From: D4P (Norma Lee)
Subject: HELP! HELP! HELP!
Machine used: MASTER128
My AMX Stop Press System Disk when
booted will no longer bring up the
MAIN MENU.Using *ROMS shows that the
ROM images have been loaded but the
program hangs up with just the first
TITLE SCREEN on the VDU.The same thing
happens with my backup copies of the
System Disk.Has anyone any ideas as to
what may have gone wrong.I've tried
verifying the disks but nothing showed
up.
ANY HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED
I also have a QUEST PAINT ROM fitted
into a ROM Cartridge together with a
Quest Trackerball.I can access the
Quest Paint Program which brings up
the pencil icon in the centre of the
screen but the trackerball will only
move the icon to the left side of
the screen so I am unable to get the
COMMAND menu.The buttons appear to
work but do I need some sort of mouse
ROM to make the trackerball interact
and if so does anyone know a supplier.
Has anyone any other suggestions?
Both packages were purchased from
Watford Electronics but their customer
backup service has been non-existent.
Does anybody have a copy of "The
Complete Mouse User Guide" by Watford
Electrics for sale or a photocopy.
From: D6E (Richard Harker)
Subject: Teletext and Repton
I have got an Acorn Teletext adaptor,
(It originally came with a TFS ROM.)
I have got an ATS 2.59 ROM, but it
doesn't work with it. When the ROM is
in my Master 128 and the adaptor is
connected up, I cannot seem to access
the Teletext. A *help says:-
ATS 2.59 Morley No Unit0
The only manual I have is the one for
the original ACORN TFS ROM Please help
I recently bought Repton Infinity on
3.5" disk but I cannot get it to work
on my M128. Please help
My address is
Elmlea, Sewardstone Road, Chingford,
London, E4 7RG
Or contact me via the 8BS messaging
system
From: D6E (Richard Harker)
Subject: Wanted (Part 1)
I wonder if anyone has or knows where
I can get BBC or Spectrum 48
snapshots. The Spectrum ones should be
PC type .Z80 or .SNA or Archimedes type
&CEE or &CEF. The BBC ones should be
compatible with !6502em on the
Archimedes. My address is ELMLEA
SEWARDSTONE ROAD, CHINGFORD, LONDON,
E4 7RG. I can do some swaps of
snapshots. I can return disks and
postage.
From: D6E (Richard Harker)
Subject: Wanted (Part 2)
I urgently need ROM images of all the
standard ROMS for the Master Compact
on 3.5" disc. The ROMs are (I think)
ADFS2.10 / Utils/ BASICIV 86 / OS5.1.
I am also after a Compact welcome disk.
Address: Elmlea, Sewardstone road,
Chingford, London, E4 7RG
I can return disks and postage.
From: K2Q (John Nicholson)
Subject: Help needed with CPM on BBC
I have recently come by a BBC z80
second processor, which will therefore
run CPM. There seems to be a great
deal of additional software available
for this set up. Are there any other
users out there who can give me some
help?
In particular, I wanted to read some
CPM discs created on a 'normal' z80
machine, (a merlin) and transfer them
to a BBC readable disc for use with
WORDWISE.
Can anyone help?
Please contact: JOHN NICHOLSON (K2Q)
01286 830312.
From: K2Q (John Nicholson)
Subject: ADFS directories
Does anyone know where ADFS stores the
directories from disc in memory?
Given this, it would be possible to
write software to find ones way about
within the ADFS tree like in Windows.
Wouldn't that make life easier?
Perhaps someone has already done it?
Please let me know!
John Nicholson (K2Q)
01286 830312.
From: K2Q (John Nicholson)
Subject: ADDCOMM
Are other folk aware of this handy
ROM? It has amazing graphics
capabilities, and most useful of all a
near instant string sort. I believe
it operates using a sort routine
already in the OS, which is used
regularly to sort filenames before
displaying directories. Has any one
discovered how to call this routine
without ADDCOMM?
