free Spins and so on.
1 The letter I received soon after mytelephone call was typical of onesreceived previously. He says that I amgoing over the same grounds yet in a waythat others would think they were newoccurances. You are the jury here - haveyou seen any old occurances reprinted tomake it look that they have just happened?Of course not. Look at this article forexample.
1 The first three lines just fill theattributes file with random characters...the last line is the important one! Thecommand 'FADE_' is followed by a singlenumeric expression. The attributes file issearched and any bytes that are equal tothis expression are left alone; any thataren't are decremented.
1 The first is a simple three-in-oneinterface which plugs into the soundsocket of the Spectrum +2. Quite simply itgives me three sound sockets instead ofone. This means I can use my monitor andtwo tape decks without the complication ofleads and connectors! It could have quiteeasily have been a six-in-one or more!
1 The file will now have a differentaddress, so typing LOAD "" CODE will loadit to the wrong area. We must:r
1 The expansion ports have also beenmodified in such a way that there are twoof them now, and one of them is wired likea FIXIT (a through port which modifies the+3 expansion port to allow 48K peripheralsto be used), but the other is still wiredlike a normal +3 port.
1 The codebook program sets up a smallsample code dictionary of 20 words. Usinga two dimensional array A$(i,j) in whichi=1 indicates plain text and i=2 is codedtext, the program first READs in the datadisplayed in the table. The next section(lines 120-170) takes in a word from themessage and then prints out
1 The circuit is connected to a bridgerectifier 6 amps and 240/12v, 2Atransformer.`
1 The answer is the second marvellousinterface from Lloyd Garland.G
1 The Spectrums char set consists ofprintable characters and others whichaffect the way the characters are printed- called 'control' characters. A number ofnew control characters have been includedin the MB's char set:
1 The REM statements appear as a basicprogram listing and are incremented in10's Lets look at how the windows aredefined:-
1 The Morse code program will eitherencipher or decipher plain text, or decodea series of dots and dashes into theappropriate letters. As an example, thewell known distress signal SOS becomes:
1 The +D utilities disk has some newprograms added to it. Should any of yourequire your disk updating, simply returnit for a free update.
1 The 'PRINTER_' command is provided toallow screen output to be diverted to aperipheral, such as a printer. The commandis followed by a single
1 The new catalogue has a
1 The first of
1 That, at any rate, is what's MEANT tohappen, and indeed when it does work thatway, all goes well. On the occasions thatit crashes, however, something veryunusual occurs. It's almost as if theabove process were carried out all overagain a SECOND TIME, a split second later- just when the program counter isactually at address 102, in fact. Now, tryto imagine what would then ensue: the nextaddress, 103, would therefore be stacked,so when you returned to your program, itwould resume from there. By that time,however, the Spectrum ROM would be pagedback in again, so it wouldn't be address103 in the +D that was executed, but inthe Spectrum ROM instead, i.e. plunginginto the Speccy's own bugged NMI routine,and heading straight for a reset!
1 That's the end of my nattering away thisissue. Thanks for reading it - bye!M
1 That's it. If you've got any problems,suggestions for future versions, or wannaswop demos (new stuff and +D only) thenwrite to:
1 That concludes customising Tasword 128.If you have any problems, don't hesatateto get in touch but before you do, Iadvise you take your time, prepare somescrap paper and test each customisedoption carefully. I gave Miles Kinloch areally hard time when requesting help andadvice when setting up my printer!
1 Thanks to: Albert Harper
1 Thanks to all who helped with the new 1995catalogue, from advice on labellingprograms to, most importantly, those ofyou who supplied it. I really must alsothank Womo PD who supplied a great deal ofit.
1 Thanks go to Arnold Yates in helpingproduce this article.?
1 Text:. This option takes you into thepowerful text editor. Another menu barwill appear at the top of your screen. Thefirst option on this menu is Show Escapes.This simply redisplays the current framewith the escape codes inverted. (Similarto ESC-0 when using Fireview). The nexttwo options are Screen and Window. AllEditview editing is done in a window(jargon for screen area). Screen definesthe whole screen as the window. If windowis selected a box cursor will appear. Thisshould be moved to one corner of thewindow you wish to work on and clicked.Another box will appear and this should bemoved to the opposite corner and clicked.A new cursor will appear, this is the textcursor. It will either be a box ifcapslock is on, or a '
1 Text can either be incorporated in themain listing (as in the original demoprogram ) or you can make REM subroutinesthat contain the text and can be called by;^a;
1 Tetris vindicates my strongly held viewthat the secret of good gameplay, whichthis game has in abundance, is not just aquestion of stunning graphics and amazingsound effects. Here, it's not only thehand controlling the joystick that getsexercised, but the brain as well - thisgame makes you THINK! In my opinion, ithas a formula which is destined to make itendure as an all-time classic, withevergreen appeal.
1 Tel: 0952 462135
1 Tel: 081 397 0763
1 Tel: 0494 871319
1 Tel: 01353 777006
1 Take your LED, whichever one you want touse first and slightly part the legs.O
1 TRUE VIDEO: Deletes the whole of the inputline./
1 TRIAD DEMO FINISHED
1 TRANSFERRING TO MICRODRIVE
1 TRANSFERRING TO 3.5" DISK
1 TOTAL ECLIPSE
1 TOTAL = `2.47
1 TO INPUT TEXT
1 THORNTON CLEVELEYS
1 THIS TO 850 IF
1 THIS ISSUES DRAW WINNERS
1 THEO DEVIL IS BACK!
1 THE THING MAGAZINE
1 THE SEQUEL :
1 THE PROCEDURE/REPEAT-UNTIL STACK
1 THE EDITOR
1 THE ADVENTURE WORKSHOP
1 THE ABCD AWARD
1 TEXT-33283/33284 (4
1 TEXT ENTRY
1 TEXT DESIGNER and PRINT EXPANDER.!
1 TESTING THE THEORY
1 TELEPHONE ORDERS NOW TAKEN
1 TASWORD TUTOR
1 TASMAN, creators of the excellent TASWORDwordprocessors still sell their three besttitles. Contact them at:l
1 TASMAN SOFTWARE
1 TAPE / DISC MAGAZINES
1 TABADR-33295/33296 (39680): Address of thetable used by the FSLP function. It has(always!) a length of 256 bytes and mustbe placed at a address that can be dividedby 256. The table (Sine values are of mostuse) is automatically made topical. So youonly have to provide the table, switch onthe FSLP function and handle the trickyCLSCR bit. If you don't use the FSLPfunction, TABADR is without meaning (whichmeans that you can place anything at theaddress at which TABADR points withoutbeing corrupted)
1 TAB puts spaces in text but does not seemto work properly with < text line;L
1 TAB 19;CHR$ (77+i); TAB 27;n(13-i)"
1 TAB 10;"Any key to run";
1 T.A.W. supply adventure games for a widevariety of computers, including CP/M andthe Spectrum. Most software is writtenwith PAW, GAC or QUILL and can be suppliedon tape or disk. The 22 page A4Spectrum catalogue goes into great detailof all their available titles, giving awell written scenario, game type, partsand prices. This catalogue details seven128k adventures and over 64
1 Sutton-In-The-Isle
1 Supplier of ZX Microdrives,!
1 Sub-Editor:
1 Study the print-out of the listing, save acopy of the code and prog. Try makingalterations so you can see how it works.|
1 Structure of program
1 Strange though the above may seem, all theexperiments I have done seem to point tothis happening. For instance, if I go into48k and POKE either 23728 or 23729 (thelatter is better, since 23728 alsofunctions as an error-trap with the +D)with a non-zero value, I can then pressthe snapshot button as often as I like,and it never crashes afterwards. This isconsistent with the bug in the Spectrum'sroutine at 102, the result of which is tocause a jump to address 0 when both 23728and 23729 hold zero, but to RET harmlessly(albeit
1 Strange then, that DB2 won't cope withdisks formatted to 203K by DICE. It willcope with the vast majority of "protected"games disks, but not a disk formatted byDICE. Why?!
1 Str M. Kogalniceanu
1 Stops the scroller for n seconds. n can bea value from 1-5. Example: "|2" to stopthe scroller for 2 seconds.o
1 Still here ?. Good. Type this in and saveit on the same disk as the Code.J
1 Starglider is a bit of a no-no becuasethere are no lives as such, but an energybar. This makes it very difficult to seehow many units of energy you have left. Ifit told you in decimal that you had, say,67% energy, you could just stick 67 in theLIVES counter of Lifeguard.
1 Star Micronics
1 Staffs. ST3 5BH
1 Staff Writers
1 Spectrumcommunity and would welcome any comments.This was in June 1994. The letter wasfeatured in Format in September, someTHREE MONTHS later. I questioned Brenchleywhy this was so, especially since so manythings had happened since then, but hefailed to respond. This led to my notre-subscribing to INDUG partly because ofthis and the poor service recieved bymyself and dozens of ex-readers. Perhapshe was a little upset that his service wasnot featured in AlchNews because it wasconsidered "not in the Spectrum interest"by so many. You all know how well AlchNewsgets about, and now being on Internet -well, it's a bad loss of publicity!
1 Spectrumatribute value.
1 Spectrumaccompanyment, a phoenix from the ashes ofFISH magazine.@
1 Spaceman Bob II adventure
1 South Wales
1 Sounds a bit far fetched I know, but itworks! The basic control loop program maybe a bit slow (24K in around 5 minutes),but it's far faster than having to re-typeyour text files!
1 Sorry, SUC!
1 Some of the names who have already reachedthe hall of fame must surely be:J
1 Solder the RED lead to the SHORT leg.%
1 Solder the BLACK lead to the LONG leg.&
1 So, we have no options to archive a diskother than a simple backup. Sector errorscan occur anywhere on the disk, it couldbe just by chance that they occur in thecatalogue tracks and the odds could bequite small, but I have come up with avery simple idea which could have yourbacon if it does happen. The idea is verysimple and would take just one +D disk toprotect almost forty others.
1 So, run the game and press the button.Press "L" and alter the number of lives to1. We haven't a clue what DEC command ituses so we may as well stay with DEC a.
1 So, now you know how to write a scrollydemo. Theres a couple of scrolly shells inAlchNews where all you have to do is writeyour text. Best scroller to arrive by May1995 gets a free sub to AlchNews. For acopy of the scroller shells, just sendblank media and SAE and ask for the"Scroller Shells".
1 So, now it's time to offically launch it.If you are a 3.5" disk system owner andwould like to take advantage of telephoneordering, you are most welcome.
1 So, my estimations is that it is simplyMartyn Sherwood himself who is the causeof all of the trouble and the sad state ofthe Spectrum. As many of you have said, itis an attitude problem of his. If he gaveup his business tomorrow I am 100% surethat nothing would be heard of it again.Not that the succesor would be foolishenough to use the name Prism - it hasindeed been sullied for life.
1 So, expanding from my PD catalogue I'vedecided to pen some "8 BIT GUIDELINES".Now, they don't HAVE to be accepted byPrism PD or any other groups but they arein effect from Alchemist PD and are aguarantee on a high degree of service.
1 So, a look at the points again-
1 So, I repsonded to Mr Sherwood's letterinforming him of his strange statement ofan end of th matter in the Summer whencome autumn there are more attacks.Needless to say, he failed to come up withan answer.
1 So, I finally have a copy of the programthat will decompress all those PMAarchives... Well, actually I don't haveany on hand, so I'll have to make my own.
1 So with this build up, you find yourselfon the alien homeworld, from there on,your on your own.e
1 So what do you do? The catalogue is a lotmore than a visual reference so that weknow whats on the disk. It's also a guide-book for the +D, to tell it the file typeto load, where the file is archived on thedisk and how many sectors it occupies.Without this information the disk isalmost useless.
1 So this is very useful if, like me youhave a +3 and a PC. Once copied, this diskwas put into the +3 and it workedperfectly. So the next thing was to copyall of the stuff out of the various userareas and into user 0 of the disk. CP/Muses all of the other disk drives with thesame user area as the one you are curentlylogged into if you see what I mean.Probably not. Right, say you are on driveb: and you change into user area 2. (Goodtrick if you can manage it... once Ichanged into user area 4 and coulnd'tchange back for a whole week, it wasreally terrible and I missed my dentalappointment).
1 So now we take a look at the February 1995issue.0
1 So instead, a look at one of the oldersoftware houses - Psion. I reviewed HoraceGoes Skiing last time, but I happen tohave tonnes of their other games, so heregoes...
1 So if using a normal charset, UNISCROLLuses the addresses from 32768 to 34433(1665 Bytes). This might seem a lot, butremember that displayfile tables (they area lot faster than normal
1 So how does the patch work? Well, wheneverthe +D's button is pressed, the firstthing the snapshot routines do is storethe current stack pointer in addresses16382/16383, before setting up a temporarystack in +D RAM. SNAPFIX looks at thecontents of 16382 / 16383 and tests to seeif the return address is 103. If so, itincrements the contents of 16382/16383 to'drop' this address, so the one before it,i.e. the genuine return address, will beused instead. The reward is a snapshotbutton which, at least in my case, is nowmuch more reliable.
1 So far we have only considered ciphers.Proper codes - that is whole words orphrases which are encrtyted by other wordsor numbers - are traditionally favoured bylarge organisations tht operate from fixedpremises. Embassies, ships and businesshouses fall into this category. Operatingfrom fixed locations is preferable becauseone or more bulky coding dictionaries arenecessary for translating the plain text.
1 Since there are no local variables, youmust make sure that those used in oneprocedure don't clash with others inanother part of the program. Procedurescan only be called from within a program,and so can't be used as direct commands.
1 Since my article in the last issue, itseems that many more have abandonedSpectrum UK forg
1 Simply modify the menu now it's presentedon the screen. Don't forget aboutwordwrapping,a
1 Silviu Stroie, RAMTOP magazine
1 Shropshire
1 Sheepsoft PD
1 Several variants of Tetris have appearedover the years, all of which are equallydelightful to play, includingw
1 SetBleep- Changes CP/M Bleep
1 Set in the far future, you (yes you) playthe last of a warrior race. Your peoplehave been at war for many years, and nowthings are getting worse.
1 Set the Window to one-line high, anddesired width. Enter text to match, orfall short of, the dark bar beneath theinput cursor. (if Window is maximum widththe bar is omitted - in this case aim fora full line of text). Press (P)RINT-P toprint black text automatically justifiedinto the full Window width. At a paragraphend, where you don't want a justifiedline, press CAPS SHIFT Q (QUICKPRINT).
1 Seriously though, when you type a commandlike d to run D.COM in user area 2 ofdrive b: and it is in user 0 of drive c:it will not be run because it is not foundas CP/M is only searching user 2 of driveC:.
1 Separate print-out into strips at thedotted lines. Trim off left-hand edge ofeach strip except the leftmost one alongthe dotted line.
1 Send an SAE for their comprehensive A5catalogue dealing with the Amiga, Amstrad,Atari, Commodore, PC and Spectrum. Lots ofSpectrum hardware and spares available atthe lowest prices. Theres even a specialoffer of +2a computer consoles (no PSU orleads etc) for only `10 + P&P which is abargain to say the least, if only used forspares! They also deal in the Newnespocket books for `9.99.
1 Select these by pressing CAPS SHIFT C,followed by a number 1 to 5 - no need towait for the Menu to appear. C-Set 4(OUTLINE TEXT) is matched by C-Set 5(INLINE TEXT) which fits exactly withinthe interior spaces. Thus, if you firstselect C-Set 4, (P)RINT with one style,you can then switch to C-Set 5, and(P)RINT in the spaces in a differentstyle.
1 Select C-Set 5
1 Select C-Set 4
1 Selanswei 25
1 Seek Fail 0:1
1 See the following description of Uniscrollas a part of our helpline. If you havequestions to this then write us or directto Vision. You will find his new adress atthe end of the file.
1 See SPECTRUM PROFI CLUB, previous page&
1 Scan through the other options until youare returned to the main menu. Press R toreturn to editing a text file.r
1 Save this onto your cartridge with"
1 Save onto disk using exactly the sameinstructions as for microdrive up to andincluding BREAK. NOW! Type 2120 Then pressENTER, This will CLEAR line 2120 from theprogram. NOW! Type in the following lineusing the KEY WORDS:-
1 Save as SAVE d*"prog" LINE 10
1 Save Editview to
1 Save to Memory/Load from Memory Theseoptions allow the current frame to bestored and retrieved from the framestores.
1 Sat on top of the +3's external drive(the unit is black and blends inperfectly), it features a volume control,external / internal power selector andinternal / external sound selector. It canrun from an external 9v supply from asocket at the back or can be run from a 9vPP3 battery inside the case. On the backis an INPUT and OUTPUT jack socket. Simplyplug your Spectrum to the INPUT socket.Selecting the switch to "SKR" gives yououtput via the speaker. Setting to SKTdirects it to the OUTPUT socket on theback.
1 Sad news again. Two cornerstones ofSpectrum magazines have closed down. ZAT,which aired the works of our very owneditor has finally bowed out. Theremaining readership and contributionshave been absorbed into their sister diskmagazine SAM PRIME.
1 SUTTON IN ASHFIELD
1 SUPERPRINT:- 2X TO 32X
1 SUPERPRINT MODE
1 SUPER PLANNER, TRANSFORM HISTOGRAM, MICROLSPREADSHEET,6
1 SUPER ADVANCED LAWNMOWER SIMULATOR"
1 SUPER ADVANCED LAWNMOWER
1 SUC-CESSION
1 SUC, Germany
1 SUC and SPC magazines which are!
1 SUBLIMINAL EXTACY - INCLUDES S.CLASSIC&
1 STYLE PALETTE
1 STUDIO CORNER
1 STOP-33288 (0): Stops the scrolling of thetext. To stop poke STOP to 1, continuewith 0.[
1 STOP PRESS
1 STOP : Moves the 'copy' cursor left.$
1 STOKE ON TRENT
1 STEP TWO - Removing the keys
1 STEP THREE - Cleaning
1 STEP ONE - Tools
1 STEP FOUR - Spring Pulling
1 STEP : "
1 STAR PRODUCTS AND PRICES
1 STAR LC-100
1 STAR CLUB NEWS
1 STANDARD LOADERS: 99% of our programs aresaved via standard SAVE methods. WE avoidusing Multiface or disk SNAPSNOT routinesexcept for programs which were sent to uson this format and cannot be "un-snapped".
1 SPRINT and PRINTER
1 SPLIT-33285 (1): Splits the scroll. Highervalues than 3 aren't very useful as thescroll gets quite unreadable then. Thegaps aren't changed and CLSCR only clearsthe used area. It is also possible to usethe value 0 but this is only useful if theFSLP- Function is used. Just try to seewhat I mean!
1 SPEED-33286 (1): Speed of the scroller.Useful are values from 1 to 4. A fasterscroller needs more time!m
1 SPECTRUM PROFI CLUB
1 SPC FIND FD-1?
1 SPACES BETWEEN WORDS"''
1 SPACES BETWEEN WORDS"
1 SORRY FOLKS
1 SONG BY ST COMPILE
1 SNAPFIX by Miles Kinloch
1 SINCLAIR GEBRUIKERSGROUP GRONINGEN / ASSENJohan Koning6
1 SINCLAIR COMPUTERCLUB BENELUX
1 SINCLAIR CLASSIC - NO LONGER PRODUCED!&
1 SIMULATOR ADVENTURE 2 :
1 SHIFT.CAREFULLY place the screwdriver under thekey, at the bottom edge and then gentlyprise it up using the computer lid as asort of lever. From there work along thekeyboard, either using the computer lid asa lever or putting the screwdriver in atthe key side and using the next as alever.
1 SHEEPSOFT deal in a great many CPC titles,as well as supplying CP/M material forversions 2.2 and +. Prices are extremelycheap.
1 SHEEPSOFT PD
1 SHADOW-EDGE TEXT
1 SGG, Netherlands
1 SENDING SECRET MESSAGES
1 SCROLL=33402: Scrolls the text into theworkspace and copies it onto screen. Thescroller runs smooth if SCROLL is called50 times in a second (whenever the TVbuilds up a picture). Synchronized inBASIC by using PAUSE 1 and in MC usingHALT or own generated interrupt (IM 2).
1 SCREEN$ : Displays the automatic listings(output to window 1)>
1 SCREEN$ 1: GO TO s.
1 SCB, Netherlands
1 SAVE *"m";1;"name" LINE 10.
1 SAVE "MENU"CODE 59648,383
1 SAVE "MENU"CODE 58176,2239
1 SAVE "CAT.BIN" CODE 36864,1024
1 S.C. sells a wide range of Spectrum andSAm software, including an excellentwordprocessor,b
1 S ave - screen$ to tape or M/drive L oad - load screen$ file from tape or M/drive.]
1 S L C N U S O N S
1 Run this, and you will get a two columnlist of all the files on the disk, andtheir sizes. If there are any system,protected or archive files then you willnotice that the extension of that filewill be corrupted. This is just +3 DOS'sway of storing attribute information. Youcould alter the basic program to stop thiscorruption happening, by:
1 Run this program and follow the prompts.(
1 Roy Burford
1 Roy Benson
1 Roy Benson has already given a briefreview of DINOSAURS and EEC, but there areplenty of great games and graphicsprograms. One of my personal favourites isthe "BLACK AND WHITE HUMOUR 1 & 2", twoslideshows of cartoons, similar to innewspapers and so forth but a littlewittier. Theres also a great driving game"HOT TYRE" and four volumes of VGApictures from the PC.
