8-Bit Software Online Conversion

                      From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem scarecrow on the Hill Here I stand on the hill, Rain,Wind or Sun all weather passes me by, Farmers tweed jacket,fit only for the birds, Farmer grumbles years of life still in How right he was!! Corduroy trousers baler twine secured, Legs flapping in the restless wind, Sun arcs across Spring's lengthening days, All around the gentle rustle of growth, Hedgegrow Oaks harbouring rooks and crows, waiting for their moment; Black silhouettes across the dusk sky, maybe tomorrow? All in a day's work.  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem counting Oak trees Good Morning; Reply given with a scrowl, Easier than a smile, Frustration feeds his ever, Present hunger; We move off,I hoping he will improve; Cocks and Hens feeding abundancty, Questioned where are the young? There they are; Another missed moment of frustration; Work flows the morning, He issues no order,I on returning, He satiates his hunger, That's why I count Oak Trees, One day one might have moved;  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem clouds Clouds; creatures of the sky, Dark steathily growing giant anvils of thunder, Hopefully only rain, Sunlight shines through chinks in pervading cloak, Gossamer streaks of silk against evening sky; V formations of seagulls heading seawards, Heralding fine weather tomorrow  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem Footprints When the thaw happens briefly during Winter's siege; Footprints sink in the harvested fields, Wondering who has passed this way, As Sun sinks,winter creeps across the fields again ; Marks of the days activity frozen in the Earth; Like fossil imprints in the earth, until thaw regains its hold, Spring gradually coming with lengthening days*  From: K8P (Brian 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 alive off its own, Constantly spanning the Globe, 24hrs every day; Immediate decision being asked for! Will their be time for quite reflection;  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem Rain Rain is giver of life, Universal solution for life, Whether Elephant or Moss, Tea and Coffee culture bonds of friendship, Wars fought over waters flow, With water aid deserts bloom, Without;civilisations crumble to dust, Changing weather patterns due to Man devoid of seasons, Shifting populations,deserts march behind fallen forests, Planting trees protect vital element of Nature.  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem playfield Green field of dreams, Generations have played seasonal games, Whether village cricket, all in white or colourful mud spattered football, Childhood adventures, whilst mothers gossip by the swings; Few now come on Summers Days, Have childhood adventures been passed by, Mothers no longer say come in when the Sun sets, Techon-entertainment now reigns, Where every room's screen is attentively watched, But I know the playfield is not left alone:  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem wind Who knows what messages you carry, Lulu lays by the garden door reading your tale, I wonder what we are missing, as she dozes, Gentle evening of Bar BQ or floral scents, Strong winds drying dancing washing, Humming telegraph lines played by Zephyr,whilst cycling home.  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem Radio Times Radio informs and amuses through the hours, Such diverse,stations prospering; Whether classical muse,or thumping pop available, News hourly leavened with music, Broadcast acting as musical wallpaper, Enliven space; Stirring emotional moments of afternoon Drama,Radio images so much better, Radio your companion,unlike T.V. As your Master:  From: K8P (Brian Tallowin) Subject: poem candles in the night We take electrical power for granted, Evening progressing with T.V. ON , Videoing another programme; Flickering lights ,electronic age silenced in darkness; Lighted candles offering glimpses of rustic age, Offering brief resprite of demands on senses; Circles of candle light gives soft soft glowing charm; We are able to ponder by the soft glow*  From: Jack Foster (E5N) Subject: Adventure Games I retired from teaching in July and have time on my hands to devote to one of my passions - Text adventures. I used to spend many hours solving them but for the last ten years have been unable to devote much time to them due to pressures of work. I have many still unsolved and would like to get in touch with anyone out there who still enjoys this now arcane pastime. I also enjoy playing old BBC games under emulation on my RiscPC have managed to get about 95% of those I have running. Anybody interested in any of these areas is welcome to get in touch. Jack Foster 18, Latrigg Road, Liverpool L17 0DD.  From: E3Y (3.Spaceman) Subject: My notorious I.D. stamper Mwa-ha-ha-ha! My cunning ploy to doom all ADFS users has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations! Or rather - "OOPS!" My sincerest apologies to all the ADFS 8BS users who had their menu scragged by my (admittedly crude) I.D. Stamper program. I use and only have practical knowledge of DFS - so hopefully anyone with that setup should be satisfied with my program, at least. Chris pointed out to me that the program wouldn't be across-the-range compatible and gave me a couple of pointers when I first submitted the program. With this in mind I rewrote the program into what I thought would be a DFS/ADFS compatible form - that was the theory at any rate! So again, I'm very sorry to all you 8BS members without easy access to your issue 60s at present. I was trying to write for something I had no real experience with. I guess the moral