Please let me know!
John Nicholson (K2Q)
01286 830312.
From: K2Q (John Nicholson)
Subject: EBBS BBS
Has anyone used this software to set
up an active BBS using a BBC? I would
welcome some help with setting up a
BBC dedicated BBS in North Wales. I
am very new to ADFS. Does anyone know
where the originators of EBBS (ORION)
are now?
John Nicholson (K2Q)
01286 830312.
From: W79 (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: VIEW timesaving tip II
Instead of doing:
NEW
SAVE name
LOAD name
so that you can use SAVE on its own
without a filename, you can do:
NEW
NAME name
NAME sets the current filename, and
can be used at any time.
From: W79 (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Disks and Coffee
I once put a 5¼" disk minus case and
with footprint in a disk drive and
managed to recover all the data off
it...
From: W79 (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: 40T disks with an 80T drive
With Watford's DFS, you can do
*OPT80,drive and *OPT40,drive to
switch software double-stepping on and
off, similarly to the Master's DFS's
*DRIVE drive 40 and *DRIVE drive 80.
From: W79 (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: BBC Memory map
The memory map is useful, but you
should mention that &00-&8F and
&400-&7FF is language memory and
&90-&3FF and &400-&DFF is MOS
memory.
From: W79 (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Archimedes DFS Reader
I have in my PD library two DFS
readers and an HADFS reader. I have
sent them to CJR to be available in
the 8BS pool.
From: W79 (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Econet
I can give various help and hints &
tips on using, programming for and
setting up Econet and AUN networks.
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Extra colours!
Brown is rather an odd colour to the
BBC however it can be realistically
produced using one of two methods.
1) If there is a lot of green on the
current screen, for example the forest
scenes in Twin Kingdom Valley, red
alone is used for the brown of the
tree trunks. The eye expects to see
brown, so it does, this is an
effective optical illusion.
2) A second way to produce brown is to
stipple red and green pixels as
follows.
RGRGRGRG (R)ed and (G)reen. This
GRGRGRGR technique is used in many
RGRGRGRG games, for example, the pick
GRGRGRGR axe handles in Arctic Repton.
The second method can be used to
effectively mix any two colours. (In
modes 2 and 5 the effect is not as
good.)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Wordwise tips...
The following relates mainly to
Wordwise +, most of these will work on
Wordwise and almost all will work on
Wordwise + II.
If the cursor keys stop functioning
normally (eg Shift or CTRL + Cursor
key doesn't work), press Break. Press
Escape to get back to the text and all
should be fine! If Shift-Lock is set
then the cursor keys will also do odd
things. To stop this, deselect the
shift lock!
Using Wordwise on a Master or Compact.
If you are using the original Wordwise
I suggest that you switch off the
Break key by inserting a small flat
head screwdriver into the hole next to
the Break key and turning it clockwise
to turn the key off and anti-clockwise
to turn it on again. This means that
if you accidentally press the Break
key (which is next to the up-arrow)
you won't lose your text.
Extra editing keys...CTRL-A deletes
the character to the right of the
cursor. CTRL-S changes the case of any
letter, so 'z' becomes 'Z',
non-alphabetic characters remain
unchanged. CTRL-D deletes the word to
the right of the cursor. CTRL-F
toggles word wrapping on and off, it
is useful to turn this off when
editing BASIC programs.
To clear all the text enter ':DELETE
TEXT' in the main menu.
To enter text/commands from a function
key press CTRL+Shift+the function key.
To execute a segment program press
Shift+the function key.
If you accidentally lose your text,
enter the following command, replace
ZZZZ with the hex value of PAGE for
your machine (&1900 for a DFS BBC,
&E00 on a Master, etc);
*Save Temp ZZZZ 7000
To find the value of PAGE for your
machine, type the following at the
BASIC '>' prompt.