1 Route De Bel Air
1 Romantic Robot
1 Roger G41DE
1 Robert Skene, where's the tapes?
1 Right, on with the show. The next game topass under my critical eye is one whichmany people will have heard of: Psion's"Horace Goes Skiing". Horace was verypopular for a while and this game soldwell - though not as well as "HungryHorace" (alas, I haven't got that one!). Ithink there was a third one as well. Thisgame stars good ol' Horace as he attemptsto cross the road (no, not with skis on!),get some skis and cross back over. Then hemust take to the slopes, preferablywithout crashing into the liberallyscattered trees, and score points bypassing between the flags. Finally, Horacecan gain a bonus by going under a bigbanner-type thing at the end. After this,the game starts all over again...
1 Right, next one then. Personally, I havenever heard of Spectrum UK, much less doneany business with them. Still, I thinkthat they are a bit out of order inaccusing Andy Davis of trying to take themover. As we all know, AlchNews is a tapeor disk based magazine, and Spectrum UK ispaper based. Why would Andy try to takeover a paper based magazine then, when allthe efforts except the PD catalogue areread from a magnetic media?
1 Right, here I am, attempting to write anarticle for you all. This is about how towrite text for demos and things!t
1 Right, got those? good. let's begin...&
1 Right, before I go then, I just want tosay that if you stick to these rules, no,guidelines, then your text will indeedbe.. well, it'll be very mad!! That's ifyou skip out the last 3 points until thelast bit of your demo, or text orwhatever.
1 Right, This Issue, as you may have alreadygathered, is about Cataloguing disks. AlsoI'd like to say hello to any newcomers,and welcome to Alchemist Research'sAlchnews. This part of the magazine isdevoted to the +3 and using it in machinecode. To use this tutorial, you will needthe following...
1 Right, I start this issues report with anapology. In issue 14 I stated that theUnited Minds were being harassed by MrSherwood, and in particular PatrickMorriss. I would like to make it clearthat this was an error on my part andshould have been Robert Skene. It can getvery confusing working with all themembers of the team seperately as well asa group and I get phone calls from Robertand letters from Patrick.
1 Right then, it's the 3rd of January, andI've been woken up by someone telling methat there's a letter been delivered forme. 'It looks like it's got a disk in it.'I hear through the darkness. Instantly Iam out of bed and wondering who it wasfrom, as it couldn't have been Andybecause I hadn't got round to writing tohim yet, in fact it could only have beenfrom Miktor, who hasn't written to mesince I wrote to him ages ago. It turnedout to be from Andy anyway, and he's sentme some CP/M stuff as it turns out, andasked me to review it. Fair enough says I,and proceeded to power up my computer,stopping only at the breakfast table onthe way.
1 Reset the computer, and type in thisBASIC, which I've got to go and dig outfrom somewhere, and print it out so I cantype it in here... Don't go away.
1 Remember to reset values if you generate anew scroller and changed some variables inthe preceding one!f
1 Register C should contain 1 if you wantsystem files to be displayed, otherwise itshould contain 0. (Remember that if a fileis a system file, it will have bit 7 ofthe second character of the type fieldset, so to print
1 Register B must contain the number ofentries in your buffer. remember that anentry is 13 bytes long, and though it saysin the book that a +3 disk can only have64 directory entries, this is not true of720K 3.5" disks, which can have 256directory entries. However, +3 basic onlyreads the first 64 of these which can leadto some amazing confusion.
1 Readers may be interested to know thatthis fiasco is now eighteen months oldwith no clear indications of being endedon Mr Sherwood's part.
1 RUN to return back to Tasword and thencheck your handiwork. If it's all jumbledup beyond belief or crashes, you'veprobably loaded it to the wrong address.reset and try again.
1 RUN as a direct command ignores the REMs(of course) and goes straight to theRANDOMIZE USRa
1 RS232? NO UNIVERSAL ZX SERIAL!
1 RS 232 communications are quite pointlessfor many people, but seeing as how I writearticles for AlchNews on a PC using theDOS version of WordPerfect 5.1, I need todo it quite often!
1 ROY BENSON still has a few items for salefrom his mega-clear out. For more details,send him an SAE to:g
1 ROBOTIC INTERFACE
1 RIBBON PRICES AND PROBLEMS
1 RESTORING THE DISK
1 REPEAT-UNTIL
1 REPAIR DISK
1 REFUNDS: Many orders do not take advantageof our free software service or discountsin effect. So, you may find a chequerefund with your order, or some of yourcash returned.
1 RANDOMIZE USR 63103 - The magic word thatmakes it all work!<
1 RAIDERS OF THE LOST RANTINGS
1 R" to set YPOS to 100 (R=ASCII Code 82=> (82-32)*2= 100!). Got it? WARNING: Ifthis instruction is printed on a printer,it might be that the copyright char isused as a commando by some printers. Inthis case the copyright char as thepreceding char aren't printed!
1 R ightshift - centres text
1 Quite why this article was published isquite unclear, perhaps it has something todo with the team not responding to M.Sherwoods comandeering letters tellingthem to cease links with AlchemistResearch and telling them what to writein their letters to us!
1 Quite recently, one outstanding effort wasfrom Mr George Munro who provided LloydGarland with a complete and fully workingInterface 1 and Microdrive
1 Quite complex compositions can be produceddirectly onto the Spectrum screen. Thesewill generally consist of areas of'Chunky' patterned text intermixed with aninteresting variety of smaller, solidblack text. Hovever, for more ambitiouscompositions, 'paste up' techniques shouldbe used using hard copy from yourprinter,superprinted as required to thedesired size. Using this technique, evenlong words or lines of text can beproduced in patterned styles by printingthem in sections, as large as desired onthe screen, and then pasting- up theprint-out. Finally, photo-reduce forquality.
1 Quite a line-up eh??? Oh, and the otherthing you do, is the credits!!! This isthe bit where you and your other groupmembers say what you did for the demo.With us, it's usually I do the program,some text, maybe a screen, and possibly anidea once in a while, and Dok- Well,according to him, he does everything!!!Nah, he comes up with all the ideas, drawslots of screens, slaggs me off a lot,swears a lot, slaggs everyone else off alot (but usually me!), writes mad stsongs, drinks tea, and comes up with moreideas!!!
1 Question Marks
1 QUICKGUIDE - DOCTOR.BAS
1 QUICKGUIDE - DISCKIT.BAS
1 QL's,Spectrums, cartridges, keyboard membranes,disk drives, monitors and the Z88. Flyersusually go out with all letters toAlchemist Research, but send an SAE to theabove address for the latest catalogue &deals.
1 Q uickprint - prints normal-sized text aligned to top-left corner of window.P
1 Professionally programmed using the G.A.C,the author, Roy Benson, has really brednew life into what was once a tired oldformula game. The graphics really are ajoy to look at, and the font, againcreated by Roy Benson, give the game areally futuristic feel.
1 Prior to making a choice from theStyle-Palette during (P)RINT -ing, pressthe 0 key to add a 'shadow edge' to thetest as it is printed. this is often agreat help in visually separating textfrom a back-groung pattern. A second pressof the 0 key cancels prior to printing.NOTE: IF WINDOW IS TOUCHING RIGHT-HANDEDGE OF SCREEN, THE SHADOW IS OMITTED INTHAT DIRECTION.
1 Price: n/a
1 Pressing GRAPH and the key turns thefunction ON, you will need to do the CAPSSHIFT version of the key to turn them off!~
1 Press S to search and we find it findsseven pokes. Try the first one by pressing"N". Launch a missile in the game anddetonate it. Try to launch another(although there may be no missiles visibleinthe counter, there still could beinfinite missiles remaining). It doesn'twork so we press BREAK and abort the gameand try again.
1 Press EXT and then 3 to call up theprinter menu option.>
1 Press ENTER, and then save the programonto your disk thus:-?
1 Press the 'P' key during ON-SCREENprinting (i.e. when the printer is notrunning) to make the program pause at thebottom of the current vertical pass whilstyou change paper roll.
1 Power-Print
1 Ports 191 and 63, normally used with an INinstruction to page the Multiface memoryin and out, can also be used in outputi.e. OUT (191),A and OUT (63),A, thoughthe Multiface instructions don't actuallymention this. Here, their function istotally different, and because they don'thave anything to do with ROM paging, theBASIC OUT command can be used here. (Thevalue output to the port is irrelevant.)
1 Please also consider these other sourceswhen wishing your programs and articlesdistributed:`
1 Pleasant View
1 Picture the scene
1 Phil Glaves
1 Peter Beardwood
1 Pear Tree Cottage
1 PbRd u&e%`U
1 PbQD U&CEPU
1 Paul Newman
1 Paul Fairman
1 Patrick Morriss
1 Patrick Morris
1 Pass the cable through the hole so that itgoes INTO the main part of the box.M
1 Part of Sinclair Computerclub Benelux%
1 Part One: The menu
1 PUT THIS IN IF
1 PS. Joke for PC owners: How many IntelPentium programmers does it take to changea lightbulb? Answer: 1.k
1 PROGRAMS!,PROGRAMMING YOUR SPECTRUM!, THE SINCLAIRSPECTRUM BOOK!..etc etc.L
1 PROGRAMING
1 PROGRAM UPDATES
1 PRODUCE DECORATIVE PANELS BORDERS, ETCSIMPLY BY SETTING THE WINDOW AND USING THEFILL COMMAND.a
1 PROCESSING: Programs are loaded into theSpectrum and saved independantly. In somecases, programs may be archived on masterdisks and transferred to required mediumwhere they are tested.
1 PROCEDURES
1 PRISM PROBLEMS
1 PRINT (drive:filename.ext)
1 POWERPRINT II provides a powerful andextremely3
1 POWER PRINT II for 48K Sinclair Spectrum.K
1 POINTS TO WATCH
1 PMARC - The program that makes all those.PMA archives7
1 PEEK (F+7);".";CHR$ PEEK (F+8);
1 PEEK (F+5); CHR$ PEEK (F+6);CHR$
1 PDcounterparts TOBOS and USCHI.
1 PD, Propac,Alchemist, or Neon Grafix.'
1 PD LIBRARIES
1 PCW+ Magazine
1 PC200! THE Sinclair PC200?, yess!!, andsure enough on the front cover of thisbook was a woman operating a big blackchunky doorstep with keys on it!. Yes, assome of you may remember, the SinclairPC200 was Amstrads attempt to bring acheap PC compatible to the consumermarket, much in the same way Sir Clivebrought the speccy - a cheap home computer- to us.
1 PAYMENT: Like all
1 PAPER MAGAZINES
1 PAN AND SCROLL
1 PAGE CODE PRICE
1 PACKAGING: Media is covered in foil andwrapped in bubble wrap and / or cardboardfor protection. Packaging is securelyfastened. With large envelopes and jiffybags, the media may be placed in a smallersealed envelope and address labelled.Then, if the package splits, the media isstill safe.
1 P.M. Reynolds
1 P-CANCEL CONDENSED MODE : 17
1 Our techniques/writing styles are asfollows-2
1 Our series
1 Orson talks on how he sees all these madspinny dots in front of his eyes wheneveranyone mentions how much better PC's areto Amigas. And the solution to it which isto remove the problem. Namely, the stupidperson who said PC's were better thanAmigas in the first place.
1 Original Programming: Dominic Morris$
1 Opus / Microdrive programs
1 One of the main advantages of theMultiface RAM is its immunity from resets,but up till now, there has been adrawback: except when you program it for'direct jump' mode, in reality you onlyhave a little over 5K, as 8192-11144 isused as a buffer when the menu isdisplayed. Because the device is alwaysdisabled after a reset, there would seemto be no way round this, as you mustalways press the button first to enableit...
1 One of my many tasks for this issue(according to the boss), is to tell youall how to transfer data files fromanother computer to a Spectrum, along withwhat RS 232 communications are all about.
1 Once you have your null modem cable builtand attached, type in the small basicprogram that appears on page 37 of theMicrodrive instruction manual. Type intoyour PC, at the DOS prompt (A> or C>):
1 Once the PC has been set up, you can printyour textfile to COM1 with:E
1 Once again, a most excellent issue, and Iguess will be sought after by many UK +2aowners![
1 On the 10th December 1994 I received aletter from Martyn Sherwood. I would haveliked to have printed it but he made itcopyright and not for
1 On paper, it seemed like a good idea, butit never took off. This was due in part tothe botched marketing of the PC200, therewere reports that it was shiped WITHOUT itoperating system, which is akin to anissue of ALCHNEWS without Roy Benson!. <h
1 Okay, back to the game in question. Theanimation in this game is good, with theaforementioned Daley sprite leaping,vaulting, throwing and running ratherwell, and the game isn't slow either. As Isaid before, everyone must have playedthis game at some point, and I don't thinkit's very difficult to obtain, so if yousee it for a bargain price at a car bootsale or something, it's worth getting toplay as well as to decorate yourcollector's shelves with. (My games aresafe from accidental erasure from theoriginal cassette, etc, now, as I havecopied all the ones that I play onto +Ddisc).
1 Okay, back to the demo text. What've wegot so far??6
1 Ok let's take these programs in noparticular order-;
1 Of course, as previously mentioned, theamplifier can also be built as a simple"beep booster" amplifier. Simply wire aloudspeaker to the output instead of thesocket!
1 Of course this is not the best footy gameever on the Speccy, but it was very goodat the time of its release and for a goodwhile afterwards. Later in Speccy history,in fact, lots of football games suddenlyhit the market, all of them fairlysimilar, some better, some worse - andthen all of those appalling footballmanager games... I don't actually play"Match Day", but it's a significant Oceangame to own, and again, not very hard tocome across.
1 Of course it turned out that the caretakerwas to blame for these deaths, and this iswhere the 'disturbing' aspect came in,z
1 OVERLINING PROBLEM SOLVED
1 OVER : Moves the 'copy' cursor to nextwindow.1
1 OTHER SERVICES
1 OTHER PRINTERS:-
1 ORSON 1995
1 OR : Moves current line up one anddisplays automatic listing.E
1 OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS
1 ONLY IF YOU ARE
1 OK, the disk is a bit bashed by theabominable postman, but I'm just thankfulthat it arrived at all because you neverknow if your post is going to arrive atall up here in chilly newcastle, and it ischilly because we've been having some ofthe coldest weather for a long time.Anyway, our postman is a complete moronwho I'm sure is illiterate because heposts all of the letters down our roadthrough the wrong letterboxes, and ofcourse isn't my letter always amongst theones that don't get to me, so I usuallyhave a couple of days before someonebrings it round.
1 O-CONDENSED (17/20 CPI) : 27 15
1 O ver - does the same. except using the 'OVER 1' condition, thus mixing with any pattern already present.m
1 Nr Longton
1 Nowadays the only option available wouldbe to build your own, and this has neverbeen well documented over the years. Onemajor problem however has been theSpectrum I/O port which needs it's addresslines decoded to operate any add-ondevices.
1 Now, when you play the game again you canpress the Multiface button, press T fortoolkit, press SPACE and then type 60396and then 0 and ENTER. Press Q then R andre-start the game. You will find infinitemissiles.
1 Now, whatever you have done, reset yourcomputer and load up Tasword 2. Whenloaded, simply load up the file "MENU" viaTasword or from Basic.
1 Now, we continue. Last issue, you willremember an open letter from Johan Koningto Alchemist Research and Prism, and alsomy response to both Johan and to MartynSherwood.
1 Now, use the old buds to wipe between theholes across the keyboard. This sectiondoesn't play a major part in the keyboardoperation so old buds are fine to removethe grime.
1 Now, this is a bit tricky one. It changesthe variable YPOS. The new Y-Positioncomes straight after the texmark. Problemis that UNISCROLL can only indicatenumbers that aren't bigger than 9. To givecontroll over the whole screen Uniscrollinterprets the ASCII Code of the followingchar. A further problem was that onlychars in a ASCII Code range from 32 to 127can be shown or entered (At least inTasword). This would mean, that you wouldbe limited to a change of YPOS in therange from 32 to 127. To get around this,32 is subtracted from the ASCII Code(range changes from 0 to 95) and then thewhole thing is multiplicated with 2. So,nearly the full range (0 to 190) can beused with the limit that the change isachieved in steps of 2 (0,2,4,...).Example: "
1 Now, the fence post code is really aspecial case of the moreJ
1 Now, take your box. you should find it hastwo circular holes in the middle and twosquare holes at either side. With ascrewdriver or a file, gently open up thesqaure hole so that the cable will fitthrough it.
1 Now, say for example you're talking toyour group member, what do you talkabout??? There's lots of things... Like,well, you could comment on how dark it isat night, or how Yellow the Sun is,something like that. Or you could take theeasy way out, and completely slagg offyour group member. This is exactly what meand Dok do all the time. Say Dok says-"Orson, you're crap." I would say, "No, Ithink you're wrong."
1 Now, move through the options until youcome to UNLOCK HELP - select "Y".K
1 Now, get a cotton bud and impregnate itwith the cleaner. Gently give a tiny wipedown each hole. You may have to use a newcotton bud after each row but don'tdiscard the old ones. Sit them on thecloth for a while.
1 Now, first of all I must admit that Iwasn't looking formward to this article,but once I got started I soon realised itwas simple. Secondly, I must thank all ofyou who have passed on compliments to me.
1 Now you can edit the menu as if it wereyour own text file. I recommend that youturn OFF Wordwrap, Insert and RightJustify options. If you were editing theend of a line and made a mistake, youwould find all your menu re-justified andmessed up!
1 Now where did I put that disk to write thearticle to...?8
1 Now try, CAT 1. The TEST disk should nownot work at all.:
1 Now load the POWERPRINT II tape. Whenloading is complete, BREAK and save theprogram onto your cartridge thus:-v
1 Now I missed most of this 'weird' themenight, but one program I did catch was -THE X FILES!. This particular episode wasbeing shown at 11 o'clock at night,because it was to 'disturbing' to be shownin it's normal 9pm slot.
1 Note, the serial-parallel
1 Note that we are only wiring one LED atthe moment. This is because I haven't hadtime to wire up the second and work outhow to operate it.
1 Note that the top 6 of these only affectthe current window.=
1 Note that how the line is drawn, dependson the editing status, shown in the topright hand corner of the EDIT menu. If thecurrent status is Toggle, then all 'set'pixels that the line passes through, willbe reset, and all 'unset' ones will beset. Simple really. If it is Set then allthe pixels will be set, and if it is Resetthen all will be reset. You can continueto draw lines until another option isselected from the EDIT menu.
1 Note first, however, that the screen issplit up into three different sections orwindows. SEE WINDOWS. Window zero displaysuser input and error messages; window onedisplays automatic listings; window twodisplays all output produced by basiccommands; and window three is used by thefront panel. Note too that a second cursormay be used to copy text from another partof the screen to the 'input' cursor. Thiscursor appears as a flashing square onscreen and can be moved around the currentwindow via pre-defined control keys. The'copy' cursor will only function inwindows zero, one and two.
1 Not to be outdone, Mr Benson, a greaterself publicist than Richard Branson, hasincluded some of his other beautifullydesigned fonts on the loading screen ofthe game, plugging that they are availablefrom Alchemist Research, a well knownPublic Domain library.
1 Not strictly a computer related magazine,but an excellent read! They also promiseto do "Your Thingclair" but we've yet tosee a copy!
1 North Deighton
1 No software is needed at all to transfer aprogram, thats the beauty of it! I loadeda program into my +3 and typed LOAD "" onmy +2. A simple SAVE "t:": SAVE "prog"saved the file from the +3 into the +2.
1 No seriously, there I am on a HNDComputing course, looking at the computingsection of the library, and here arehundreds of books, on everything from JSPA.I., Prolog, to PHd computing for sadists, er sorry, software engineers.
1 Next up is Match Point, a tennis gamewhich was released in 1984. It has simplegraphics but runs quite fast and the ballcontrol is quite accurate. There is a twoplayer option
1 Next there is a block of 8 numbers, thisis in fact four pairs that define theposition and size of the window, they workon the ordinary spectrum character screenof 32 by 24 lines.
1 Next issue we'll give a full feature ofthe keypad devices along with articles onusing it. In the meantime, I hope thislittle device is of some use to you.
1 Next issue : AlchNews 16, June 1995$
1 Next Service: PD Catalogue 9, July 1995'
1 Next is the excellent CRASHED. An A4magazine, costs only `1 and is ofexcellent quality. It covers the Sam andSpectrum in a lighthearted way but withoutthe sillyness of YS and the like. Itfeatures a great editorial, lots of news,reviews and more reviews and a technicalarea, contributed by our very own editor.
1 Neil Thompson
1 Needless to say, we will be pressing for aretraction of the article and an apologyto the team which can be published inAlchNews, which is the source of news anddistribution for the group.
1 Needless to say, I apologise to Robert,Patrick and to Martyn Sherwood for thismix up. Patrick has made it clear that hedoes not wish to be associated with PrismPD in any way whatsoever.
1 Nearly everyone who has a bank account nowhas a card which enables them money to bewithdrawn from a 'hole in the wall'machine. The card has it's own code.Likewise, each cheque has codes writtenalong it's bottom edge, related to thebranch, account and cheque number.
1 NOW! press ENTER and the program will nowbe saved to the disk and will PRINT out(assuming that you have a compatibleprinter, I use a CITIZEN 120D). To PRINTjust
1 NOTTINGHAM
1 NOTE: PRIOR TO USING THE PRINT COMMAND,THE WINDOW MUST BE AT LEAST AS WIDE ASYOUR TEXT-LINE, CHECK THIS WITH THE BLUESTRIP SUPERIMPOSED ON THE UNDER- SCREENDISPLAY.
1 NOTE: No keywords. doubles such as =), orcontrols such as INV VIDEO.E
1 NORMAL SIZED TEXT
1 NO THANKS: Prism PD
1 NEXTCH-33287 (8): This one defines afterhow many scrolls a new char shall appear.As the charset has a wide of 8 pixels/bitsit is set to 8. By increasing NEXTCH to 9you can use the full width of the charsetwithout the need to leave a gap toseperate the char to the next one. Ifusing the ROM-Charset you can easilychange NEXTCH to 7 as Sinclair left twogaps in the charset. Or if you want to usethe Tasword charset you can set NEXTCH to4. It is important that the "emptybits/pixels" always are on the right sideof a char!
