From: K6N (B.Raw)
Subject: Notepad
Is your workroom full of bits of paper
with notes to yourself for future
reference that you just cannot bring
yourself to throw away? It is, well
this program attempts to rescue you
from this untidy mess.
Notepad provides virtual sheets of
paper stored on disc, the number of
which depends on the format of your
discs :-
DFS 40T 3 X 26 = 78
DFS 80T 7 X 26 = 186
ADFS S 6 X 26 = 156
ADFS M 12 X 26 = 312
ADFS L 24 X 26 = 624
You need to prepare a blank formated
disc for use with this program.This
is done from the first screen on
running the program. However there is
a dummy file with two pages on this
disc which may be used for test
purposes.
If you already have a prepared disc
pop it in any drive and make this the
current drive using the * command
option, before running the main
program.
When first prepared, the pages are
given a title that is their location
in the notepad, this is displayed at
the top of the page in blue initially
Page A1
this will be temporarily overwritten
with the help line.
<H>elp <I>ndex <P>rint <['> <Esc>
Use the cursor keys to navigate around
the notepad. Index sets off an auto
display of the whole notepad which may
be stopped when it reaches the page
which you wish to edit.
Press <Return> to enter edit mode
The help line will be replaced with
the true top line and a large flashing
cursor will be visable.
Warning hitting <esc> from here will
save the displayed page without prompt,
so if you do not wish to save the
changes you have made, use <Break>
While in Edit mode the function keys
are as the 8BS message system barring
shift+f9 and ctrl+f9 which have the
same effect as f9 i.e. pixel editing
While in pixel editing a smaller
flashing cursor is used.
Also ctrl+P prints the page
ctrl+C clears the page returning
its initial title.
Epson 9pin
If you have an Epson 9 pin
printer or compatible you may select
this option from the first screen.
When in this mode Teletext graphics
characters used in the notepad are
printed rather than being replaced
with a space. Normal contiguous as well
as seperated graphics are catered for,
and also the square brackets are
redefined as arrows so the printout
is as displayed.
On startup this option is set off but
may be altered to on by changing :-
130epson%=0
to
130epson%=1
Then SAVE"NotePad"
From: K2K (Peter Davy)
Program: LIST PRIME NUMBERS
(D6E's program in Issue No.50)
My interest in generating prime
numbers goes back to my pre-computer
days when I used to struggle to do it
on a programmable calculator. Having
seen in About this disk that there was
a Prime Number program I went straight
to it to see if there were any
comments I could make.
There were! With a few changes the
program can be made to run very much
faster.
The principle of the program is to
test each possible prime number to see
if it has any factors apart from 1 and
itself. If it has it can't be a prime
number. Apart from 2, all prime numbers
are odd numbers. In D6E's program the
next possible prime number is derived
by incrementing by 1. The number of
possible primes to test can be halved
by incrementing by 2.
An odd number cannot be exactly
divisible by an even number. D6E
increments his divisors by 1. The
number of operations can be halved
again by incrementing the divisor by
2.
Finally the biggest gain in speed of
all. When searching for a factor of
the possible prime number, it is
sufficient to take the divisor up to
the square root of the possible prime
number rather than all the way up to
the number itself. For example if 5197
(which is a prime number) is being
tested, it is only necessary to try
divisors up to 73 as the square root
of 5197 is 72.090. It would be a waste
of time trying 75, 77, 79, 81, ...
etc. as if a factor above 75 exists we
would have encountered the
corresponding factor on our way up to
73.
I found it easier to incorporate the
above changes by re-writing the
program. List Prime Numbers (2) is to
be found elsewhere on this disk. Line
20 gets the primes 2 and 3 out of the
way and the program proper starts at
line 30 by considering 5 as a possible
prime. Incidentally I usually consider
1 to be a prime number but for this
exercise I have gone along with D6E
and taken 2 as the first prime.
An indication of the relative speeds:
PRIME NUMBER D6E's prog. K2K's prog.
211 01min 00sec 00min 08sec
1937 55min 00sec 01min 07sec
For a program which enables a search
to be made for prime numbers starting
at any point up to 999,999,999 see my
Adult Basic Education disk TBI-46-2 in
the 8BS pool.
