Fred 47
Disk Magazine
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Monday, May 21, 2018 - 23:26.
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Release Year
1994
Copyrights
Copyrights Granted
Copyright Provenance
Description
Issue 47
Item | Author | Description |
---|---|---|
Menu | Brian McConnell | |
Mag | Soul Magician Codes; Colin Speaks! | |
Letters | Deskjet 310 Printer Reviewed | |
GI_Mon | Paul Horridge | Mc Monitor (Programming Util) |
Cheats | Paul Crompton | Cheat At Kreuzen on Fred 30, Lemmings, Triltex |
Mork | William McGugan | Various Progs By Mork |
#50 Demo | David Simmonds | Demo Advertising Fred 50 |
Net | Tim Paveley | Text Pinched From The Internet |
E-Tunes | Lee Willis Doug Murdoch | Music Done On E-Tracker |
Modules | Dan Dooré | Converted Amiga Modules |
Easycalc | RJ Bister | Spreadsheet Package |
Beeble | Allan Clarkson | Puzzle Game |
Hi Scores | Nicholas Bay | For Use In Your Own Games |
Mod Player | Dan Dooré | New Loader For Mod Player on Fred 41 |
Sampaint Fonts | Dan Dooré | Fonts For Use In Sampaint |
Magazine
BM Editorial Oh God. You all know that I finished Uni about 6 weeks ago. How on earth can I explain THIS issue being late? Okay; I can't. This issue is late, and when you think about it it's not all that late, because I've been a very lazy young idler for the whole of the holiday. Okay, I've had my hair cut and spent a couple of days working for my Dad, but that's about the lot. And cycling. I did a fair bit of that, but it came to an abrupt halt when I broke my toe. It wasn't even a spectacular break. If I'd been fighting off thugs who were trying to mug me for the FRED 46 master disc it would have been something to boast about, but oh, no. Mr Co-ordination has to mis-judge the top of the staircase in a rush to get to the TV before Halloween started (great film). And guess who manages to put his full weight on the one toe? Exactly. Moi. And CRACK!! Was it loud! And sore. And it went all purple. I wouldn't be surprised if the nail fell out. That would be cool actually. People are totally grossed out by that sort of thing. I could even charge 'em to see it... BM Editorial This past weekend, you may have read a little about Dundee or seen it on the news, because we hosted some big power boat race. I can't say I saw much of it - in fact I didn't see ANY of it - but this was apparently a really big event. Cool, huh? 100,000 people came to see it, which is quite a lot considering the entire population of Dundee isn't even 200,000. The boats were extremely loud, and I could hear them from about 2 or 3 miles away. The b******s woke me up, in fact (at 1 in the afternoon. Hey, it was a late night!). Other big events: I turned my £5 casino defecit into a £3 overall profit - yes, I've been twice, lost a fiver the first time and won £8 the second! So I'm in the black on my casino account, which I suppose is the way you want to be. I saw one bloke get £3600 in £100 notes as I was cashing out. It made my £8 seem more than a little trivial! One of my friends left £5 up, and two others dead even, so it was a pretty good night for us all. You wouldn't believe the amount some of the punters lost though. Jeez. BM Editorial On a somewhat sad note, this is going to be one of my last FREDs. I'm not yet sure yet which is my last one, but it's either #48 or #49. Maybe #50. Colin and I haven't decided yet. We know that you'd like to know how the new editor thing's going, but we still haven't decided! It's starting to get a little late, but never fear, FRED will continue long after I'm gone. Remember that we're having a really stunning issue 50. Or so we hope. Don't for one millisecond think that it's all lined up and sorted out and put to bed though - we still want contributions! We do have a couple of things for it, but there's still plenty of room for new things, so if you've got that demo idea or half finished game, why not get it finished and sent in and you could be one of our issue 50 contributors! - BRIAN BM News No news this issue, but a couple of updates on people you thought you'd probably heard the last of long ago. Remember Enigma Variations? You should do, because some of the games they released for SAMmy were really pretty excellent. Well it seems that they've started up again under the name Dark Technologies Ltd. Or else it's a completely different company which just happens to be involved in computer games and is at exactly the same address... Our next blast from the past comes in the shape of King Saddo, Simon Scott, whose Fastline PD library amazed hundreds with its lack of professionalism and respect for other SAM users. I recently spotted his evil name in the teletext computing pages (C4, 470) which usually deal with consoles and never deal with SAMs or anything vaguely serious. He was selling some sort of game for the ST. Incredible, no? I'd have thought he would have given up trying to con people after he botched up Fastline, but it appears not. Never mind. CM Remember me? Wow - this will be a bit of a thrill: getting my name in FRED again. I think the last time was sometime last year. Mind you, that nice editor of FRED would include more people's names if only they wrote some stuff to give him the excuse. Still, better late than never. For those of you who haven't already taken an educated guess, this is Colin once again - Brian's been threatening to take away my SAM if I didn't write a page this month. So what better way to keep my SAM than to witter on for a while? Unforutunately, most of this year (and especially since the Gloucester Show) I've been run off my feet - the taxmen (had better!) love me, the bank manager hates me, I've discovered that spending 12 hours a day, for 7 days solid just filing bits of paper is not my idea of fun, and I've successfully passed my second year of a degree at University! You may remember that it was actually college that I went to, CM Still around...somewhere but happily for me, it was "upgraded" to University status not so long ago. And contrary to popular belief, Walt Disney did not have anything to do with the deal. So the Summer months have arrived, and I can catch up on some work that I've been putting aside for months. I do also have to make provisions for possibly not spending as much time on FRED over the next year - being the year I pass or fail the Degree I thought I'd put in a little bit more effort. For this very reason, I've been sifting through the people interested in becoming the new FRED editor or FRED Software Manager. And although I can't decide at the moment, whoever the unfortunate one is, you can be sure he'll do a great job. (sorry to be sexist but there have only been males apply ... so far ). No decisions have been made yet though, so there's still time to write in and offer me