8-Bit Software Online Conversion

                                                        To: 999 (all members) From: 3SQ (Tim Parsons) Subject: HELP Tim Parsons 40 Coniston Road Flitwick Beds MK45 1QH 01525-715013 Dear Members Can anyone please help me with locating the following:- 1> Some ready made Data Files for the KEY database made by the ITV for schools. I have an original ADFS version of this package but have never got it to work, mainly I think, because I haven't got any Data files. 2> I have Fun School 3 (original) aged 5 to 7, when Booted the menu just keeps on scrolling very fast, over and over again, in other words it don't work!. I have all the other Fun school programs (2 & 3) which work OK, they ALL worked OK when I had a "B", but now I have a Master 128, this particular disc doesn't work at all?. 3> I have just been "given" a package called "MUSIC MASTER" which consists of a box with microphone attached, the box plugs into the User Port, the microphone fixs on a "Recorder", the disc when Booted, enables a Recorder beginner to learn how to play their instrument, BUT my disc doesn't work, I have lost the all important MENU on it. Can anybody help me on either, any or all of these above requests. TA. Can I take this opportunity to wish all our members, New and Old a Happy Christmas.  To: 999 (all members) From: 3SQ (Tim Parsons) Subject: M128 New starters pt1 Dear Members Below is/are extracts from recent letters to new Master owners that I have written recently,to some of our new members who have come by their Masters without really knowing how to use them. You can select ADFS with Crtl/A/Brk or A/Brk or *ADFS otherwise if ADFS disc not in drive you can use Ctrl/F/Brk or F/Brk or *FADFS Similarly, you can select DFS with Crtl/D/Brk or D/Brk or *DISK If in doubt when booting a disc with (*OPT4,3 set), try Shift/D/Break for DFS disc and/or Shift/A/Break for an ADFS disc. In ADFS with Double sided Drive, both sides of the disc are only seen as one side therefore Drive 0 is both sides of the first drive, with Drive 1 being both sides of the second drive. SWRam banks are numbered 4, 5, 6 and 7 use the *SRLOAD command like this *SRLOAD WW+ 8000 7 Q which as follows means, WW+ is the filename of the Rom image, 8000 is the location in memory of the Sideways Ram Bank, 7 is the number of the ram bank (try *ROMS) and the optional Q means Quick but it WILL overwrite a Basic program if you have one loaded, otherwise leave it off. Each Cartridge has connections that, depending on which of the two slots it is in, will either be applicable to Sockets 0 and 1 or 2 and 3, a single cartridge obviously has two sockets, there are other types of cartridge available which have four sockets (QUAD), these have switches fitted to switch between each pair, these QUAD cartridges are also taller into which you are able to plug in the "piggy back" type of roms such as a "TRUE" Interword Rom which has Two 16k Roms put into one 32k Rom which plugs into one 16k Socket, this is why the Rom images of Interword that you have on Disc consists of two 16k images which take up two 16k SWRam socket. Beebug Master Rom and View Professional are other Roms which were "originally" on a 32k Rom, which work perfectly as (two) Rom images loaded from disc. This is very fortunate because NOT ALL Roms will work when copied to disc and loaded into SWRam, because some crafty folk incorporate a kind of SWRam Protection into ROM's !. BEFORE you try to Copy, Tape to Disc and RUN them with any success, you will have to be more experienced about the INFO details. Under normal circumstances the first Column shows the HEX number relevant to the memory location the file was Saved at, for a Basic program on your "B" it will be &1900 on your Master it will be &0E00 (This is PAGE). The second column, in the case of a Basic Program gives the Execution Address should it be CHAINED, this is probably &8023 which is the location in the "Basic" Rom which will be called to RUN a Basic Program. Are you still with me ????. The third column gives the length of the file in HEX, the fourth and narrowest column is the sector number (in HEX) where the file begins to be stored on the disc. For normal (non View) text files the first TWO columns will normally be FFFF or FFFFFFFF or 0000FFFF when there are eight characters the leading four are usually irrelevant, when the first column is something like 0900 or 0C00 or 0B00 these are usually Machine code routines and again the second column is usually the Execution address, often the same as the first column. We haven't yet touched on Function Keys and defining them, Function key definitions are kept in different places on the "B" and Master, any definitions are not interchangeable, have you programmed your own Function keys yet ? Chris I have included on the disc an Interword EXEC file "Z88keys" for defining function keys 0, 1 & 2 to be operated in numerical order for deleting the extra carriage returns that are in VIEW text files.     EDITOR...... The above file is saved on to this disc.  