8-Bit Software Online Conversion

                                                    To: 999 (all members) From: K1Y (Paul Harvey) Subject: Hello! This is a message to everybody who remembers me, a note to say hi. I used to run ByteBack, before the rest of my life took over all of my time. As a self employed person, work is very demanding. I sometimes miss ByteBack myself, and the enjoyment I gained from putting it together. I also miss the many friends that I made along the way, many of whom have found their way to 8BS, into the caring and completely competent (and somewhat crazy?!) arms of Chris Richardson. One of the things I was doing towards the end of ByteBack was moving house. This I have now seemed to accomplished, and am settling in nicely. As you can see from this letter, my Beeb still has a place in my room (I now have my own 'study'!) And I enjoy going through this disc every month. I want to say a special hello to Tim Parsons, whom I haven't spoken to for a while (hi there!) and to Trevor Crapper. Among others, these guys were a great encouragement, and pleasure along the ByteBack trail. Now I am settled in at my new home, and with the expansion of our (my wife and I) company to five people, I find my hands even fuller with things to do. I don't intend to restart a newsletter for the Beeb (even though part of me wants to): it would be a selfish act on my part, a responsibility I know I would not be able to live up to. Instead, I think I will hang around these pages (sectors?), reading, learning, smiling and generally having fun. After a while away from my Beeb and my Beeb friends, it's great to be back!! learning, smiling and generally having fun. EDITOR....... Hi Paul! Thanks for the kind comments. Nice to see you back. Your disc was corrupted, it looks like there was supposed to be more message than this, but this is all my sector editor could find.  To: 999 (all members) From: K6N (Brian Raw) Subject: 80 columns v teletext I think a turning point has been reached as to the development of the 8BS disczine and as such we as members ought to sit back and think in which direction we wish it to go. Issue 44 for me had too many 80 column texts on it which, unless you have an expensive high resolution monitor can cause a bit of eye strain. The questionnaire didn't ask into this one, eyesight that is not monitors, but is best assumed to be averagely less than perfect. Don't get me wrong, I did like and will probably be using !Fred in issue 44. I just think that things such as 8BS adverts should all be in teletext mode to swing the balance a bit more in favour of teletext screens. So to open up the argument here are a few comments for and against :- 80 column FOR ************* Easier to produce on a wordprocessor, if you have one. Can be sent straight to a printer. Electron compatibility. 80 column AGAINST ***************** No colour or graphics. Delay when getting text from disc. Difficulty in reading on T.V. etc. Teletext FOR ************ Colour and graphics available. Larger text make easier reading. Faster scrolling. All text in memory so no delay. Teletext AGAINST **************** Printing can be a problem and graphics don't print at all. Word wrap of long words make text look untidy. *************************************** What do you think ? EDITOR...... Yes, what do you really think? This issue has fewer 80 column articles I think. The mode 7 articles have to fit into memory the way they are written at the moment. This increases the speed that articles can be scrolled, much faster than being read from disc. However, sometimes articles are too big to exist in one file. In the past, I would split large articles and use a linking facility to enable one file to load another. I had a report of this causing problems on someones machine and so I stopped linking articles and left large articles in 80 column which are *TYPED from disc. I prefer articles to be in mode 7 with colour. I would be prepared to risk using the linking facility in the next issue if anyone comes up with a strong opinion one way or the other before the next deadline.  To: 999 (all members) From: K4R (Robin Morom) Subject: 3-D moving pictures. This is just a half-baked idea I had some time ago and was too lazy to develop fully. It occurred to me that if one wrote a program to produce rotating wire frame images it should be a fairly easy step to make it 3D. These wire frame pictures work by printing the various positions of the required shape in different colours and redefining them in succession to show a white image, the remainder being defined as the background colour. Now for the clever bit! If TWO (slightly different) sets of images are drawn and are programmed to show one in RED and the other in GREEN then it should be possible to view the monitor through the glasses provided with 3D books (one eyepiece RED and one GREEN ) and finish up with real 3D on a mono screen. As I said this is just a half-baked scheme. If anyone would like to take this up and make it fully-baked please feel free to use the idea.  