To : 999 + 2J3
From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin)
Re : Acorn User Show
I will probably be at the Acorn User
Show in Harrogate on Saturday 23rd
April from about 1pm onwards (British
Rail permitting), either at the 8-Bit
Software stand or wandering around the
place.
From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin)
Re : Acorn Computing, Manuals
Also : New User Group
I have just bought my first copy of
Acorn Computing for quite a while, and
it seems that they have finally seen
the light! Well, sort of, anyway.
Claiming in their magazine that they
are the only news-stand magazine to
continue supporting the Beeb, they
have expanded their 8-bit coverage
(slightly) from its previous levels.
In this issue (the March one), there
is a full-page review of a Beeb
educational program (though it looks
like being the last). There are also a
couple of mentions of 8-bit machines
in the "Problem Solved" section.
One of these is quite useful, pointing
out that WeServe Computer Services
(0705 647000) have available the
Master Welcome Guide, and Reference
Manuals 1 and 2, and the New Advanced
User Guide BBC B/Master, for £13, £14
each and £19.95 respectively, as well
as the Master Welcome Disk, and a few
pages of other Beeb stuff in their
catalogue. Their address is 4042 West
Street, Portchester, Hants PO1 69UW.
The Reference Manuals are also
available from that omnipresent
company Watford (0582 487777) at £14
each, as well as their own Master
Advanced Reference Manual at the
bargain price of five pounds (unless
that is a typing error and should be
fifteen).
They also have a range of a few dozen
8-bit software titles (no games),
hardware add-ons, spares, cables,
filing system ROM's/kits, and
printers, as well as bargain-price new
and refurbished monitors, printers and
4MHz 65C102 Master Turbo Boards (forty
quid). Beeb and Master software is
also available from Dabhand Computing
(061 766 8423), who ask you to ring
for a price list.
Also, Acorn Computing have attempted
to improve the quality of their 8-bit
subscription disks - the one this
month has what appears to be an
advanced platform game with fifty
frames per second high resolution
graphics and four-channel sound (i.e.
some pretty impressive statistics).
The other offering on the disk is
rather more practical - a flexible
spelling checker allowing you to
create your own personalised
dictionary.
But the area where the 8-bit world
features in most detail - as you would
expect - is in the public domain
column. In this issue 8-Bit Software
gets about a column and a half,
starting with praise about,"consistent
quality and presentation".
Teri Paul then goes on to list half a
dozen of the utilities 8BS has
featured recently, together with a
brief explanation of what they're for.
Next the games "Phrases" and
"Shopping" get longer descriptions,
taking up three paragraphs between
them. A couple of programs from the
Destroyed Realities disk magazine also
get mentioned.
Further good news for the 8-bit world
is in the news section of the
magazine, where it is mentioned that
an 8-bit user group with a bi-monthly
newsletter is being set up - the Beeb
Supporters' Group. Potential members
or those wanting to write anything for
the newsletter should send an SAE to
Mark Brocklehurst, 1 Park Avenue,
Markfield, Leicester LE67 9WA. They
also support Electron users.
To : 999 + 2J3
From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin)
Re : File standards?
You might know how, on the Archimedes,
all files are "filetyped" so that you
can tell what sort of file they are
from the desktop; textfile, sprite
file, drawfile, EXEC file, etc.
Now, a desktop for the Beeb would be
nice, or even a menu system for
creating filetypes, reading them and
treating files accordingly. However,
that's not what I'm suggesting.
What would be nice (and fairly easy to
implement), would be to have some
commonly accepted standard names for
different sorts of files, so that we
all know what sort of files we are
talking about just by giving a simple
name, rather than struggling through a
list of precise details.
We would presumably want to retain
some of the names given by Acorn to
files in the Archimedes range:
Textfile (this (I think) has some
line-feed differences to a Beeb ASCII
file)
Spritefile
Drawfile
Data (any miscellaneous lump of data,
often numerical)
BBC ROM (a 16K ROM image)
Obey/Command files (files to be
*EXECed)
Utility file (a piece of machine code
that can be run at any memory
location)
BASIC (tokenised, of course)
Absolute file (a piece of machine code
that has set load/run addresses)
BBC font (what is the definition - to
be *LOADed or *EXECed or *RUN?)
And there are some standard names that
would be fairly obvious:
Viewfile (unless there are different
sorts - View users please enlighten)
InterWord file (the same applies)
ViewSheet?