1 NEW SPECTRUM SOURCES
1 NEW HARDWARE APPEARS ONCE AGAIN!
1 NEW BOTTOM RANGE STAR PRINTER
1 N-12 CPI (ELITE)
1 My other RSS game was described as "a realtime graphic adventure among the LostColumns of Atlantis". Have you guessedwhat it is yet? Yep, "Devils of the Deep".It is old, but unfortunately, and like"Transylvanian Tower", this game takes along time generating the seabed. Anyway,when you begin the game, your character (asmall diver) is on the sea floor. You haveall sorts of time/oxygen limits andthings. Your task, I think, is to findburied treasure. The objects you may findare a harpoon gun (to shoot the Devils ofthe Deep: giant eels), a spade, harpoonsand other paraphernalia. Your character isable to run (although this drains energy)and hide behind columns, should a nastysea-creature approach.
1 My final 1982 game for this month is alaughable attempt at a game by RichardShepherd Software. For those going "Eh?Who?", RS Soft was a company specialisingin adventure games and simulation typethingies. This "game" is appallingly slow- about the speed of an engineless Skoda.When it's first loaded, it takes 2 minutesto generate a maze! To add to that, thegame's no good either! Simple graphics andrubbish sound combine to create a gamewhich is a lot of fun... to kick aroundyour office! This may be a collectablepiece of software but not one that you'dactually play!
1 Must be preceeded with either < or ^$
1 Multi-systems
1 Mr V. Bishop
1 Mr Staniford
1 Mr Sherwood was soon to come crying for apublic apology when he was wronged, let'ssee how forthcoming he is when the boot ison the other foot!
1 Mr J. Thomson
1 Mr F. Ridout
1 Moving onto the 'SPRINT_' command, it'snow possible to print characters on screenin any size required. The command takesthe form: SPRINT_x,y,a,b,a$ Where x and ymark the pixel position of the firstcharacter to be printed; a is the numberof times the characters are to bemagnified in the x direction; b the numberof times in the y direction; and a$ thecharacters to be printed. SPRINT and otherYSMB commands take the screen origin to bethe top left-hand corner of the screen.
1 More information on PRINTERS and EXTRACHARACTER SETS in a later issue ofALCHNEWS.]
1 More experiments next month. Meanwhile,enjoy Lloyds construction article on theunit.Y
1 Monika & Wolfgang Haller
1 Mind you, it was a nice change to see theIrish being portrayed as villains for onceinstead of the English!.l
1 Miles Kinloch.
1 Miles Kinloch and Mark Harris havepreviously pointed out that it seems MrSherwood doesn't read his mail and thisproves true if his numbering goes likethis on two occasions and he also hascompletely ignored my first apologyrelating to the United Minds name mix up.
1 May I re-assure Thomas that this is not anisolated incident and no matter how goodand beneficial his club is to theSpectrum, he'll only get a feature if hepays for it. Alchemist Research sufferedthe exact same scenario. We don't chargeanything, offer free advice and software,but nothing except a price list ofadvertising.
1 Matt Beal, Fish
1 Martyn, if you really want an end to thisagro LIKE YOU SAY YOU DO, then all youhave to do is ANSWER YOUR MAIL! It's OKthough if you don't, I will just assumeyou don't give a damn about any truce.Either way, this subject WILL be sortedout by the next issue of AlchNews. Youeither answer your mail and talk about it,or you ignore your mail again and we allknow you don't want a truce. Simple asthat really! It's no good giving anybodythe silent treatment or thinking that the"olive branch" Andy is offering you isbeneath your contempt. Both you and Andyhave a go at each other in your respectivefanzines, and these are distributed tomembers of the public, like me. Therefore,if a member of the public decides to talkto you about it, really, you shouldanswer. YOU HAVE MY ADDRESS MARTYN, MYNAME IS LLOYD GARLAND! By debating yourgrievences in public, you have both madethe whole issue a matter for public debate(as was so rightly pointed out by acollegue of mi
1 Mark Sturdy, Crashed
1 Many of you write great letters praisingthe work Alchemist Research provides. But,half of it is not possible without thesupport and work you provide.
1 Many of you who have taken advantage ofour Romantic Robot offer of discountMultifaces may now have a copy ofLIFEGUARD but not much advice on how touse it.
1 Many other Spectrum companies may betut-tutting at this service and wonderingwhy we may be venturing out like this butit's just another example of our Spectrumdedication and, most importantly, ourTRUST of you, the user.
1 Many of youhave told me that theoverlining function fails to work on theLC-100.[
1 Malcolm Gent, MGPD
1 Malcolm Gent
1 Make sure you use CLEAR to lower RAMTOPone address BEFORE the address you want topoke your text (eg):h
1 Make sure you leave the CAPS SHIFT, ENTERand SPACE BAR on the computer. They havetiny latches on them and shouldn't bemessed with. Don't worry about mixing upthe keys too much as theres a layout inyour manual. However, keeping them inorder will make replacing swifter.
1 MY TOP 5 GAMES
1 MULTIPLICATION CODES
1 MULTIBASIC consists of a short routine of310 bytes, which, via the +D, adds newcommands to BASIC for accessing Multifacememory. These let you POKE and PEEK itjust as easily as you could normalSpectrum memory, move blocks of code inand out of its RAM, and execute any codeinstalled there. Apart from the obviousconvenience, it also unlocks the door forpeople who might want to use the devicefor storage, but are perhaps put off bythe need to do it from machine code.
1 MULTIBASIC AND THE USE OF MULTIFACE RAM'
1 MS Oddball- Program to translate betweenPC and +3 formats;
1 MS Oddball
1 MORSE CODE
1 MORE SMALLS
1 MORE CLOSEDOWNS PREVAIL
1 MODIFYING THE CHARACTER SET
1 MODIFYING TASWORD 128
1 MODIFYING PRINTER GRAPHICS CONTROL"
1 MODE_n,4 Calls the double height, doublewidth char set8
1 MODE_n,3 Calls the double height char set)
1 MODE_n,2 Calls the standard char set$
1 MODE_n,1 Calls up the 64 column char set(
1 MODE COM1: 9600,8,N,2
1 MISSING TITLES: Should we not be able tocomplete your order becuase of one or twofiles, we'll add twice as many secondchoices you add.
1 MINUTES before the deadline, Des!
1 MILTON KEYNES
1 MGPD, United Kingdom
1 METHOD TWO - Via Tasword Two
1 METHOD ONE - INBULT
1 MB02 will be available in March and theonly official place to get it is SINTECH!S
1 MB02 contains 128k sideways RAM (like aRamdisk) and runs from a 3v supply. with a3 year "memory".d
1 M-10 CPI (PICA)
1 Lots, some of which I'm not too sure of,still here are the easy bits first.M
1 Lots, Lots, and even more Lots of:"
1 Looking at the circuit, it appeard that itis configured for a DS DD drive, enablingyou to get 720k from 3.5" disks.t
1 Logically none of these chars should beused as normal text, as UNISCROLL alwaysinterprets them as textmarksv
1 Locations of the menu are slightlydifferent.4
1 Load up Tasword 128 as normal, then press"B" to return to Basic.A
1 Lloyd gives his feelings.
1 Lloyd came up with the idea of making atiny amp which was inbetween theSpectrums, amplifying the signal. Not onlythis but he also put a speaker in the boxso you could amplify the music from yourgames or have sound and avoid the nasty TVbuzz from the +3!
1 Lloyd Garland was telling me of a greatfeature in MS-DOS for the PC which allowsyou to save an entire compressed disk intoa small space of the hard drive. Then,should you suffer a fault, you canuncompress this file and have normality.
1 Lloyd has been active with Spectrumsduring their entire course and has a greatextent of knowledge of the computer, the+3 in particular and just recently theMicrodrive. He also works with his PC andAmiga but assures me that they arestrictly secondary systems!
1 Lines When you click this nothing willseem to happen! You have now entered linesmode. Move the pointer cursor down intothe editing area and click it where youwish the line to start. Then move it towhere you want the end and click it. Aline will be drawn between the two points.Note that if no graphic codes have beeninserted then the line will then changeinto the text code equivalent. The graphicform can be retrieved by inserting escapecodes using the text option.
1 Line 70 This is the SAVE Editview option.You must also alter line 80.F
1 Line 50 Line 60 This is the CAT x etc line*
1 Line 40 These are the load options.#
1 Line 30 And this is the second.
1 Line 20 This is the first save to storageoption.1
1 Likewise, the input to the unit (IP) istaken to a small jack socket to allow easyconnection to the MIC socket.q
1 Like a lot of readers, I started atuniversity this past September. It washere that my epic quest beganq
1 Later, I asked him why he did that and hesaid it was the thrill of it. Thrill ofwhat? Looking at a bridge? Andy isparticularly interested in transport,enjoys driving, cycling, riding, sailingand even being a trainee pilot and I askedhim if he ever did the same when on oneform of transport or another:
1 Later Programming:
1 Last, and by no means least is 8 BIT. Runby Brian Watson, "8 BIT" aims to cover all8 bit computers. This worried me somewhatas the last 8 bit magazine I saw wasextremely <yawn> boring and struggled tomake any sort of impact. This, on theother hand, is far better and has highhopes of evolving into the 90's fanzineversion of "Your Computer". Rather thanjust having sections on each computer, itaims to culminate them all together withtheir compatability - perhaps withcommunications or CP/M. The editor is alsorunning a personal project of interest tous all - accessing EMAIL facillities froman 8 bit computer.
1 Last issue I prepared a ribbon price guidefor some large scale mail order firms.These companies usually deal with largescale orders, handing is usually free withorders over `25. Smaller items must incurrthe wrath!
1 Lancashire
1 LOAD *"m";1;"b"
1 LOAD "MENU" CODE 59648
1 LOAD "MENU" CODE 56640
1 LLOYD FOR KING? Well, no.2 then!
1 LIFEGUARD, the program most of!
1 LET a=a-1: REM you died, take off a life(
1 LET a=5: REM 5 lives
1 LD a,5 ; 5 lives
1 LD HL,FNAME
1 LD HL,32768 ; BUFFER BEGINS
1 LD DE,32769
1 LD DE,32768 ; BUFFER BEGINS
1 LD BC,3330
1 LD A,127 (Test space key)
1 LA LETTRE DU SPECTRUMANIC (French)"
1 LA LETTRE DU SPECTRUMANIAC, France"
1 Kobrahsoft.
1 Kobrahsoft
1 Kevin Gurd.
1 Kevin Gurd
1 Karen Moore
1 KOBRAHSOFT are suppliers of some of thebest software around for the Spectrum andSAM. Their biggest successes are the tapeto disk utilities, along with such +3applications like DICE, DB2 and so on.Send an SAE and a couple of stamps fortheir catalogue:
1 KOBRAHSOFT
1 KEYBOARD CLEANING
1 K lear screen - clears the screen."
1 Justin Thorpe
1 Just a quick note to plug a few things,'
1 Joyce Cook
1 John Wilson
1 John Westhead
1 John Thomson would would any games andutilities for the Amstrad CPC, Dragon 32,ZX81 and Vic 20. He is also on the lookoutfor cartridges for the Commodore 64. He isselling off some Spectrum and Dragon 32games if anyone is interested. Write:
1 John Stowe
1 John C. Blomley.
1 John Blomley
1 Johan Koning, SGG
1 Jethro Tull and Hawkwind for making greatmusic to type to.;
1 James Waddington
1 Jacksoft assembler or something similar A spectrum +37
1 JP NC,ERROR ; PUT THIS IN
1 JP NC,ERROR ; AGAIN, ONLY
1 JP C,MAIN (If not press, jump main)$
1 JIM LEESON, makes and sells printer cablesfor the +2a / +3 to any Centronics printerfor `10 including P&P.j
1 J-DOUBLE HEIGHT AND WIDTH
1 Its new, Its fresh, its here
1 It's very strange that none of us haveheard anything from his "friends". Lots ofyou have complained about Prism, whichhave been detailed in these articles. Yet,Mr Sherwood has been unable to do thesame. I have also yet to recieve oneletter of complaint from anyone about thematter.
1 It's up to you, after all, it's YOURspectrum, it's your life.C
1 It's possible, pixel by pixel, to scrollthe current window and uses the command'PAN_' (scrolls a window sideways) and'SCROLL_' (scrolls vertically). Bothcommands must be followed by two numbers.The first indicates whether the edge ofthe window should be filled with INK orPAPER; if it's a one then the edge isfilled with INK - zero fills with PAPER.The second number shows in what directionand by how many pixels, the window shouldbe scrolled. With 'PAN_' if the secondnumber is positive then the window isscrolled left to right. With 'SCROLL_' ifthe number is positive the window scrollsup.
1 It's possible to program the top row ofkeys to produce strings of up to 255characters. To program a user defined key,you use the 'KEY_' command, followed by anumeric expression and a string expression(seperated by a comma). The numericexpression defines which key is to beprogrammed, and the string expressionprovide the means. Placing an 'ENTER'character (CHR$ 13) at the end of thestring will enable the key to executeitself automatically. YSMB already has twofunctions defined: VERIFY: Comprising thestring 'RUN+CHR$ 13', runs current programin memory. VAL$: Comprising the string'LOAD"":RUN+CHR$ 13', loads and then runsthe next program on tape.
1 It's now possible to store a portion ofthe screen in memory and then put it backon screen in a different position. The twocommands used are 'GET_' and 'PUT_'.'GET_' takes the form: GET_0,a,y,x,d,w.Where a is the address at which to startstoring the screen information; y is theline number of the top left hand corner ofthe area to be saved; x is the columnnumber; d is the depth of the area(measured in standard character blocks);and w is the width.
1 It's early February and my Spectrum nowboasts two new pieces of hardware. No,they are not second hand devices from thegolden age of Spectrum; they were made alittle over three weeks ago and I wouldlike to think they are the prototypes andfirst ones in use anywhere!
1 It's doubtful you've use DEC SP since thattakes one from the Stack Pointer, animportant register which deals with thecalculator stack.
1 It's best to start in the bottom left ofthe keyboard, with@
1 It's also possible to make the contents ofa window wrap around. This is done using'PANW_' and 'SCROLLW_'. These 2 commandsare followed by a single number,specifying the direction and number ofpixels to be scrolled. The 'FX_' commandis used to control the way the YSMB systemoperates, and a number of 'FX' calls havebeen set aside to control choice ofwindows for particular tasks. The 'FX'command is followed by 2 numbers, thefirst being the call required and thesecond providing any data which the callin question may need.
1 It's a real pain to be honest, as the bestdisk sector editor program around is alsoproduced bya
1 It's now possible, for instance, toconfine output to a particular area of thescreen; this area can be any size and caneven cover the whole screen. These areasare referred to as 'Windows'; each windowhaving a number (up to ten numbered from0-9, although windows 0-3 are always usedby the system). All PRINT statements usewindow 2 automatically. It is possible toswitch to another window using the command'CURRENT_'. The command word is followedby a single numeric expression. It's alsopossible using 'CURRENT_' to manipulatethree windows at once, switching betweeneach in turn. As mentioned earlier, awindow can be any size and take up anyposition on screen using the 'WINDOW_'command and takes the form: WINDOW_y,x,d,wWhere y (the line position of the topleft-hand corner of window y) can be from0-23; x (the column position of the topleft corner of window x) can be from 0-63;d is the depth of window in char lines;and w is the width in char columns. AsYSMB incorpora
1 It worked again, no problems at all. Thevolume was set at exactly 50% and I havehad a 100% success rate with all filestransferred - no need to alter the volumeone bit.
1 It was in early January of 1995 that JoyceCook of Spectrum Software Hire informed methat Mr Sherwood had written to her andtold her of some "concerted action to putan end to Mr Davis's activities", one aidein this would be her old friend DarrenRandle.
1 It is early, as I am mindfull of theGerman exchange students throwing theircoats over the terminal operator chairs at7.00 in the morning
1 It is also easy to install, so that itcomes up each time you run CP/M, just bycopying a FID (Field Installable Device)file to your startup disk. However, toperform the task of intercepting the bleepand playing it's own sound, It must gointo memory, and set up an interruptpointing to itself. This means that thereis less memory available for otherprograms. The programs supplied are easyto use though, and there is a programsupplied to make your own bleeps, eitherusing your own AY chip machine coderoutine, or telling the program notes toplay. It does make CP/M a bit more noisyanyway. The problem is that I have nevercome across an occasion when CP/M bleepsanyway.
1 It is also dependant upon the editingstatus.1
1 It didn't work, address was 56867!
1 It didn't work, address was 42164!
1 It didn't work, address poked was 41696. Try again.4
1 It comes out every month(ish) and costsonly `1. It's in A4 format and is a great,easy read with no wildly stupid, unfunnyhumour. Buy a copy now and get 20 freecredits to APD!
1 It appears he'd have me print any oldstatement just so he can smile and say hegot an apology. This is the behaviour of achild, stubborn until their own way isachieved. And I shall certainly not statethat I was misled unless I recievethorough proof that I was!
1 It has the ability to repair anymagnetically damaged areas of your diskwithout the need to format it and lose allfiles on it. But please note, it cannotrepair PHYSICALLY damaged disks (ie: bent)nor can it bring programs which were onthe damaged sectors back to life.
1 Invincible Island, we are informed, is theprimitive ancestral home of the mysteriousXaro tribe`
1 Interface 1'2 RS232 ports in!
1 Instead of simply viewing your textfile,you could of course POKE the data intomemory; simply change line 30 of theprogram to read:
1 Insert plug into socket and turn on, youshould find the light is lit. Hooray, younow have another "ON" light!p
1 Incidentally, in 128 mode, POKEing23728/23729 doesn't help, as the 128Kshadow ROM doesn't contain any NMI routineat all - not even a bugged one! A call to102 in it will inevitably spell disaster.
1 In this, the first of two articles, I willexplain how to get files from a PC to aSpectrum via the Interface 1.q
1 In the library are a few sounds, whichhave the extension BEL, and there is aprogram to play the sound file for you soyou can choose the one you want to replacethe bleep with. The files are mostly PCWones, and don't sound right, but theprogram warns you if this is the case.There are a couple for the speccy however,and these use the AY soundchip.
1 In the Star Users Club this issue you'llfind details of customising Tasword helpmenus, otherwise tune in next month for aguide on converting Apple IIe textfiles toTasword.
1 In one last attempt to win the finalbattle, it has been decided that you (yesyou) should undertake a secret mission toyour enemies homeworld. Once there, youmust destroy the enemies fortress. If youare successful, your enemies will bedefeated, forever.
1 In machine code, it may be something like:*
1 In issue 10 you will recall Lloyd Garlandexplained the differences of the Taswordwordprocessors. Now, almost all of us ownat least one of them. If not then GETTHEM! Out of all Spectrum text editors, Idon't think there is one finer thanTasword. It's fast, versatile and full ofwonderful features. Text written on any ofthem are easily transportable betweentheir sisters.
1 In either even it will be necessary tocount the letter frequencies in themessage. This is both time consuming andsuseceptible to error. The frequencydistribution program given below comes inuseful here. All you need to do is type inyour text and when you've finished, thecomputer displays the complete letterfrequency count.
1 In conclusion, I have to say that thisgame is brilliant, get it now!.I
1 In brackets you'll find the values of thevariables after loading UNISCROLL. Theseare standard values which of course can bechanged (That's the point of variables,n'est pas?).
1 In MC this would have been:
1 In use, you simply connect the unitbetween the two computers, save files onone machine, and simultaniously load thefile on the other machine. Once loaded,the file can then be saved in the normalway to tape, Microdrive, +3 or +D disk.All this sounds pretty useless really, butremember that you can load your file infrom Microdrive on one computer, save itto the other machine, and then save to a+D disk. How else would you transferfiles from a Microdrive to a +D disk soeasily?
1 In the latest SPC magazine there aredetails of a floppy disk interface for theSpectrum +2a. Although I've not fullytranslated the article it appears to be adirect replacement for the Amstrad FD-1 -the interface which allowed the +2a to usedisk drives.
1 In his letter, he also seems to bedictating all the terms, but unwilling toaccept any for himself. I quote:t
1 In general it is possible to driveUNISCROLL from Basic, but if possibleBasic should be compiled with a compileras the time loss would be actually high.It is of course the best if you driveUNISCROLL from MC. I didn't include aninterrupt driver in UNISCROLL (this wouldhave get around the time problem in Basic)to leave you free to generate your owninterrupt and add your own routines.
1 If your programs are of marketable qualityand you would like to make a few pencefrom it, add it to our small but qualitycollection of software.
1 If your printer is a ZX printer, Alphacom32, Floyd 40, Timex 2040, or any similarnon-interface printer that can produce ahigh-resolution screen copy using the wordCOPY (without any prior initialisationproceedure) then you can proceed directlyto use POWERPRINT II. Users of otherprinters are advised to first read theparagraph at the end of these instructionsheaded SETTING UP YOUR PRINTER.
1 If you've ever wanted a display like thatof the Sinclair QL, then enter and runthis short program:g
1 If you've built our "hey you" device aspreviewed in issue 13 you could even usethis. Issue 16 will contain fullconstruction details and offers of readybuilt devices.
1 If you've selected the code pages andcharacter sets as I have, you will need tomodify Tasword to print out hash and poundsigns. To do this, select "CUSTOMISENORMAL CHARACTER SET" and then press:
1 If you've ever experienced the fun ofplaying a one-armed bandit in a pub oramusement arcade, then you'll have aflavour of what this game is like. Theonly difference, of course, is that youcan play the computer simulation as longas you like, and it won't cost you a penny(though, by the same token, you won'tstand to make a mint out of it either...)
