From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: BUG Issue 5
BUG Issue 5 comes out on 1st April
1997.
If you would like a copy please send
1 pound (or 1.50 if you require a
disc) and return p+p to me at the
following address.
Jon Ripley, BBC User Group,
56 Longstone Road, Eastbourne,
East Sussex, BN21 3SJ.
Or telephone: 01323 732597 (ansa)
If you have anything you would like to
submit then please feel free to.
You can use the Messaging System on
this disc to send messages or any
wordprocessor.
From: 0E7 (F.W.Nevin)
Subject: SHAGGY DOG STORY N0.1
In the small coastal mining village of
Easington Colliery in the midst of the
once abundant Durham coal field of
somewhere in the region of 140+ mines,
lived a breed of men we may never see
the like of again, and for which the
world is left all the poorer for their
passing.
The tales of their fortitude in the
face of great adversity are legend,
as are the tales of their love of
Whippets,Greyhounds and Pigeon racing,
and the resultant gambling fostered by
these activities.
In our pit village of Easington
Colliery lived our intrepid hero
Geordie and his marra Tommy.
Both these stalwarts of their time
liked nothing better than a bet on the
races, and their pint on a Saturday
night after a hard weeks work at the
pit.
One day after a win on the geegees
they were at a loss as to what to
do with their winnings.
After much argument and deliberation
they decided to invest in the
ownership of a Greyhound.
They visted the local dog track which
was really a field behind the pit and
after much deliberation eventually
purchased a young hound with 'Great
Potential'.
They returned home with 'Great
Expectations' in the dog's ability to
win them a fortune and commenced it's
training forthwith, eventually entering
it in the local races. To their great
dismay the dog came last in every
race.The problem was that it just did
not seem able to to run round the
bends of the track when running in an
anti-clockwise direction.
As all the local tracks ran the races
in an anti-clockwise direction, it was
apparent that their dog would never be
capable of winning any race as it
could not negotiate the left hand
bends.
They needed to find some solution to
this problem.They decided after much
deliberation that they would have to
bias the dog somehow so that it could
negotiate the bends of the local
tracks.However much thought they gave
the matter a solution escaped them.
After weeks of research and heated
arguments they were taking the dog to
the track, their hearts heavy with the
thought of yet another failure, when
Tommy in a moment of great inspiration
cried
"Whi man if we put some lead in his
left ear that'll mak im lean ower
so he'll flee rund the bends an Bob's
yer uncle".
Geordie very low in spirits gave this
suggestion his every attention for all
of a split second before muttering
"Aye an awe reckon it'll be best
applied oot'o' the barrel owe a gun".
From: K6X (Cluke)
Subject: Owning-up time!
For over two years now, Chris has
been sending me the ( nearly ) final
version of the issue discs for me to
check over for spelling mitsakes etc,
a job which I volunteered for as my
contribution towards the running of
our merry band.
They usually plop onto my doormat a
day or two after the deadline date, I
then sit up 'til 2 or 3am for the next
few nights, after the family have all
gone to bed, casting the ole eagle eye
over the entire disc contents emending
errata, and sending the finished issue
to Chris. He has been privately very
fulsome in his gratitude to me for this
service, but has recently been going so
far as to sing my praises on the issue
discs, thanking me for all my hard work
etc.
It is in fact all this public praise
which forces me to admit to a rather
large deceit, and one for which I must
apologise mainly to Chris, as he is
the one that I have most deceived. He
has thought that all this time I have
been laboriously checking all of the
discs, and I haven't; all the work has
been done by a rather special piece of
software which I had given to me.
It came from my cousin in the U.S. of
A. Her name is Mona T Witz ( she won't
tell me what the T. stands for but she
insisted that I use it when I told her
that I was going to own up ) and she
used to work in a department which is
responsible for checking all the
complicated specifications that are
issued to companies tendering to make
components for NASA. It used to be a
much larger dept, but with funding
being reduced they had to find a way
of cutting the amount of both time and
staff involved in checking the specs,
so they hired a whizz-kid fresh out of
M.I.T., told her what they wanted, and
left her to it. Within two months she
had written a piece of software which
not only checked for correct spelling,
but also whether a word was correct in
the context of the sentence in which
it was being used. In 6 languages!
