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3 EGBBGEEEBBB 2 SONG BY ST COMPILEJ 1 no of parts+1 (ie: 1-38+pt 0=39) 1 ago. But, why not stickwith the brand you know and love and tryout a SINCLAIR Z88? Not only is the laptop far more powerful,with extra options such as EPROMs and RAM& ROM packs, but the machine can beconnected to Spectrum 128's, QL's and evenPCs. The Z88 comes complete with clock,diary, calendar, alarm, word processor,database and BBC Basic as standard. Alchemist Research hopes to have one ofthese in operation either now or in thevery near future, courtesy of the UK'sleading supplier - Bill Richardson. Seethe flyer with this issue of AlchNews. Theprice quoted is a special discount forQUANTA and ALCHNEWS readers only. In the meantime, any PC owners wi 1 The dictionary may actually consist ofmore than one VOCABULARY - the primary oneis called FORTH and this is the word tokey by pressing ENTER when you want toreturn to what is called the CONTEXTVOCABULARY. All vocabularies link back to the FORTHvocabulary and this helps to justify theirexistence. When commands are entered,FORTH first looks through whatever happensto be the cuurent vocabulary and thenrefers back to the FORTH vocabulary inorder to find a match for the word underexecution. As soon as it finds such amatch, the corresponding definition iscarried out. Putting the definition ofrarely used words into specialvocabularies speeds up the search timewhen in the FORTH vocabulary itself. THE STACK The working of 1 EGGNEB - (Egg Nebula) officially titled 'Gaseous Pillars' this image was originally taken by the Hubble telescope in Nov 95, and you might remember it, as it hit the headlines at the time due to it's striking beauty. GA1 - SCULLY IN RUBBER!!!, OH MY GOD!!!, GA2 THERE IS A GOD!!!. Taken for FHM GA3 magazine, but not published, distributed on the Internet instead (at the SKY TV site, X FILES section). (GA1 & GA2 show how you can improve an image, if you fiddle with it a bit. GA1 is darker - resulting in a sharper image, but GA2 which is lighter, reveals more details - especially that rubber!). MARS - Taken b 1 COPYRIGHTED - NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN! 1 AN23.D 1 AN23.C 1 AN23.9 1 AN23.8 1 AN23.7 1 AN23.6 1 AN23.5 Q 1 AN23.40 93 1 AN23.4 1 AN23.39 1 AN23.38 1 AN23.37 1 AN23.36 1 AN23.35 Y1 1 AN23.34 1 AN23.33 1 AN23.32 1 AN23.31 1 AN23.30 1 AN23.3 1 AN23.29 ) 1 AN23.28 a/ 1 AN23.27 1 AN23.26 1 AN23.25 Y 1 AN23.24 1 AN23.23 1 AN23.22 1 AN23.21 1 AN23.20 1 AN23.2 1 AN23.19 u) 1 AN23.18 1 AN23.17 a/ 1 AN23.16 1 1 AN23.15 1 AN23.14 1 AN23.13 1 AN23.12 1 AN23.11 q) 1 AN23.10 1 AN23.1 1 AN23.0 1 ALCHNEWS23" 1 ;"LOADING INDEX": 1 ;" LOADING PART ";CNT;" " 1 1997 A.Davis & Alch. Research 1 1.20 coveprice. All in all, I'd rate it as a "must have"especially if you have any interest at alin science fiction and/or informative, welwritten and witty articles. I personallcan't wait for issue three! CATTY REMARKS Copyright '97 DH Industries, AlchemisSoftware, Alchemist Research, Andy DavisRay Smith - in fact copyright 1997 thwhole world except RB. Ring ring... ring ring... rin-click "HelloAlchemist Research Seat Ibiza Mobile HQ" DH Hi Andy, Tis me. When are you likely to be in Bristol? AD We're just on the M32 now (wooosh) Lookit that pillock in the bus, just 1 00000000`00 1 "Enter Part:";cnt: 1 SETUP PARAMS 1 LOAD PART 1 LOAD +D INDEX 1 CHOOSE PART 1 Mulder sighed and shut his bag ofseeds. He found he wasn't hungry anymore."Lisa," he said with a concernedexpresssion on his face, "how doesWaterton "choose" its people? I mean, whatcriteria must it follow to accept someone?Agent Scully is one of the best people Ihave ever met and she is someone who wouldput her life on the line for me as I wouldfor her. Granted, we have bigdisagreements on many things, but shestill stands by me in a lot of cases. Whatmakes the town hate her and like me?" Lisa smiled sadly, "It all boils downto something I know that you have toadmit, Mulder. Waterton can only acceptpeople who "believe", who are open to thepossibilities of unknown places andunknown phenomena. Agent Scully, like alarge majority of the Earth's