1 If you'd like to use some of the fancygraphics characters your printer canoffer, select this option from theCUSTOMISE menu as before and type:
1 If you'd like to do a brief tutorial onyour favourite program, old or new, PD ornot, send it in and we'll extend yoursubscription for an extra three months.
1 If you want to see the effect of OUT 63,try loading one of the MULTIBASIC demos,and run it first with the Multifaceenabled. N ow type OUT 63,0 and run itagain: this time you'll be greeted withthe tell-tale 'Invalid DEVICE' error.
1 If you use Tasword 128 or Tasword +2, oreven Tasword +3 for that matter, thenyou'll enjoy the extra printer commandfeatures you can tailor to yourself,thanks to the full use of the graphicscharacters.
1 If you look at the keyboard, you will seemany little holes which the keys sat onand the key spring went into. If theresdust in there gently remove it withtweezers. Get all the large bits of dustoff the keyboard with the same method.
1 If you have POWERPRINT II on cassette typeLOAD"".1
1 If you don't compress them, you could addthe following line to show har long youhave to wait:a
1 If you do get to the next stage, it willcheck the sectors. Note, it will onlycheck 39, not 40, 41 or 42 as created byany high capacity formatters.
1 If you are satisfied, return to the mainmenu and select SAVE TASWORD option.N
1 If you are not happy, press EXT then X toerase the text and start again from thebeginning.^
1 If you don't have Microsofts DINOSAURSCD-ROM, then this is the next best thing!.T
1 If we all go around with our heads in thesand, nothing would improve and we'd getstung by dodgy software houses (etc) allthe time. If you simply don't care how youget treated by other "user groups", thengo ahead and use them, but don't moanabout it if you get ripped off or have towait a month for your software to arrive.The reason for public slaggings is becausehow else does anything get sorted out whenpeople refuse to answer mail (and no, I amNOT reffering to Prism here). When theonly way to warn potential customers of adodgy company is to expose them, then Andydoes it, without fear so that YOU don'tstung, and for no other reason.
1 If we look at the first line in theprogram , (if it is not the same as inyour copy demo alter it to this, it worksnicely!)
1 If this is starting to look complicated,then one alternative could be to tapethe+5v supply from the I/O port because onlya few milliamps are required, this wouldthen leave the +12v. Maplins supplyregulated power packs which when set to+12v would eliminate the construction ofthe power supply unit. However, these areexpensive, and it still remains to powerthe model...?
1 If this is defaulted in any way, which canclearly be proved since your personalcomments and tricks have been exposedseveral times before, then the defaulterCLOSES DOWN THEIR ORGANISATION COMPLETELY.
1 If theres anyone not listed, LET US KNOW!We can't keep asking you if you want afree plug! You'll notice one or twoservices missing this issue. This isbecause they have closed down or are nolonger in the Spectrum readers interest.
1 If on M/drive cartridge type the keywordRUN..
1 If on Disc-drive then you know how toload!.0
1 If it doesn't work, deliberately end thegame and start it again. Press theMulitface button and then press "N" againto move to the next poke in the series.You will see the counter has moved up oneand the address in the right hand cornerof the last poke tried.
1 If anything, I think this whole businesshas taught Mr Sherwood a lesson andperhaps improved Prism, although I haveseen no proof.
1 If any of you thought the Alchemist PDcatalogue was huge, then you haven't seenthe one from SOFTk
1 If any of you doubt my words, then atleast consider this. WHY would I lie?There are quite a few of us AlchNewswriters out here, and all of us only dowhat we do so that you people who read itcan get the most out of your computer.This really is the only motivation weneed!
1 If any of you would like to write toLloyd, please pass on your mail to thenormal AlchNews address and it shall beforwarded. Those of you who know his homeaddress carry on using that by all means.
1 If WIDTH and XPOS are left to standardvalues UNISCROLL leaves a gap of one charon the left and right side of thescroller. This enables you to shape theedges with some nice patterns or whateveryou want.
1 If Spectrum UK took over AR, then whowould be the top man? The big boss manwould be whoever runs SUK now, or a personchosen by them almost certainly. Eitherway I look at it, I can't see this as amisunderstanding. It looks like
1 If I, and any other editors for thatmatter, were to receive any criticism, nomatter how slight or serious, I would beexpected to act positively on it and thankthe author for their advice.
1 If your disk was damaged, then thisprogram would clear the catalogue tracks:S
1 If you've ever messed with a Basicprogram, and found the "LET a=a-1" orsimilar, you could just simply remove theline altogether so it doesn't take off alife. This is what the Multiface does.If you used a disassembler to find thecommand, you could even change it to INC ato GIVE you a life when you died!
1 If you want to edit the ENTIRE menusystem, type the following:E
1 If you have any further difficulties,please don't hesatate to get in touch.Next month we'll take an in depth look atthe GENIE disassembler, possibly the bestdisassembler available.
1 If you have any experience with theSpectrum, no matter what, and would liketo share it - it's always welcome atAlchNews. We accept articles on anyformat, although a wordprocessor textfilefrom either a PC disk or any Spectrummedia is preferred.
1 IT'S THAT EASY! just follow the simple1-2-3 instruction as follows:-H
1 IT WORKS! Press the button to see whataddress was poked. In this case it was60396. Write it down!i
1 INVERSE VIDEO: Deletes the character tothe right of the cursor.B
1 INVERSE : Resets 'copy' cursor to top leftof current window.<
1 INSTRUCTION HEX
1 INPUT Software Library
1 INIT=33297: Initializes UNISCROLL by doingthe following operations:C
1 INIT needs the variables TEXT, HEIGHT,CLSPAT and WIDTH when initializing. Ifthey aren't left with the standard valuesthey have to be changed BEFORE callingINIT!! A change of these variables aftercalling INIT doesn't show any effect orleads to rubbish! If using PRINT USR INITthe last address used by UNISCROLL isshown. If you use MC the address is givenin the register BC. (Important if you wantto place MC or data after UNISCROLL)
1 IN A,(254)
1 II,STATISTICS II, PROJECTOR 1 and SPECFILE+.,
1 IC1 TBA 820M
1 I've seen this problem four times in twoyears of +D operations, two by myself andtwo by APD customers. Almost every diskrelated book, magazine and document tellsyou to backup your disks, but it's notalways so cheap and convenient, especiallyif you are constantly updating your disks.
1 I've just heard that a french companycalled 'Poissons d'avril industries' arebuying up the rights to make Z80processors. However, the processors willnot just be any old thing, they are goingto remake them in a new type of material,which will allow the processor to run atthe speed of 33 Megahertz. Consideringthat the normal Z80 runs at 3.5 Megahertzthis is a fair step up from the spectrum,but all of the existing code will work,but faster. So why not build a spectrumout of it, I hear you cry...
1 I've asked Lloyd about the possibility ofa "true tape interface" for the Spectrum+3. A small box would plug into the +3tape port and give you a proper designedport - seperate EAR and MIC ports! Intheory it is very simple and possible tomake and would be extremely practical. +3tape leads are not easily available andplugging the wrong plug of the lead intothe wrong socket can severely damage thecircuitry.
1 I've been to Sheffield to visit AndyDavis, as long time readers of Andy's workwould know. I've seen for myself theamount of work the man puts into AlchemistResearch, I've seen him struggle to getthe PD orders out on time. I've seen himrun around answering the phone, and I'veseen him frantically search through filesto find the answer to some question oranother on behalf of an AlchNews reader. Ican personally vouch for the amount ofwork Andy puts into Alchemist Research onbehalf of YOU, readers of AlchNews, usersof Alchemist Research PD material andfellow Spectrum users.
1 I'm sure you'll all welcome Lloyd aboardofficially with open arms who I am surewill further enhance the work AlchNewsprovides to the Spectrum community.
1 I'm not sure of any facillities availableto do the same for the +D which couldcompress the entire disk, the only choiceis the snapshot option which takes morespace than an uncompressed file would!Perhaps some enterprising +D programmer(cough cough Miles Kinloch cough!) couldcome up with something to compress a disk,even if it's only by 50% we could put twocompressed disks onto one.
1 I'm afraid, I must admit that I have notused my copy a great deal, due to varyingdegrees of success.g
1 I'm a little more lucky as my second driveis a 5.25" which is more flexible andcheaper than the 3.5", so I can backup allthe time as I have lots of these disks!
1 I'll be writing to the designer of thecircuit shortly and passing him some ofour +3 utilties, more details will be inthe next issue.
1 I'd very much like to hear your comments.Where is it going to all end? Will peoplebecome recluses choosing to live acomputer generated life? One things forsure, I think we can safely say that itwon't happen on a Spectrum (can you imageliving in a house created by 3DCK - itwould be like something E.M. Escher woulddraw on a particularly bad day!)
1 I'd never be able to write a chess gamemyself. Having to work out all those rulesin machine code, especially tricky oneslike castling, would be well nighimpossible, and how on earth do peoplemanage to make the computer find the bestmove?! It's very humiliating when theSpeccy beats you; you just have to go outof the room and get a sledgehammer!
1 I'd like to thank all of you for youroverwhelming support on the matter. Yourletters have provided me with a great dealof information and proof that Prism is notas perfect as he tries to make out. Noorganisation is perfect and we all have toaccept problems and mistakes but whenpeoples complaints are dismissed then it'sboiling down to poor management. It's thecustomer who is always right. They arepaying for a service and can take actionif they don't get it.
1 I'd like to hear of your settings and howyou find them comfortable. A printer'ssetup is very much a personal thing andcan differ greatly between one user andanother. This can sometimes cause someproblems, like with the printing ofsymbols, but can soon be amended thanks tothe forward thinking of programmers likeTasman Software.
1 I wrote to Spectrum UK asking why this wasand also why they had lied aboutsolicitors and that I hoped this situationcould be sorted out. I also sent them acopy of AlchNews 14 and the latest PDcatalogue.
1 I was watching a program the other eveningon Channel Four appertaining to virtualreality and the computer world in generaland how it is making a "better society"for us all. No doubt you've seen the manyMicrosoft and IBM ads recently. (OS2 Warpmay be tremendous but will it cook yourdinner?)
1 I was surprised to hear in January thisyear that someone found a copy of AlchNews9 from an Internet site in CHILE! It seemsthat ALchNews has also been seen inseveral other locations worldwide - Ithank anyone who is reading up loaded themfor me!
1 I was recently informed by a friend thatafter I passed the complaints aboutSpectrum UK to them, they claimed theywould be passed to their solicitors.However, it has come to light that suchaction wasn't taken. Instead, they wroteto these people ATTACKING THEM for theircomments and then ignored their follow-upletters.
1 I was going to suggest operating a ribbonsupply service but Office World, my localstationery supplier, have just raised theprices to almost a fiver, from `3.51!Colour ribbons haven't escaped either.Once at `7, they are now almost `12!
1 I was going to do 1983 next but I have toomany games from 1983 to cover them all andI can't be bothered to sort them out.Also,I've been converting games to +D disc andI don't know which games in the cardboardboxes are from which year and by whichsoftware house. You get the general idea.
1 I told Darren who considered this slightlyamusing! But, it appeared to do the trick.He said Mr Sherwood had drafted a letter.Why did it take this though to prompt aresponse.
1 I thought that because the PC 720K diskhas 9 sectors per track, 80 tracks and 2heads it might be worthwhile trying to usethe MS DOS Diskcopy command (a straightDisk to disk copier for the PC). So I typein Diskcopy A: B:.. Will it work? Afterthirty seconds of rattles and grunts, itfinally prints on the screen 'Copying 80tracks'
1 I though I'd follow it up by just goingover the basics once again and a new tipwhich seems to improve the keyboardresponse. This article caters for theAmstrad Spectrum +2, +3 and +2a, the oneswith built in tape or disk systems.
1 I think the only way to end it all is toignore these questions and just try andforget it. He's asked for an apology andhe's got one. He's promised a silence andpromptly broke it. As far as I amconcerned, this is the very last in thePrism Problems series. I am prepared toturn a blind eye to his activities in thelast five months in the hope that it willend the matter forever.
1 I think that's it for this month. If youhave any questions, just pass them toAndy, and He will pass them on to me nexttime he writes to me. Thanks forreading...
1 I think that covers everything. Shouldyou have any further comments orguidelines to offer then please let usknow and we'll cover it next issue.
1 I telephoned Darren and he informed methat this "concerted action" was nothingmore than a personal letter from Darren tomyself "appealing to my better nature" toapoligise.
1 I still have some games left for sale, 10pand 25p each + a COMCOM programmablejoystick I/face, my address <oh no notagain...ED> as ever is,
1 I plugged the long cable into the OUTPUTsocket of the amp and the other end intomy EAR socket of my +2 (remember, I'vemodified my +2 to use an external tapedeck).
1 I notice that Andy was referred to as "areal friend" by some top brass bloke inSUK. Well, that can't be the truth! If itwas, why are they not seeing Andy's offerof help for what it is, rather than forwhat they want it to be. Why think theworse of a "real friend"?
1 I must say that as I loaded this one I didnot think it would work, as I had triedthe previous version to no avail. However,this was very easy to use, and had soontransferred a test file from the PC to the+3. This program works by taking a CP/M720K disk and Changing some parts of itinto an 'Oddball' format which can beread, and more importantly written to bythe PC. It can then be transferred backagain, and read,written to etc. by the +3or indeed, any CP/M 3.5" machine. It worksby changing the whole disk from one formatto the other, instead of just copyingfiles. This is useful, because unless yourPC has a 3" disk drive, you will becopying the files 180K at a time, andcopying files bigger than that will beimpossible, and you have to consider suchoptions as serial transfer of files, whichseems to be a bit over the top. Taswordfile transfer was the order of the day,and although the headers had to bestripped off Tasword 2 files beforetransfer for
1 I must admit, I wasn't greatly impressedby the device, as it only ran at tapespeeds but once I tried it, I found ithard to stop using it!
1 I much prefer this method as I feel I havemore 'control' over what I do. You willneed a copy of Tasword2 or converterprograms to convert Tasword 2 textfiles toTasword 128. But, this latter reason ispointless as you'll only be doing the sameas method one!
1 I may not have the other Horace games, butI do have all sorts of Psion bits andpieces, some of them more classic-ish thanothers. The first game on my shelf byPsion is a racing game called ChequeredFlag. I must say that racing games aren'tmy cup of beer (I don't like tea), and theonly two I've ever enjoyed playing arePole Position, a nice colourful one, and agame on someone else's Megadrive (sorryabout that). Chequered Flag is quite wellpresented and plays at a good speed. Thegraphics suit the game, with lots oftwists and forks in the road (but noknives, ha ha) and a car which, if not aFerrari, looks distinctly racing-ish.Unfortunately, this is one of those gameswhere the programmers have seen fit toinclude an array of nasty engine noises.On the 48k, this sort of sound alwayscomes out far too loud, as in ChequeredFlag. Silence would probably be lessexciting, but they could have stuck toskidding noises.
1 I know I said I had lots of Psion gamesbut they've all gone missing! Honestly, Ithink I have copied lots of them onto discand put the originals up into the attic!Ah, here's another one; it's theimaginatively titled "Chess". I won'texplain the rules because I assume youreaders are educated, but basically youraim is to trap the opponent's king byputting it into check (ie you can take iton the next nove if the king remains inits place). There have been lots ofadvances in computer chess recently -there's now a game which has beaten theworld champion and also has storedhundreds of international games and howthey played. Not on the Speccy though!
1 I know I promised to add some new sectionsin the 1995 catalogue but after promotionat my new job in December, a great dealof time was lost, time I hoped to use onthe catalogue.
1 I have seen other Pinball Simulators, butnone have come even close to matching thisone's superlative quality. This is a gameI can see myself continuing to enjoy formany years to come, as I never tire of it.
1 I have pinpointed the state of affairsthat gives rise to the problem, at leastfrom a software point of view, and havewritten a DOS patch which, I'm pleased tosay, now eliminates it in my own case.However, I'm convinced that the underlyingcause is in the hardware, and I suspectperhaps something like a timing error maybe responsible. Anyway, I'm interested toknow how widepsread the effect is, andwould therefore like to ask if otherreaders ers could write in and say if theysuffer from it. It may turn out to be justcertain models of the Spectrum that areaffected, I don't know, but I'd like toget to the bottom of it. (My machine is agrey +2, by the way.)
1 I have noticed something significant here.When did most of this trouble start? Itstarted just after Martyn Sherwood cameonto the scene with Prism PD after takingover the running of Total PD. Before thatthere were no major reports of thismagnitude with
1 I have had a few hours of fun from thisgame; the Speccy has not had loads of thistype of game but it wouldn't be fair tocompare it to later ones. Overall, MatchPoint is a good simulation and one to haveif you are a collector. I don't think it'sparticularly rare though - try the goodold car boot sale!
1 I have found this game to be fun and witha good difficulty level. I'm not reallyinto adventures, but I find a lot of themtoo hard or with very limited languageinterpreters. This is an exception andthough the locations are
1 I had just begun to picture a sequel toJURASSIC PARK, where they recreate longdead speccy books by cloning the DNA of adead Andy Davis
1 I eventually find the section I need, andthrough the dark misty winds I can justmake out a bookcase (ok, there are nowinds or mist, but I am trying to inject abit of colour in to this drab tale!)
1 I don't find computer chess as fun ashuman chess - perhaps because you can'tcheat and I always lose when playing theCPU! Obviously it loses the human element.This game is quite passable but chessmaniacs should go for a more recent pieceof software like the aforementioned CDS 3Dgame, or Mastertronic's Master Chess... oreven a PC with Battlechess!
1 I decided to make an archive of everythingI had on the disk. The first thing I sawwas that it said that the work drivedefaults to M:. This is fine if you have aPCW, but with us +3 owners we only havedrive C: Luckily there is a switch to override this and tell it a new drive, but itdidn't work, so I tried running anothersupplied program, PMSET.COM to set what itwas about.
1 I decided to try another experiment -direct copying from and to disk. I loadedup DISCTAPE on the +3 and TRANSIT on the+2. The trick is to transfer files froma +3 disk and save them onto a +D disk.
1 I couldn't think of a theme here so I'lljust take games off my shelf at random.Right, the first game is... Oh dear."Magic Land Dizzy" isn't a classic, is it?
1 I cheated and got Lloyd to wire mine! Imay have a word with him about supplyingready connected plugs to 1m of cable forthe cost of the parts and postage and afew pence for Lloyd.
1 I can't see the point of this business.While it may be very good in some respects- helping the disabled and so on but ifthe line is not gong to be drawn atcomputer sex then where are we going?
1 I asked Darren what Mr Sherwood would likeme to apologise for and he told me thewrong name error in issue 14. I assuredDarren that an apology had been sent to MrSherwood some weeks before.
1 I am in luck, a free terminal, I use theterminal to gain the information I need,and then I embark on my search for thesacred books of a bygone era. (ooer!)
1 I Can' find it so I'll sign off this monthby saying3
1 I personally don't like this game,probably because I have an aversion toracing games (I'm no good at them), but Iwould recommend it to anyone who likesthis sort of thing - and has a mute optionon their TV.
1 I finally filled up the rest of theavailable space with compressed spacing(as seen on the PD catalogue to get 80lines per page) and normal spacing:
1 I doubt that we will ever get thesequestioned answered, even though they havebeen brought up several times.r
1 I don't care what Martyn Sherwood isthreatening or what other lies he isprinting, I have documented evidence, themajority of which concerning a thirdparty, which clearly proves he has lied orneedlessly caused trouble.
1 Hulme Lane
1 However, the game's appeal soon wears offas you discover some negative aspects.Firstly, the input parser is very limited- to get into the temple I needed toremove the leaves from a heavy branch.This was obvious but it took me severalminutes to work out how to tell thecomputer what to do. The other problem isthe way every room links up with lots ofothers. The game turns into a huge mazewith lots of objects but very few puzzlesuntil you find the boat. I'll say no more,but asking for HELP will usually give youa hand. Some of the puzzles are far toohard to think of. In one place, I triedEXAMINE on everything, and then used LOOKon its own. In fact, I couldn't get outuntil I tried LOOK UP (I had to use HELP,which just told me LOOK UP instead ofgiving me a clue). It should have replied"Which way?" to my LOOK command, not justdismissed it as nonsense.
1 However, it was the invention of theelectromagnetic telegraph and accompanyingsubstitution cipher known as Morse Code inthe 1830's that really speeded up thesending of secret messages. The Americaninventor Samuel Morse devised a code inwhich dots and dashes replace letters, asshown in the table.
1 How often you do this job is upto you, howmuch agony you put on your keys or howdusty your house is! I find once every sixor seven months is best to give it athorough check up, along with cleaning ofall interface ports and leads. Spray theleads with cleaner too for a goodconnection. I came up with the keyboardtrick one evening in 1990 when I found my"H" key wouldn't depress! I was even moreworried when I found it also affected the"G" key and then "Y". When I removed theoffending keys I found a piece of pencil Iwas chewing over the keyboard - be warned!
1 How many titles? Well, give or take adozen, the number is:?
1 How many of you have suffered from thedreaded SECTOR ERROR? Thought so, now howmany of you have suffered the error in thefirst four tracks of your disk? You haveif your disk won't catalogue. If you tryand CAT a disk, you get the familliarclick as the drive is moving and then thechugga chugga chugga as it comes acrossthe error.
1 How many of you have tried to save aprogram from one Spectrum to another byplugging one tape end of the tape leadfrom the EAR socket and the other to theMIC? It didn't work because of the lack ofa voltage to send the signal.
1 Hold the plug upside down. You will seeit's almost flat with the exception of aslight step 3/4 of the way down, a littlehollow "box" in this step and a hollow "U"at the top end.
