From: John Battersby
To: All
Subject: Wanted
Exmon II Version 2.06 On Rom or a Rom
image would do. Please contact:
J.Battersby. 107 Richmond Terrace,
Darwen, Lancashire, BB3 0HE
Tel. 01254 775101
From: Chris Richardson
To: All and D.Ambrose
Subject: Data Pointer
Douglas was working on a program and he
wanted to know where the DATA pointer
was held in memory.
He wanted to be able to find at exactly
what point in a program the DATA
pointer was so that he could return to
it at a later date.
The problem was easily solved with a
different approach. However, the
question was niggling at me. Where is
the DATA pointer stored? I asked this
of Stephan Richardson who looked it up
in "The Basic Rom User Guide".
So, ?&1C+?&1D*256 will give you the
address in memory of the next location
to be read in by the instruction READ.
Can anyone find a use for this?
To: 999 (all members)
From: 0E7 (Fred Nevin)
Subject: Message System V.2.0
I have a problem with the latest
version of the Messaging System.
With V.1.8 I had a simple !Boot File
to CHAIN 'SendMes'to Boot up the disc
This does not work with V.2.0
The Boot File CHAINS 'SendMes' which
commences the Menu but when it
attempts to CHAIN 'SendMCC' I get a
faulty channel message.Why is this. I
assume it is obviously something I
should know but it'ESCAPE's me.
To overcome the problem I have had to
make a !BOOT File to LOAD 'SendMes'
and to press a function key to 'RUN'
the program. This appears to work OK.
Can anyone say WHY? please.
Thank you in anticipation.
To : All
From : D2P Bob Chown
Subject : Help
CAN ANYONE HELP ME OUT WITH EITHER
MANUALS OR PHOTO COPIES OR ANY OTHER
INFORMATION ON THE FOLLOWING:
VIGLEN WINCHESTER HARD DISK, MODEL VPD
0300, 28M MS.
ACORN CO-PROCESSOR 6502 ISSUE 2.
( FITTED IN A MASTER 128 )
SEIKOSHA MP-1300AI COLOUR PRINTER.
ANY HELP WITH ANY OF THESE WILL BE MUCH
APPRECIATED.
To: 999 (all members)
From: D2C (Andy Burgess)
Subject: Wanted - ViewSheet Manual
Can anyone help with the loan or sale
of a Viewsheet manual. I have acquired
a ROM, but no documentation. All
expenses paid as usual.
Please ring:0117 9575168 after 6pm.
To: 999 (all members)
From: K4V (Trevor Crapper)
Subject: View Professional Part 4
Hopefully you will have used the
printer driver program in Part 3 and
have got yourself a printer driver
ready for use.
In this part I want to prepare you for
writing a simple no frills letter. In
the first place you will now have to
run the main View Professional program
before we can make a start. Read back
through the early parts if you have
forgotten how do this.
Having got VP up and running, take a
look at the screen. At the top is a
line of letters and dots, the total
count comes to 72. So your letter will
have a width of 72 characters. Normal
paper allows a width of 80 characters.
So there is going to be a space of 8
characters.
Just bear with me for a moment please,
because I want to make a point here.
Without altering anything and simply
writing and printing a letter results
in the first letter of each line
starting on the extreme left hand side
of the page without a gap.
If this style of writing suits you,
then leave things as they are. Now for
those of you who want a margin on the
left hand side of the page please
follow my instructions.
With View Professional on the screen
press the ESCAPE key, this will take
you out of the writing screen to the
Options Page. Take a good look at the
page. However, there is no need to try
and remember anything.
Using the arrow keys move the flashing
cursor to where it says Margins: Top 8
and move the cursor onto the number 8.
Now press the 0 key, and notice this
changes the number 8 to 0. Go down
using the arrow key and change each
number to 0. Except where it says Left.
Now you can either change the number
to 4 or 5, the choice is yours.
Now press the ESCAPE key again and you
will be taken out of the Options Page
and back to the writing screen.
Nothing will have altered on the
screen, it is just as you left it.
Before typing in your simple no frills
letter there is one more thing to
learn. This part is important and it
affects everyone.
In order to carry out the functions of
loading, saving and printing, plus
almost everything else you may need to
do, you will have to press one key.
This key is the back slash key which
is to the left of the left arrow key
just below the BREAK key.
This key is used together with single
letters or a combination of letters to
carry out most of the functions used
by VP. These including printing,
loading and saving files. Plus a lot
more besides.
Did you program yourself a printer
driver? Doesn't matter if you didn't
provided your printer can use Epson
print codes. The back slash key is
used in conjunction with the letter H
and a number between 1 to 8. This will
enable you to input changes so that
fonts and styles can be altered.
Providing you can remember what code
is represented by the numbers!
However, for the time being we will
only use the back slash key to save,
load and print your letter. Keeping
things simple for the moment. Finally
remember Chris Richardson sells VP and
it is a very handy package. Bye for
now.