vast sums of the folding stuff to give you the job - and no bits of origami paper, please! CM World record for anti-laziness goes to ... Colin Although things have been fairly quite on the publishing front at the moment, there's plenty of work going on and you can be sure that you'll be seeing plenty more titles between now and Christmas. I can "exclusively" reveal that FRED has hitched up another licence!! However, I can't tell anyone what it is because it could fall through. Work has been rocketing ahead and it should be out well in advance of Christmas. With any luck I'll be able to tell you around Autumn. It has been due to Lemmings that this second licence has been made possible - but the more Lemmings are sold, the more licences we can try to negotiate. As always, we'd like to see any program / artwork / music you've done with a view to either use on the magazine or a commercial product. I know there's plenty people out there with talent who just never quite seem to get round to doing something - what better time to support FRED and SAM than the bleak British Summer! CM Getting serious.. With constant price rises of discs, stamps, stationary (and the FRED phone bill!) it's very difficult to keep the price of FRED down. You will all know that FRED has always been one of the least expensive (well, saying cheapest makes it sound tacky) magazines on the SAM scene. It is also the only SAM disc mag to get professionally duplicated (not forgetting the on-body printing), and FRED is one of the few companies that send everything by first class post, including the magazine. The good news is that I have no intention of raising the price of FRED in the forseeable future. However, the cost of processing cheques and crossed Postal Orders is expensive. Wherever possible, collate two orders and send one cheque ie order several issues of FRED at once - or take out a year's subscription. Sending cash also helps, although I would very strongly recommend sending it recorded delivery. To try to compensate this, if you pay by cash please deduct 10% (10 percent) from the order total. Cash should always be sent securely (coins especially). Thank you for your help. CM Uh Oh, he's off again Yes, I'm afraid the call of the disc copying is crying in my ears once again, so I have to leave you. I wish I could leave you with one of my occasionally amusing tales of mishaps, while trying to do something exciting. Sadly, I have to wait until the next Gloucester Show before I can leave bonny Dundee for foreign shores, so until then I'll leave you in Brian's capable hands. Assuming of course, that he still does FRED these days - I hardly ever get a copy, and when I do it's late. Since the student grant ran out I can't even go to visit him where he lives - one of the many public houses in Dundee. Anyone who finds him, give him a quick slap and remind him he's got a life-and-deathly important duty to the SAM community. Anyone who finds him after I do, please get him an Ambulance. Anyone who finds him working, please stop hallucinating - Brian NEVER works. BM Huh. Charming Brian back now, and just to get things straight here, it's Colin who gets charged RENT by various pubs, not me. Indeed no, for I've got mortgages on the things... I think there was a dig in there somewhere about my lack of hard work. Obviously Colin is completely insensitive and my broken toe is of little consequence, sniff sob. How can I type with a broken toe? Honestly. What a nerve. Just for that, I'm going to leave a large blank space for you all to reflect on the unfairness of the world. BM Soul Magician Codes These final codes for this stunning game were meant to be in FRED #46. Due to astrological difficulties though, they have been warped into the future and are here now. Thanks to Stu Sullivan for compiling them. 36 ZKGMRYKXAM 37 AQGYSNVBXM 38 NXPWALIRNJ 39 HLXYQHPXJT 40 WUCDSQGAQK 41 YBRDGKDVKU 42 PYAONWPDEO 43 BKPXTAGOWE 44 SSMXXQKSAF 45 ZHVXXHVHXP 46 NJJNGARRKI 47 SFIBIACARH 48 NNCILPBIZK 49 UWFAWAEBYQ 50 YMYQGDLBCE 51 HZVOXTFLUR 52 UKUSPCINQN 53 PKERUYYMPY 54 LZYGJTVHRF 55 FDHBOTKXMO 56 GKNTTENLSL 57 JYJVMGWUET 58 IFYAIGKQAB 59 KRUOUCUWBS 60 XILGZSGYLR 61 KKPCCZNYKE 62 XTFVGJYRDV 63 YVWMGSUPGG 64 MKOWOIARJJ 65 DUYZIBLCBD 66 NZFTUONKBV 67 WAYMZZMIAU 68 DLIDQMOHHB 69 ZZZUWGCBDH 70 ABBASDEFGH BM Disc Contents This issue is, without doubt, brill; if you like utility packed issues of FRED, that is. We've got a couple of real corkers for you. The first one is... GI_MON by Paul Horridge. And it's a monitor program for all you machine coders. Cool or what? Unfortunately, if you are a sane person who doesn't touch MC with a barge pole, you won't really get much out of this utility, but never mind. Just be grateful you have to spend your entire life puttering around with one of these evil "assembler" things. Of course, it's only machine coders who end up being revered as Gods like Chris White and Stefan Drissen, so it might be worth while learning good old Z80 after all. Full instruction file included. CHEATS is by Paul Crompton and lets you cheat at four top SAM games - namely Lemmings, Kreuzen, and um, two others. I'll not tell you them just here though, because erm, ah, oh yes, that would spoil the surprise. A word of caution: this sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, so persevere. You'll get there. BM Disc Contents MORK features three dainty programs by William "Mork" McGugan. I bet you can guess where we got the name for the item from too. The first, PROCS, is a selection of very useful and very innovative, as well as very frivolous, procedures. Look through them, and if you can find one to tickle your fancy, then I'm a monk. REMMER puts little pictures in your REM statements, an effect which is best explained by looking at the REMs in the actual program (in Mode 3. Important, that). His final thing, SMARTCRYPT, will encrypt your data files for you to stop all those pesky spies from nosing around your data. Mork has produced explanatory text bits, so read them. #50 DEMO is a colourful demo by David Simmonds to basically advertise how smart FRED 50 is going to be. And if David can come up with a demo as good as this for that issue itself we'll be more than happy! You can exit by holding down the X key. NET this month has a load of messages you can put on your answering machine. Some of them would actually be quite good! BM Disc Contents Missing out E-Tunes and Module, because you know exactly what they are by now, we come to EASYCALC. Easycalc is - wait for it - a spreadsheet! Yes, one of those things that we haven't had on the mag for so long I'm having trouble recalling what one looks like. It's written by RJ Bister, and it's by far the best financial aid on the entire issue, ho ho ho. There are instructions, which RJ oh-so-thoughtfully