PRINT÷PAGE
Load this file into Wordwise and
simply use f3 to mark sections of
garbage and f7 to delete them. You
should be able to recover your whole
file. When you have dome this save
your work as usual, you should enter
'*Delete Temp' to remove the temporary
file.
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Phone call charges
In a payphone, the number of seconds
you get for 10p is in the table below.
Cheap rate starts at 6pm.
Cheap Daytime
Local 105s 75s
National 75s 32s
America is £1.30 for 1 minute cheap
rate and £1.50 at other times.
PLEASE NOTE...These prices are for
payphone calls only, if you are
calling from a home phone the charges
are much, much lower.
You can get more information/booklets
from BT. Call (FREE)
0800 115 511 For payphone charges
0800 800 890 For residential charges
150 General charges information
From: K3H (ALBERT SCHOFIELD.)
Subject: TAPE TO DISC ON THE BBC B
Cassette based games sometimes have
extra protection devices such as a
card with groups of colours which
have to be entered before the game
will run, so a copy is no good without
the card. Sometimes a device called a
LENSLOK is used. This has to be placed
over the monitor until two characters
appear which have to be typed in
before the game will run. There is
also a time limit and if, like me,
your monitor is the TV and is a couple
of feet away it can be a bit tricky.
The only game I have come across
which uses the LENSLOK is MOON CRESTA.
The game as it stands is fairly
straight forward to transfer to disc
but the LENSLOK still needs to be
used. What is needed is a method of
transferring it to disc which
dispenses with the LENSLOK.
The game is in three parts, CRESTA1,
CRESTA2 and the filename for the last
part is just a space. The first part
just gives a fancy screen. The second
part handles the LENSLOK routine. The
game itself is in the last part. So
position the tape at the start of the
last part and load it in using:-
*LOAD""1900
When it is loaded in, enter the
following eight pokes, pressing RETURN
after each one.
?&465F=&00
?&4660=&46
?&466F=&D0
?&4739=&00
?&473A=&21
?&4775=&50
?&4776=&4D
?&477B=&50
Now enter *DISC and save the
shortened file to disc using:-
*SAVE CRESTA2 1900+2EBC 4400 16C3
All that is needed now is a short
loader program as follows:-
10*KEY0 *CRESTA2|MCALL&4429|M
20*FX138,0,128
30END
Save this as CRESTA. Chaining CRESTA
will now run the game and no LENSLOK
needed. More next month.
From: D6F (JOHN CRANE)
Subject: HELP
As I mentioned in iss48, I have
SP64, which is an improved Stop
press. This can use any AMX fonts or
clip`art in DFS or ADFS, although
personally I only use
ADFS. Consequently I have a reasonable
collection of AMX clip-art on ADFS
3.5in Discs. I have Acorn Advance on my
A3010 which in WPmode can import
graphics in the form of DRAW or PAINT
files. I have programs which convert
AMX files to WE (Wapping Editor)
files. Can anyone tell me where I can
get a utility to convert AMX files to
DRAW or PAINT files? Perhaps Jon Ripley
or some other Arc expert could devise
something ?
John Crane (D6F)
34 ST Andrews Walk
Harrogate
North Yorkshire
HG2 7RL
(01423) 885049
From: D7X (Martin Hodgson)
Subject: Tape to Disc Transfer
As a new member I hope this does not
simply repeat old correspondence.
I read the compilation of Albert
Schofield messages on TBI-70 with
intense interest.
In the last couple of months I have
transferred a few tens of old tape
programs to disc. I mostly run them
on a RISC-OS A5000, using !6502Em (Warm
Silence Software). This and its
companion !Tapes, have unbeatable
facilities to load in tapes and force
them to run despite protection etc.
It emulates BBC B, PAGE at E00.