population,is completely closed to such ideas. Toher, a town with a mind of its own wouldseem ludicrous. This town needs to acceptpeople who wil 1 "I'm sorry, but you'll have toleave." Perturbed and still hungry, but notabout to start a fight, Scully leftquickly and went across the street to thesmall grocery store. When she walked in,Scully had a very uncomfortable feelingthat everyone was watching her, and with aquick glance at both customers and clerks,she knew it was true. This eerie feelingmade Scully rush down the first aisle shecould and pick up the first prepackageditem--some Hostess cupcakes--she couldfind. As Scully went to the checkout line,she felt as if the whole store was at astandstill--for a moment all 3 checkoutclerks seemed to stop scanning items andto just STARE! Scully was beginning to getworried that something on her person wasnoticable--perhaps she had something stuckon her coat, or her hair was stickingstraight up or 1 "Did you take her to the soda shopand buy her some ice cream or do mostpeople sit at a soda counter and eatsunflower seeds?" "Actually, she ordered cherryphosphates, but how did you..." "I went in there this afternoon andgot a double scoop for 50 cents andnoticed a seed on the floor. I justfigured that..." "I'm not most people, right?" Mulder finished. "Right," Scully answered, smiling butgiving him a strange look. Mulder feltuncomfortable. There was an unusualtension in the room that both agentsseemed to feel, but were trying to coverup with sarcasm and small talk. Finally,Mulder knew it was time to break the iceand say what was on his mind. He lookedstraight in 1 UNUSUAL BEHAVIOUR FROM FPD Quite recently, the actions of DaveFountain have been causing concern. Forsome reason he seems to have an axe togrind with everyone. Aside from callingTheo Develegas an 'arsehole' regarding oneof his programs over two years old, anarticle in ZX FILES which seems to have ago at James Waddington, with the use ofthe phrase 'rip off merchants' and statingthat Alchemist Software is swamping themarket with cheap compilations. Plusthere's also been comments made aboutcertain programmers and their work inconverting snapshots back to originalfiles, that FPD doesn't "f*ck them up bycompressing the main code". To the best ofour knowledge, only Miles Kinloch doesthis, and the compression enables peopleto get far more games on a +D disk, or tosave a great deal of time loading fromtape. It doesn't spoil the game one bit.Considering Miles has been responsible forconverting ma 1 Listing After running a program the originalprogram LIST can be returned to the screenby merely using ENTER again. Listing maystart from any line number by keying LISTfollowed by the required line number. Infact this has to be carried out beforeediting any particular line as descibed inthe next paragraph. Editing Errors in programs can be corrected byusing the EDIT facility and even oncompleted programs almost inevitablychanges have to be made at some time. Thelast line entered is shown by the symbol">" and to select any other line thecursor up or down keys must be used. The following operations can be carriedout: 1 .A complete Line can be replacedmerely by using the same Line number asbefore and typ 1 MARCH 1997. 1 The following story is my small tribute tothe paranormal phenomena found in theMidwest. "Silent Treatment" by Erin Bauer Milton Cramer had been here for twodays. It was now 11:30 p.m. and Miltonlooked proudly around his lush suitecomplete with his own living room,kitchen, bath, and bedroom. After gettingaglass of wine--of the most excellentFrench vintage--he went into his bedroomand sat on the plush comforter coveringhis soft king sized bed and stared out thewindow. He stared at the small grocery,clothing, and dime stores across thestreet and had difficulty imagining howsuch a town could offer a hotel like this.At any rate, it was about time he got somerespect--he was a high class businessmanand demanded e 1 ALCHEMIST RESEARCH PRICING POLICY Effective 01/03/97 - 01/03/98 We've streamlined the operation ofsubscriptions, single and back issues tomake ordering as simple as possible. Thesedetails will