DIDN'T include on disc and which I'm going to have to type out manually, and they follow in a couple of pages time. This is a very powerful package, and even lets you draw graphs. Yes, I thought you'd be pleased about that. It takes a couple of seconds for the screen to update, but bear with it. It gets there evebtually. BEEBLE is a game by Allan Clarkson, and yes, it is a puzzle game. It's good though, and there are lots and lots of levels. And it takes up loads of disc space, which in general is NOT a good way to get something published. Especially if the music file alone takes up FIFTY BLIMMIN' K! WHY?! Please explain this, Allan. BM Disc Contents BITS N BOBS is a bit sparse, largely because of Allan Clarkson's 50K music file, but as I'm sure you're bored numb of hearing, it's quality that counts. HI SCORE by Nicholas Bay is a routine which, if you cannibalise it, you can use in your own games. It handles the score inputting and name entering side of things, and putting it bluntly, if you can't work out the goings on you probably haven't written a world class game anyway... BANZAI returns with two items: the first is a new loader for Stefan Drissen's MOD player, which lets you choose the MOD with the cursors. You'll need to mess about with it yourself, but there are comments in the listing to help you. His second appearance in BnB is with some SAMPaint fonts, four of 'em to be exact. And a screen to let you see what they're like. Thanks Dan. Easycalc Manual by RJ BISTER Moving The Cursor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The cursor can be moved around the screen simply by using the cursor keys [Bad luck Doug Murdoch! - ED]. If you try to move the cursor off the screen then the screen will scroll and reveal the next row or column. It is also possible to move a whole page at a time. This can be done by selecting Page Up, Down, Left, or Right from the main menu (press space to access this) or with the keys Q, A, O, and P. You can "home" the cursor to the top left corner of the spread- sheet be selecting [HOME] from the main menu or pressing H. You can also specify a certain cell for the cursor to go to. This is done by using the [GOTO] function from the menu, or with SHIFT + G. Then simply type the letter and number of the cell. Easycalc Manual Inputting Data ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To put data into the current cell, type in a value using keys 0 to 9, - and . symbols, using DELETE to delete the previous character and RETURN when you're happy. Formulae ~~~~~~~~~~ To enter a formula into the current cell, either select the ENTER FORMULA option from the main menu or press F. You can then type in your formula. Type all cells in LOWER CASE, eg. b17 and NOT B17. You can use any of the following operators: + - / * < > = ( ) as well as ↑ which means "to the power of" As well as these, you can use mathematical functions. These are entered in UPPER CASE, eg. SIN a1 and not sin a1. These functions can also be accessed from the functions menu by pressing SPACE during formula input. Full list on the next page: Easycalc Manual ABS - absolute magnitude ACS - arcosine AND - logical AND ASN - arcsine ATN - arctangent COS - cosine DIV - integer result of a division EXP - exponent INT - integer part LN - natural logarithm MOD - remainder part in a division NOT - logical NOT OR - logical OR PI - ratio between diameter and circumference of a circle SGN - sign of a number SIN - sine SQR - square root TAN - tangent Easycalc Manual Two special functions are TOTAL.R and TOTAL.C which are the total of the preceding row and preceding column respectively. The above maths functions can all be seen in more detail in the SAM User's Guide. An example of a formula is: a1*cos(a2/a3)+3*PI a1, a2 and a3 are cell positions, COS is a function, PI is a constant really, but let's just say it's a function for now, and *, /, and + are operators. Title Column/Row ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To title the current column or row, select the relevant one from the main menu. Or, press C or R respectively. Then type in your title and press RETURN. Easycalc Manual Wipe All Data ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This will clear your spreadsheet. Select WIPE ALL DATA from the main menu, or press W. You will be asked to confirm the action. Update Page ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To update the current page select UPDATE PAGE from the main menu or press U. The page will then be updated, which is how you get all the data to modify itself after you've altered a formula or entry. Erase Cell ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Select ERASE CELL from the main menu, or press SHIFT + E. Easycalc Manual Copy Cell ~~~~~~~~~~~ To copy the contents of the current cell to another one, select COPY CELL from the main menu or press SHIFT + C. Then type in the cell you want to copy TO, eg. b6 or c19. If the cell you want to copy contains a formula then the formula will be copied. You will then be asked if you want to modify the formula relative to the new cell. By answering YES to this, the formula will be changed so that it corresponds to the new location. The best way to understand this is to experiment. Help Page ~~~~~~~~~~~ To access this, select HELP PAGE from the main menu, or press SHIFT + H. You will be shown a screen containing all the keys and what they do in case you forget. Easycalc Manual File Menu ~~~~~~~~~~~ To enter the file menu select FILE MENU from the main menu, or press SHIFT + F. You will see a new menu appear. From this menu you can choose to load, save or erase a file, display a directory, or format a disc. Use the cursors and RETURN to select an option. LOAD, SAVE, ERASE; after selecting one of these you will see a directory of the current drive. Follow onscreen prompts. When entering a filename NO NOT include any extension, and keep lengths to a maximum of six letters/numbers when saving. Print Page ~~~~~~~~~~~~ To print the current page select PRINT PAGE from the main menu or press SHIFT + P. Make sure the printer is loaded with paper and is on-line. Easycalc Manual Graphs ~~~~~~~~ To enter the graphs menu select GRAPHS from the main menu or press G. The graphs drawn will use the data from the current row. You will be asked to select the columns you wish to use. Answer YES or NO to each column in turn and press F when finished. You can use up to 12 columns. You will then see a new menu. To choose an option use the cursors and RETURN. The chosen graph will be drawn. The printer option toggles the printer on and off. System Menu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Select SYSTEM MENU from the main menu or press SHIFT + S. From this menu you can reset SAM, exit to BASIC and set the time. Enter