I personally would like to suggest the
following standard names:
Display file
(As produced by Chris' Teletext
Editing Suite and used in 8BS issues)
EDIT file
(unformatted text as produced by EDIT
and (I think) Wordwise, with no
control codes, and RETURN characters
only at the end of paragraphs - i.e.
words can be split by the ends of
lines).
MODE7 file
(a 1000-byte long file to be loaded
directly into screen memory in MODE
7).
MODE0, MODE1, MODE2 etc. files
(The same, except these are files of
the appropriate lengths for the
appropriate modes)
80-column/40-column/etc. file
(A file formatted, e.g. as by EDIT, to
have lines terminated by a RETURN
character, with no line longer than
the given number of characters (but
some may be shorter), and no control
codes)
80-column/40-column/etc. FullWidth
file
(Similar to other x-column files
except that no line may be shorter
than the given number of characters -
e.g. 40-col FullWidth files are
required by Chris' Teletext Editor)
I would be very pleased to hear from
anyone who has any suggestions or
comments about this idea, particularly
anyone who can think of any other
"filetypes" (e.g. files for different
widely-used software packages) that
ought to have widely-accepted names.
To : 999
From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin)
Re : Master 512 boards
I was amazed to see that in the April
edition of Archimedes World, Pyramid
Computer Services (0384 396739) are
advertising these second-hand for only
fifteen pounds each plus three fifty
carriage plus VAT - not very much
compared to the one or two hundred
pounds these were selling for
second-hand a couple of years ago!
They also have Master ROM cartridges
and 40T SS Cumana disk drives.
To : 999
From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin)
Re : Bug in EDIT and HIEDIT
To think I would only notice at this
late stage! I'm sure this has already
been noted elsewhere, but I don't
remember it. Try the following:
- Load up EDIT or HIEDIT
- Go into Insert mode (I generally am
already).
- Type:
The jumped over the quick brown fox.
- Realise that "quick brown fox"
should go before "jumped"
- Move to just before "jumped"
- Go into cursor editing mode
- Move the cursor right and copy the
last three words
As you can see, as each character is
copied its insertion causes the phrase
to be copied to move to the right,
while the copying cursor stays still -
the result is that the first character
is copied over and over again!
To : 999
From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin)
Re : New Computers?
In the Problem Solved section of the
above-mentioned magazine, Mike Cook
hints vaguely at the possibility of a
new range of machines emerging from
Acorn fairly soon. I have heard a few
(possibly unreliable) rumours about
this, so I might as well mention them
and hope that Acorn doesn't pre-empt
me by releasing full details before
this issue reaches members.
There is a new range of machines
coming out - an ex-member of 8BS knows
someone who actually used one of them
some weeks ago. Apparently they will
feature a totally new ARM chip (ARM-8
or something like that), running at
perhaps three times the speed of the
current ARM-3, perhaps a lot more.
They will (might) also feature
something like sixteen or thirty-two
megabytes of RAM and 24-bit colour
(i.e. sixteen million colours
on-screen as opposed to just 16 or 256
as on the current range). The cost
(unsurprisingly, considering the
amount of RAM), will be around three
thousand pounds to start with, perhaps
more.
Right, that is about enough rumours
for one day, needless to say I won't
be buying one of these
wonder-machines, though I may be
unwise and buy an A5000 now before the
new machines appear and force the
prices of the old range downwards.
How long before the old (current)
Archimedes range suffers the same fate
as the good old Beeb (with attendant
feelings of betrayal, panic etc.)?
Well it'll be 2-3 years yet before
we're in the same position as in 1990
when I bought my Master, with the new
hardware firmly on the way in and the
old firmly on the way out; and another
couple of years after that before
widespread support for the old Arch
range has really died out.
But if you don't buy an old (current)
Arch in the next eighteen months, I
recommend you don't at all, so now is
the time to start thinking about
buying if you're going to; an A3010
with RAM expansion to 2Mb for about
£440 inc. VAT, or an A3020 for just
under a couple of hundred more; an
A4000 2Mb 80Mb HDD for £830 plus VAT
(and only a few hundred more will buy
you a PC card), or a full-blown 33MHz
4Mb A5000 with 160Mb HDD for about
£1300 plus VAT.
Then again, if you feel that your Beeb
does everything you need from a
computer (which it does), then you can
wait a few years until a whole new
spectrum of machines will have
appeared (and had their prices cut to
affordable levels, and developed a
massive software base, etc.) from all
sides, and offered a plethora of
choices which we can't even consider
yet...Intel's stranglehold on
processor standards will certainly
have disappeared, and we're seeing the
start of that process now...