To: 999 (all members) From: K4V (Trevor Crapper) Subject: View Professional Problems This article arose from the letter sent in by Richard Chamberlain and published in the Help! section of issue 45. Although I am unable to answer the queries made specifically having never had this type of problem occur. I am aware that there are some bugs around. I suspect the reason for this was that whenever using VP, both MOSPLUS and VIEW were UNPLUGged and as soon as my work with VP was finished MOSPLUS was immediately INSERTed, and I rarely had VP in sideways ram. When I decided to use VP in earnest, I had the two roms VP2TOP and VP2BOT blown onto eproms, These are mounted in a rom cartridge which is left in one of slots permanently. I also exchanged the MOSPLUS rom for ADU which can be left 'on'. Since I don't know what else Richard has in sideways could only suggest taking everything else out and leaving VP on its own and give this a try. This also includes the other two rom images on this disk. These have got nothing all to do with the normal operation of VP and are best left unused. The purpose of these rom images is more to do with the Z88 laptop than View Professional. I was confused myself when first encountering them and thought they must belong to VP but could not figure out how. These roms carry out specific tasks such as the transfer of data between the Z88 and the BBC. Printing Z88 files via the BBC and other things. In addition there is an emulation of the Z88 program Pipedream, which in reality is VP in Z88 clothing. The reason for the emulation is to allow Z88 Users to 'use' Pipedream in the BBC. There is no point in trying to learn how to use this program unless you happen to own a Z88. VP does exactly the same things as Pipedream does and vice versa. However, if you do decide to have a play, be very careful indeed. In the first place read, and I do mean read all the text files thoroughly. To be perfectly honest apart from the Pipe- dream emulation these programs should not be used at all. So the bottom line is this only use the two dedicated VP roms, unplug the View and MosPlus roms and then try using VP. Trevor Crapper  To: 999 (all members) From: K4V (Trevor Crapper) Subject: View Professional Part 5 This was supposed to be a simple guide and no more, unfortunately nothing is ever that simple! However, with a bit of luck I will be able to get started on that letter, which was my original intention. That was before other items suddenly popped up! You can tackle this job in several ways, for an absolute no nonsense letter, get into View Professional and just start to write. I normally write my name and address on the right hand side at the top, then below this todays date in the centre. And finally below this on the left hand side the name and address of the person I am writing to. In order to save time what I have done is to write down all the names and addresses of people I write to often and save them as the persons name, TimsAdd, ChrisAd, etc. I also have a sample of my address on its own and use it when writing to anyone else. However, at this point it would be better not to start writing and saving addresses. When saving anything VP saves what it sees on the screen and, this is important to remember. Because you can alter things around the screen saved may not look like the original one anymore. And this could have an effect on your printer! So for the time being we will write using the standard screen, this also means we shall be printing in PICA style which is 10 characters per inch across your paper. If you count the letters and dots at the top of screen the total comes to 72. This is the number of letters that will be printed across the paper. However before we do start press the ESCAPE key and look at the Options page, and in particular at the margins in the centre, you want a column of 0's down to the last one 'Left' and this needs to be either 4 or 5. What this does is give a margin of 4 or 5 spaces on the left hand side. You can leave it as 0 of course and start your letter from the extreme left hand side this would leave 8 spaces over on the right hand side. It is up to you. Decide what to do and when finished press the ESCAPE key again to re-enter the writing screen. Now to start writing a letter, have you decided on a heading, your name address etc., or something entirely different, the choice is yours to make. If you want a quick short cut to writing in todays date type in @d@ on line on its own. If you want to centre it then type the backslash just below the BREAK key and when this shows up above the dotted line type CA next to it and press RETURN, making sure the cursor is next to the @D@, before doing so. Something to play with! The rest as they say is up to you, now you can save your letter by pressing the backslash and typing SA together with a file name, make sure there is a space after SA though. You can save any of your files using this method be they letters, addresses or whatever. And to load them backslash L. Before I forget put the letter(s) next to the backslack mark otherwise you will get an error message. Printing your piece, with the printer on, press the backslash key and type P and press Return. EDITOR...... Don't forget, I have typed the VP manual in now, available as TBI-74-2  To: 999 (all members) From: K4V (Trevor Crapper) Subject: Z88 To Z88 Users and anyone looking for a Z88 or hardware to look no further. Is anyone interested in a lot of valuable information about these machines and what they are capable of doing? For the price of a return postage I can put you on to a source of top quality information. Queries on any subject pertaining to the Z88 answered in depth. This gentleman may even be able to provide a breakdown service if your Z88 has gone on the blink, and mend it for you. The person to write to not forgetting to enclose a stamp is: Jack Lawrie 15 Sycamore Grove Southam Leamington Spa CV33 0EY  To: 999 (all members) From: D2B (D.Hooper) Subject: HELP I have obtained a ROM of 8k static RAM but unfortunately without instructions. So I would be grateful if anyone could please advise me on how to CALL and use it, as due to my set-up I am short on memory on powering up. I Wish You All a Very MERRY CHRISTMAS  To: 999 (all members) From: 4WL (Martin Wilson) Subject: Packet Radio What is packet radio? How does it work? How much does it cost to run? What equipment do you need? I keep hearing it mentioned but I've never seen it fully explained? Can someone write an idiots guide to it whose in the know?  PRESS SPACE