Fred 76

Issue 76

Magazine

CA                Another Day, Another Dollar

Blimey, I have had enough of Christmas.  All I've done is drive
around visiting relatives and being bored and hearing bloody
Christmas songs everywhere I go.

I was stood in some shop in Cheltenham on 23rd December trying
to decide what to but family and friends for Christmas
(admittedly, I was leaving it a little late) and everything I
could see was rubbish.  Naturally, I came out with the line
"God, I HATE Christmas!" and before I knew it, some lady came up
to me and started having a go at me!  "Bah Humbug," she said,
"Christmas is for everyone and should be enjoyed," she carried
on.  Stupid old hag.

Carl and I also caused quite a commotion in a card shop too.
Realising it was incredibly busy, we decided to head for the
posters.  Soon, a queue built up behind us so every time a blank
section came up we stood and commented on the ironic bleakness
and subtle master-strokes of the painter, who we could name
almost every time.  Everyone behind us was clearly amused...
CA                      Christmas Chaos

Anyway, after a bit we moved on to where the cards were and the
whole place nearly fell down when we saw one card.  At times, I
tend to laugh a little too loud, but nothing had prepared me (or
anyone in the shop) for my sudden outburst.  There was a card
with a naked bloke stood facing a full length mirror on his
door, and he was saying "Mirror, mirror, on the door, Make my
plonker touch the floor!".  Incredibly childish, maybe, but it
was enough to inform everyone in the shop that we had found it
hilarious.  Incidentally, that wasn't even the punch-line.  On
the inside, his legs were stood upright and his body had snapped
off and was lying face down on the floor.  It was then we
decided to leave.

After a whole day's shopping, I managed to buy my Dad something
and myself quite a lot.

I cunningly added my name to the bottom of the tag on the
presents my brother had bought everyone.

CA                 NINE TEEN NINE TEE SEVEN

It is now time to put on some dodgy rave music and look back on
1996.

1996 was a year in which FRED was completely run by me!  Hip hip
hooray.  Eleven issues and a Best Of FRED came from Anderton
Base, with only fourteen tellings off from Mr. Macdonald.  SAM C
came out in leaps and bounds, dozens of re-subbers came back to
the nest after constant harrassment from BigMac, Phoenix closed
down (ho ho, erm, I mean, oh dear..), Malcolm Mackenzie started
up Persona Software, Simon Cooke stunned us by starting a
superb technical magazine called Based On An Idea, Simon Cooke
stunned us by releasing the second issue, Simon Cooke stunned us
by releasing the third issue (sorry, Simon!), the Leeds show was
born very successfully, some big releases found their way onto
the shelves (of Colin's bedroom) such as Elite, Momentum and
Ka-boooooooom, I passed my exams, and most importantly of all,
you're still reading.

Well, that was the Ghost of Christmas past, but what does the
CA                     Htookm Dassmc Acs!

Ghost of Christmas Present have to say.  He says, "Colin is very
hungry and requires some toast."  Well, just like Mr Scrooge,
I'm not one to argue with Ghosties.  So, I'm going to adjourn
for ten minutes and make some breakfast.  Hurrah and ta-ra!

Well, that's bloody marvellous.  There's no milk or margarine
in the house, so I'm being forced to have toast with nothing on
it and black coffee.  And a bar of chocolate.

Anyway, Mr Future - what's happening.  Well, who knows?  I might
be hit by a bus tommorrow.  But the plan is to bring in a new
editor.  A co-editor, as he would like to be called.  A
sub-editor as I have named him.  I'd rather have called him
Common-Underling-Dogsbody, but he wouldn't have it.  This lad,
who also goes to university in Nottingham (except he's at the
POLYTECHNIC - ho ho ho) thanked me for the job by giving me a
black eye (seriously).  Not that he's the Grant Mitchell of the
SAM world, though.  More that he enjoys throwing books at people
when they're drunk and they fall asleep.  Take it away Allan....
AC                It's Allan (hip hip hooray)


                     *********************
                     *                   *
                     *  ALLAN'S AIRINGS  *
                     *                   *
                     *********************


Hello, viewers. Allan Clarkson here, your new sub-editor. Or the
guy who has to fill up space 'cos Colin A is too busy studying.
Sorry, I mean drinking. Unfortunately I've no idea what to write
about now. Well, I can tell you a bit about myself. I'm editor
of Crashed (and will be for a while yet, no matter what Colin
said last ish), main organiser of the Northern SAM & Spectrum
shows (more later), SAM representative of the Independant
Eight-Bit Association (or IEBA), and bass guitarist
extraordinaire. Now that's given me an idea of what to talk
about. What did I say, Roy?

AC                      NSSS Information

The Second Northern SAM & Spectrum Show is on the 22nd of
February 1997 in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, in the same place the
last one was held (the Methodist Hall on Bank Street, for those
of you still in the dark). There should be a map in the next
issue of Fred if it's out on time, or maybe even in this issue,
if it's out late (most likely, eh?). If you want to, though, you
can get a map, information about public transport, places to
stay, etc. by sending an SSAE to:

N.S.S.S., [redacted]

Someone'll send you an absolute boat-load of juicy info and tips
on how to get there... You can get in for £1.50 on the door
(under 10's free when accompanied by an adult) but if you like,
you can send off for advance tickets at £1.00 each! Send an SSAE
& payment (made out to N.S.S.S.) to the above address if you
want to take up this offer. Can't say fairer than that! Oh, I
just did...