A machine that is not by any means a
rumour is the new Apple machine, the
PowerPC (or whatever it's called). For
£1,350 or more, it claims to offer a
lot more processing power than the
currently available 486 PC range. The
design of the processor that provides
this power is a RISC one similar to
the ARM range used in the Archimedes,
and hence a step ahead of the
CISC-design Intel chips used in PC
clones.
Previously, although Apple machines
were widely known as being extremely
easy to use, and were the market
leaders in desktop publishing, they
had a reputation both for being rather
more expensive than equivalent PC
machines, and for having rather
expensive add-ons and peripherals.
And, like Acorn, the equivalent
market-leaders in the education
market, they weren't "industry
standard".
But now Apple are hoping to shake off
this image, with a range of machines
that will still have the Macintosh
ease of use (hopefully), but allegedly
offer 10% more power than current
Intel/IBM clone machines, but at 10%
less cost.
Not only this, but with all this extra
power the new machines can also
emulate PC's by running DOS and
Windows software as well as their own
Macintosh software (a similar
stratagem to that employed by Acorn
with the Archimedes).
Up until now, standards in the
computing world has been dominated by
three companies - Intel making the
chips (286, 386, 486, Pentium), IBM
making the computers (the PC's upon
which all PC-clones are based), and
Microsoft the operating software (DOS,
Windows). Other companies (Motorola
making the 68000 and 6502 and Zilog
the Z80 series chips, Acorn and Apple
making their own computers and
operating systems) have been largely
sidelined.
But now, in the contest for new,
better systems to win a share of all
the money being spent on them, things
are changing; IBM have teamed up with
Motorola to develop new RISC chips to
replace Intel chips in the next
generation of IBM computers, Microsoft
are working with Apple to develop
software for the PowerPC range, Acorn
(or ARM Limited which Acorn own a
large share in) are busily selling
their ARM RISC chips to just about
everyone, and so on.
The market for operating systems is
even more confused, as many PC owners
are now considering having larger
operating systems originally designed
for networks (Windows NT, Unix etc.),
and this brings in a whole new range
of sales people (AT&T, Novell, etc).
These operating systems (and
Microsoft's next Windows update) all
require huge amounts of RAM (i.e. six
megabytes or a lot more). Archimedes
owners are lucky - RISC OS will still
run happily in two megabytes of RAM,
or even one if absolutely necessary
(mind you, the Beeb can manage with a
few hundred bytes of workspace - how
things change).
All this may sound horribly
complicated and, even worse,
expensive. However, the optimistic
view is that the more competition
there is, the better (and cheaper) the
manufacturers will have to make their
machines. The new ranges of processors
being developed, once they are a bit
more widely-used, will provide more
processing power than ever before and
at a much lower price.
Prices of other hardware (RAM, hard
disks, monitors) won't fall as fast,
but shouldn't be too far behind - bear
in mind that, where a few years ago
Acorn provided the early Archimedes
with 20Mb, or at most 40Mb hard disk
drives, the smallest they now make
(for the A3020) is 60Mb, with the
A5000 having a huge 160Mb hard drive.
But more to the point, the machines
with these new larger drives are
several hundred pounds cheaper.
In the PC world, though there are the
large demands I mentioned above made
by operating systems on the hardware,
prices fall in proportion. While in,
for example, 1986, a thousand pounds
(+ VAT) would perhaps buy you a lowly
286 PC with one megabyte of RAM and a
twenty megabyte hard disk drive, right
now the same sum could buy you an
extremely powerful 486 DX 33MHz with
four megabytes of RAM and nearly two
hundred megabytes of hard disk space,
or a 486 SX 25MHz with similar
facilities but also a CD-ROM drive
(unknown in '86) and stereo speakers,
or one of the last A5000 25MHz (which
were sold off cheap by Beebug as the
new 33MHz range replaced them).
This may not be so helpful to those
who do not have a thousand pounds to
spare, but the new technology should
also filter down to the cheaper end of
the market - if the successor to the
A3010 is as much cheaper as the A3010
was to the A3000, it will cost about
as much as a Sega Megadrive! (O.K.,
slight over-optimism, but you know
what I mean).
LATEST NEWS - I have just found out
that Acorn are now shipping some of
their 4Mb A5000's with 210Mb instead
of 160Mb hard drives, at the same
price.