To: 999 (all members)
From: D4H (Paul Smith)
Subject: New member
Hi all,
Just thought I would introduce myself.
I have just started to get back into
BBC computing after a few years on
PCs and I am enjoying it all once
more. I have 2 working computers and 1
not working at present. I only have 1
monitor so I have to make do with the
TV for the other computer.
My interests in the Beeb are:
a) Some programming. Fairly basic (pun
intended) stuff but its fun.
b) Wordprocessing with Wordwise Plus
writing letters, notices, etc.
c) I am interested in getting some
useful educational stuff for the
7-11 age group. If anyone can help
reply via Messaging System please.
d) I require a simple ASCII file
editor. Perhaps there is one in the
8BS catalogue but I have not looked
all the way through that yet.
e) One of my computers came fitted
with the Replay system.
Unfortunately it didn't come with
any information. Can anyone help
please ?
f) I do use my computers for games
(surprise, surprise) and I am
looking for a REPTON 3 disc. Can any
one help please ?
Thanks in advance to anyone offering
help.
Regards.
Paul.
To: 999 (all members)
From: K3H (ALBERT SCHOFIELD)
Subject: TAPE TO DISC ON THE BBC B
Last month I dealt with a game which
would not work unless a character was
poked into the locked program byte.
This month I will deal with the game
EAGLE'S WING which needs to have four
characters poked into the four spare
bytes immediately following the locked
program byte. The four characters are
DDH. (including the full stop). To
PEEK at these locations, first
catalogue a few blocks of any part of
the game, press escape and type
PRINT$&3CB. The characters DDH. will
be shown. Typing PRINT ÷!&3CB will
show the hex equivalent in reverse
order which is as they should appear
in the necessary poke.
So to transfer the game to disc a
short loader program will be needed as
follows:-
10 !&3CB=&2E484444
20 CHAIN"EAGLE"
Save this to disc as LOADER. Load in
the first part of the game, which is
Eagle-Wing, using *LOAD""1900. This
section is part basic so list it and
copy line 10 and then list it again.
The hidden line 15 can now be seen.
Copy line 15 to eliminate the REM but
leave the colon. Delete line 20. Copy
line 40 and alter the last statement
to:- *L. 1.EAGLE
Add line 50PRINT'"PRESS"'"SPACE"GET$
Add line 60CALL&753E
It is essential to do these
alterations exactly as shown to
maintain the same length of the basic
which is &AB. Otherwise the screen may
be corrupted. Save it to disc using:-
*SAVE EAGLE 1900+600 8023.
The second part, which is 1.EAGLE, is
locked so it will have to be loaded at
&1900 using a locked file utility.
Save it to disc using:-
*SAVE 1.EAGLE 1900+600 753E 7000
The last part, which is 2.EAGLE? is a
bit tricky. It is locked and also, as
the ? shows, the filename contains a
control code. This control code is
different in every block so it is in
effect a changing filename. So type
*TAPE and then enter *OPT2,0 to force
it to load and load it in at &1900
using a locked file utility. Ignore
the File? messages. Then save it to
disc using:-
*SAVE 2.EAGLE 1900+2C00 3200 1200
By chaining LOADER the game should
now run. More next month.
To: 999 (all members)
From: K6L (Richard Chamberlain)
Subject: View Professional
Can anyone help me with the above
package? I obtained the TBI-74 disk
from 8BS many moons ago, looked at it
briefly, but never did much with it
till recently. My PC's monitor packing
up prompted me to have a look through
my Master 128 software for a PC type
wordprocessing package. (Only till
the monitors repaired) I came across
View Professional and decided to give
it a more thorough going over. I was
a little amazed at its supposed
capabilities, PIPEDREAM compatibility
and all! Anyway, I managed to load in
and use the 4 main rom images, but I
fell foul of one or two of the other
files/utilities. In particular PDE, a
printer driver text file editor. It
seems to be another rom image (I could
be wrong) but when I load it in,
initialise it, and then subsequently
try to use it my machine locks up.
I now know I was wrong! Having read
Trevor Crappers mini tutorial on VP, I
realised it dealt with the topic of
this message! Isn't life wonderful!
Anyway I discovered that I needed to
change modes to MODE 128. As you need
to to run VP, and low and behold, up
pops the Printer driver text editor!
I will now go through the other disks
I have just received and look for more
from the redoubtable TC!
Also, having decided to persevere, I
had another look at the other
software, ViewVP etc and found them to
be nothing more than basic programs!
I would though like to hear of any
manuals for this software!