1 Hmmm, first up is "Invincible Island", anadventure game (most RSS games were inthis genre), written by Peter Cooke. I'mnot sure, but I think this is the samePete Cooke who wrote quite a few morerecent Speccy games, such as "A Whole NewBall Game", which I loved. Anyway, thisadventure's inlay calls it an "intriguingsplit-screen graphic and text adventure",and after playing the game, I'd agree.This is much better than some of RSS'sother releases (I think you know the one Imean!). The particularly good thing is itsresponse time - very good when compared toother adventures of the time (mostly inBASIC). This game is well-written, and hasa graphic representation of every room youenter. The graphics are really quite good;better than the vague shapes in games like"Blizzard Pass" (not that I'm slagging offBP - the puzzles are good).
1 His letter also goes on to inform me ofhow the people who complained to me weresorted out. Why do this now? For Christ'ssake, this was upto a year ago, and heaccuses me of raking up the past! He doesthe same with his faulty disk drive whichcould not handle HD disks. Only now hetells us it was a prototype drive!
1 Hilton Court
1 Hi and welcome to Ye Olde Reviewes. Inthis section I will be reviewing some oldclassics (and not-so-classics!) fromdifferent places in Spectrum history. Butfirst things first - readers of SpectrumUK may be wondering why I am now writingfor Alchnews. Well, I am still writing forSpec UK as well, but Andy kindly asked meif I would like to write something forAlchnews, so here I am! I will remain ongood terms with both AR and SUK for aslong as possible.
1 Heres a very simple routine which willremove the directory from one disk andstore it onto another. It's configured fortwo drives, with TEST in drive one andARCHIVE in drive two but can be easilymodified for one.
1 Here's where it gets confusing. So, itended in the summer of 1994? Just so wedon't mistake anything, can we all agreethat the Summer is technically from June21st to September 21st?
1 Hello to Ferry (Netherlands)
1 Hello again, although it's probably Marchwhen your reading this, some of this willhave been written in the run up to Xmas,so please forgive any festive feeling tothis column!.
1 Hello Spectrum freaks,
1 He was ready for a new ribbon so purchaseda black NX-100 from CPC of Preston. Thecost was a very reasonable `3.31. But,there was also a `3.99 handling charge andalso `1.26 VAT - making a total of `8.56.
1 He sounded more cockney than Irish, andhis English 'accent' was even worse - nonexistent.]
1 He later said "D. Sinclair did not likeabiding by my terms of trading andcomplained at guidelines commonplace inthe 16 bit market - not my fault"
1 He claims that they were prepared to writeto me but he "advised them to hold back".Is he sure thats all it is? Perhaps he'safraid of them hearing the other side ofthe story and seeing some of thecomplaints you all sent. I can nameseveral ex-Prism customers who had onlyheard Mr Sherwood's side of things butwere shocked when they saw the extent ofthings.
1 He also says:
1 He also says that I can stop it quiteeasily by apoligising for printing wronginformation on myself and Prism PD. Wronginformation? The information used in thesearticles comes from you, the readers andcustomers. If Mr Sherwood can prove theinformation you have sent is erroneousthen I shall immediately apologise and notbefore.
1 He also advised Mr Koning to "stay out ofit, especially since the situation hascleared up anyway.".h
1 Have you had a letter from AlchemistResearch with an upside down letterhead?If so then you are this quarter's letterprize winner! Send your odd letterhead tous to claim a free year's subscription.
1 Happy byte wishes you,
1 Halskestr. 6
1 Half a dozen cotton buds
1 Hackers Workbench is an excellent tool forexamining snapshots, and when I use it tolook at the state of the Z80 registers ina snapshot which crashes on loading, thePC, i.e. representing the stacked returnaddress to be jumped to, invariably showsas 103.
1 HOW TO WRITE DEMO TEXT
1 HERE are the rest of the program commands.To use them Press CAPS SHIFT - LETTER.P
1 HEIGHT-33293 (8): The height of the chars(Normally 8). You can use higher orsmaller chars. Double high chars needtwice the time to scroll! Thus higherchars as 24 bytes aren't very useful.
1 HAVE A 3" DISK
1 HARD TIMES
1 HACKING STARGLIDER
1 H-COMPRESSED (80 LPP) : 27 65 9
1 Grindleton
1 Greetings time:-
1 Greatful appreciation must go out to allwho helped in the production of this finepublication. Notable thanks must go to:{
1 Graphics-wise, this game is quite good.Colour is splashed around nicely, andalthough Horace skis rather jerkily, hissprite is a nice, simple sort of head witharms and legs (hmmm). The sound isn't badeither, with some good 48k effects asHorace dives into black lines (erm, Ithink they're meant to be deep crevassesor something!) and a passable crunch whenhe hits a tree. Other sounds include ahorrible raucous BBC Micro type sound atthe beginning, and car horns as Horacerisks the M4. This game would have beenbetter if the piste (the bit where youski, thickies!) was longer, or evenrandomly generated each time. Because itisn't, you come to know where the flagsare and the game gets a little too easy,but overall, this game is good - by 1982standards! (It beats "Sonic 3" though!).
1 Got it then? If not just try it out. Therisk of a crash is low in most cases. Withthe first tries you surely won't get theresult you wanted, but at last you'llmanage it.
1 George Munro, many thanks for the goodies,hope your problem is solved now?J
1 George Imrie
1 Gastackerstrasse 33
1 Gastackerstrasse 23
1 GUARANTEES: Should you order any softwareon our media, including titles fromAlchemist Software, there is a LIFETIMEGUARANTEE with the titles. This means thatshould the disk or tape become damaged,even some years from when it was ordered,the program will be re-supplied again freeof charge. This also covers updates toprograms you may have already purchased.
1 GRAPH (caps 9) home the cursor to the topleft corner of the current window.L
1 GET and PUT
1 G-GREEN : 27 114 6
1 Full Stops
1 From the main menu, select the CUSTOMISEoption again and then PRINTER CONTROLCODES. Now, you simply press the numberof letter and then enter the code. Hereare mine:
1 Format 2 worked perfectly however, and Iwas soon transferring files like they weregoing out of fashion. As well as the CP/Minterface, There is a +3DOS one supplied.To use this, you have to use the rarecommand COPY filename TO SPECTRUM FORMAT.
1 For those of you wanting a "standard" disksystem, I'd say buy a +D but if you areserious about the Spectrum and wantsomething powerful and new to experimentwith, I'd strongly suggest this.
1 For the more experienced builder this hasnever been a problem, but for the noviceit could represent a real headache. Thereis one way to overcome this, especiallyfor the +2a and +3 owner, and that is tothe printer port. It has the eight datalines which are needed to operate a simplemodel and be addressed using the OUTcommand in +3 BASIC. Giving the commandOUT 4093,1 would send a signal down dataline D0. To stop this signal simply sentOUT 4093,0. The circuit given over is aneasy to build model controller using 12vrelays. I hope by approaching this in verybasic terms it will be of interest tothose ofyou who are not electronicallyminded, like myself...?
1 For more details on all of these excellentproductions, their addresses are inTRADING POST of this and future issues.{
1 For more details contact:
1 For many years, stock control has been maeeasier by using computers, with each itembeing assigned a code number. With theintroduction of bar codes - the black andwhite stripes found on shopping items -prices can be automatically read, and thebill compiled at the same time as thestock totals are adjusted, besides givinga detailed itemisation of your purchases.
1 For all of you who wants to use Uniscrollin your own programs we will give you afamous description of all the facilitiesin english. But thats not all: it comesdirectly from Vision, who knows best whatthe program can do.
1 For those interested in the technicalaspects, it's the NMI mechanism that'sgoing wrong when the +D's button ispressed. When the Z80 receives an NMIsignal, the current program counter ispreserved (pushed) on the stack, and acall made to address 102 decimal), whereit executes the NMI service routine (i.e.the snapshot routine). The +D hardwaresimultaneously detects when a call is madeto this address, and then takes immediateaction to page itself in, so it will bethe NMI routine in +D ROM, rather than theone in the Spectrum ROM (which contains afatal bug anyway), that's executed.
1 Following the earlier information in thisarticle regarding the United Minds and MrSherwood's half accusation of their trustwe have just been informed that MrSherwood has published an article in PDPower that the group has split up.
1 Firstly, RS 232 is NOT a port that ownersof a Spectrum have. RS 232 is actually astandard means of data communicationbetween two computers. It is the industrystandard that is called RS 232, not theactual port itself. The RS 232 port onyour computer should actually be called a"serial" port that happens to conform tothe set standards of RS 232, as that iswhat it really is.
1 First, reset the computer and then load upTasword 128 again and go into Basic asbefore.[
1 First up is THE THING MONTHLY, an A5sattire magazine. Whether you enjoy themagazine depends on the level of yourhumour, but also promises to include YOURTHINGCLAIR,
1 First of all, why did he approach Darren?He has ignored no less than FOUR differentsources to end this. These being Mark"Miktor" Harris, St. John Swainson, JohanKoning and myself. Why should he tell themall to keep their noses out and thenrecruit someone else, an outsider to theentire matter. One thing to consider isthat Darren does an occasional article inPD Power!
1 Finally, a most unlikely utility provedinvaluable in analysing the problem - PlusD Poker! Invaluable because it allowed meto look at the stack AFTER the snapshotbutton had been pressed, and examine thereturn address. On every occasion when itcrashed on returning, the address wasalways 103, and using this method, I foundI could always predict in advance theoccasions when it was about to happen.
1 Finally, HL will contain the address ofthe filename you want. ( You may usewildcards, and it must be terminated with255) Now the routine may be called at 11Ehor 286 decimal. On exiting, if there wereany problems, as always, the carry flagwill be reset and the error code will bein A. If all went OK then B will containthe number of completed entries in thebuffer. (If B is the same as the number ofentries, your buffer contains, it ispossible that there are more entries tocome)
1 Finally, F. Ridout is selling an UNUSEDMultiface 128 with a copy of Lifeguard for`15. He is also looking for a completelist of EPSON Printer control codes andcommands if anyone can help. Please writeto:
1 File: Selecting this simply takes you tothe FILE menu.8
1 File ends:
1 FX_3,n Sets the window used by the frontpanel/
1 FX_2,n Sets the window used for useroutput0
1 FX_1,n Sets the window use for automaticlistings2
1 FX_0,n Sets the window used for user inputand error messages<
1 FSLP-33294 (0): Switches the FSLP on (1)or off (0). Every single line of thescroller is assigned to a value of atable. CLSCR must be used as otherwiseonly rubbish would be seen on the screen.Timing of CLSCR can be very tricky, butcan be done (means that CLSCR sometimesclears the scroller before it has beenwritten by the TV beam). If combined withdifferent values of SPLIT you can alsochange the look of your scroller.
1 FRUIT MACHINE SIMULATOR 2
1 FONT_2 Calls char set similar to AMSTRADCPC 4641
1 FONT_1 Calls char set similar to BBC andACORN/
1 FONT_0 Calls the standard char set"
1 FILES READ IN C
1 FILE This controls the storage of frames.The first thing that should be done is toconfigure the menu by selecting theconfigure menu option. You can then typein the filing systems you intend to definethe BASIC to, pressing enter when to moveonto the next one. Altering the BASIC isexplained later on.
1 FILE TRANSFER BETWEEN TO SPECTRUMS"
1 FICHEROS allows you to copy any files youselect from drive A to B. Although I havenot tested it I suspect single driveowners will be able to use it to copy fromdisk to disk (A=source, B=destination).
1 FELIXSTOWE
1 FAULTS (Outgoing): If any of the aboveoccurances happen on their way back toyou, your order will be redone -COMPLETELY FREE and treated as if it wereany other order and not relegated. Sinceyou have already paid for the programs youwanted, how can you be ripping us off byasking for them again?
1 FAULTS (Incoming): If your tape or disk isdamaged on arrival, we will do our best torepair it. Snapped tapes can be easilyfixed. Disk corruption can be cured withour programs, or simply reformatting.
1 F-ORANGE : 27 114 5
1 F ill - fills the window with a pattern selected from the STYLE-Palette.K
1 Exit : DE=Displayfile address
1 Exclamation Marks (
1 Example: "}1" to print the following textinvers, "}0" to get back to normalprinting.]
1 Even the most secure of codes are oflittle use if it cannot be transmittedquickly. Napoleon made som attempts toovercome the problem of speed by buildingsignal towers throughout France. Aprimitive version of semaphore was used topass messages from tower to tower.
1 Escapes can be inserted using TRUE VIDEO,followed by the relevent key. Red textwould be TRUEVID followed by A. Watch thecase, esp. with capslock. CAPSLOCK (caps2) simply toggles the case between lowerand upper.
1 Ernastrasse 33
1 Ernastr. 33, D-51069 Koeln, Germany#
1 Erm, see you then I suppose!
1 Entry: B=Y-Position
1 Enough of Ocean - the next game to bereviewed, "William Wobbler" (!) waswritten by Tony Crowther of a lesser-knowncompany, Wizard Computer Games, andpublished by Melbourne House (when theywere also doing books and things).Wizard's address was: Alpha House, 10Carver Street, Sheffield... Yes, later tobecome the home of Gremlin Graphics Ltd,still going today under the name ofGremlin Interactive, but now at numbers2-4 and only programming for the consoles(scum!!). By the way, don't write to themabout Speccy games - they only have threeleft (Turbo Esprit, Man Utd and HeroQuest) and couldn't care less about 8-bitowners.
1 Editview has 26 frame stores, labelled ato z. These can either be in Fireview (920bytes) format, or Editor (960 bytes)format. Selecting the format option on theFILE menu alters the frames between theseformats and should be used before loadingor saving frames to disc or tape. Belowthe format option is a count of the numberof escapes and * graphics present in thecurrent frame. This is useful if theframes are going to be later up loaded toPRESTEL or another Viewdata computer. Iwill now consider the other options on theFILE menu.
1 Editview II is a dedicated Viewdata frameeditor. It has been designed to makeediting easier and more fun. Most of itsmany features are accessed using thepointer cursor. This is controlled usingthe keys Q,A,O,P and a key on the bottomrow for up, down, left, right and select(or click) respectively. To select anoption you simply move the pointer to it,and press select. The program has threemain areas. These are EDIT, for editingframes, FILE, for storing and recallingframes, and the BASIC so that you canconfigure Editview to your own filingsystem.
1 Editview II Tutorial.
1 Edit This gives you the EDIT menu."
1 Ed's Note:
1 Ed's Note: Thanks to John for thatexcellent article. Should you require ahard copy and / or a printout of the DLANprogram, just send an SAE to us.
1 Earlier, I reviewed a rather poor game byRichard1
1 Earlier detailed in the news section, anexcellent multi format magazine.J
1 EXTENDED MODE (pressing both shift keys)moves the cursor to the next tab stop (ifone is present) within the current window.Tab stops can be defined using the tabsoption on the Text menu bar, or by usingESC TRUEVID followed by t while editing.Many other functions can be accessed likethis:
1 ESC-e Moves to the end of the text in thecurrent window. ESC-i Inserts a space intothe current line. ESC-d Deletes acharacter. ESC-l Inserts a line. ESC-k"Kills" a line. ESC-r Moves down a lineinserting any ESC codes.
1 ESC-0 Inverts any escape codes. ESC-tDefines tab stops. ESC-s Save to lastaccessed frame.c
1 ERROR HANDLER
1 ERASE will erase any files you select fromthe presented catalogue.B
1 ENTRIES. YOU CAN
1 ENTIRE MENU : SAVE "MENU"CODE 56640,2239 PRINTER ONLY: SAVE "MENU"CODE 5876,319P
1 ENTER leaves the current window andreturns to the pointer cursor.H
1 ENLARGEMENT ON MOST PRINTERS
1 ENCODING TEXT
1 EIGHT POUNDS AND FIFTY SIX PENCE for aTWO POUND RIBBON! I was outraged!K
1 EDITOR'S COMMENT
1 EDIT: Copies the current program line intothe input line.9
1 EDIT: After selecting EDIT from the FILEmenu you will be presented with a menu barat the top of the screen. The rest of thescreen is used as an editing area for thecurrent frame.
1 ED. was it my imagination or was this%
1 ED. Oh well, theirs still 'The easily%
1 E-YELLOW : 27 114 4
1 E L O S L S O E T
1 Dwbas - RSX Mallard basic extension#
1 During the American Cival War the RailFence code was used to send secretmessages. It works like this: suppose youwish to pass on this commerciallysensitive warning SELL CONSULS SOONEST.Then, take a sheet of lined paper andwrite the first letter on the top line,the second on the second line, the thirdletter on the first line, and so on toget:
1 During RUN-time the Space key is used as anew Shift key. Consequently, to obtain aspace between characters, both the Symbolshift and Space keys must be pressedtogether. The Space key - when usedtogether with another key - will from nowon be referred to as the Control key.Control functions
1 Due to a character design, EXTRA BOLD andOUTLINE texts appear offset towards Windowtop-left. Us the above controls to add An'R' or 'D' to status display. (A secondpress cancels).
1 Does anybody even wonder why Andy gives abad review every now and then? I'll tellyou why, Spectrum users we all may be.Desperate for new software we may be too.We still have rights to expect a bit ofquality though, be it software or service.If a company promising good service givesa shoddy one instead, then we all have aright to know about it. We are Spectrumusers, not second class citizens that wantto get ripped off. Another example of thefact that Andy cares about the Spectrumworld. He doesn't want to see you lotripped off, and that's why when a badreview needs to be given, it gets given!
1 Do you really want to do business with aperson who craves that sort of power andcould charge you anything they wanted forwhat you get now for FREE? Because that iswhat a monopoly is all about.
1 Do you really want a business- who fallsapart when a key member of staff falls illfor a while- in charge of YOUR hobby?Because that is what has already happenedwith SUK. People were left wondering ifthey had "run off with the subs".
1 Do you REALLY want a person who screams"TAKE OVER BID" whenever you offer afriendly word of action of help to be theONLY person you can turn to for newsoftware or help? This is what has alreadyhappened to Andy Davis and AlchemistResearch.
1 Do you really want to get all yourSpectrum support and software from aperson or business with an ego big enoughto want to rule the Spectrum world? That'swhat a single Spectrum outlet amounts to!
1 Diodes are inserted purely as a protectivemeasure. Depending on the application,this circuit could be doubed up to includeall eight data lines. Relays are used asswitches, allowing an electric motor to beturned on and off, forward and reverse.They also seperate the model's powersupply from the interface circuitry.Connecting just four lines to operate twosmall electric motors, relays could beused to turn the power on and offindependently, and give forward andreverse.
1 Did you here the caretakers (Americanactors) incredibly BAD Irish accent?,O
1 Despite the inaccurate report in PD POWER,The United Minds have not ceased demowriting. Indeed, they threatened to stopcoding because of the harassment they weregiven by M. Sherwood of Prism PD butdecided to continue with APD, MGPD andWomo.
1 Desmond Tyler
1 Design:- POSTERS...LETTERHEADS.. TICKETSETC in a vast range of exciting styles.MAGIC-WINDOW - Auto-justify, 4 way system.~
1 Depending on the position, speed or thenumbers of the scroller and the height ofthe charset it can happen that yourscroller might flicker. If CLSCR is usedit might even happen that no scrollerappears on the screen, as it is clearedbefore it is written by the TV-Beam. Allthis is due to the construction of the TVpicture but can be avoided with some goodtiming. See, it is a small price to pay Ithink. I could have limited you to onescroller with no change of anything. Butthis way it's more of a use for you, isn'tit?
1 Demos Only
1 David Ledbury
1 David Crookes
1 Dave Fountain and Amy
1 Darren, however, had only heard one sideof the story and had a different frame ofmind when I informed him of the mass ofevidence I had collected over the pasttwelve months from many sources.
1 Darren was confused with the matter andsuggested that I telephone Mr Sherwood andspeak directly to sort it out. Not beingan unreasonable chap, I made the effort.
1 Darren Randle, for those of you not in theknow, used to run Rasputin PD and SinclairNews, which Alchemist Research took chargeof in late 1993.
1 DT: Why? Why spend two hours in front ofthat when you can just as easily get inyour car and do the same in Sheffield?z
1 DT: Well, yes, you do have a point. Butlook at it from this angle - would yourather spend two hours on an interactiveadventure or go out and do it in reallife?
1 DT: That game where you drive around thetown - I know you can't get enough of it!S
1 DT: So, why do you do it when you playthat flying game?;
1 DT: So, when you go under a bridge in yourcar do you look right underneath it andbehind you as you emerge?m
1 DT: Okay, but I have one that will REALLYstump you out now - TURBO ESPRIT.K
1 DT: Could it be the safety element? Be asrisky as you want and know that you cansafely walk away?e
1 DT: Can you honestly say that you'd preferflying a Spectrum rather than a realplane?Z
1 DT: And what would you expect to find ifyou did look under a bridge?F
1 DT: AlchNews 15.
1 DT: AND... That game is SO predictable -you don't know what will happen if you goout in your car.d
1 DOCTOR is an excellent +3 utility, onewhich all owners should have a copy of.Quite why Amstrad decided not to letEnglish +3 users have this kind of programon their disk which came with thecomputer, rather than half a dozen oldgames is beyond me.
1 DOCTOR is the only known low-price,non-commercial disk?
1 DLAN - CAMPBELL SYSTEMS
1 DISCO is the same as above but willcopy the entire disk.?
1 DISCKIT programs, plus Lloyd on!
1 DIP SWITCH SETTINGS - My Choice
1 DINOSAURS is a PD prog available from AlchResearch. Programmed by the very talentedTHEO DEVELEGAS (I hope I've spelt his nameright!) it's suitable for readers, andespecially children, or those withchildren, who have an interest in dinos.
1 DICE, orDisk Information Copier Editor, has to bethe best sector editor around. It willeven format 3" disks to 42 tracks, givinga large increase in capacity.