the time in 24 hour form using 2 digits for hours and minutes and separate them with a : as in 05:11. You can display the time at any point by pressing SHIFT + T or selecting it from the main menu. Easycalc Manual Notepad ~~~~~~~~~ To enter the notepad, select NOTEPAD from the main menu or press SHIFT + N. You will see a blank page appear. You can write notes about your current spreadsheet. Press EDIT to enter the notepad menu. From here you can clear the notepad, exit notepad, print text display time or exit menu by using the cursors and RETURN. IMPORTANT NOTES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Do not press CAPS while using Easycalc. This will cause the keys to not perform their functions. If the package appears to be not working, try pressing CAPS in case it was on. When drawing pie charts, it is not possible to plot if there are values <= 0. Also try not to plot small percentages as the pie chart may not be accurate. Accessing discs momentarily disables the clock, so it will lose time. The clock may need reset after numerous disc operations. BM Phew! Well. I'm glad THAT's finally over with. I never ever want to have to type in another manual like that again, so any "funny" contributors out there had better think twice before sending one in on paper but not disc. This one had been clearly word- processed as well - the manual was printed out on continuous stationery! Aaarrgghh!! Before I go, here are a couple of music tips. This isn't a Music Section as such, just a paragraph or two. That's why it's here, not after the credits. ORB "Pomme Fritz" - nowhere near as good as UFOrb. I'm sorry to say it, but this really isn't worth getting. UNDERWORLD "Dubnobasswithmyheadman" - brilliant. Sort of dancy, sort of ambient. With lyrics. Highly recommended. TRANCE EUROPE EXPRESS 2 - also brilliant. A mixture of ambient and more up tempo stuff. Not commercial night-clubby styles. BM Credits EDITOR: Brian "Pain don't hurt" McConnell Thanks to: Paul Horridge William "Mork" McGugan Paul Crompton Allan Clarkson RJ Bister David Simmonds Lee Willis Doug Murdoch Nicholas Bay BANZAI Stu Sullivan Contact FRED at: Phone: 0382 535963 [redacted]
Letters & Reviews
Letter from Douglas Murdoch Dear Brian and Colin, Huzzah! It's me again, after a leave of absence of about 6 months.The truth is that my psychiatrist, Dr Fitzpatrick turned out to be an evil alien and enemy of all Chipmunks and was in fact trying to make me think I was mad. Fortunately I saw through his cunning plan and informed the authorities who whisked me safely away to a special hiding place. My room was really nice with this lovely bouncy stuff all over the floor and walls, and they gave me a lovely white jacket with a strange sleeve design that kept my hands nice and warm. A nice man would listen with interest every day when I told him about the evil doctor and he informed me that everything would be okay and that Dr Fitzpatrick probably wouldn't succeed in exterminating all forms of intelligent life - and Nintendo owners (sorry, couldn't resist that one) - so the world is safe once again. Letter from Douglas Murdoch But enough of my heroic deeds, there's more important things to discuss. For example, why is it that when my cursor keys decide to throw a wobbly on me, all the games and stuff that everyone send in work by cursor keys? Y'see, I bought E-Tracker a wee while ago and was doing fine until the cursors got all temperamental on me. This caused endless frustration and restricted my musical artistic ability (which is low enough already). As far as I can tell, the defect in the keys is being caused by the closeness of the moon which is causing a temporary increase in the flux density of it's gravitational field on the Earth, but it might just be dust. If anyone else has a theory then I would be interested to hear/read it since I'd rather not have to send my poor Sam away to Wales to get fixed. Letter from Douglas Murdoch Just in case no-one's nodded off yet I'd like to mention that this is my second letter that I've typed because I forgot to mark the end of the letter and so my dear Sam ate all my work. Believe it or not, people, it does sometimes pay to read the instructions! Lastly, I'd be interested to know if there was a reason why my question about 'Another World' and 'Flashback' was 'cunningly edited' (again). Was it another of life's spooky coincidences or was Dr Fitzpatrick succeeding after all? Farewell (till next time anyway) Dougie BM Reply to Douglas Murdoch Hi Doug. I'll just explain to all the readers that Doug sent me up a promo tape for a band named "FLOP." Then they'll understand why I say "thanks heaps and may all your hair never turn grey." If there's any justice in this world, FLOP (bad choice of name, I'd have said) will soon have a meteoric rise to fame and will be worshipped by all. The presence and popularity of bands like Doop indicates that justice went out the window long ago, however, so we'll just have to remain hopeful. I should warn you Doug, that the evil Dr Fitzpatrick has managed to subvert one of my bosses at work, who is now making me tidy up the women's tights section (as opposed to the men's tights section, obviously). Shall we "get" him? Sorry to disappoint you all but no: there is absolutely no way that Flashback or Another World will be SAMified. I can't think why it was editted out, but it's not being done. Sorry. Any ideas to help Doug's cursors to the usual address! - BRIAN Letter from Robert Pain Dear Brian/Colin, Coming soon from me is Font Designer V2.x (with full mouse support, and additional graphics to improve the looks of it a bit) - due out before or for FRED50. Talking about FRED 50, I think the gold disc idea is a bit naff, but seeing as I'm not able to think up anything better myself, then I suppose that it is an OK sort of idea. Now two serious questions to tax your brain: 1- Does FRED consider for use programs that have/are being considered for release on the PD market? Alternatively, does FRED hold the copyright of programs it publishes, if so can they be released on the PD market after FRED has used them? 2-Where can I get the SAM Technical Manual from? I know it used to appear on the FRED price list, but not now, so where? That's all for the moment, you and all FRED readers everywhere, have a great summer! Bye, BM Reply to Robert Pain Aha! The return of another long ago letter-writer. Good to hear from you once again Rob, and to meet you and Tim at the show. To answer your questions, no, we don't use things that have appeared elsewhere. There are exceptions to this, but if you've had something plastered all over the SAM scene, don't expect to see it in FRED. FRED doesn't have any sort of legal agreement about rights and things, so the original writer still has full