As some of the specs for even quite
mundane items like nuts or screws can
be over 40 pages, and are sent to all
the suppliers on the approved list,
any errors in the final draft can be
very costly in terms of time and money
to both NASA and the suppliers.
Mona's software ( she was the whizz-
kid from M.I.T. ) had it's first major
success with a 7400-page spec. for the
refractory tiles which shield the body
of The Shuttle from the temperatures
generated during re-entry. A team of
15 people had spent 9 weeks working at
refining the engineering design team's
mountain of notes and drawings into a
more usable and cohesive document. It
was regarded as a finished project,
and was about to be printed up to be
sent out. They decided to give Mona's
program a tryout on the document, and
it spotted what nobody else had, not
even the spellchecker built into the
word-processors on which the document
had been compiled. The tiles should
have been specified as being self-
coloured, ie the base materials from
which they would be made would need no
added colouring. This had somehow been
typed in as shelf-coloured!
NASA were so impressed with this, and
further successes of Mona's software,
that they built it into their word-
processors at all of their facilities,
sacked the team of 15 that had first
prepared the tile spec, and made over
80 more in the dept redundant. Mona
was so upset that she had caused so
many to lose their jobs, she herself
resigned and came to work in England,
which is how I come to have a much-
modified version that works on my
128. By way of apology, I have sent
it to Chris for this issue. Warning!!
Read the Program Documentation Article
before trying to run the Program.
From: K8P (B.Tallowin)
Subject: Poem
Connections
When surfing the Net,
Fingers travelling Cyberspace,
Distance no obstacle to
connections made;
Diverse data flowing into your
terminal,
Do we need all this data?
Gaining a life of its own
constantly spanning the globe,
24hrs every day,
Immediate decisions being asked
for;
Will there be time for quiet
reflection?
To: 999 (all members)
From: D6G (SPROW)
Subject: Updates
Listfix,which was on last month's disk
and fixed the indent problem with
LISTO7 on BASIC's < 4,has been
updated.
I found while ambling through old
Micro Users that location &37 contains
the most recently unpacked token.This
discovery greatly simplifies the
program's task as it no longer has to
scan along the next line looking for
"NEXT" or "UNTIL".
The resulting space saving (that was
V1.10) means that there is room to
include a check on the current BASIC
version. This gives V1.20, available
from my homepage:
www.york.ac.uk/÷rps102/bbc/bbc.htm
Keep BBCing...
Robert Sprowson.
To: 999 (all members)
From: K6N (Brian Raw)
Subject: BeeB-Master incompatabilities
*****************************
While the Master is a vast improvement
over the BeeB, having many functions
sadly lacking on the BeeB, if you were
to use any of them then you limit the
program to being a Master-only program
The most noticeable incompatibility is
the DFS or rather the disc controller;
8271 in the BeeB, 1770 in the Master.
Most if not all the pre-Master sector
editors will not work on the Master
even in DFS mode.
If you have a BeeB then you are more
than likely to be running Basic II,
Master owners having Basic IV.
(What happened to Basic III?)
Now I find it very strange that the
function that opens a random access
file, OPENUP on the Master, is not
available from Basic II, especially
since such a file is available on a
BeeB by using OSFIND with A=&C0.
To: 999 (all members)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Labels, Labels, Labels...
As Richard Harker and Derek Hill have
both said in recent issues label upon
label may grace a disc; each telling a
different tale can be found.
The same goes, I find, for envelopes.
Having travelled many hundreds - or
perhaps thousands - of miles. Layers
and layers of labels and tape.
