From: D9X (RON KILROY)
Subject: FOR SALE.
2off MASTER 128's plus H/Book.
2off BBC's, Model B plus H/Book.
3off 40/80 D/sided Disc Drives,
powered by the BBC micro.
Local delivery or collect,
hence price on application.
Watford
Herts
WD2 6PZ
( 01923 678748 )
From: 15A (Steven Flintham)
Subject: Large dictionaries
There were one or two mentions of the
availability of large dictionaries in
issue 59. Although it depends exactly
what you want to do with it, having
lots of obscure words in isn't always
a good thing. If you're tryng to find
anagrams or something then it's
obviously great, but if you're
spellchecking some text the advantage
of the extra words has to be weighed
against the risk of them hiding a
typo. For example, you might mistype:
He was as drunk as a lord.
as:
He was aa drunk ad a lord.
(A and D being next to S on the
keyboard) and as both 'aa' and 'ad'
are words, a more comprehensive
dictionary will miss the errors while
a 'common words only' dictionary will
catch both of them.
From: E3B (J R Halliwell)
Subject: DISC Drives.
Help please
I have two sets of d/s d/d's 40/80's
Cumana and Pace when connected a Beeb
with 8271 or 1770 fdc's they don't
work at all if i *info *.* i get "not
found"format or verify i get drive
fault at 00/00/00. tried new cables
and my mates Beeb no joy. on my Master
they work perfecly.any help much
appreciated.
7 Hampden rd.
Prestwich.
M25 1LQ.
0161 773 1635 after 6pm.
ReplyTo: D5B (Jon Ripley)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Econet Station Number
In issue 55, Jon mentioned 8 switches
on the keyboard setting the Econet
station number. The station number
switches are actually near the back of
the main PCB, about one inch from the
Econet socket. (The Master/etc station
number is set from CMOS ram, so
doesn't need switches.)
Also, you shouldn't try to read the
station number by reading location
&FE18 - what if you're on the Tube, or
on a Master? You should - as with all
calls - use the provided operating
system calls. The station number is
returned with:
X%=ctrl%:Y%=X%DIV256
!X%=8:A%=&13:CALL &FFF1
=X%?1
ReplyTo: ??? (Steve Fenwick)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Anglian Water
Steve (in iss 55) said:
Anglian Water produced a simulation of
a coastal town's water and sewage
handling system, has anyone come
across this?
No, but the Hong Kong Polytechnic
Hydrological Studies Department used
to model the water and sewage flows
through Victoria Harbour with a giant
model of the harbour with lots of
sensors connected to a network of BBC
Masters. When they were persuaded to
replace the with PCs (spit!) it took
months for people to write software up
to the calibre of the BBC stuff they
were replacing!
ReplyTo: D5B (Jon Ripley)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: HADFS on Master & Compact
Yes, PAGE is raised (but only to &1500
if you configure only two i/o channels
with *OPT5,2) as the version of HADFS
you have is designed to work on ANY
machine. I've been tinkering with a
Hazel-specific version (Hazel is the
high workspace memory) and I'll send
it to you as soon as it's stable
enough.
It's not just as simple as getting the
universal version to find what machine
it's running on and then set some
pointers to point to the other memory,
as a lot of operations need to work
with at least some absolute memory.
ReplyTo: K6N (Brian Raw)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Beeb/Master incompatabilities
Re: 8271/1770 incompatabilites. Well,
if you go and play with the hardware,
then of course things are going to be
different, but you're not supposed to
do that. There is a proper OS call
(OSword &7F) that you use to read and
write directly to disks. It makes no
difference what the hardware is - it
could be a gramaphone record for all
the calling program cares. You ask
Osword &7F to read a number of sectors
and it worries about what te hardware
is.
Basic III is basically Basic II, but
with the COLOUR token also acceptable
as COLOR, and listed as such; it was
mainly for the US market.
OPENUP is definately there in Basic II
- I use it all the time. Maybe what
you're thinking about is Basic I. In
Basic I there were the following two
tokens:
OPENOUT &AE - Does OsFind &80
(ie OpenOut)
OPENIN &AD - Does OsFind &C0
(ie OpenUp!)
In Basic II, token &AD was changed to
list as OPENUP, as that's what it
does, and a new token was introduced:
OPENIN &8E - Does OsFind &40
(ie OpenIn)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: EMail Address
Section: Regular Contacts
I now have a functioning email address
as:
jgh@digibank.demon.co.uk
And, may I repeat, my phone number is
0114 281 8708, and not the one with
'3's in it.
ReplyTo: D5B (Jon Ripley)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Diary 1997 disk checking
(Again...)
Diary doesn't really need to check
what format disk is inserted right at
the start of the program, just what
filing system is in operation:
DEFFNfs:LOCAL A%,X%,Y%,E%
=(USR&FFDA)AND&FF
Returns filing system number, eg
4=dfs, 5=net, 8=adfs, 16=hadfs
True, when the program lets you change
a disk, that's when it would be useful
to check what format it is
The following function is also useful:
DEFFNfsname(A%)=MID$("HADFS",3-A%DIV8)
Giving it a parameter of 4, 8 or 16
will give that filing system's name,
so PRINTFNfsname(FNfs) will print the
filing system name if it is DFS, ADFS
or HADFS.
ReplyTo: D6A (Godon Wileman)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Acorn CP/M System Disks
I have a full set of Acorn CP/M system
disks, I can provide copies to anybody
who needs tham, plus some additional
extras including a program to allow
BBCBASIC(Z80) to run outside CP/M and
use normal BBC file i/o.