remain effective until arevision is published in AlchNews 27.Alchemist Research reserves the right toalter this information without notice. __________________________________________ ALCHNEWS FREQUENCY AlchNews is released every three months,on or around the first days of MARCH,JUNE, SEPTEMBER and DECEMBER. September isthe birthday month of Alchemist Research,and we usually give away extra freebies. __________________________________________ 1 RUNNING Z80 WITH WINDOWS 95.... Properly! A number of you have written in and saidthat you've had trouble running Z80 underWindows 95. The setting described here ispretty general and should work with mostmodern PCs. First, make sure that you have the Z80.PIFfile in your Z80 directory. It may beadvantageous to put it on your Windowsdesktop. Wherever it is, right click on itand select the PROPERTIES menu. You shouldbe then confonted by six pages ofsettings. 1) GENERAL. Tells you about the emulator.There are four check boxes, make sure onlythe ARCHIVE one is highlighted. 2) PROGRAM: The name (beside the icon) iswhat you want 1 Paul's New PC-Powered Rantings! Yes, that's right folks; I now have a"proper" computer (that's what PC standsfor!) complete with Pentium processor,multimedia bits and pieces and variousother add-ons - like a cool colour inkjetprinter! So, my next step is naturally to leave theSpeccy scene, right...? WRONG! Sorry todisappoint you all, but I still love theold Speccy and will continue to mess aboutwith it in my spare time. Er, by theway... does anyone know how to get64-column text in this WordPad thing? IfTasword can do it, surely this great32-bit multitasking phenomenon must beable to. Well, anyway, I haven't ranted about asingle thing yet, so here goes: * Whenever I 1 CUSTOMISING ALCHNEWS LOGO BAR Andy Davis / Miles Kinloch When Dominic Morris revised the SinclairNews shell for ALchNews, he didn't botherto add any screens or revise the logo - heleft that for us. As the shell came veryclose to the deadline, we left it in somecopies of issue 11, but has now beenrevised. Creating the address screen,which is seen between loading the parts,was quite easy, and has been changed onmany occasions. However, what was moredifficult, was altering the informationbat at the bottom of the screen. The moreastute of you will know that it hasn'tchanged once! The reason is because the way Dominicprogrammed it - as a sprite. I'm certainlynot having a go at him, but there are noprograms which allow you to design asprite like this and then import it toAlchNews. 1 Select Drive B for BRAIN Desmond Tyler The two men crept stealthily into thegraveyard at the dead (oops, sorry) ofnight. "This one is still fresh massster", hissedthe smaller of the two men. "Good, Igor", replied the taller man. Igor began to dig. The tall man lookedaround and then studied the ream of notesin his hands. "Remember, Igor, it must be a man's brainwe get. A woman's is just too small forour needs." "Yesss massster", replied Igor. The master listened. He could swear thathe could hear 1 BETTER DIGITISING: PART 3 *************************** By Paul Howard. Yes, this is the conclusion to my amazingseries. This final part will detail how tocreate your own digitised slideshows(easy!) or animations (less easy), asBASIC programs. I've made quite a few ofboth, so I'll explain how I did it andhopefully you can follow suit. Whatever you want to do, make sure allyour screens are ready (coloured ifnecessary, and all that), then load upyour copy of the Mikropol ScreenCompressor (available from most PDlibraries, or from me!) and compress eachscreen in turn. By the way, it is VITALthat all are 6912 bytes long (either CODE16384,6912 or SCREEN$); if they have beenleft unchanged and are 6144, they will becompressed wit 1 Z80 3.05 - THE BUG LIST As briefly detailed in the news section ofAlchNews, Z80 version 3.05 has beenreleased. There's no radical changes to 3.04 which was reviewed last issue, but manybugs have been fixed. They are: Disciple/+D Centronics printer bug fixed. Disciple COPY SCREEN$ bug fixed. RLD and RRD could change ROM (Soldier ofLight; James McKay and Lee Tonks aka Bloodtold me