claim to his work. While this means they can do what they want with things after they've appeared on FRED, we don't like people doing so, and will duly slap them with a baked-bean soaked rugby top when we see them at shows. Sometimes Colin gets hold of techy manuals from Honest Bill, the local dodgy character, so if you give him a phone he may happen to have one on him. Maybe not though, that's why you should always phone before ordering stuff. - BRIAN Letter from Nick Symes Dear Colin, Following your request for information on printers used by SAM owners, I thought I would take the opportunity of writing to tell you about mine. I, like Matt Round, decided to opt for the Canon range after visiting my local computer shop, where they demonstrated the merits of the print quality. The price quoted to me for the BJ10sx was in fact £299, which is not cheap, particularly as Matt only paid £210 and Jersey is meant to be VAT free! By chance I stumbled across an advert by Steve's Software in an old copy of Format (it has also appeared in this month's issue) where he was offering to sell the same printer for £210. Great, I thought, and phoned him up. Steve, who was very helpful indeed, told me it had in fact been reduced to £185 - even better! Letter from Nick Symes Not knowing much about printers, we proceeded to talk about the options, at which point he recommended the Canon BJ200. This printer has the benefit of a built in sheet feeder, which can hold up to 80 sheets, and is 48 "pin" for better letter quality definition with 8 fonts available, as well as being slightly quieter than the BJ10sx - although I don't profess to noticing any difference. All this for £240. One of the other benefits was that Steve also provided a piece of screen dumping software, specifically written for the Cannon - free. This produces graphic printouts either credit card size or 1/3 A4 size of your favourite pictures. Needless to say, I bought it, together with a copy of the Secretary (which is very good and I am presently awaiting the updated version). Letter from Nick Symes One final point worth mentioning is the running cost. Matt mentioned that the Bubble Jets are more expensive per sheet than other printers. However it is possible to purchase refill packs which are approximately half the price of new ink cartridges. I hope that this may be of interest to other potential printer purchasers. I certainly hope that you succeed in making Sam Paint compatible with the Canon and I look forward to receiving my Mouse to use with it. Thankyou for all the support you have given to the SAM over recent years - long may it continue. BM Reply to Nick Symes Thanks for taking the time to let us know about your printer buying escapades. Printers, next to computers and monitors, are probably THE most important peripheral you can buy, and they're not cheap, so it's vital that people learn as much about them before purchasing one. The Canon range is very impressive; my BJ10-ex is still running after nearly two years and I haven't had any problems whatsoever with it. Apart from the SAMPaint thing. That's not really the printer's fault though, so I'll refrain from launching it from the bedroom window just yet. Steve's Software do offer an excellent printer-selling service, and those prices are unbelievable! I now want a BJ200 - if only for an auto sheet feeder! Anybody else got any monitor/printer stories for all our info- hungry readers? Any recommended buys? - BRIAN Letter from G Tattersall Dear Brian, I am not really a great letter writer, I prefer to sit in the background and observe. Occasionally, however, I may write to FRED. I have two questions : 1. I think that the MOD player is great, but I have to say that a sample rate of just 7.8 Khz gives very bad quality. Is it possible to push up the rate to 11Khz on SAM? 2. If I, or anyone else, sends in Graphics files, what file formats can you accept other than SAM SCREEN$? I can supply IFF, PICT, TIFF, GIF, and PCX/SCR formats at present. Long Live FRED! BM Reply to G Tattersall Sigh. If only *everybody* wrote the odd letter every six months, this letters section would be a joy to write! Instead, I've got to hunt high and low for letters; even then I have to make half of them up myself. No, okay, that was a lie. Really. I don't. I think the MOD player is pushed pretty far as it is; 7.8 KHz may not be CD quality, but it's recognisable! Stefan Drissen had a little hardware doobrie at the Gloucester show which boosted the performance quite considerably. I can't remember the exact playback rate, but it was definitely better than the purely software-based routine. I really don't know if this is going to be put into production, but I don't think it's likely. It would only be usable in demo applications like the MOD player; people might not be willing to pay heavily for such an essentially trivial thing. Pity. I'm afraid we can only accept SAM screens. IFFs are borderline; if I can't be bothered converting them they won't be used. The others are out of the question for now, I'm afraid. - BRIAN Letter from Paul Horridge Dear Colin/Brian, The Adventure Help thing over the past two months has been very enlightening - I dug out my copy of Days of Sorcery (which I'd given up on ages ago) and actually managed to finish it! Does anyone know if Nigel Kettlewell is releasing any more adventure games? On the subject of games, what has happened to Waterworks 2? Has it been binned or what? I was amazed to read in FRED that you still haven't sold enough enough copies of Lemmings - I thought that the SAM-owning public was screaming out for a licence of this quality. And people still moan at the lack of software... The rather strange letters that Colin Anderton and his mob are sending in are a good laugh, but if it goes on much longer it could get a bit silly and I'm concerned that maybe some of your older readers will stop takng FRED seriously. PS When are you going to tell us the cheat for Wop Gamma?! BM Reply to Paul Horridge Apart from this and one or two other letters, we haven't had a particularly huge response to our adventure thing, so if everybody that enjoys the column wants it to continue, it would be a great boost for the author if you write and tell him. Just a few words of encouragement are needed, so don't feel that it's pointless if you're unable to supply a complete solution to a game. Waterworks 2 hasn't been binned, and is still being worked on. I can tell you that it is nearing completion, and we should be able to announce its release in the near future. And it is one challenging sequel! Jeez. This one'll have you bald in a week! YOU were surprised at the low response to Lemmings? How do you think we feel! After the mountains of enquiries about the game prior to its release we thought we'd sell