1 DH. No I think your right, Roy must be&
1 DELETE: Deletes character to left ofcursor.1
1 DECREASE THIS TO
1 DECODING TEXT
1 DEC a ; take one from 'a'
1 DB2 is by far the best disk back uputility produced for the +3, but it won'tfully back up disks that have beenformatted to greater than 40 tracks!
1 DAVE WOOD has some spare PC equipment tosell. It includes an SX386 motherboardwith AMI bios, 6 ISA slots and space forSIMM RAM to 16Mb. It also features aTRIDENT VGA board 512k with IDE I/O boardwith printer port / joystick etc.
1 DAMAGING THE DISK
1 D-PURPLE : 27 114 3
1 D-40215 Duesseldorf
1 D ownshift - centres text vertically.%
1 Cut and Paste This allows you to move awindow from a stored frame to the currentframe. This feature allows you to build upa library of graphics. The fragments canbe placed anywhere in a frame. Uponselecting this option, the current frameis displayed, and a menu shows the frameletters, a-z. Pick the one you wish to cutfrom. This will then be displayed with theusual box cursors. Define the window youwish to paste. The current frame will beredisplayed. Move the cursor to where youwant to paste the window and click it.
1 Credits and a few last things!
1 Creative.Radical.Alternative.Productions(
1 Congratulations to:
1 Commodores,BBCs, Dragon, Oric, MSX and many more.They do not seek high profits and theirprices are cheaper than most privatesellers. Indeed, their catalogue uses 15feet of paper! Most prices are 50p and `1and they even sell books and hardware.Howdoes a +3 printer lead at `4 sound, ora Spectrum 128 for `30, +2 for `35,Wafadrive for `25, ZX printer `12, CurrahMicrospeech for a tenner and externalspeaker with amp for `3!!! If you don'tsend them an SAE immediately, then youcan't be a dedicated Specateer!
1 Circle This is exactly the same as thelines option but instead of defining theends of a line you define the centre andthen a point on the edge of a circle.
1 Chris Taylor, The Knights
1 Chris Norfolk
1 ChoosingShadow-edge text over-rides both settings.2
1 Choosing which type of relay to use asdescribed above can be very confusing. Ihave used items YX94C and DC80B boughtfrom Maplins, which are very usefulrelays. Incidentally, all
1 Chic Computer Club
1 Characters can now be printed on screen in4 different sizes, using the 'MODE_'command[
1 Changes the variable speed. The new valueof speed comes straight after thetextmark. Example: "{3" to change thespeed of the scroller to 3.
1 Changes the variable SPLIT. The new valuecomes straight after the textmark.Example: "~2" to change SPLIT to 2.w
1 Catalin Russen, MicroCRIFS
1 CUSTOMISING SECOND CHARACTER SET
1 CURSORS: Move within the input line.$
1 CRACK CITY
1 CPC Undercover
1 CPC UNDERCOVER
1 CPC / PCW support
1 COPYRIGHTED - NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN!
1 COPY=33500: Copies the content$
1 CONTROLLING PROGRAM FLOW
1 CONTROL R: Resets YSMB system (does noterase program in memory)B
1 CONTROL KEYS
1 CONTROL F: Calls up front-panel (SEE FRONTPANEL)0
1 CONTROL E: Stops program execution"
1 CONTENTS (5)
1 CONTENTS (4)
1 CONTENTS (3)
1 CONTENTS (2)
1 CONTENTS (1)
1 CONSTRUCTING
1 CODE BREAKING
1 CLW_n,3 Clears attributes only
1 CLW_n,2 Inverts contents of window#
1 CLW_n,1 As above but with INK
1 CLW_n,0 Clears window using currentpermanant colours;
1 CLSPAT-33289/33290 (0,0): Pattern which iscopied into screen when calling CLSCR.P
1 CLSCR=33635: Clearscroll, clears thescroller at the actuall Y-Position.Necessary if the Y-Position is changed(=FLP) or if you use the FSLP function.
1 CLS is used to clear the whole screen. Anew command 'CLW' is provided to clearindividual window areas. The command wordis followed by one or two numbers. If twoare supplied then the first is the numberof the window and the second shows whattype of clear is required:
1 CLS AND CLW
1 CHRISTIAN AYMARD is on the lookout for thefollowing programs:=
1 CHR$7 Inverts the char set at the cursorposition2
1 CHR$24-31 Select the window used foroutput; CHR$24 selects window zero whereasCHR$ 31 selects window 7.m
1 CHR$1-4 Select the mode of current window)
1 CHR$, VDU and DOWN
1 CHR$ PEEK (F+9);CHR$ PEEK (F+10);""
1 CHR$ PEEK (F+2);CHR$ PEEK
1 CHR$ (h+64);
1 CHESSINGTON
1 CHARACTER SETS
1 CHAR-33281/33282 (15360): The "address" ofyour charset. Because the first 32 charscan't be used (see Speccy manual fordetails) you always have to subtract 32 *high of your charset (normaly 8) from theaddress where your charset is placed. Onlythis value must be poked into CHAR!Example: If you want to place a charsetmade with Art Studio at 35000 then youhave to poke 35000-32*8=34744 into CHAR.
1 CHANGE_3 Each attribute byte is ORed withthe data byte7
1 CHANGE_2 Each byte in the attributes fileis ANDed with the negated maskH
1 CHANGE_1 The mask is negated - all ones tozeros and all zeros to onesE
1 CHANGE and SWAP
1 CHALLENGE TIME
1 CHALFONT ST PETER
1 CAUTION WHEN EDITING- The program auto-renumbers when it is run. All instructionsplaced in the REM must be closed with asemi-colon (;) otherwise will probably beignored!
1 CATALOGO is a simple disk and filecatalogue option.;
1 CATALIN RUSSEN
1 CATALIN RUSSEL would like some Amigacontacts, wishing to swap tips, advice andsoftware for the Amiga. If you would likean Amiga penpal, please write to:
1 CAT-RESCUE
1 CAT Drive. This option can be configuredto perform a general purpose BASIC action.I use it to catalogue my disc drive.x
1 CALL PAGDOS
1 CALL PAGBAS
1 CALL 33402 (Scroll)
1 CALL 33297 (Initialize UNISCROLL) MAIN HALT.
1 C7 330 uF 16V
1 C6 220 nF POLYESTER
1 C5 220 pF CERAMIC
1 C4 220 uF 16V
1 C3 100 uF 16V
1 C2 100 uF 16V
1 C1 470 nF POLYESTER
1 C-BLUE : 27 114 2
1 By today's standards, it certainly isn't,but I found this game quite a lot of funthe first time I played it. Just about allof it is written in BASIC with noprotection, and as it plays very similarlyeach time, it gets rather repetitive aftera few goes. However, it is a long game.You, a trader, have to visit variousplanets and try to peddle your wares tothe inhabitants. Bits of the game includecollecting fuel in a time limit,bargaining with some druggies
1 By now, I was convinced beyond any doubtabout what was going on, and I decided thenext step would be to write a routine tofix the problem. Perhaps neutralise mightbe a better word, as, of course, theunderlying hardware bug is still there -but to all intents and purposes it can beregarded as cured. There are two versions:G-SNAPFIX, as you might guess, is theversion for G+DO S and B-SNAPFIX, the onefor Betados.
1 By Paul Howard
1 By Lloyd Garland
1 By Kevin Gurd
1 By Desmond Tyler
1 By Ben Douglas
1 But, we cannot survive without your input.Anything you can offer is welcomed by usand even moreso by the Spectrum community.~
1 But, the most astounding program he hassent is MORBUS GRAVIS 128k. It's probablythe biggest demo ever and takes up theentire 128k memory and THREE +D disks! Thedemo is more of a graphic picture storyand you'd be advised to sit down oneevening in the dark with it and a POT ofcoffee!
1 But, it's clear to see how many missilesyou have - you start with one.H
1 But, if the disk is physically damaged andwould pose a threat to our equipment byusing it, we will return it and, ifpossible, will send your order on our ownmedia where you can copy it to your own orsend us replacements in your own time.
1 But, he still refuses to answer severalmore serious questions. Ones like:L
1 But, back to his letter. He then goes onto recap some past events. There areeleven points in all, yet he has MISSEDOUT POINT THREE! How can I have anyconfidence in this person if he can'tcount! This is NOT an isolated incident asI have recieved a letter from Mr Sherwoodpreviously, entitled "The real facts"which had points numbered 1,2,3,3,4,5,7,8,9,10,11,12,13!
1 But, as I said, it doesn't have to be "DECa", it could be any other register, suchas DEC HL, or even DEC BC. This is whythe FLIP option is needed. If the numberof lives isn't held by 'variable' a, thenyou will have to try another 'variable' orregister. Move it to CUSTOM and you haveaccess to the custom option.
1 But, I'd just like to make one final pleato Mr Sherwood - are you prepared to putyour business on the line Martyn?u
1 But, I promise the new sections in theJuly 1995 catalogue, if not sooner:M
1 But, back to the magazine. Theres apreview of the new SQ-TRACKER soundsystem, a listing of Solitaire by MilesKinloch and a list of all members alongwith what equipment they own. (By the wayThomas, put an X in my +3, 48k, Opus andMG boxes please!).
1 But it doesn't, it just gets worse.#
1 Brian Watson, 8-BIT
1 Brian Watson
1 Brian Gaff, BG Services
1 Brian Gaff
1 Brandlesholme
1 Box got his drives from!)
1 Both these progs, and my new lawnmovergame are available from Alch PD.J
1 Books on the ORIC and DRAGON 32 computersThe MSX, BBC Micro, VIC 20, ZX81!!! (boy!I feel like a cross between Alan Grant andIndiana Jones, discovering these oldrelics! - Que red-line-over-map-screen(next page) aka, Indy movies)
1 Bl: L11 Ap: 86
1 Bill Richardson, EEC
1 Bill Richardson
1 Bill Clark brought up a very interestingand expensive problem quite recently withhis Star LC-100.d
1 Bill Clark
1 Bill asked about re-inking and I aminclined to agree with him. There is a re-inking tool called MAXIPRINT, which isused by many readers who swear by it. I'mnot sure exactly how it's made but you fityour ribbon into the unit and turn alittle handle which re-inks the ribbon.The unit is adjustable to all makes ofribbon and works fine with the LC-100ribbons, which also are the same as theLC-10. It costs only a few pence to re-inka ribbon and the quality is excellent.Alchemist Research will surely
1 Big supplier of Spectrum adventuresoftware, including?
1 Besides which, we have no advanced DTPfacillities to produce a magazine of anygood quality. We would rather stay withelectronic media that look like some ofthe poor efforts we've been informed of inpast months!
1 Beside those problems, the PC200 shouldhave been a mild success, however, lookingback it's not really that surprising thatit wasn't.
1 Before you get all excited I'd betterexplain what they are.@
1 Before we go any further we must do a bitof work to the plug again. It may beadvisable to do this before wiring it. Allyou have to do is file or cut a littlepiece of the plug with a craft knife.
1 Before publication I was debating whetherto compile a list of all the lies andtrouble Martyn Sherwood has caused. Ihave decided that it will take some tie tocompile so may feature it in AlchNews 16if nothing is done to rectify thesituation.
1 Before I go, I offer no apology what soever for the contents of this file. Ifanybody is upset by this, then tough!Things that needed to be said have nowbeen said.
1 Because when the Multiface is installed,it cannot access any part of the ROM, suchas the font, printing routines etc. so itmust have it's own "on-board".
1 Back to Psion Chess. This was an earlychess game for the Spectrum, written in"fast and efficient machine-code". Theprogrammers boast that "level two willprobably beat you!". Actually it did, butthat's beside the point. The game has tenlevels of difficulty and came out in 1982(could've done it last month then!). Youare given options to set up the board andchoose your colour - I wanted yellow butit wouldn't let me...
1 Back to "William Wobbler". William is akind of funny dragon, with massivenostrils and a red vest. (You'd have tosee him yourself). He walks along quitenicely in the game, and is an unusuallylarge sprite. The game is a sort of earlyplatform adventure, where you have to pickup "objects and go to different cavernsand places with them, but the gameplay issomehow not enough to keep you playing fora long time. Sound is limited, butsufficient. This is undoubtedly quite arare item, but not a true classic or "new"game idea. Has anyone completed this?Perhaps you could tell me what happens atthe end!
1 Back in issue 13 I gave some brief detailson a little keypad project to give you avisual signal by the computer without themonitor needing to be on, perhaps to tellyou that calculations or copying isfinished, an error or so on.
1 BY LLOYD GARLAND
1 BONUS LETTER PRIZE
1 BG SERVICES
1 BEACH IMAGING
1 BASIC, as it clearly states, returns youto Basic!3
1 BASIC note: The BASIC has been defined tomake it easy to configure. At the momentit is configured for tape and +3 disc. Theother basic is set for Microdrives. Eithercan be altered to cope with most drivesystems.
1 At time of writing, I cannot get the lightto behave in 128k mode so either go into48k mode or type USR 0.k
1 At the moment there are three phenominallygood lists of hardware, software and booksdoing the rounds. Should you want one,send an SAE to:
1 Aside from the traditional uses of codesin the shady world of subterfuge, codesare finding their way increasingly intoour daily lives.
1 As usual, it was ignored and they sent theparcel back in the same envelope, withoutreturn postage. The catalogue howeverseemed to be well used, creased and hadsome characters written on one side!
1 As the cytographers struggle to inventbetter and more secure codes, so the codebreakers strive to frustrate them. Apowerful tool when trying to decode thesipler transpositions or substitutionciphers is the letters frequency count. InEnglish the letters E,T,A,O,N,I,S - inthat order - occur most frequently. So, ifin the encoded text the letters ETAONISstill appear most frequently, the odds arethat you will be dealing with atransposition code. Should other lettersoccur more frequently, then you mustconsider the possibility of a substitutioncipher.
1 As most of you will recall, AlchNews 14was the largest ever, some 576k - amassive 157% larger than issue 13 or amassive 1773% larger than issue 3!
1 As it checks, it will list and repair anydamaged sectors along the way.H
1 As for the international character sets, Ihave chosen USA. This is simply because ofCHR$ 35, the # sign. As ASCII isessentially American, the ` sign has noplace in it. So, when you print a # youactually get a # and not a pound sign.Many small fanzines make this mistake andwhen they have a hex listing, hashesappear as pounds which looks veryunsightly! The pound sign is at location156 of all the character sets and isjust as easily accessed.
1 As for software to use on the PC, MS DOSis usually good enough!A
1 As far as we know, Alchemist PD is thefirst library to offer this serviceanywhere. Please also see our article inthis issue "8 BIT LIBRARY GUIDELINES" - anew initiative created by ourselves tofurther protect customers from beingripped off.
1 As far as is known, this is still thelargest collection of Spectrum PD in theUK.W
1 As far as I know, you must strip off about6-8mm from the outer sheathing and then2-3mm from each lead. Make sure all theleads are parallel and not bent in any wayand insert into the lead. Look at the topof the lead and behind each contact youshould JUST see the wire. When you aresure it's in press each contact down. Ifit doesn't work then the lead is nowuseless and should be binned. There is noway of recovering a partly connected lead.
1 As a great fan of the 'Freescape' system,I'd rank this game as being the best inthat genre, and one which gave me manyhours of pleasure trying to solve.Freescape, of course, represented amilestone in the Speccy's history, and ifthis is a foretaste of the virtual realitysystems of the future, then I'm definitelyhooked! The first game to be released inthis format was, of course, Driller,followed shortly afterwards by its sequel,Darkside. However, while the latter werevery successful in demonstrating thepotential of Freescape, unfortunately theylacked one vital ingredient - gameplay.
1 As I know this is the fastest method tocalculate the screenaddress of anyY-Position^
1 As well as procedures, YSMB provides'REPEAT-UNTIL' loops. The 'REPEAT' commandis used to mark the beginning of a loopand 'UNTIL' is followed by a singlenumeric expression. If this expressionreturns a zero value then the program flowjumps back to the statement after the lastREPEAT instruction; if a positive number,program flow continues with the nextstatement as it should. 'REPEAT-UNTIL'loops can be nested up to ten deep.
1 As the UNISCROLL demo was written incompiled Basic (I used the USCHI compiler)here's the basic routine to driveUniscroll from Basic (text at 4
1 As I've heard that it really annoyspeople. <ARRRGH - YES! And so does "erm".Ed.> Funny that I shoud only find out lastweek, and I've said it in nearly all UMdemos!!!
1 Arnold Yates
1 Arkanoid 2 continues the theme, but in avery much enhanced mould, adding many newfeatures and 128K sound. If you played itwith just the three lives you are given,it would be exceedingly difficult toprogress beyond even the first screen, butI never play it that way - I always POKEit for infinite lives!
1 Apply adhesive to each right-hand edge,except on the right-most strip. ScotchSpraymount is recommended which, allowsre-positioning.
1 Apologies for what I might have got wrong,missunderstood, misspelt, missed out orjust messed up! I wrote this as a set ofnotes for my benifit originally, andthought they might be of general use so Isent them to Alchemist PD to pass on withthe DLAN program
1 Anyway, when you do wire it up, make surethat the ORANGE wire is connected to thepin which is NEXT to the little catch. TheBLACK wire should be at the opposite side.At the other end of the lead strip it andstrip the RED and BLACK leads only for themoment.
1 Anyway, next issue I WILL write about TimeTravel, I have a lot of points I'd like todiscuss about it. It will take some tim towrite and Andy is already telling me thatI have five minutes before the deadline ispassed. (He gets would up very easily whenhe's on nights and has only had four hourssleep!)
1 Anyway, in the letter, Mr Sherwood toldJohan and myself that since the summer of1994, the whole situation had "fizzledout". He also said:
1 Anyway, imagine my surprise when I havegenerated the file to allow this to be runwhen it says 'The MSODBALL.HED file youare using is corrupt' Reading to the endof the first document I am told to readanother one specific to the +3 Basicversion, which then tells me that itshould be converted on the ramdisk ordrive A:, not drive B: because it doesn'twork properly. The best way to use thisprogram would be to go through all yourstuff and get 700K of files, then convertthe disk. I have found it very useful, andwill give it 9/10.
1 Anyway, back to Ye Olde Reviewes. Thismonth, a selection of games from the yearthat was, 1982 (I think it was a vintageyear!). The Spectrum was still quite newat the time, and games were slowly gettingbetter as new software houses appeared.The first game I will look at is a 16k/48kgame by Pixel Productions, called TheTrader Trilogy. This game loads in severalparts and set you back `9.95! It came in alarge-ish white box. Pixel Productionsclaimed this game to be "the ultimategraphic adventure".
1 Anyway, I'm straying off the point here.As I was saying, where will it all end?Already, PC's a couple of years old arenow virtually obsolete. In this throwawaysociety it's ridiculous to consider eventhinking of buying a PC if you can'tafford to keep upgrading it. Look atWindows for the PC - a few years ago anice option, now you find it's almostvital to run any software.
1 Anyway, when I questioned Mr Sherwoodabout it, he said "NO MAJOR library (8 bitor 16 bit) worth their salt will entertainpeople under these circumstances unlessthey pay."
1 Anyway, that's enough of my in(s)aneramblings, let's get on with the show...R
1 Anything marked as "RS 232" should allconform to the same standards as any otherpiece of equipment, hence the possibilityof transferring data between two otherwiseincompatible machines. Fo example, textfiles written on (say) a PC could betransferred to a Spectrum, and then editedor printed out using Tasword. Files couldbe stored on a large capacity hard drive,and exported to the Spectrum. Of course,many Spectrum owners would alreay befamiliar with using a modem to log onto aBB, and many of those will know all aboutdownloading software from BBs. Things likethis are just a few uses that datacommunications using an RS 232 link couldbe put to.
1 Anyone trying to break the code withoutknowledge of the multiplication key wouldhave a hard time. All that is reallyhappening is that the message is writtendown the page until the first column ofour array is filled, and then continued atthe top of the second colu.n. When thewhole array is used up the encrypted textis read off across the page. Sometimes itis a good idea to add a few extra dummyletters to the end of a message - just tofool would-be code breakers.
1 Anyone interested in purchasing thisCD-ROM (approx. cost `40) should requestmore details from the normal AlchemistResearch address.
1 Any of you who used to buy Your Sinclairwill remember the excellent programs fromTheo Develegas. Such classics like hisMultiface utilities FUSSLOAD and SPRITERare available in our library.
1 Another rather crap text file from:#
1 Another new writer, Orson from!
1 Andy has seen dodgy companies come and go,he's seen it all. Alchemist Research isstill here though, as the UK's largestSpectrum public domain library. Does thissuggest anything to you? It should! Makeno mistake, Alchemist Research isn't aslarge as it is just because he happens tohave a large range of titles, it's becauseAndy has WORKED at it, and with nothingmore than a few Spectrums, a tape recorderand a lot of dedication, he's built it upfrom scratch. Andy truely cares for theSpectrum community, and that is one of thereasons why he has succeeded. AlchemistResearch, and all it stands for, is agreat example of what can be done whenpeople work together without any childishargueing. I am proud to be associated withAndy and Alchemist Research.
1 Andy Davis and ALL the staff at AlchemistResearch are only here so that we can HELPand SERVE you, fellow Spectrum users. Ifyou can see my point, you will also seethat Andy Davis has no interest in atakeover bid for Spectrum UK, he simplywouldn't have the time required. Andy wasquite simply trying to do his self-imposedjob, and help out so that yet anotherSpectrum user group wouldn't vanishwithout trace. If anybody doubts that,then for what reason other than to offerhelp, advice and free software, doesAlchemist Research exist? It's certainlynot a financial reason, I can assure youof that. If it was, then why do you lotget free PD software? Go on, how many ofyou have ever been asked to pay AndyANYTHING for help or advice? Not a singleone of you, I bet!