about this) RES/SET IX/IY could change ROM (RedScorpion; bug reported by RobertZmyslowicz) Z80 again works on all processors,including 8088/8086. ALT-F7 shortc 1 Spectrum 128 +2 (grey) Faults & Modifications P W Johnson Those readers who use the RGB output toobtain a direct video feed may beinterested in the manufacturing faultswhich I have found in the only three ofthese models I have seen. In each of these,three transistors havebeen installed on the board with theiremitter and collector transposed.According to the white line markings onthe board they are correctly mounted butpossibly due to a change of transistortype during the production run to a typeusing a different lead arrangement theincorrect assembly has occurred. Thetransistors are TR4,TR5,TR7. TR4 is the main composite PAL video outputdriver which appears on pin 1 of theconnector. The 1 SPECTRUM EMULATOR TOOLS This collection comprises of the mostpopular known utility programs to enableyou to get more from your Spectrumemulators. If you own at least oneSpectrum emulator, then you need one ormore of the following utilities. Only official shareware / freewareprograms are featured and neither theauthor, nor Alchemist Research condoneusing unregistered emulators, or gamepiracy. The collection is PKZIPped to almost 5Megabytes on four high density disks andcosts `3 from Alchemist Research. Contactus if you require the collection on doubledensity disks or do not wish the entirecollection. The programs, when unpacked, occupy almost9 Megabytes! 1 RE-TUNING YOUR SPECTRUM Well here we go, it just had to happen Isuppose. One day some inconsiderateorganisation was bound to want to use thechannel (or frequency) that almost every 8bit home computer and video recorder uses. To be fair, Channel 5 has sent out plentyof engineers to re-tune your videorecorder, but will they re-tune yourSpectrum too? Methinks not. So, it's either up to you to do ityourself, or you could of course paysomebody like your local TV engineer to doit for you - either way, the whole ideaabout using channel 36 as a broadcastfrequency should have been thought out abit better! Okay then, here's how to re-tune yourspectrum. Details are given here for a 48Kmachine, altho 1 AUNTY ROYS AGONY COLUMN >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Dear Aunty Roy... SP-UK/SP-EMU/UK v1.0 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> This is a strange emulator, and thedocumentation is foreign, can't tell whatthough. It seems to have some tape & Adlib/Soundblaster sound card support (judgingfrom the start messages) and requires EMSmemory. This emulator also features a built-indebugger, so all you technoheads can get athrill watching the numerous variations onthe assembly language instructions POP DX 1 THE ZX FILES Magazine Done by Paul White This review by Lloyd Garland Hiya AlchyNewsy readers, tiz I, theBristol Nutter. So, Paul White went and sent me a newmagazine - "what's reckon to it thenLloyd?" "Hope you enjoy reading it" said Paul inhis intro letter. What can I say, YES I DID! it's funny,packed with all things Spectrum, isnon-biased and readable like no otherpaper based magazine has been for years. Iwas reminded of Crash quite a lot whilstreading it, and I don't mean Crash when itwas taken over by Europress either. No,this is vintage stuff, just like theoriginal Spec 1 THE ALCHEMIST HOLIDAY I had a final week's holiday from work totake before Christmas, so plumped for thesecond week of November to do a littletour around the South of England, startingwith Stonehenge. Allie and I had a nice drive down onMonday morning, stopping off at Allie'srequest to see some horrors of Berkshire -such as the Newbury by-pass, AldermastonAtomic Weapons Establishment and GreenhamCommon. We also passed the power stationthat allegedly intentinally gave severalworkers cancer which was in the news aweek or two later. It amazes me how somuch evil can exist in such a localisedvicinity. The volume of military and'unmarked' vehicles on the roads in thearea was tremendous. We arrived at our hotel in Salisbury earlyin the aftern 1 TASWORD TIPS TUTOR Geff Bobker With thanks to Steve Hanley