squillions of them. We were kind of disappointed at the degree of indifference apparently felt by many SAM owners, but there's not a lot we can do other than emphasise the very high quality of the game. BM Reply to Paul Horridge As for Colin Anderton and his little brigade of hoodlums. Well. We all know that it's not big and it's not clever, but do they listen? Do they 'eck! Unfortunately they put cunning little hypnotic patterns on their letters which force me to publish their rantings, the effects of which don't wear off until two months later, by which time my sanity is invariably in tatters. Ah well. As for our elderly readers being offended, that strikes me as being more than a little ageist, but I won't report you to the politically correct police. Luckily we seem to have attracted elderly people with senses of humour. None of them have complained yet, anyway! Aha, the cheat for Wop Gamma. Believe me, you don't want to know. It's horrendous. It's ghastly and fiendish, and it's best forgotten about. If you really want to know, learn MC and dig it out of the program - that's probably easier than getting it the "proper" way! - BRIAN Letter from Andrew Chandler Dear Colin/Brian, Top of the morning to ya! (Said in phoney Irish accent). I have to agree with Brian that the "chatty" letters are better than the technical ones, but I have no intention of writing one. I have noticed that many of the people appear to be clinically mad, otherwise they are just friends. I don't fall in the category of mad, but I am mental if that counts. I can prove it, because I've just spent the week on a nature reserve, speaking until late at night in an Irish accent for no apparent reason. It's just that it has become the norm with all the other technical people there. UFOrb is brilliant, and so is The Art Of Noise, the Fon Mixes, and The Ambient Collection if anyone is interested. In case you're wondering, I won't be applying for the editor's job - even though I'd like to - because I don't have the time. Letter from Andrew Chandler Or, in other words: I'm lazy. I'm not sure if you know or not Brian, but once you have stopped being editor, you will be tailed to your house, kidnapped, and forced to listen to Take That and the Man. United song for 24 hours a day. This is because, like MI5, we have an official secrets act of our own and we have to do this in case you talk to any Nintendo owners (or Alan Sugar). Before I go, I'd like to ask you a serious question: how many SAMs have been sold and how many SAMmites are there? Format gave some figures a few years ago, but surely many SAMs have been sold since. Good luck with your new found spare time, Brian. BM Reply to Andrew Chandler You said it wasn't going to be a chatty letter! If that was a techy letter I'd hate to see your idea of a chatty one! I'll let you offer for having such obvious musical taste though. There can never be too much praise for UFOrb. It obviously wasn't as clear as I'd thought, but Colin Anderton and company are indeed friends (loosely speaking) from the same school, maybe even the same class. And yes, I think they very probably are mad. I'm sorry if I'm not up on the proper lingo here, but what precisely is the difference between mad and mental? I have taken many many anti-espionage measures, not least the precaution of a little tooth-embedded cyanide capsule. So don't get any big ideas, matey. There are 8,000 to 10,000 SAMs going about, but most of them are silent. About 500 of these have FRED subs at any given time so I wouldn't have thought there were over 1000 active users. - BRIAN GT Printer Review by Graeme Tattersall Subject : Hewlett Packard Deskwriter 310 Printer 300 dpi Colour Bubblejet Printer Tested on : Apple Macintosh LCII Computer Operating system version 7.1b 4Mb Chip RAM Price : £199 - Basic mono printer, software, black cartridge + cables. £31 - colour kit £50 - 60 cap. sheet feeder Verdict : 75% - Speed 95% - Features 100% - Documentation 90% - Black (mono) Print Quality 75% - Colour (CMY cartridge) Print Quality 87% - overall mark GT Printer Review NOTE : The HP Printer, DeskJET 310, which uses the same print mechanism as the Deskwriter 310, has the same quality and compatibility with SAM, or so I believe. 1) Print speed - 75% Print speed is good, both in black, and colour, averaging, as the manual says, 3ppm (Pages Per Minute) in Black (mono), and 1ppm in colour print. The only quibble that I had is to do with the macintosh driver software which runs a bit slowly, especially when Background printing is on. Background printing is where the printing continues while you can be working at something else on the computer. With an LCII Macintosh, which is pretty slow at 15.6 Mhz, you are waiting nearly 15 minutes for a single page in Black Print on faster. GT Printer Review 2) Features - 95% I shall comment about the hardware add-on, the sheet feeder, and battery pack (£20). The software is easy to use, but is not relevant to SAM. The sheet feeder is very easily attatched to the printer, having been printed with assembly diagrams on the sheet feeder. It feeds up to 60 pages, and is easily loaded/unloaded with paper. It helps keep pages in line, for projects etc. The battery pack could be better. It provides about 1 hour of constant use when fully charged, a process that the printer does automatically when both battery and mains are connected and switched on. The printer is Energy Star Compliant ie. it switches into a low power consumption mode after about 5 minutes of inactivity. GT Printer Review Cartridges are pushed into place and can be replaced/removed in less than 10 seconds. The printer weighs about 3Kg, with battery, and so is very portable. 3. Documentation - 100% The manual is extremely well written; even the most computer illiterate person could understand it. It contains a very well defined troubleshooting section, and is well laid out. It is one of the few manuals that is actually a pleasure to read. The sheet feeder instructions are contained both on the sheet feeder, and in the main manual. There are instructions for the colour Kit, but these are more or less guides to achieving the best result. GT Printer Review The Mac Software has built in help, so if you get lost, you can consult this quickly and easily. 4. Black (Mono) Print Quality - 90% Black print quality is adjustable in terms of print density. This gives six different levels of darkness. The darker, the more likely the ink will smudge, too light, and the ink can still smudge as there is not enough force behind it. Laserlike quality can be achieved if you are prepared to perservere. 5. Colour (CMY) Print Quality - 75% Colour print is achieved using a three colour cartridge, containing Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. These produce a synthesised black colour which is more of a dark muddy green colour. GT Printer Review Complex graphics can be shaded using the scatter colour matching facility to get the closest colour. This does not look good close up, but is good at distances of more than 40cm. I think that the colour black print lets this section down, it can look very bad at times. ======================================= G Tattersall June '94 == ED's Note: Okay, so it may not seem stunningly relevant to the SAM, but what the Hell. It fills up another couple of pages, and it didn't hurt you to read it, did it? Other than having a 15.6MHz processor referred to as "slow", that is. I suppose when you have machines with completely OTT requirements like Macs and PCs 15.6 MHz IS a bit too slow. Now if their OSs were as well written as Driver, there would be no problem with 15.6MHz! Just imagine Driver with that much processing power... - BRIAN