of the story (as I keep seeing around my place of work) is "IF IN DOUBT - ASK!" With that in mind, I ask for output from members on how to read from discs (other than by reading the INFO from the screen). Sorry, 3ason Spaceman -------x------  From: K3Y (Lorna Jenne) Subject: Cartridges for Master Several people are enquiring about Master Rom Cartridges, about 2 years ago I bought several from Watford Electronics 2 and 4 sockets they told me on the phone that they had about 4000 of each sort, that is why they were selling them cheap. I do not know if the still have them, but it might be worth a phone call to find out. EDITOR.......... I followed this one up to no avail. I suspect that Watford Electronics ditched the thousands of cartridges that they had. A year back I tried to haggle a cheap price for 100 or so of these cartridges, but they would not budge, a while after, I heard they had thrown them out, so I rang them. I could not get any sense out of anyone at the time. Prompted by Lorna7s message, I have just now made several further calls to 'non-helpful' people at Watford. All denied any knowledge.  From: 4WL (Martin Wilson) Subject: Software Wanted Reply Last issue my contact message got a response from the editor himself. So I thought I'd better clarify what I meant when I said about 'why pay one pound a disk when...'. This wasn't meant to mean that I think a pound a disk is a ripoff or anything like that because obviously it isn't. If anyone ever read any Mac magazines from 92-94 they'd notice people selling PD disks for five pounds each. Now that was a ripoff. Anyway I personally have on many occasions bought PD disks at one pound a time, in fact I reckon I've bought a couple hundred altogether. I'm also certainly making no claims either that I have the same range of software as the 8BS PD library because I most definitely haven't. It was simply that I wanted to get the early issues of 8bit to read a couple of articles approx from each issue. It didn't seem worth a pound each on this basis. Back along while I was on the internet I had the opportunity to download many such issues but for some reason my downloads were corrupted, this was with 'Compuserve'. Because the issues were available on the internet I thought it would be ok to mention I wanted them in a message. Nowadays I use my 32bit Acorn more than the 8bit but still really enjoy the 8BS new issues. However because of this I have less need or interest in the PD library compared to a fully fledged 8bit user and many actual programs and demos on 8BS disk mags don't actually run as desired (although of course many do). I hope this explains why I'm not regularly buying PD disks and so forth and hope my only contribution of 50p per issue plus articles etc is satisfactory.  From: 4WL (Martin Wilson) Subject: BBC Demos                                                                                                          From: 4WL (Martin Wilson) Subject: Computer related Quiz Just a little bit of nostalgia. Name these computers; Home based computer originally cost 750 pounds including mono monitor. 360k 3.5 external disk drive and with an operating system based on CPM68. Based being the key word, it had been modified quite a lot and a famous GUI had been added to it. The OS was loaded from disk. It came with a mouse and later on got one of the worst BBC emulators ever. Flat as a pancake with a crude word processor built in, yet BASIC came on cartridge. Maximum resolution of 640x512 using interlace. Could also emulate the spectrums attribute graphics. 256 colours on screen at low resolution. A computer that actually replaced a technically superior model and cost more. It did have the virtual of built in business software but you needed a disk drive to use most of them and this computer was mainly supplied with a tape deck. Had a sister model never sold in this country that had a speech synthesiser built in. A 32k computer with multiple graphics modes, single channel sound and a cassette port with motor control. Had a range of cartridge games available and used analogue joysticks. British made and not an Electron. A competitor to the BBC for a while, 8bit memory chips and built in storage. Included some serious software in the bundle. Early ones had a lump sticking out the back. Cheap early computer designed in Britain, made in Hong Kong I think but sold by an American company. A Mk 2 version was sold by the British company. A British video console that actually reached the market place. There's a connection with the BBC too in that the same company made something that many BBC users used. The clue being it was a console company. A Belgium computer that was actively marketed back in 1982/3. It was expensive and had full colour graphics. An early 16bit computer that was incredibly slow compared to 8bit computers. Mainly because it didn't allow you to program it in m/c at all unless you bought an additional cartridge language. A clue is the place there based in likes to execute people. Early Japanese computer using the same graphics chip as MSX and coleco vision. Membrane keyboard like spectrum although nicer, not a lot of memory. Flat disc hand controllers instead of joysticks. You could call this Britain's answer to the MSX. Brushed aluminium case. Very long. They had a fixation for black. They used a Porsche in their adverts to indicate it was fast. A German low cost PC to compete with Amstrads models. Used cheap 8bit memory though to save a few quid and therefore only had a 8088 processor. It was just a chunky keyboard so had no expansion potential what so ever. It had a connection with Amstrad though because of the CPC models. Can you name them?                    