Here's a quick collection of hints andtips for Tasword 2. MULTIPLE COPIES Add the following lines to the Tasword 2Basic program - providing it has not beenmodified in any way beforehand: 251 LET i=14: PRINT AT i,0;"No of copies (1)": GOSUB 6000 252 LET k=VAL a$ 279 FOR i=1 TO k 281 NEXT i MODIFYING HELP 1 So on and so FORTH Graeme Harris FORTH is a very efficient and high levelprogramming language and operating system.It's speed is closer to machine code thanto BASIC - but unlike machine code, it isvery easy to learn. And one of the supremeadvantages of FORTH programs is that theyare almost completely transportable fromone computer to another. This applies notjust between small home micros, either -the machine's size or type has very littleto do with it. Transportability like thisis a very rare attribute in an industrybeset with the programs of incompatability- especially within computer languages. Several dialects and updates of FORTHexist but the core principles are the samefor all. The introduction to FORTH givenby this series should be easy to follow byitself, but needless to say,you will needFORTH in your 1 Inside the PLUSDROM If you own Z80, one of the biggestbenefits is the internal operation of the+D system. There are a number of externalDOS programs to read +D disks, but onlyZ80 emulates the +D system to it's fullpotential. However, before you can access the +Demulation, you must supply your own DOS,which means that you must own a Spectrumand +D! Obviously, most don't, but that'scopyright and meanness of the copyrightowners for you! But, should you manage to aquire a copy ofthe ROM file, you may want to know alittle about the actual Spectrum it camefrom, and may wish to alter the parametersof your +D emulation. Like before, we willuse the MS-DOS DEBUG command to debug thefile PLUSDROM.BIN, which is 16384 byteslong. 1 ASSEMBLING BY HAND Chris Lyons WARNING: Trying to write machine codeprograms in hex could damage your brain.But you can do it easily in assemblylanguage and then translate intohexadecimal. Machine code programs are fast, efficientand very effective, but they are extremelydifficult to write and debug. Even to theexperienced eye they can appear to be ameaningless string of numbers, becauseinstructions, data and addresses allappear as strings of hex digits joined endto end. The solution is ot to write programs inmachine code at all. Instead, most machinecode programs are written in assemblylanguage, then translated into machinecode. Usually this is done by a programcalled an asse 1 GraffiXmax v2.0 CREDITS. Original graphics viewer Richard Coles Graphics viewer v1.0 created Andy Davis. Graphics viewer v2.0 created Paul Howard. Database graphics drawn and compiled Richard Coles. Logo graphics and sound Paul Howard. Nude pictures Roy Benson. <Just kidding! Ed> (c) 19 1 BACK TO BASICS No. 1 by Ken Beer First of all let me introducemyself. Like Arnold Yates I used to writefor the Spectrum UK magazine but as Arnoldhas already explained this mag hasdissapeared into thin air. I was invitedby Andy to write for Alchnews some timeago but unfortunately I wasn't too well atthe time but I am glad to say that I amfeeling better now and rearing to go. I aman Electronics Engineer and have beenretired for nearly twelve years and Ifirst became interested in the SPECTRUMlong before I left work and I used it inconjunction with an Alphacom printer. Thisprinter has its shortcomings and I havesince invested in a full-width printer.This has given me a new interest in thesubject. 