8-Bit Software Online Conversion

                                                      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?     