It certainly is an interesting way to
spend an evening - if there isn't
anything else to do - peeling back the
layers of time.
I wonder what Postman Pat makes of all
this?
To: 999 (all members)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Perfect Disc Copies...2
In addition to my message in issue 54.
I would like to add - with many thanks
to Stephan Richardson for pointing this
out to me - that some games
manufacturers used protection
techniques that even ADI and other good
disc copiers couldn't manage.
A prime example is the game 'Superman'
and other disc games from the same
company. (Sorry but I can't remember
their name!)
A series of articles and programs
covering all apsects of the DFS filing
system is currently running on BUG - my
user group magazine.
Regarding the disc copier ADI. I am
told that it should be fully
compatible with the Electron and BBC B
when the computer has the 1770 or 1772
disc interface fitted.
To: 999 (all members)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Thanks...
I would like to say a big...
TTT H H A N N K K Y Y OOO U U !
T H H A A NN N K K Y Y O O U U !
T HHH AAA NNNN KK --- Y O O U U !
T H H A A N NN K K Y O O U U
T H H A A N N K K Y OOO UUU !
...to all the people who helped with my
need for info about my Taxan printer.
To: 999 and 0E7 (Fred Nevin)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: 5.25" Floppies
I agree with Fred Nevin's point that
it seems that 5.25" floppies are no
longer made nowadays. Certainly the
supplies of brand new discs are
dwindling.
Perhaps it would be better for us all
if we switched to 3.5" discs on our
BBCs. Good quality new DSDD 3.5" discs
although probably out of production
seem to be more readily available at
better prices than their 5.25"
counterparts.
To: 999 and K6X (Paul Clucas)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Those damned ele-chimps...
Just for a laugh I decided that in
line with my message from the last
issue that I might ask my BBC how it
counted...
I find that with a bit (pun?) of
practise you can do it this
way...(!!!)
1...Quartz Crystal...2...Quartz
Crystal...3...Quartz Crystal...
It gets a bit toungue tying after
twenty seconds (vibrations) or so!
If you want to try your own method of
timing this simple program may help.
10 A=GET:TIME=0:REPEATUNTILGET:PRINT
TIME/100
Type RUN, press any key when you are
ready to start and press another key
when you are done. The number of
seconds you have taken will be
printed.
To: 999 and K6X (Paul Clucas)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Underground Messaging System!
A reply for Paul Clucas.
Paul Clucas mentioned the possibility
that there are a hard-core of people
who are sending personal messages to
each other through the issue bypassing
the publicity of 999 and CCC.
Rarely do I not send in messages and
it is usual for me to bombard Chris
with 30 to 40 messages for each issue.
In most cases around a quarter are for
individuals, another quarter are
replys to individuals but sent in for
all to read.
Lastly the final messages are mainly
general messages and can be about
anything.
To: 999 and K6X (Paul Clucas)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Underground Messaging Part 2!
Firstly I would like to say that I
think that it is a pity that many of
the messages we send to individuals
would be of use to the group as a
whole and could be sent to 999 with a
footnote to say that the reply also
applies to a particular person.
Obviously some messages are too
personal to make public but why not
follow in the footsteps of Jonathan
Harston and me (following him) by
making many of our replies to
individual's questions available to
all.
Or it would be possible to send the
same message over and over again to
each and every member but Chris might
get a bit annoyed. And anyway...Who
wants to type out the same message 200
times!
Lastly I would just like to say hello
to everybody who all those members out
there who haven't plucked up the
courage to send in anything yet. Get
typing!
To: 999 (all members)
From: D5B (Jon Ripley)
Subject: Archimedes...
If any members with Archimedes
computers whatever their setup want
some advice, info or just want to swap
software please get in touch!
Also, due to much demand I am
considering a regular Archimedes
section on my user group magazine (BBC
User Group - BUG!) disc. This will
include whatever people want it to!
(Just in case people are worried, the
magazine will stay focused on the BBC
Micro.)