1 TRADING POST ************** Please note, it is common courtesy toenclose a SAE with your enquiry to allservices. If purchasing from a privateindividual, make confirmation the articleis still for sale and try not to send cashunless a premium delivery service is used. The services and contacts here are allin regular communication with AlchemistResearch and are considered reliable andtrustworthy. The listing has also beenscaled down vastly due to the increasingamount of space taken. THIS SECTION IS NOW LISTED IN ALPHABETICALORDER, WITH DETAILS OF WHAT THE SERVICEPROVIDES UNDERNEATH. * * * * * ADVENTURE WORK 1 TASWORD TUTOR Rescuing lost files Believe it or not, now and again theSpectrum has a tendency to crash. It's away of life, so accept it. If you'relucky, it will only happen when doingsomething non essential, but, judging byyour letters, it seems to happen more whentyping in a long program or article into aword processor. That's Murphy's Law foryou, and if I ever catch up with him,he'll regret making that law! If, when you're using Tasword, and itcrashes, the first thing you do is scream!However, don't panic, there's a strongchance that you can recover most, if notall, of your lost data. To help you, haveto hand: Pencil and paper Calculator A Multiface (p 1 DESMOND TYLER AREA 51 CONSPIRACIES I don't think that there's ever been atime in history where Roswell and Area 51has been on so many people's minds. Wayback in the 40's when an alien craft wassupposed to have crashed on a ranch inRoswell, New Mexico, there was some localinterest, but it was quietly covered upand no more was said. But, today, if thesame thing were to happen, there would bean outcry and no doubt millions wouldstorm the fences of Area 51 to demand toknow the truth. We're not far from it now,actually. ALready the town of Rachael,Nevada, which is nearest to Area 51, has abooming tourist industry catering for UFOspotters from across the globe. The roadthat runs parallel to area 51 has beenrenamed the Alien Highway and even thediner featured in the second ever X-Filesepisode 'Deep 1 DAVE'S RANTS Yo! Dave (DEFFSTAR) Forrest comin' at yourscreens for a bit of important gossyinfo. I have finally got myself a mortgage! Yes, so instead of sending me piles andpiles of letters to my usual address at 6Tithe Barn Way, I shall be living at: 81 Birdwell Road Grimesthorpe SHEFFIELD S4 8BL (IMPORTANT NOTE, Grimesthorpe is not thesame as the pit village Grimethorpe, nearBarnsley which was the setting of thecolliery band film, Brassed Off, but asuburb of Sheffield) Now a message for Paul Howard, who verykindly complim 1 BACK IN TIME Arnold Yates This month lets take a further look at theMicrodrives and other storage media. The Microdrive. This was one of the bestitems to come on the market. First off itconected to the spectrum via the expansionport and was held in place with twoscrews. You had too remove two screws from thespectrum,one to the left and one to theright. Y6u now pushed the interface 1 onto the spectrum via the expansion port.Then the two screws in the interface werescrewed into the spectrum. You now had to the left of the interface asmall socket for the microdrive plug tofit into,it will come to the microdrive alittle later,but for now I will describethe interface 1 Rockfall 3 Ever fancied becoming famous and havingyour name in lights? Well, now you can (ina limited sense)! Contribute a few levelsto the latest Spectrum game from ImpactSoftware and not only will you be creditedbut you will also be entitled to a freecopy of the finished game on tape, +D 3.5"disc or PC disc (for Z80 emulator). Ian Collier's Rockfall is a game in theBoulder Dash genre. In each level you mustcollect the required number of jewels andreach the exit which then appears, whileavoiding hazards such as bombs, fallingrocks and aliens, all of which have uniqueproperties that can often be used to youradvantage. The original two games,Rockfall 1 & 2, should accompany thistextfile. By playing them for a while,you'll get used to the workings of thegame. Note that on a 128k machine youshould load th 1 PUZZLE TIME A free year's subscription to AlchNews forthe first person drawn out of the hatOn May 1st with the solution to thispuzzle: You are locked in a sealed room withwalls on all six sides. There are nowindows or doors or exits whatsoever. Theonly object in the room, besides yournaked self, is a table. How do you getout? Answers on a postcard or sealed downenvelope to the usual AlchNews address,with your own name and address and choiceand format you would like AlchNewssupplied on. A winning subscriber willhave their subscription extendedaccordingly. 