Having loaded games etc in, you can
load the "tape file" into Edit and
remove / repair (sometimes) damaged
tape blocks, and splice good ones in,
and do as you will with the data. You
can then load the file into 6502Em,
where the program thinks it is running
from tape (as it is, sort of), and
therefore usually does run. In a
multitasking environment you can do a
memory dump / disassembly, modify
things as per Albert's advice, test it
and save the file. You can then
extract the component files from the
"tape file" to run on either the
RISC-OS machine, or back on the BBC
micro, from a normal disc.
Finally, if all else fails,all of
memory can be "Snapshotted" and used
in that form.
Way back in mag issue 36 Albert
mentioned the utility SNAPSHOT, to
save all of the BBC's memory. I seem
to remember reading about 10 or 12
years ago there was such a program.
Apparently it was easy to disable, and
most games were being written to do
just that. I found it worked well on
one of my programs. But when I tried
it on my disc Acorn Soft Hits vol.1
SNAPSHOT worked, but kept recycling,
saving the memory over and over until
I hit BREAK at a carefully judged
moment. I did get Maze copied (for the
A5000), but Magic Mushrooms came off
badly damaged - seems to have other
tricks built in. Using SNAPSHOT on the
Superior Collection vol.2, and even on
the original Acorn disc of Elite, it
simply failed to trigger (using *WAIT
n). Has anybody considered modifying
SNAPSHOT to overcome this ?
Reverting to the matter of faulty old
tapes, there must be some scope for a
members' exchange facility - not
software piracy, more a case of
"person having lost block 0A of LYNX
(Combat Lynx) wishes to correspond
with person in need of any other block
of said file".
From: K8P (Brian Tallowin)
Subject:AMX Pagemaker system disc
can anybody supply disc as you are
unable to backup disc ,as I am finding
finding the DTP system quite useful;
please tel.01692-598544
From: D6G (Sprow)
Subject: Help!!
Does anyone out there have the
instructions of how to add a battery
backup to an ATPL ROM board.
Anything will help - part numbers,the
actual manual,circuit diagram,even
the loan of a board with one fitted.
Does anyone have the manual to this?
I will refund any photocopying costs
up to a maximum of £1.50 +P&P
Call Robert on (01625) 431067
Write to 6 Bollinbrook road,
MACCLESFIELD,
Cheshire.
SK10 3DJ.
Or 8BSmail it to me D6G.
From: 3WU (Fred Price)
Subject: TeleText AdapTer
HELP
My son's MORLEY Teletext Adapter
stopped working and it seems that on
trying an Acorn Adapter the same fault
returns so it would appear that the
ROM is at fault and like a lot of
other firms Morley does not support
BBC computers anymore.
Now the big question is, where if
possible can I get the ROM or a copy
of it so I can get the unit back in
working order again, so can anyone help
me at:
8 Orchard St
Pallion
Sunderland City
Wearside
SR4 6QL
Or give me a ring 0191 567 91 35
From: D6U (Syd. Hetherington)
Subject: Mug Shots
First my thanks to Chris for
converting my photograph to digital so
promptly. Whether he will dare to
publish it and frighten the members
remains to be seen.The pictures on the
screen look quite good.
I do have a small problem however. I
would like to be able to print out the
odd copy. My screen dump program
prints it out in negative form and, of
course, with a different aspect ratio.
I doubt if anything can be done about
the latter without accepting white
lines across the image but there
should be a way of inverting the
image. Anyone with ideas?
From: 4WL (Martin R Wilson)
Subject: Help/Info needed
I have a CASE 400/26 modem of 1988
vintage. Described on a hand written
sticker on it as a Multiplexer Data
Link Modem. Its traditional styled
grey plastic box. There's two buttons
on the front DATA and TEST. Four LEDs
for Power, TXD,RXD and DCD. Its fully
approved. It has a standard 25way D
socket labelled DTE interface. Four
screw connections and an earth
connection near to the Power lead
input. Who are Case? Has anyone seen
this or a similar one reviewed in an
old magazine. What would the
connections be to connect it to my
phone socket. What does the model
number mean 400 and 26?