From: Keith Johnson
Program: BBC to GW Basic
BBC BASIC TO GW BASIC TRANSLATION
PROGRAM BY KEITH JOHNSON I HAD WRITTEN
A FEW PROGRAMS ON THE BEEB AND WANTED
THEM TO RUN ON AN IBM COMPUTER THE
COMMON GROUND BETWEEN BOTH COMPUTERS IS
ASCII CODE SO THE PROBLEM BOILED DOWN
TO GETTING THE PROGRAM ONTO A DISC IN
ASCII CODE USING THE *SPOOL COMMAND
TRANSLATING IT INTO GW BASIC AND
PUTTING IT BACK ON THE DISC THE
PROGRAMS DO A TWO STAGE TRANSLATION THE
FIRST PROGRAM DEFT1 HANDLES THE PROCS
AND DEF PROCS AND THE SECOND PROGRAM
TRAN2 HANDLES MOST OF THE COMMANDS
TRANSLATING THEM INTO GW BASIC THE
FINAL STEP IS TO GET THE TRANSLATED
PROGRAM INTO ANOTHER COMPUTER WHICH
RUNS GW BASIC THIS CAN BE DONE VIA A
MODEM OR VIA A CABLE PORT TO PORT
HOOKUP. THE METHOD I USED WAS TO USE A
PROGRAM WHICH FORMATTED A DISK USING A
BEEB WHICH WOULD BE ACCEPTED BY AN IBM
COMPUTER
THE TRANSLATION PROGRAM SCANS EACH BIT
OF THE PROGRAM AND TAKES HOURS TO WORK.
IT IS NOT DESIGNED TO HANDLE SOUND
OR GRAPHICS. I WROTE IT TO SAVE MYSELF
A LOT OF TYPING. ANYWAY YOU ARE WELCOME
TO USE IT AND COPY IT.
PS USE THE MERGE COMMAND ONCE THE
TRANSLATION IS IN ANOTHER COMPUTER
TO CHANGE IT BACK FROM ASCII CODE
AND GET IT RUNNING PROCEDURE CHAIN
DEFT1 - CHAIN TRAN2
From: 3WU (Fred Price)
Subject: A Poem
When you have a few poems like I have,
it makes you wonder which one to send
in and I have a full issue of that
tyneside bloke. NO I dont mean my other
namesake, I mean the other one Geordie.
So for a change, this one is a bit more
serious. It has one advantage, it
costs you nothing to get and costs
nothing to give as it is free. So find
out what is in:
******
******
Just set your printer up and print it
out OK
D6G (Sprow) QuidFix
£ signs causing problems This program is not designed to save
you money I'm sorry to say.Instead it
is to put and end once and for all to
the problem of a £ sign appearing as a
# (hash) or ' (apostrophe) on the
printer and correctly on the screen or
vice versa.
CHAIN"£SIGN" when you're in BASIC to
start it up.Answer the on screen
question when prompted,and have your
printer at the ready when prompted.
Once printed you wil be asked to enter
the two character numbers that appear
in your wordprocessor files and
printed wordprocessor files.The normal
BBC pound sign as seen in Mode 7 for
example is &60 (chr$ 96).
The disk drive,or current media will
then start and save a custom version
of a patch to it.In future simply *RUN
it to correct the problem.
As the program is intended to be able
to be run from BASIC etc... where
complex VDU sequence such as palette
or window definitions may be sent it
will also handle these correctly.
Hence VDU23,250,96,96,96,2,1,96,0,7
will be interpretted correctly even
though it contains ` signs and printer
sequences and nulls and bells.
Let me know how you get on...
Write to 6 Bollinbrook road,
MACCLESFIELD,
Cheshire.
SK10 3DJ.
Or 8BSmail it to me D6G.
From: D6E (Richard Harker)
Program: Circ and Circ2 info.
These are two similar one-liners. The
program draws different coloured
circles, and then cycles the pallete.
You may like to try staring for the
screen for a while, and then look away
at something else, and see if it has
any strange effects!
From: D6E (Richard Harker)
Program: 'BBC B' PCB layout key.
I have reproduced the PCB layout, as
printed in the BBC Microcomputer User
Guide. Hopefully this will be
particularly useful for people without
a BBC User Guide.
KEY
A - Econet Din socket.
B - RTS SW.
C - Analogue & Paddle.
D - Cass RL.
E - Cassete socket.
F - RS 423 Socket.
G - RGB.
H - BNC style plug.
I - UHF socket.
J - Econet Interface.
K - ADC.
L - Serial Processor.
M - Cass and RS423.
N - Pal Encoder.
O - Don't Know!
P - 6850.
Q - CRTC.
R - Clock Generator And DRAM Support.
S - DRAM Address Buffers.
T - 16 DRAMs.
U - 6854.
V - Voice Synth Memory.
W - Voice synth Processor.
X - Floppy disk control.
Y - No Idea.
Z - Versatile interface adaptor.
0 - Address Decoders.
1 - 6502.
2 - SAA 5050 Teletext.
3 - Don't Know.
4 - Don't Know.
5 - Video Process.
6 - Disk Interface.
7 - Don't Know.
8 - Don't Know.
9 - Versatile interface adaptor.
@ - Don't Know.
# - Don't Know.
$ - 5 28 pin ROMs.