1 PD CLASSIX Twenty five programs you should not be without Not wishing to steal ideas and articlesfrom CLASSIX magazine, a series has neverbeen compiled for classic and 'musthave' PD / shareware / freeware programs.In the first of a series, we take a lookat some of the finest software that allusers shouldn't be without. SPECIAL OFFER Inconjunction with this series, we javemastered a special 'PD CLASSIX' tape anddisc featuring all the programs covered.In total, there will be approximatelyfifty titles covering utilities, games,visual and applications. The price of thiscompilation is just one pound and isavailable from Alchemist Research. As withall Alchemist Research productions, thecompilation co 1 INDEX (1/3) AN23.0 : This file. AN23.1 : NEWS. 27 Items of news and viewsAN23.2 : in the ZX world. AN23.3 : SOFTWARE CLASSIX. Part one in a series of the top 'free' software titles, past and present. AN23.4 : Z80 3.05. Another release and dozens of bugs fixed. AN23.5 : THE ED'S HOLIDAY. A visit to Salisbury and Alchemist Software. AN23.6 : FISH2. It's back, bigger and brighter than ever. AN23.7 : BACK TO BASICS. Part one in aAN23.8 : series by Ken Beer. 1 FISH E-ZINE Spring 1997 Hello AlchNews reader, and welcome to theplug for Fish2. As many of you know Fish! magazine cameabout soon after the demise of YourSinclair and gained a reputation for thesillyist magazine around. Fish2 wassporned as the tape version of themagazine a year later. The driver was slowand it took two hours to load up, but forsome strange reason people read it. Thenevery thing went quiet, GCSE exams came,then Mat brought out issue 5 as part ofthe FishPaste collection and promptly gaveme the editors hat. I meanwhile had written a new fasterversion of the driver software and optedfor the section loading approach to cutdown on the initial loading time. So nowFish2 offers p 1 CREDITS Greatful appreciation must go out to allwho helped in the production of this finepublication. Notable thanks must go to: Editor: Andy Davis Bsc Sub-Editor: Desmond Tyler Sam compiler: Ferry Groothedde Original Programming: Dominic Morris Later Programming: Andy Davis United Minds Paul Howard Miles Kinloch 128K Music: Agent-X Chris Taylor United Minds Dave Fountain 1 REVIEW ZX FILES - Issue 2 Something of a ZX Files special this issueas they get two reviews in one go! Namelybecause ever faithful Lloyd Garlanddecided to leave it a bit late beforesubmitting an article for AN22. Not onlydid he miss the November 1st deadline, butI'd compiled the issue and had a copy I mypocket for him! But, it's nowhere near asbad as the United Minds who promised anarticle for issue 19 (December 1995!)which STILL hasn't been posted! Anyway, to the task. ZX Files issue 2landed on my desk the first week ofJanuary, along with a stack of flyers,which you have no doubt seen with thisissue. The cover of the magazine is afantastic rip-off of the infamous "Scully& Mulder in bed together" from ROLLINGSTONE magazine (beware Paul, no doubt somesad individu 1 NEWS Happenings in the Spectrum world NEW PC AT ALCHEMIST RESEARCH The editor has invested in a new PC, aP166+ machine with all the usual extras,built specially by FAST ACCESS SYSTEMS inRotherham. Whilst looking around for a newPC, the editor compared the price paid atFAS (`1159) to other stores. A similarmodel in the usual electrical stores wouldcost almost `2000! Quite recently, theEuro-supermarket ALDI sold PCs worth `1600for `850. The stocks, sadly limited, wereexhausted in just a few days! NEW PCs FOR ALCHNEWS STAFF There must be something in the water, orall the new Microsoft advertisements on TVare too tempti 1 GARGOYLE GAMES INSTRUCTIONS At time of editing, these games have beenplanned to be featured with AlchNews 23.However, some may be held back forAlchNews 24, pending last minute changesto the software line up. Ed. SWEEVO'S WORLD Can our Hero overcome the absurd dangersthat face him and reach Active Status? Themain task would seem to be theextermination of an organism originallydesigned to look after the Folly and keepit clean - the Waste Ingestion and JanitorUnits are not really dangerous but areextremely irritating. On the other hand,the creatures built to guard the place arevery dangerous and will attack at everyopportunity.