GI_MON Instructions
GI_MON by PAUL HORRIDGE Well, I've just finished another proggy and now its time for my favourite bit, the instructions. Oh goody. Ah well, here goes... GI_Mon is a monitor program designed to help you track down bugs in machine code programs (so if you're one of the lucky people who don't know about the insomnia and 3am bedtimes that is MC programming, you might as well exit to the FRED menu now and play a game or something). It allows you to disassemble and single-step through an MC program to find out what it does to the registers, flags, memory, etc. The program will run at the start of any memory page above address 32767. To use the program, simply load it in at the desired address (the program is on the disk under the filename "GI_Mon .O") and CALL it. When the program is run, it reserves 2 pages in the Page Allocation Table and another 2 pages immediately above it (skipping a page if the program is loaded at an odd-numbered page) for the monitor screen. GI_MON This means that the program won't be corrupted by DOS commands or a RAMdisk. The program should run on a SAM with only 256K of RAM, but there's no check to find out how much memory you have, and I'm not sure what will happen if you try to view/singlestep memory that you don't have! The program features a simple WIMP system which most people should be reasonably familiar with by now, so I'm not going to go into any great detail here. To move the pointer around the screen, use the joystick keys 6789, and to click something press 0. If you have a mouse it can be selected instead (see later). You can move a window around the desktop by clicking the title bar and dragging the outline to the required position before releasing the button. To close down a window or menu, just click anywhere outside it. Note that you can only have one open window/menu at a time. The main screen is split up into a number of sections: GI_MON The top left of the screen shows the current values of LMPR, HMPR and VMPR, the layout of the memory (the ROM or RAM pages in blocks A (0-16383), B (16384-32767), C (32768-49151) and D (49152-65535), and also the current screen page (lower 5 bits of VMPR) and the screen mode (bits 5 and 6 of VMPR plus 1). The value of these ports can be altered by clicking the appropriate number and typing in its new value (as with numbers elsewhere in the program, you can specify a hex number by preceeding it with a & symbol, or a binary number by a % symbol). Note that the program can only deal with internal memory, so if you enter a value for HMPR with Bit 7 set (used to access the 1 Meg external memory) it will be rejected. To the right are the value of the single registers A, B, C, D, E, H, L and F in hex or decimal and in binary. Again, to change the values click on the hex/decimal number and enter a new value. Also, if you click on a binary digit for one of the registers, it will be toggled from 0 to 1 and vice versa. GI_MON Next to these are the values of the register pairs, index registers, alternate registers and the stack pointer (SP) which can be changed in the same way, and the contents of (AF), (BC), (DE), (HL), (IX) and (IY). Next to this is a list of the top seven addresses on the stack, with the top item at the bottom of the list At the bottom left is the disassembly at the current PC address (which can be changed by clicking the first address in the disassembly and entering a new value), and to the bottom right is a numeric or ASCII dump (the address of the start of the memory dump can be changed in the same way). Each line of disassembly shows the address of the opcode, then the bytes of hex for the opcode, then the mnemonic. Note that the disassembler will only show "documented" Z80 instructions - if it comes across an instruction it doesn't recognise it will use a DEFB mnemonic. The numeric dump simply shows a list of PEEK values at the address. GI_MON These values can be editted by clicking on a number and entering new values. To leave this POKE mode, press ESC and the pointer will reappear. The ASCII dump uses a "." character to denote codes outside the range 32-127, and lines of ASCII text can be editted in a similar way to numeric data. Numeric and ASCII display can be toggled between (see later). At the very top of the screen is a menu bar with three pulldown menus. The Options menu contains the following options: Credits ~~~~~~~ Prints up a window with my name in it. Palette ~~~~~~~ Allows you to reconfigure the palette colours used by the program. Just click the numbers in the grey boxes and enter new ones. GI_MON Breakpoints ~~~~~~~~~~~ Sets up breakpoints to stop a running program under certain conditions. It uses the Calculator (see below) to evaluate the expression entered in each of the five boxes in the window (any empty boxes are ignored). If the result is not zero, then the program being monitored will stop running and open a window with a message saying that a breakpoint condition has been met and which one (1-5) it was. This means that the program will allow you to set up quite complicated breakpoints without returning to BASIC, eg: pc=32768 will stop the program if it tries to run an instruction at 32768 peek hl<>255 will stop the program if the value of (HL) is not 255 f band 1 will stop the program if the carry flag is set etc. GI_MON Calculator ~~~~~~~~~~ When this window is open, clicking anywhere inside it will allow you to enter a calculation, and the computer will display the answer. As well as the usual +,-,* and / oparations, the following extra operations are permitted: a\b - Gives the modulus (remainder) of a/b PEEK a - Gives the value of a certain memory address DPEEK a - Gives the double-peek value of a and a+1 a AND b - Gives 1 if a and b are both not zero, otherwise it gives zero a OR b - Gives 1 if a or b are not zero, otherwise it gives zero a XOR b - Gives 0 