To: 999 (all members) From: 3WU (Fred Price) Subject: Beeb Development Group Can anyone tell me if this club is in existence? After BDUGS appeal a few months ago for Issue No4 which I replied to with my disc & postage, as yet I have had no reply, I have since written again & still I have got no reply. So once again I wrote another letter to this same address & I still have not had a reply from that one again. So you can gather I will not be sending any more mail to this address. So can anyone put me in the picture as to what is happening or happened to this group BDUG. PS. I DID NOT SEND ANY MAIL TO THE OLD NEWBIGGIN ADDRESS. ---===============---  To: 999 (all members) From: K4V (Trevor Crapper) Subject: 512 PD Library Any 512 User who has not had a look through the library catalogue is to a certain extent missing out. There are a number of word processors spreadsheet and database programs. In fact enough for all tastes really. I have bought most of the disks in the library and continue to buy the new ones that are being added. Apart from a couple of programs, all the rest will either run from a floppy disk or else from a hard drive. The one program that will not run is BOXER311 on 512-3-6, it needs someone with programming skill to look at and put the .EXE file right. INTEXT on 512-3-4 does work okay, the trouble arises when trying to print a file, the program hangs up with an error message. Pity really because this is a good program. You will need to install a mouse program prior to running SKYGLOBE on 512-3-9 otherwise it just crashes. You can either use the mouse or keys in the program. It is a very nice solar system program. Duplications, the main one to watch out for is 512-11 E NUMBERS this is on disk 512-3-3 under the name DOCDATA. As far as I can make out the two are identical. If not then sorry. There are few more around but not many. At one pound for the disk and postage paid these are a snip, nothing earth shattering and of course certainly not Windows 95, but back in 85 some of the programs were market leaders. The other point to remember is that this library does cater exclusively for the 512, and as already stated is being increased with new material. By the way if you pick something up that is not commercial, either PD or Shareware will do, then send this to Chris Richardson he may be able to add it to the list. The aim of the article is to inform anyone thinking of buying from the library that in the main most of the programs will run. For a brief run down on the contents of the disks read the 512 catalogue, and also the Editorial in the latest issues of 8BS. Bye for now.  To: 999 (all members) From: 20G (Roy Dickens) Subject: Radio and TV programmes Some progs about computing that may be of interest. Radio 5 Live: Sundays 12.15pm 45 minutes of "THE BIG BYTE" live. ............... Radio 4: Tuesdays 8.30pm 30 minutes "THE NETWORK" One of the recent discussions:- 'Men play with computers.... Women use computers'. ............... ITV (Anglia) Sat. 1.30pm ITV (Meridian) Sat. 2.10pm. other regions not known. 30 minutes "THE BIG BYTE" ............. Channel 4 Teletext Page 650/3 "ON LINE" News/new products/letters/internet. ............. Channel 4 Teletext Page 470/6 "Computer Games" .............  To: 999 (all members) From: K8G (Jonathan Harston) Subject: Whata Fraud! Ok. I've got to come clean. I used to work for them. Believe me, it wasn't a nice experience. Imagine you applied for an Architect's job and then discovered that you were the tea boy. I joined WE thinking 'Great... someone's at last going to pay me for writing all these programs and things that I keep coming up with'. Reality: I was manning a phone in what can only be called the complaints department, trying to fob off disgruntled customers, and opening returned packages containing faulty goods. Only one person at a time was allowed to go for lunch, so I often ate at around three o'clock. When I went for my interview they said 'you can eat in the canteen', and I thought 'ooh, great, no more cooking for myself, cheap company meals'. It turns out that Shiraz Jessa though 'Canteen' meant 'a small room with tables in', where we could eat our sandwiches, etc. that we brought with us. At one point I ask, where do you actualy write and develop software, having not been able to see anyone else in the entire builing but us. Oh, we don't write anything, we buy it. Buy it up, more like. WE's products sold because they bought up the competition, and closed them down, and I don't care who reads this. Acorn was developing and external Tube box so you could plug Master Co-Pros into a Beeb. Watford got theirs out earlier and cheaper, so Acorn's never got to the market. Unfortunately, WE just put a design together, plugged it in, and if it worked sold it. Sod soak-testing it to see if it overheated or crashed after being used to twenty minutes. 'Oo, these 25MHz ARM3s will run at 30MHz!' 'Right, sell them at 30MHz'. Yes, but they're rated at 25MHz, because they aren't designed to go faster. You could drive a Mini at 120mph, but it won't get very far before the engine blows up. I've had medical exemption from any lifting work ever since working in Watford. Oh, you can lift that box by yourself, ignore that label that says 'two people only'. 'Fire exit? It's behind that filing cabinet that's behind those boxes that are behind those monitors.' They also seemed to think people picked up knowledge through osmosis. I was often phoned about products that I didn't have the foggiest idea about, yet they wouldn't let you actually take any home to fiddle with in your spare time. And as for 'playing' with them in company time...! The high-up Jessas seemed to want to treat all the employees as their family and control them as they wanted. I was in a room in a company flat. A flat with no communal areas, so I had to eat my meals balanced on my knee on the edge of the bed. No heating. One of the other tenants was my immediate boss, who thought it was a good idea to have a fourty-minute bath before going to work in the morning, and who kept the phone in his room. EDITOR..... A bitter man.... (Pun intended)  To: 999 (all members) From: K5K (David Robinson) Subject: Apologies for Absence Apologies to anyone who may have sent me a message and had no reply. I have been completely out of 8BS since about the end of April. I unfortunately took on rather more than I should have done, so my hobby evenings were cancelled! I have now just about caught up though, and am looking forward to reading the next issue. 6-Oct-95     