Whilst preparing this message though I
discovered a problem that effects the
messaging system while VP is loaded
into sideways ram. The ESCAPE key
doesn't work at all! So it's
impossible to SAVE a message. I had
to switch off the computer, then
reload the messaging software, and
then retype the info again. Another
problem I found was VP interacts
adversly with *executable files that
contain Control Codes making them
inoperable. To see this in action, if
you have VP loaded, try !booting an
8BS disk. No double height coloured
text! I discovered this as I was
working out how to create coloured
text and double height characters in a
!boot file. I still had VP loaded and
wondered why suddenly the text
generated no longer appeared coloured
and double height! It took me ages to
realise it was VP acting in a
subversive manner!! Now heres the
crunch. Can anyone explain to me why
VP does the dirty in these two ways??
To: 999 (all members)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Comms, etc
Reply to:K4E (Richard Walker)
Internet, WWW,etc... These can all be
accessed by the trusty Beeb, the only
problem is software. 'Traditional'
BBSs were either Viewdata or Scrolling
that is, looking like MODE 7 or MODE 3
text. All you needed was a modem
connected to you serial port and a few
lines of code that send your keyboard
input down the phone line and
displayed whatever came back.
Electronic mail was one of the most
useful things most BBSs gave you
access to. The Internet can be
thought of most easily as a network
connecting host computers together, so
that if you called into one, you could
EMail to a user on another computer
host. What has happened recently is
that somebody realised that the Mac
Hypertext display program could be set
to read from a device file for the
displayed pages, and that this device
file could be the modem COM: port.
Once this was realised,then large
graphcally-orientated screens could
easly be sent around, as the protocols
were already loosely defined. This is
also the reason most Web sites start
with http: (HyperText Transmission
Protocol) and end with .html
(HyperTextMarkup Language).
For Beebs to access Web sites, someone
needs to write an HTML displayer for
the Beeb. This is possible, but I am
finding it difficult to get hold of
the neccessary information without
forking out 40 or 50 quid apiece for
several books that I don't yet know if
they will be the right ones. Most
book on the subject are for users, not
software writers.
Anyway... I'm currently writing a
clearer article on this slightly foggy
subject which I hope Chris will put in
later issue.
To: 999 (all members)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: DIRing ADFS disks
Acorn DOS disks and Acorn ADFS 640
disks are both identically formatted:
16 sectors per track, 256 bytes per
sector. So, if DOS reads sectors
2/3/4/5 to look for the DOS catalogue
and an ADFS disk is in the drive, it
will read whatever is on it. DOS
doesn't do much checking to validate
disks and directories, so you get DOS
trying to display the data it has
found as filename entries. If you
tried to do an ADFS CAT on a DOS disk,
you will get a catalogue containing a
single file which contains the DOS
partition that fills the whole of the
rest of the disk. Acorn DOS 800k
disks are formatted like ADFS/D 800k
disks that the Arch. can use. (And
theoretically, so can the Master if
someone writes an ADFS/D filing
system). ADFS/D is 512 bps, 10 spt.
To: 999 (all members)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: CLOSE#0 bug
This is fairly easy to work around.
Write your program something like
this:
Initialisation:
in%=0:out%=0
Error handling:
DEFPROCerr
:
:
IFin%:A%=in%:in%=0:CLOSE#A%
IFout%:A%=out%:out%=0:CLOSE#A%
:
:
ENDPROC
File handling:
in%=OPENIN(file$)
:
process
:
CLOSE#in%:in%=0
:
:
out%=OPENOUT(file$)
:
process
:
CLOSE#out%:out%=0
Basically, define all the variables you
will use as file handles before you
use them and set them to zero. In
your error handling routine, check if
they are non-zero, and close them,
using a temporary variable, so that if
the CLOSE causes an error, it won't be
tried again. Every time you close a
channel, set the variable back to
zero. This will work a treat and
solve most problems. The only hard
bit is remembering to do
CLOSE#var:var=0 instead of just
CLOSE#var.
From: D4U (Dave Gray)
Subject: Help/Info wanted
Can anyone help with a Welcome Disc
for the Master 128 ,instructions or
help with a Viglen 29mb hard drive ,
and Acorn hard drive. Ive been given
both and I'm not sure how to connect
and run them.
To: 999 (all members)
From: D4A (Paul Richmond)
Subject: Clogger & Sidwayes RAM
I have just formatted my sons
favourite game,it was a free Xmas gift
from Micro User in 1988,the game is
called Clogger. I wonder if anyone
would have a copy? I would be more
than happy to pay all expenses! I want
to talk to my son again!!
My other problem is with sideways RAM.
I have a B.B.C."B" with a Watford
Electronics Rom board,with two 6264
chips.Included with the computer was
some discs with Roms recorded on them,
I have a switch on the back that
connects to E to A. I have tried
*LOAD""8000, BREAK, the drive turns
for a few seconds and then stops. When
I *H. the Rom is not listed. I have
tried the switch in both positions
with the same result.I also have a
Master 128 on which the discs work
O.K. What am I doing wrong?
My address is,
5 Wood End Hill
Harpenden
Herts AL5 3EZ
Phone 01582 769917