if a and b are zero, or a and b are both not zero, otherwise it gives 1 NOT a - Gives 1 if a is zero, 0 if a is not zero a BOR b - Binary ORs a and b a BAND b - Binary ANDs a and b a BXOR b - Binary XORs a and b GI_MON Also, the registers A, B, C, D, E, H, L, F and the register pairs AF, BC, DE, HL, IX, IY, PC and SP can be used in calculations, and give the current value of that register/pair. Note that the calculation is worked out from left to right, ie no operation has priority over another, although brackets can be used to indicate the order in which the calculation is worked out. Values used in the calculations are restricted to integer values from 0-65535. The base (hex, decimal or binary) in which the result of the calculation is given can be selected by using the commands HEX,DEC and BIN. If there is an error is typing in the calculation, a Syntax Error message will be displayed. All the calculator operations except DEC, HEX and BIN can also be used in defining breakpoint conditions. GI_MON Exit ~~~~ This displays a window which asks you to confirm whether you want to quit. Clicking the Okay button will exit to BASIC but keep the page markers for the program, so you can call it again (the current values for the registers, etc. will be preserved). Clicking Cancel will get rid of the window (so will clicking outside it). Clicking Exit and Close will exit to BASIC and remove the page markers from the Page Allocation Table, freeing up the memory it was using. The Display menu allows you to select a hexadecimal or decimal display, a numeric or ASCII memory dump at the bottom left, and keyboard or mouse control. The current settings are shown by ticks. Note that there is no check to see if you actually own a mouse, but if you accidentally select mouse control, you can change back to keyboard using to CNTRL-M hot-key (see later). GI_MON The Clear menu allows you to return to default values for the registers, stack and memory paging. Clear Registers sets the values of the registers (including the index and alternate registers) to zero. Clear Stack moves the stack pointer to the bottom of the stack, getting rid of all the addresses currently on it. Clear Memory sets the startup paging arrangement (ROM0, Page 0, Page 1, Page 2), sets the PC and memory dump address to 32768 and sets the stack pointer to 20100 (clearing the stack). Clear All does all of the above. Hot-Keys ~~~~~~~~ As well as the above options, you can use the following keys while in pointer mode, but not while a window or menu is open. Cursor Down - Disassembles forward one line. Cursor Up - Disassembles backwards one line. The instruction given will not necessarily be correct, but it gets it right most of the time, and the backwards disassamble is quite fast. GI_MON F0 - Nudges disassemble forward one byte. F1 - Nudges disassemble backwards one byte. F4 - Scrolls memory dump forward one line. F7 - Scrolls memory dump backwards one line. F9 - Single-steps the instruction at the top of the disassembly. F8 - Displays the screen currently selected by VMPR and runs through the instructions until it comes across an error or a breakpoint. Press ESC while in this mode to interrupt the program and display the values of the registers, etc. See later for further details on the single-step. SPACE Bar - Holding down the space bar will display the current screen without running any instructions. CNTRL-P - Calls up the Palette window (same as selecting the palette option from the Options menu. CNTRL-C - Calls up the Calculator window. CNTRL-B - Calls up the Breakpoint window. GI_MON CNTRL-X - Calls up the Exit window. CNTRL-H - Toggles Hex/Decimal display. CNTRl-N - Toggles Numeric/ASCII dump. CNTRL-M - Toggles Keyboard/Mouse control. The Single-Step ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The single-step function enables you to run an MC program one instruction at a time. It can cope with paging, and will allow you to single-step instructions from anywhere in the SAMs internal memory (including ROM0 and ROM1). Like the disassembler, it can only deal with documented Z80 instructions, and if you try to single-step an unrecognised instruction an error will result. Most other instructions will run normally, with a few exceptions: OUT instructions to the ports 250 (LMPR), 251 (HMPR) and 252 (VMPR) change the low memory paging, high memory paging and current screen respectively in the usual way. GI_MON OUT instructions to port 248 (CLUT) with the high byte in the range 0-16 will change the palette colours that the output screen is displayed in (initially the palette table contains the default MODE 4 palette values). OUT instructions to any other ports are ignored and skipped over. IN instructions to ports 250, 251 and 252 will read the values of these ports. IN instructions to other ports will be executed "as they stand" from within the monitor program, so things like key scanning should work. IM commands, writes to the I and R registers and the commands EI, DI and HALT are skipped over by the monitor (since they could seriously mess things up). Output to the screen must obviously be done by POKEing the relevant addresses in the screen, so I'm not sure what effect using the ROM routines to print to the screen will have if VMPR is not set up to point to the page that was being used by BASIC. GI_MON To be honest, I hardly ever use the ROM routines anyway. Experiment and find out. Okay, I hope that this has given you some idea of how to use the program. It's not very difficult to get used to, so you'll just have to experiment. I hope somebody gets something out of this program - it took me ages to write. If anyone has any questions, comments, criticisms, etc about it, please send them to me (address at end of file) or FRED. I'll probably have started at Uni by the time you read this (Warwick to study Maths and Computing if I can get the ABB grades they want) and I won't be taking my SAM, so it may take some time to answer. If I get an Email address I'll put in my next demo/prog as soon as possible. It's been ages since I greeted anyone, so I'll bung a few in now and get back to worrying about my last A Level exams.... (it's probably too late to wish everyone good luck, but I hope everyone gets the grades they're hoping for). GI_MON Colin, Brian, Stefan Drissen, Matt Round, NoName (Cpt Comic was cool), Steve Taylor, Chris White, MOM, Ian Slavin, Dan Doore, Andy Monk, Bunj Wobl (haven't seen anything from you for a while), ESI, the Doogle, Wayne Coles (good luck with the game) and the inevitable horde of people I've forgotten (sorry). Everyone I'm leaving from Accy and Rossendale College (even though none of them own SAMs), And yep, everyone in the SAM world, especially the people who contribute to FRED. My address: Paul Horridge, [redacted]