ReplyTo: 4WL (Martin Wilson)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Modems and BBSs
I'm putting together some articles
about modems and BBSs to go into the
magazine, including some information
and programs to make sending internet
email just as simple as using the 8bs
messaging system. Watch this space!
ReplyTo: 4WL (Martin Wilson)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Laser Printer not FF-ing
From the BBC keyboard, try doing
CTRL-B, CTRL-L, CTRL-C.
This will send a FormFeed code to the
printer and should eject the paper
Not an ideal solution, I know, but it
works.
ReplyTo: K6N (Brian Raw)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: 3.5" disk drives
The drives I have sucessfully used
are:
Newtronics/MITSUMI D359T5
no DS link, always drive 1
SONY MP-F17W-00 and -01 and -02
selectable 0/1/2/3. I have four of
these, one of which died in the
humidity of Hong Kong
All my computers have a little switch
in the lead to swap drive 0 and 1
around. I have a single 5.25" and
3.5" on each machine, so I can select
which is drive 0 or 1. On one machine
I have a bigger setup with four drives
(!) and switches so I can have:
Drive A 3.5" Drive B 3.5"
Drive B 3.5" Drive B 5.25"
Drive A 5.25" Drive B 5.25"
Drive A 3.5" Drive B 3"
and A and B can be selected to be
either drive 0 and 1.
ReplyTo: D7Y (Andrew Medworth)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Write protecting Ram
Most Roms that will not run in
sideways Ram do so because they check
whether they are in Ram or not and
diable themselves if they are as a
form of copy-protection. Some
versions of View do this, but my copy
of ENIGMA that you mentioned does not.
With the Waford Rom/Ram board, there
is a bank select latch at &FF30+rom
which selects the bank that write
operation go to. So, for example,
doing:
?&FF3E=0
*LOAD image 8000
would load image to bank 14. So,
conversly, to write protect bank 14,
just set the write latch to something
other than 14, the recommended being:
?&FF38=0
which would set it to bank 8 which is
a rom socket. The actual value written
is irrelavant.
From hardware, link S2 on the left
hand side of the board may be removed
and replaced with a switch. Then
write protecting is just a matter os
switching the switch.
Hope this is of some help.
ReplyTo: D7Y (Andrew Medworth)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Loading to &00000000
Why doesn't Basic complain with Bad
program when loading to &00000000?
Probably because the machine has
crashed before Basic is returned to
and gets a chance to look at what's
been loaded. Also, the program
integrity is only checked whenever a
error occurs, a program ends, TOP is
asked for (which is done by SAVE), END
is done or a LOAD/CHAIN command.
Try doing: !PAGE=0
No Bad Program message, but now press
Escape. Bad program message appears.
ReplyTo: D7Y (Andrew Medworth)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Acorn User Magazine
Acorn User is published by IDG media
and is available in all good
newsagents NOW! price £3.95.
ReplyTo: D2G (Niel Parry)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Mag Search Program
It's a very good program! Yes, keep on
developing it. I used it to track down
an article I wrote ages ago and
couldn't remember what issue it was
in. Wonderful.
ReplyTo: K6N (Brian Raw)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: 3.5" disk drives
Brian has successfully added 3.5"
drives to his BBC Master and tried
them out on his Beeb, and declared:
3.5" drives do not work on a Beeb with
an 8271, only with the 1770 interface.
Not quite true. I have been using
3.5" drives on my Beeb since about
1989. What is more correct to say is
that DFS up to 1.20 (ie, the firmware,
not the hardware) does not wait long
enough for the drives to come up to
speed, and so keeps dropping out with
Disk Error 10 (Drive Not Ready). It's
actuallyt fairly simple to dig around
in the DFS and modify the disk access
loops to get it to ignore Error 10.
This is exactly what HADFS does.
If people contact me I can send them a
program that will create a rom image
of a modified DFS 1.20 ready for
blowing into an EPROM.
As for using HD disks as DD disks -
don't! You'll ruin them in the long
term (long meaning after a couple of
uses). Back in issue 40 (I think) I
wrote an article about different disk
recording formats. I've repeated it
here for further perusal.
ReplyTo: D5B (Jon Ripley)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Basic 3 and USA Beeb
Jon said:
...Basic 3 had to cope with US screen
modes being only 25 lines deep...
No, that's nothing to do with Basic,
that the OS. The Basic doesn't care
whether the screen is 1 line deep or a
million, it just sends commands to the
OS and lets it sort it out.
Let me quote the BBCBasic version
changes application note:
"BBC Basic 3 (C)1983 Acorn
This version of BASIC was produced for
the US version of the BBC Micro. A few
minor changes were introduced over
Basic 2. The HiBasic distributed with
the 6502 second processor is a
relocated version of Basic 3. The
changes from Basic 2 are:
1: The interpreter accepts COLOR for
COLOUR. The detokeniser spells the
word as COLOUR. An American version of
the Basic is available that lists the
word as COLOR. This is the only
difference between the versions.
2: SAVE n$+m$ now works.
3: The use of ? and ! as formal
parameters works correctly.
4: Random number generator re-coded
for speed.
Point 3 means that something like
DEFPROCname(!&F2,?&F4)
works properly
ReplyTo: K1D (Ken Davison)
From: K8G (Jonathan Harston)
Subject: Star Printer Codes
I've enclosed on here a complete
listing of all EPSON-type printer
codes.