1 Andy Davis Bsc
1 Andy <Ed to you. Ed> thinks that I'm over-reacting but I don't think I am. He wasplaying a computer game the other evening,the name escapes me and flew his aircraftunder a bridge and as he did so, used theon-board camera to view the underside andthe rear as he emerged from the other side- triumphant.
1 Andrew Parish
1 And with that, Andy trundles off to thebar and doesn't realise I taped theconversation! Even now as he's compilingthis issue and waiting for me to finishthis he doesn't have a clue! He thinks I'mwriting about Time Travel.
1 And various other books with imaginativetitles0
1 And there amongst all these titles are 10-12 year old books on programming your ZX48k Spectrum!, I could'nt believe it!, Ithought these books were extinct.
1 And the months passed. Still nothing fromPrism. Yet, Mr Sherwood found time towrite to the United Minds and pester themto write me a letter complaining about themix up. Not only that, but he sent themguidelines over WHAT TO WRITE! It's onething to ask them to do something buttotally out of order telling them what towrite! Needless to say, they have declinedto do anything he asked.
1 And the colour, these occupy graphics A-Gand need no turning off codes (whicharen't allowed anyway).k
1 And that is essentially it. Oh, no, sorryit's not!! I forgot to mention Greetings!!T
1 And that is basically it. Erm, Oh, oneother thing, if you ever run out of thingsto say in your text, dont say:r
1 And so now we have -
1 And finally
1 And before Mr Sherwood blames myself, hemay like to note that Alchemist Researchhad excellent working relationships withthe entire Spectrum community before hecame along. This is also reflected inEurope, where Mr Sherwood has yet to makean impact. In the Euro-community, PrismPD does not exist and there is no troublewhatsoever. Makes you think doesn't it?
1 Amy Pandagirl
1 Among other things Uniscroll offers thefollowing possibilities: FLP (FlexibleLine Position), Split, Variable speed ofscroll- text, Multiscroll, Windowfunction(Width and X-Position can be changed),Variable high of charset, FSLP (FlexibleSingle Line Position) with automatictable-use, and controll of differentroutines/variables by using textmarks.
1 Always ensure that the model operates onalow voltage. Typically I have used 3v to4.5v which have been idea. Building thisinterface previously described can producea unit that is totally reliable, and willgive hours of fun, experimenting andprogramming.
1 Although only on issue 3 and the editorunder a lot of pressure (so don't fret ifit's a few weeks late), it shows greatpromise as an unbiased general interestSam and Speccy magazine.
1 Although his exact title is questionable,it is a sort of deputy / assistant editor,second in command in other words!u
1 Although an excellent word, I don't wantany of you wags shortening it down so Ihave slightly renamed it and created arecognition and awards scheme to those ofyou who deserve it (actually, you ALLdo!). So, thanks to my local Asda storewhere I nicked the name from, I'd like topresent the ABCD AWARD.
1 Although two of them could have beenjustified and were relating to the SUC andUnited Minds matters (it appears that bothmyself and Martyn Sherwood were tolddifferent things), the
1 Although the program listed above islimited to 20 words, it can easily beamended to include mor. If, for instance,you wanted to enter 50 words you will needto make the folowing amendments. Change 20to 50 in lines 50, 70 and 140. You willalso need to enter the new codes andadditional lines in the program. In theexisting program you are limited toentering words of no more than 10characters. If you wish to increase themaximum of characters to, say, 12, allyouneed to do is alter the 10 to 12 inline 50.
1 Although Alchemist Research has greatfaith over it's readers' technicalcapabilities,a
1 Also, with the new 1.44Mb Disk drive, theywill have to rewrite the format command touse two different sizes of disk, and addthe new formats. Stay tuned next issue,when I'll fill you in on more details as Iget them... If I get them.
1 Also, another thing to do is say what youused to make the demo - eg, which artpackages, screen compressors etct
1 Also with the magazine comes two extra A4news sheets. These tell us that EuricoCovas is back in Portugal from studies inLondon and more English details on theMB02 interface.
1 Also in the magazine is a great article onconverting screen pictures from the PC orAmiga to Spectrum accompanied by a coupleof pictures (the bottom one is from "TrueQ" of ST:TNG".
1 Also by Theo is a nifty little prog calledEEC1993. Like DINOSAURS, EEC1993 is like amini database of information, with info onsome of the countries in the EC. Again,the graphics are well drawn, and I have togive it a mention, as I stole the BritishIsles map screen for this issue of AN!
1 Allie Weston
1 All you will need is a textfile written onTasword 2 and know the length of thetextfile, which should be found whensaved. Type in this short program:
1 All you need to do is call, quote yourrequested collections or order of twentytitles for just `1 per disk which will beprocessed immediately and sent with bill,to be settled within 30 days.
1 All the speccy books disappeared from mylocal library a few years ago - mostlydeleted from the library collection - soit was a genuine surprise to see somespeccy books still in existence. (The caseof the missing speccy books - another casefor THE X FILES methinks)
1 All the bits you require to build theproject are7
1 All of the normal spectrum ports are backin now, including the ATTRIBUTE PORT whichAmstrad forgot to put into the +3 and +2A,thus crashing several games such as BombJack and Short Circuit. I wonder whatit'll be like to reset and see (C)1994,1995 Poissons d'avril ?
1 All details contained in this article are,as far as I know, and to the best of myknowledge, completely true. I do not telllies! I stand to be corrected on any ofthe above text, but it will stand as it isuntil YOU tell me otherwise. Don't botherme with trivia, tell me the facts.
1 Alf Fairwheather
1 Alchnews 14 would probably also be usefulas it has another tutorial like this onein it, as well as lots of other finethings.
1 Alchnews 13
1 Alchemist Software has a growing number ofNON PUBLIC DOMAIN titles, all for theprice of media and postage. We have thechilling 128k adventure DOOMSDAY, manyutilities from the 007 series, plus titlesfrom BRADWAY SOFTWARE and our newexclusive in-house
1 Alchemist Research is confident it willpurchase an MB02 in 1995 and will supportit in every way possible.m
1 Alchemist Research is dedicated to thesurvival of the Spectrum by offering whatwe do at low prices and, in most cases,free.
1 Alchemist Books
1 Alchemist Research congratulates botheditors of aforementioned publications whodid their best to ensure the Spectrum namelives on as long as possible.
1 Alchemist PD give some basic!
1 AlchNews 128k:
1 Albert Harper, congrats on the PCPDlibrary!2
1 Alan Sharvell
1 Ahh haa, the books I am after are here,but they are trapped, so I shift thedebris - Windows 3.1 user guide, MasteringC programming, PASCAL - A case foreuthanasia...
1 Ah - how about "Daley Thompson'sDecathlon", by Ocean in 1984? Well, nearlyeveryone has played this game, but it'squite old and "one to have" so I'll writeabout it anyway. This game claims to have"superb
1 Again, this is the sort of game you justcan't put down, and it will always be oneof my firm favourites.j
1 After last issue I had a letter fromThomas Eberle of the SUC. He was a littleupset that his magazine "SUC CESSION"wasn't featured in our round up of topmagazines.
1 After buying 4m of cable from MaplinElectronics, I decided to give the unit atry. Since there is at least 2m betweenthe +2 and +3 it would be a good test.
1 After all his loyal service to theAlchemist Research empire, it was aunanimous decision by all concerned topromote Lloyd Garland to a high positionin AlchNews.
1 Addresses may be found in the TRADING POSTsection.2
1 Address on page 1
1 AVAILABLE NOW
1 AT LAST!, I have the sacred books -#
1 AT : Copies the character at the 'copy'cursor to the 'input' cursor. This commandcan also be used to copy characters whichare standard size; it will not copy 64column, double height or double widthcharacters.
1 ASB; this switches off the above command.)
1 ARRIVALS: When orders arrive, requestswill be followed to the letter ifpossible, from requests of where to putprograms on disks etc.
1 ARKANOID 2 (REVENGE OF DOH)
1 AND : As above, but Down
1 AN15.C
1 AN15.9: MULTIFACE MAGIC.
1 AN15.9
1 AN15.8 v
1 AN15.7: PRISM PROBLEMS. An even biggerAN15.8: article this issue,J
1 AN15.7
1 AN15.6
1 AN15.5: SENDING SECRET MESSAGES.#
1 AN15.5
1 AN15.4: STAR USERS CLUB. The Overline bug*
1 AN15.46 THE END. Phew, what an issue!*
1 AN15.46 0
1 AN15.45 SOAPBOX 2. Following M. Sherwoods*
1 AN15.45
1 AN15.44 l
1 AN15.43: TRADING POST. A double sizedAN15.44: section covering whats hot andT
1 AN15.43 9
1 AN15.42: CRACK CITY. With only FIFTEEN*
1 AN15.42
1 AN15.41: DEMO CODING - AN INSIDE VIEW.*
1 AN15.41
1 AN15.40
1 AN15.4
1 AN15.3: DLAN.
1 AN15.39: SPECTRUM CLASSIC. New writer PaulAN15.40: Howard gives his reviews of someT
1 AN15.39
1 AN15.38: PD WORLD. A quick look at some*
1 AN15.38
1 AN15.37: GET A LIFE. More Multifacing this*
1 AN15.37
1 AN15.36: 8 BIT GUIDELINES. What with*
1 AN15.36
1 AN15.35 E
1 AN15.34: WOMO WORLD. The SPC team giveAN15.35: some news plus a guide toT
1 AN15.34 8#
1 AN15.33: POWERPRINT POWER: Vic Bishop*
1 AN15.33
1 AN15.32
1 AN15.31 E
1 AN15.30: ROYS RANTINGS. He's back, not byAN15.31: popular demand but 'cause weAN15.32: can't get rid of him!r
1 AN15.30
1 AN15.3
1 AN15.2: KEYBOARD CLEANING. Follow up*
1 AN15.29
1 AN15.28
1 AN15.27: MEGABASIC MEGA TUTORIAL. DaveAN15.28: Fountain of Sinclair ClassicAN15.29: begins the first part of his~
1 AN15.27
1 AN15.26: ROBOTICS. Kevin Gurd!
1 AN15.26
1 AN15.25: PLUS THREE PLETHORA. Quick guides*
1 AN15.25
1 AN15.24: SNAP TO IT! Miles Kinloch on the*
1 AN15.24
1 AN15.23: ACROSS THE WAVES. A look at the*
1 AN15.23
1 AN15.22: EDITVIEW 2 TUTORIAL. Following*
1 AN15.22 &#
1 AN15.21: +3 MASTERCLASS. Ben continues his*
1 AN15.21 X
1 AN15.20 D
1 AN15.2 g
1 AN15.1: NEWS. Two prominent closures, one*
1 AN15.19: BENS BITS. Ben Douglas excellsAN15.20: himself by writing a three partT
1 AN15.19 :#
1 AN15.18: CAT RESCUE. An unorthodox but*
1 AN15.18 0
1 AN15.17: SOAPBOX. Lloyd Garland gives his*
1 AN15.17
1 AN15.16: TASWORD TUTOR. Following on from*
1 AN15.16
1 AN15.15
1 AN15.14: TASWORD MODIFICATION. Guide onAN15.15: modifying the PRINTER CONTROLT
1 AN15.14 Q
1 AN15.13 5
1 AN15.12: PROPER RS232.
1 AN15.12 S
1 AN15.11: UNIVERSAL RS232? Lloyd Garland's*
1 AN15.11 X
1 AN15.10: HARD TIMES. An extended section*
1 AN15.10
1 AN15.1 J(
1 AN15.0: This file
1 AN15.0 #
1 ALCHNEWS15
1 ALCHNEWS PHENOMINAL SIZE INCREASE!
1 ALCHNEWS GOES GLOBAL
1 ALCHEMIST SOFTWARE:
1 ALCHEMIST SOFTWARE
1 ALCHEMIST PD:
1 ALCHEMIST PD
1 ALBHAR is newly established. Just send a3.5" DD or HD disk and three 1st classstamps, plus your preference of softwareand you will recieve it back full ofprograms. No doubt Albert would welcomeany mail at this stage, so please do getin touch.
1 ALBHAR PC SHAREWARE
1 AFB; this causes the current paper and inkcolours to alternate, as in FLASHK
1 ADVICE: Advice on almost any program isavailable. We welcome information fromcustomers on any programs they have so wecan use it for future customers. quite agrowing number of programs come with helpfiles for wordprocessors. These files comewith the program as standard but can beprinted out by us if required. This isdone with GAC, YS Megabasic and severalothers as seen in the AlchNews tutorials.
1 ADVERTISEMENT
1 ADVENTURE 2 : THE SEQUEL : REMIX 95#
1 ADVANCED PINBALL SIMULATOR
1 AD: Yeager's AFT? Dunno!
1 AD: What, like an Amazon Quest or a CaveVenture? Well, the latter but I thinkthere it's down to the money involved.z
1 AD: Thats true, I was on the M1 thisafternoon and saw a horrific smash, youdon't get that on Turbo.l
1 AD: No! It's just (long pause), oh I don'tknow, I suppose more of a thrill - zoomingdown and under a bridge. I'm not allowedto do that on my lessons.
1 AD: No it's not! Look, do you want anotherdrink?0
1 AD: Erm...
1 AD: Dunno. Concrete I suppose.
1 AD: 'Course not, what kind of stupidquestion is that?;
1 AD: Perhaps. Look, where is thisconversation leading??
1 ACROSS THE WAVES
1 ABCD stands for Above and Beyond the Callof Duty - to which many have already risento. This award benefits you in all mannerof ways, free subscriptions and you beginto find your orders are processed free ofcharge!
1 A4catalogue of these wares availableshortly.4
1 A/V Programs
1 A-BLACK : 27 114 0
1 A,S & D give backslash and vertical line,as used by many PC ASCII textfiles.M
1 A small flat screwdriver
1 A series exploring the Tasword
1 A program by Roy Butterfield.
1 A problem I've always had with the +Dconcerns the snapshot button roughly onetime in every five, or thereabouts, Iexperience a crash on returning to theprogram , i.e. either through pressing 'x'or after making an actual snapshot. (Ifthe latter, then the snapshot itself alsocrashes when loaded.)
1 A particularly effective style for smalltext is achieved with :-B
1 A pair of tweezers
1 A new Star Printer has just been released.The LC-90 is similar to the LC-100 but ismono only has has a top speed of 192characters per second (draft), some 12CPS faster than the LC-100. NLQ mode isalso faster, at 48 CPS. Price is `129 andStar ribbons are priced at `4.50 with atractor feed unit at `15.
1 A long established company in the Spectrumfield, also catering for the SAM. Lots ofuseful bits are available for theSpectrum, including leads and hardware. BGServices is also the official distributorof the Z80 Spectrum emulator for the PC.
1 A great game to relax with, and one I findvery addictive.9
1 A great feature about the Star LC-100 isthe fact that the dip switches arecontrolled electronically - no tiny littlebutton shifting which can soon wear outand being moved by pins, pencils,screwdrivers and so on!
1 A few weeks later Robert Skene telephonedme to thank me for his complimentary copyof AlchNews and to also inform me of themistaken name in issue 14. He also toldmethat Mr Sherwood wanted Robert's fullsupport, most likely as the basis foranother article. Robert declined. Iimmediately made written apologies toRobert, Patrick and Mr Sherwood.
1 A few of you have asked on the telephoneto prepare an order ready for your shortlyarriving letter. This has unoffically ledto telephone orders being taken.
1 A few issues ago you may remember a briefarticle on general housekeeping of thecomputer and keeping it in tip top form.|
1 A couple of months ago I gave him the taskof making a lead from the 128k to theInterface 1 and write software to swapfiles. Well, it didn't fully work due to aminor problem. But Lloyd didn't give up,he started a fresh idea he had.
1 A block of code reads instructions andtext placed in REM statments like anordinary program listing. It produceswindows, either visible or invisible intowhich your text is inserted and scrolled,the windows can have a variety of bordersall paper and ink colours are obtainable.There are 11 fonts to choose from, it ispossible to do multiple box/windowdisplays.
1 A Software Solution To A Hardware Problem)
1 A stack is used by procedures and'REPEAT-UNTIL' loops to store line andstatement numbers. When a procedure'scalled, the line and statement number ofthe statement after the call is placed onto the stack - this lets the Spectrum knowwhere to return to at the end of theprcedure. When a 'REPEAT' command isexecuted, the command and line number ofthe statement after the 'REPEAT' command,is pushed on to the stack; this tells the'UNTIL' command where the last 'REPEAT'command was.
1 A refreshingly original game, and yetanother striking success for Code Masters.The most salient feature is again theincredibly life-like movement of the ball,reproducing all the subtleties
1 A printer would also be useful forprinting out this article.D
1 A few weeks ago, Andy asked me abouttransferring files between two computersusing the RS 232 interface.o
1 >~< ASCII Code 126
1 >}< ASCII Code 125
1 >|< ASCII Code 124
1 >{< ASCII Code 123
1 >= : Moves cursor to end of line.!
1 <Sym Shift> x
1 <Sym Shift> h
1 <Sym Shift> S 124 <enter>
1 <Sym Shift> D 92 <enter>
1 <Sym Shift> A 126 <enter>
1 <Sym Shift> 9
1 <Sym Shift> 8
1 <OOh, controversial - Ed>A speaker with volume!/
1 <I can't believe I actually printed that!Next issue - how Lloyd assumes command ofthe USS AlchNews because he thinks theeditor has lost his mind! Ed.>
1 <> : Deletes all characters from cursor toend of line.6
1 <= : Moves cursor to beginning of inputline./
1 <<PS - Roy: Next issue I will define a new'Edcomment' open and close bracket whichyou won't know until it's too late! REALED. >>
1 <<<Cataloguing Disks>>>
1 < scrolls text in from right to leftthrough one line of window.E
1 < ASCII Code 127 (Copyrightchar)"
1 ;wa; This calls window wa
1 ;r; This returns from the called routine -it will also repeat.>
1 ;^a; (key H+sym.shift) and a letter - Thisgoes to a routine that has the name : *a ;(the star on B + sym.shift) and the sameletter. (works like GOTO and GOSUB ,evenwithin the same line.)
1 ;3^a; this will go to the *a routine 3times/
1 ;*a; whatever you put between this and the;r; is the sub routine with the name *aQ
1 ;"Next, Prev, Index or Choose:":
1 ;"LOADING PART ";CNT
1 ; YOU CAN DECREASE
1 ; SAVE NUMBER OF
1 ; RESTORE NUMBER OF
1 ; INCLUDE SYSTEM
1 ; GET NUMBER OF
1 ; FILL BUFFER WITH
1 ; DOS CATALOGUE
1 ; 255 DIRECTORY
1 : 27 120 1
1 : 27 120 0
1 : 27 114 1
1 : 27 104 1 K-QUADRUPLE HEIGHT AND WIDTH : 27 104 2 L-NORMAL SIZED CHARACTERSP
1 : 27 104 0
1 99% on the megometer
1 9866 TM LUTJEGAST
1 95 PRINT AT 0,0;(32000+length)-32000;" "*
1 935K OPUS DISKS
1 93 <enter>
1 91 <enter>
1 9040 ENDPROC_DISPLAY
1 9030 PRINT A$
1 9020 MODE_4:STIPPLE_6
1 9012CM RAERD
1 9010 PAPER A:INK 9
1 9000 @DISPLAY_A,A$
1 90 NEXT j: NEXT i
1 90 LET p$=m$(x)
1 90 INPUT LINE a$
1 90 INPUT "CODE (c) or DECODE (d)? ";e$ 100 PAUSE 50: CLS:
1 9 West View
1 8086 processor running at 8 mhz!
1 80 READ a$(i,j)
1 80 INPUT "Columns? ";n
1 80 IF m$=" " THEN PRINT " ";: GOTO 110&
1 8-DOUBLE WIDTH : 27 87 1
1 8-DOUBLE WIDTH : 27 87 0
1 8 BIT LIBRARY GUIDELINES (2)
1 8 BIT LIBRARY GUIDELINES (1)
1 78 Holtdale Avenue
1 720k disk drive! (ahhh, that's where Chris*
1 70794 Filderstadt
1 70794 FILDERSTADT
1 70 PRINT "To end input of text, type *" 80 FOR t=1 TO 28: LET n(t)=0: NEXT tN
1 70 PAPER 7:INK 1:CLW_0
1 70 INPUT "Rows? ";m
1 70 FOR x=32000 TO (32000-length)
1 70 FOR x=32000 TO (32000+length)
1 70 FOR x=1 TO LEN m$
1 70 FOR j=1 TO 20
1 7) Why ignore the attempts of threeindependant people and an offer of an endto the matter with a silence and then seekthe help of someone?
1 65 St Thomas' Square
1 64 Roebuck Road
1 64 IF YOU ONLY
1 606 CK49D
1 606 CJ61R
1 60 Queensfield
1 60 INPUT "Message to be encoded"'m$#
1 60 INPUT "Enter Text"'m$
1 60 GOTO 40
1 60 FOR i=1 TO 2
1 60 DIM n(28)
1 60 CURRENT_2:WINDOW_15,0,7,32
1 6/ What you used. (Tools of the trade)&
1 6) Why deliberately misinform peoplelike Joyce Cook when they find out it'snot quite how he portrayed it?r
1 6 Ravensmead
1 574 FK72P
1 520 REM *c; t5 ; c17 ;AFB;= You can change*
1 512k memory
1 51069 KOLN
1 510 REM *b;<Or this could be written later*
1 500 REM *a;=This could be your
1 50 PRINT FLASH 1; PAPER 2; "DON'T LEAVE)
1 50 PRINT FLASH 1;AT 4,6;"DO NOT LEAVE)
1 50 POKE @1,208
1 50 PAPER 1:INK 7:CLW_0
1 50 LET a=a+1
1 50 DIM a$(2,20,10)
1 5/ Credits.
1 5/ Credits,
1 5-SUPERSCRIPT : 27 84
1 5-SUPERSCRIPT : 27 83 1
1 5-Clears workspace
1 5) Why did he ignore my apology for theUnited Minds name mix up and then writeweeks later and demand an apology?v
1 4rd: BRIAN CHAPMAN who wins ten freecredits.2
1 4: Reserved. The manual doesn't detailit's use but is obviously for expansionpurposes, perhaps it could be used toselect four more fonts if the appropriatechip was fitted, or extra memory.
1 4: CR Centering. Disabled. This reallyonly has a purpose when using fanfoldpaper. If you do, then switch on.u
1 4: Auto LF with CR: Disabled. This is abig subject of confusion with the +D whichcan send it's own. I leave it disabled andlet the +D or whatever software is runningto sort it out.
1 48kadventures, plus many compilations. Printand presentation quality of this companyis outstanding, which reflects the highstandard it's software is. The CP/Mcatalogue is just as impressive, goinginto greater detail of each adventure!
1 48/128 Spectrum
1 474 XS03D
1 46 High Road West
1 42000, 36
1 40 SAVE @2,x,y,5
1 40 SAVE @1,x,y,5
1 40 PRINT TAB 12;"WARNING"
1 40 PRINT CHR$ PEEK F;CHR$ PEEK (F+1);%
1 40 POKE a, CODE INKEY$ #4
1 40 If r=2 THEN GOTO 140
1 40 FORMAT d1
1 40 CURRENT_1:WINDOW_0,32,22,32
1 4/ Greetings
1 4-Clears scroller on screen at actuall&
1 4) Why did he also do this with AlecCarswell of Venturesoft when just over ayear ago made a public unprovoked attackon him?! Is he that desperate for supportthat he is going to his old enemies?
1 4) POKE @1,208
1 4 Bethune Close
1 3rd: DAVE TONKS who wins twenty freecredits to APD.9
1 3: RAM Usage: Input Buffer. Unless ofcourse any of you have a buffer expansion.T
1 3: Paper Out Detector. Always a good ideato have this on when you're using singlesheet paper, otherwise it will carry onprinting on the roller!
1 3: NLQ Direction. I originally had thisset as Uni-direction but moved it toBi-direction for speed. When you have anew ribbon is, Bi-directional is fine.When the ribbon is fading somewhat or youwant a really crisp print, chooseUni-directional.
1 39 High Street
1 37 Trimingham Drive
1 36 Grasmere Road
1 35 <enter>
1 34680 ST GEORGES
1 34186- ? : Workspace! This one changes*
1 33297-34185: MC and intern variables$
1 33280-33296: Users variables
1 32768-33279: Displayfile-Tables
1 32768, 768
1 32 PROGRAMS FOR YOUR SINCLAIR SPECTRUM!'
1 30 PRINT TAB 8;"FREQUENCY COUNT"
1 30 PRINT TAB (6);"MULTIPLICATION CODE"&
1 30 PRINT TAB (10);"CODEBOOK"
1 30 POKE @1,1
1 30 POKE (address), CODE INKEY$ #4!
1 30 PAPER 2:INK 7:CLW_0
1 30 OPEN #4;"t"
1 30 LOAD @2,x,y,5
1 30 LOAD @1,x,y,5
1 30 INPUT "Encode (1) or Decode (2) ? ";r(
1 30 FOR F=32781 TO ((FILES-2)*13)
1 3/ Strange+silly text
1 3/ Really copius ammounts of silly text'
1 3-Switch on FSLP function.
1 3-DOUBLE STRIKE : 27 72
1 3-DOUBLE STRIKE : 27 71
1 3) Why did he write letters to neutralparties, asking them to cease links withAlchemist]
1 3) FORMAT d1
1 3" DISK DRIVE
1 3 PRINT IT! * Press CAPSHIFT-P
1 3 & 4: Page Length. I keep mine set to A4as it's rare I use any other paper size.R
1 2p; 2 stands for how long , p is what itdoes ie wait (for pause?)C
1 2nd: Mr K. HALL who wins a free issue ofAlchNews.3
1 2: Printable Area. I choose type B. Now,this doesn't start to print at the top ofthe paper like type A, but about an inchdown. The reason is because when you loadthe paper, it spools it down past the bailbar which holds the paper in place. Usingtype A will print from the top without thelever needing to be bought back until thepaper is at that position. Type B uses thepaper more economically, but will onlyprint the first few lines and wait untilyou replace the lever. I like to selectprint and leave it to print a page whilstI get on with some other work!
1 2: Orator Lower Case. I have chosen thelower case to print as small capitals. Asthere are already three fonts which printin lower case, I thought a fourth would bepointless. As it is I rarely use Sanserif.
1 2: AEC mode. Disabled. I don't think thishas any relevance to the Spectrum.L
1 298 Holton Road
1 26 Spotland Tops
1 25 POKE 23658,8
1 24s; 24 is the number of times the text isscrolled upwards:
1 240 LET s$"": GOTO 200
1 230 NEXT h
1 230 DATA "54982","73581","90075","23874" 240 DATA "68719","68677","10327","40476" 250 DATA "27921","48553","11072","70355" 260 DATA "26569","74832","10996","12128" 270 DATA "69783","74891","22317","98724" 280 STOP
1 23 Cleveland
1 225 FOR h=1 TO 26: IF a$(h)=s$ THEN PRIN*
1 220 NEXT i
1 220 IF LEN s$<>5 THEN LET s$=s$+f$ (TO 5*
1 2120 IF i$="H" THEN INPUT;: SAVE
1 210 PRINT TAB 2;CHR$ (64+i); TAB 10;n(i);)
1 210 NEXT i
1 210 IF LEN s$>5 OR LEN s$<1 THEN PRIN*
1 210 DATA "NIGHTFALL","IN","AT","ON","SEND"220 DATA "MONEY","FOOD"A
1 205 GLENESK ROAD
1 200 PRINT d$(i);: IF e$="c" THEN PRINT "*
1 20 POKE 22528+A,PEEK A
1 20 PAUSE 1: RANDOMIZE USR 33402: GOTO 20(
1 20 PAUSE 0
1 20 LET FILES=USR 36864
1 20 GOTO 10
1 20 FORMAT "t";9600
1 20 FOR x=1 TO 26: READ a$(x): NEXT x$
1 20 CURRENT_0:WINDOW_0,0,15,32
1 20 BORDER 0:PAPER 0:INK 7:CLS
1 20 BORDER 0:PAPER 0: INK 7:CLS
1 20 BORDER 0: PAPER 0: INK 7:CLS
1 2/ Writing loads of punctuation marks to simulate madness! (or any other reason you can think of!)i
1 2/ Punctuation
1 2/ Nothing yet!
1 2/ Lots of punctuation
1 2. If not, then printing it normally. Ifit is, then print "System" on screen, andcorrect the character by subtracting 128from it.
1 2-4: Code page. I have chosen page #850,the Multi-lingual set. This is because itgives me the (R) and (C) symbols. Theadvantage of page #437 is the fact it canprint out Greek characters. It's really amatter of personal choice.
1 2) Why did he tell myself and Johan Koningthat the matter was over in the summerwhen attacks continued?k
1 2) Type in: 10 PRINT "Hi mum"
1 2) The Spectrum is NOT 16 bit! If hecontacted any other 8 bit library, he maybe surprised to hear that they wouldhonour their customers. If Prism PD isoprating under sixteen bit guidelines,this could be why there is do muchfriction against them.
1 2) POKE @1,1
1 2 SET the WINDOW-To set the window to thesize you want your text to be USE:- S forUP. X for DOWN. J for LEFT. K-RIGHT.x
1 2 North Hill Road
1 2 Cromwell Close
1 2 Belvoir Road
1 1nd: RAY MUSSON who recieves a years subto AlchNews.6
1 1: Print Mode. Draft is selected here. Itwould be silly to use Courier because ofthe amount of printing which is just roughfor personal notes. Should I print aletter to anyone, I would select Courierfont myself.
1 1: Emulation. This is best set to Standardas the Spectrum, and +D in particular, aremore suited to Epson code emulation ratherthan IBM.
1 1: Character Table. I have set this up toprint graphics. This switchK
1 1: Auto Sheet feeder. I don't own one soit's set to NOT INSTALLED. I do hope toget one shortly though. The price I havebeen quoted is `58 from DNCS Computers &Supplies.
1 1995 A.Davis & Alch. Research
1 197 LET m$=m$(TO LEN m$-1)
1 195 LET d$(i)=a$
1 190 PRINT "LETTER FREQ' LETTER FREQ'"200 FOR i=1 TO 13;
1 190 NEXT j
1 190 LET s$=s$+k$ 200 NEXT x: GOTO 120'
1 180 LET a$=a$+m$(i+j-1 TO i+j-1)
1 180 IF k$=" " THEN GOTO 220
1 180 DATA "NEWYORK","LONDON","PARIS","ROME"190 DATA "ARRIVE","DEPARTFROM","GO TO",Q
1 18 Clyde Grange
1 172 <enter>
1 171 <enter>
1 170 LET k$=m$(x)
1 170 GOTO 90
1 170 GOTO 120
1 17 Le Mas Blanc
1 160 NEXT i
1 160 FOR x=1 TO LEN m$
1 160 FOR j=1 TO LEN m$-1 STEP x
1 156 <enter>
1 155 LET a$="": LET m$=m$+" "
1 150 SAVE "TextENC"CODE 32000,length#
1 150 SAVE "TextDEC"CODE 32000,length#
1 150 NEXT j
1 150 IF m$=a$(1+x,t) THEN PRINT a$(2-x,t) 160 NEXT t4
1 15 POKE 23658,8
1 14sd; 14 is the number of times the textis scrolled downwards?
1 140 INPUT "Message to be decoded ";m$: LE*
1 140 IF j=CODE (a$(i TO i))-64 THEN LET*
1 140 FOR t=1 TO 20
1 140 FOR i=1 TO x
1 14 De Verose Court
1 130 INPUT "Resave encoded text? ";LINE s$ 140 IF s$<>"y" THEN STOPB
1 130 INPUT "Resave decoded text? ";LINE s$ 140 IF s$<>"y" THEN STOPB
1 130 IF m$="" THEN GOTO 280
1 130 FOR j=1 TO 26
1 130 DIM d$(x,LEN m$/x)
1 13- the second pair, this is the number oflines deep that the window will be.M
1 128K Music:
1 127 FOR n=1 TO 10- LEN m$: LET m$=m$+" ":*
1 125 IF LEN m$>=10 THEN GOTO 130
1 120 PRINT
1 120 INPUT "Enter word ";m$
1 120 IF e$="d" THEN LET x=n
1 120 FOR i=1 TO LEN a$
1 12 Frederick Street
1 110 NEXT x
1 110 IF e$="c" THEN LET x=m
1 100 PRINT " ";a$((CODE p$)-64);
1 100 INPUT "Do you wish to code (0) or*
1 100 IF a$="*" THEN GOTO 180
1 10 REM DECODER
1 10 REM CODER
1 10 REM #; wa00240032;e2; c07;f ;
1 10 RANDOMIZE USR 33297
1 10 POKE 23658,8
1 10 LET a=<address>
1 10 INPUT "Enter the damaged disk in drive*
1 10 FOR A=0 TO 703
1 10 CLEAR 32767:LOAD "CAT.BIN" CODE"
1 10 CLEAR 30664: LOAD *"m";1;"m"CODE:$
1 10 BORDER 0:PAPER 0: INK 7: CLS: DIM'
1 10 BORDER 0
1 1/ Slagging
1 1/ Slagg off group members
1 1. detecting whether the byte has bit 7set.(128 added to it)?
1 1) Why did he tell Miles Kinloch Prism PDwas run as a full time business sponsoredby Bradby Boys Club?h
1 1) The customer is ALWAYS right!
1 1) Insert TEST disk in drive one
1 1) Do a simple SAVE d*"pic" SCREEN$#
1 1 To ENTER your text
1 1 Pelham Street
1 1 & 2: Ribbon Type. No doubt you willleave it set to the first option, LC9CL /LC9HD and LC9, as this covers the ribbonsyou will use in it. LC9CL is the colourribbon, LC9HD is the long lasting blackribbon and LC9 is the standard blackribbon, as used in the LC-10 printer.
1 07- the fourth pair, this is the width ofthe window.5
1 0600 ROSIORI DE VEDE
1 05- the third pair, this is the number ofcharacters away from the left hand side ofscreen that the window starts at.u
1 01- the first pair, this is the number oflines down from the top of the screen tothe top of your window.k
1 0-Inverse text printing is switched off. 1-Inverse text printing is switched on. 2-Switch off FSLP function.o
1 /Load from
1 .79 1M 6 WAY PHONE CORD
1 .60 12V LED (Yellow)
1 .38 6 WAY BT PLUG (631/A) 68 FT52G&
1 .35 12V LED (Green)
1 ...to name just half a dozen. Restassured, the rest of you will be mentionedin due course!b
1 ... --- ...
1 . ... -.-. .- .--. . .- - -- .. -.. -. ..)
1 ---Next year in Alchnews--
1 - inverses the window area C-Set...n - where 'n' is a number,1 to 9 draws an n-sized rectangle around window. xact edge = 5). Proceed number with 0 (Thus 05) to draw in Over 1 condition and thus 'UNDRAW' a rectangle H ard copy - Sends screen copy to printer.
1 - a pattern like the Western railroadfences. This message can then be encodedas SLCNUSONS ELOSLSOET or divided intomore realistic word lengths as SLCNUSONSELO SLSOET.
1 - Intern textvariable is set to the start of your text.9
1 - Copies content of CLSPAT into MC"
1 - Clears workspace
1 - Changes the MC depending on the width of your window.8
1 - Calculation of Displayfile-Tables#
1 , thats an idea...ED> <<Hang on, Ididn't say that - REAL Ed.>>A
1 , allvariables set to standard values):(
1 +D Utilities
1 +D Support:
1 +D snapsnot bug - cured by!
1 +32781 STEP 13
1 +3 Utilities
1 +3 & CP/M Support:
1 * You get the usual 'L' curser.
1 * You get the STYLE PALETTE.
1 * Press ENTER.
1 * Press CAP SHIFT - T
1 * PRESS CAPS-SHIFT N (New printer routine)* RESPOND TO THE ON-SCREEN QUESTIONS.O
1 * Now type in from one to 32 characters'
1 * LOAD POWERPRINT II
1 * LOAD INDEX *
1 * Choose one of the styles by
1 * (Press x to cancel)
1 ): The address ofyour text. Simple, isn't it?/
1 ) is where you want topoke the data.(
1 (teletext)
1 (one line).
1 (anddepending of the following char, muchrubbish might occur!)!D
1 (after calling INIT)
1 (You can get around this by saying CAT"B:X*.*" if your file begins with an X,but no files past say, W are displayed.)~
1 (Syncronize)
1 (Syncronize + Scroll)
1 (S)EARCH: is the all important option.This lets the Multiface begin looking forthe command requested. When it finds it,the NUMBER OF POKES bar will be altered tohow many occurances it has found in theprogram. The COUNTER bar tells you howmany pokes out of the above number youhave tried.
1 (Richard Darling)
1 (Rich Pelly, Y.S. Jan 95)
1 (R)IGHT SHIFT
1 (P.S. hello to THE KNIGHTS, THE KNUCKLEGIRLS, EXTACY-3, DOK, PSI-CO, ROY BENSON,LLOYD GARLAND, JOHN GARNER, MY CAT, DOK'SDOG, HIS NEIGHBOUR'S DOG, AND TO ALL THOSEPEOPLE WHO I NOW LIKE FOR HAVING READ ALLTHIS USELESS TEXT!)
1 (P)RINTing first with (R) and (D) in onepattern, followed by unshifted printing ina secons pattern, produces specialshadow-edges (see SOLID example).
1 (P)RINT 1P
1 (P)RINT 0P
1 (Only kidding, Ben)
1 (N)EXT POKE: You press this to let theMultiface set the first address it hasfound to zero. It will return to the gameand you deliberately get yourself killedto see if it works. If it does, then pressthe button again and note down the addressin the right hand corner of the Multifacewindow. This is the address of where youshould poke, which I'll explain in awhile.
1 (L)ives: This is where you tell theMultiface what it is looking for. Press"L" first and then use keys 1 and 2 tomove the counter to the right number andthen press "3" to set it.
1 (Initialize UNISCROLL)
1 (If pressed goto Basic)
1 (Garth Sumpter, SU Jan 95)
1 (F+3);CHR$ PEEK (F+4);CHR$
1 (F)lip: When you've set your number oflives, you now have to look for the"variable" which controls how thy aretaken off you. In Basic you'd havesomething like:
1 (Dr Whiplash, S&M WEEKLY)
1 (D)OWNSHIFT
1 (C)USTOM: If you have to add your ownsearch token, it has to be done via thisoption. Like with LIVES, you move theCUSTOM counter with 1 and 2 and set with3. The variable refers to the decimalZ80 machine code command. 60 actuallyrepresents 'INC a'. Should you not have acopy of any Z80 instruction sets, heresall the DEC instructions and theirrelevant HEX and DECIMAL codes:
1 (A sad pop star from the 70s)
1 (64 LPP) : 27 65 12
1 (!)<Political Correctness tells us to referto these people as "Reality Challenged"Ed.> and solving a hazardous maze. Thegraphics are simple but add to the game'splayability. Sound is provided in the formof beeps and clicks every now and then,but the full 2-channel Spectrum 48kcapabilities aren't used. This game is OKbut gets boring when you've played it overagain and can remember some of the traps.
1 'disturbing'!, i'll say it was, but forall the wrong reasons!.A
1 'SPUT_' is a variation on 'PUT_' in thatyou can enlarge the stored information. Ittakes the form :SPUT_a,x,y,b,c,w,d. Wherea is the address, x and y are the pixelco-ordinates, b is the number of times theblock should be magnified in x direction,c magnified in the y direction, w is thewidth and d is the depth, the value shouldbe eight times that used by 'GET_' and'PUT_'. 'SPUT_' always uses the currentattributes when placing a block on thescreen.
1 'PUT_' and 'GET_' use the same co-ordinatesystem as 'ATTR' and 'SCREEN$'. Use theCLEAR command to reserve a specific pieceof memory for storing screen information.You can work out the number of bytes takenby one screen area using the equation: 9 *w * d
1 ' if capslock isoff.
1 & Big thanks:
1 #; Must confess I'm not too sure what thisdoes, but if it omitted then the programseems to run slower.h
1 "When I phoned some of MY FRIENDS aboutyour latest attacks, THEY IMMEDIATELY wereprepared to write to you on their ownaccord because they are also fed up withyou. Because of the apparent doubledealing, I then advised them to hold backas I was not prepared to allow them to bedrawn into back stabbing. So it appearsthat certain individuals in Scotland canno longer be trusted."
1 "Multitextmarker" which controls differentfunctions depending on the followingparameter. Possible Parameters are:w
1 "Megabasic",
1 "In short, Prism PD considers it all to beat an end. This is the message that manyother outlets have been told by Prism PD."~
1 "I dont know what to say"
1 "HIT ME, HIT ME, HIT ME WITH YOUR RHYTHM(
1 "Enter Part:";cnt:
1 "EXCELLENT"
1 "ESCAPETO","SATURDAY"
1 "ERROR": GOTO 120
1 "As far as I'm concerned you can stateyou were misled and give ANY reason. Thatway I get the apology, and you don't loseface, which I and others agree is morethan you deserve!"
1 "An adventure game with a difference"%
1 "ANOTHER HIT"
1 "A SINCLAIR CLASSIC, AND NO DOUBTING"%
1 "A DEFINITE MEGAGAME"
1 ";PEEK (F+11) + 256 * PEEK (F+12)!
1 "000","-","00-","000-","0--","-00-",$
1 "0-","-000","-0-0","-00","0","00-0",$
1 "-0---","--00"
1 "--","-0","---","0--0","--0-","0-0",$
1 ","00","0---","-0-","0-00",
1 " A great new game from that genius of&
1 ! STOOPID! Spot the obvious faults:#
1 the word MAYDAY will appearon the screen. Asterisks are used to tellthe computer that the message is complete.q
1 `149 AUTO SHEET FEEDER
1 ` 69 BLACK INK RIBBON
1 ` 6 EXTERNAL SERIAL/PARALLEL CONVERTER . ` 55/
1 ` 6 COLOUR INK RIBBON
1 ` 4 LONGLIFE BLACK RIBBON
1 UNISCROLL V2.1
1 THE VARIABLES
1 THE ROUTINES
1 TEXTMARKS (II)
1 TEXTMARKS
1 TASWORD 128 / +2 ONLY
1 TASWORD 128 / +2
1 SPECTRUM?It's true to say that their heydays havewell and truly gone. Many people hailedtheir doom after the advent of the AtariSt and Amiga. But only five years on,these have
1 SETUP PARAMS
1 MEMORY MAP
1 LOAD PART
1 I'm making my waythrough the paper jungle that is theuniversity library. I am looking for alibrary catalogue computer terminal.
1 Here is the User Process commandline. Remember that the Configure Menuoption can be utilised to make sure youknow what the options you have changedACTUALLY do! Remember to resave theprogram after altering the menu.
1 GENERAL TIPS
1 CHOOSE PART
1 BYE BYE!
1 " (Space) to set YPOS to 0(Space=ASCII Code 32 => (32-32)*2= 0!) or"
1 when suddenly itoccurred to me that I was on to something,Speccy books that is, not a dead AndyDavis!.p
1 Self explanatory,note that the frame stores are not savedas well.F
1 If theBASIC has been correctly configured thenthese options can be used to save a blockof frames to tape, disc or microdrive.
1 V2.0 written by VISION of TMG in 5/92(
1 MARCH 1995.