AC                         IEBA Stuff

I'm meant to be passing on IEBA information to SAM magazines,
y'know... Anyway, here's some for you; the second edition of the
IEBA's 8-Bit Directory is available now. It lists just about
every company that's trading for all the 8-bit computers,
including the SAM, Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, BBC Micro, and all
the less well-known ones. It probably stretches to thousands, I
expect. It costs a measly £4, which isn't bad for what reads
like a Yellow Pages for 8-bit users. Send your order to The
Treasurer, [redacted].
Make payment out to IEBA, and let them know where you found out
about them.

[Tsk.  He's a clever one, this new lad Allan, isn't he?  He's
 already mastered the wonderful art of leaving gaps to make
 editorials seem longer!  Well done! - CA]




AC                  8Bit! Git yet 8Bit 'ere!

8Bit magazine has, sadly, gone quarterly, due to time pressures
on the editor, Brian Watson. 8Bit is a very good read and is
well worth buying even if you only have a SAM - the latest issue
should be out by the time you get this, and it's well worth
checking out, 'cos it's going to be a SAM special. It costs a
mere £3 per issue, and there's lots of classified small ads in
there, too. Lovely.

I think that's enough plugging, don't you?



[Erm, this gap is pushing it a bit far though, eh Allan? - CA]






AC                         Editorial

Well, what else can I say? I could tell you about how I gave
Colin a black eye at a party, or how many big bars of chocolate
I've eaten in the last couple of days (I'm only a skinny thing,
too), or even how I borrowed an excellent Apple Macintosh over
the holidays to do Crashed on and ended up playing Spectrum
games on it instead (I've completed Contact Sam Cruise now,
y'know!). But you don't want to know all that, do you? [I'd love
to hear about all of them - CA]

Thought not.

Well, I've been told to fill six pages or so, so I'm going to
convert this file to the right format now and see if I've done
it or not. Fingers crossed...!

'Till next time,

         ALLAN

CA                        Skippedy-Bop

Blimey, that really is scary.  The initials in the top corner
just flip around when Allan does editorials.  Yet another way in
which FRED is causing mass confusion!  Yippee.

Not a bad start Allan, even if it was more like a news section
(although, much better than my "repeat-news-because-I-haven't-
got-any-new-information" news sections).

Incidentally, readers, I had to edit it down from 48 pages to
just a few because of the infinite mentions of a certain
magazine and Alan bragging about his prize fishing catch, but
never mind.  He tried his best, bless him.

Some more news for programmers - I've passed on the job of
returning discs and sending out vouchers to Allan (tee hee,
another tedious job out of my hair!).  So, if Allan is so much
as half a week late in sending out vouchers, I want to hear
about it.  I'm deducting one pence per complaint from his pay!
Hurrah!
CA                        Moving On Up

Did I mention that I saw Sting at Sheffield the other week?  He
was playing a gig, I didn't just see him in the street or
anything.  A marvellous performance, and if you're reading this
Sting, congratulations!  And can I borrow a few thousand pounds?

By the way, you won't be at all surprised to know that we've
moved house again and I'm now in the coldest of cold bungalows
in Evesham.  Actually IN Evesham now, rather than 6 miles out.
If anyone thinks that they can beat the number of places I've
lived in over the last 12 months, then write in (except Dave
Ledbury, who probably wins hands down).

Moving on, if I may, I was thinking.  How many times have our
wonderful older readers told me I'm a lout this year?  Probably
four.  So, let me introduce a section for their entertainment...




CA                        Mature World

Now then, readers.  By 'eck it's been nippy recently, hasn't it?
I tell you what, the amount that old people get for heating
isn't right at all.  It's not right.  I'm in half a mind to
write a letter to the council.

And I'll tell you what else.  The frost is killing all the
plants in our garden.  It's just too cold for them to grow.
Even the ones in the greenhouse are suffering badly.  Mind you,
you have to expect it nowadays.  Still, it'll soon be February
and we can start thinking about Spring and even Summer plants.
There's nothing better in the Summer than doing a nice bit of
gardening, I always say.

I don't know what to make of these new fangled films they show
over Christmas though.  I watched one called Jurassic something.
I've never seen anything so far-fetched in my life!  All those
dinosaurs running round.  It was just silly.

Mind you, Emmerdale was exciting.  Now that is a programme.
CA         Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha Fanta-sy FRED Le-ague

   Team Name                               Manager        Score
01 The Crashed Crusaders               Allan Clarkson       084
02 Scotland                            Colin Macdonald      075
03 "Headless"                          Stefan Drissen       071
04 Frank Broughton Appreciation Soc.   Mark Sturdy          069
05 I'll Cheat If I Start Losing...     Colin Anderton       065
06 Crikey...My Wig Is On Fire!         Andrew Chandler      065
07 Real Nice World                     Andrew Collier       061
08 Sentai Power Sammers NL             Robert Van Der Veeke 055
09 What's In A Name?                   A. Francis           055
10 Scorpion Soft Productions Team (?)  Paul Dudley          052
11 Children Of Satan (ahem)            Stephen McGreal      049
12 Blue Foot United                    Stewart Skardon      048
13 Happy Slug Productions              Tim Paveley          048
14 Team Mango Chutney                  Matt Vowles          042
15 Some Dead Good People               Graham Goring        040
16 I Still Use My Sam, Honest..        Dave Handley         039
17 Death By Electricity                Doug Young           039
18 Crap Games Co.                      Dean Nicholas        037
CA           Everyone On This Page Needs Locking Up

19 NewZealandStory                     Howard Price         037
20 James Curry's Team Of SAM Wierdos   James Curry          037
21 Har Har Har                         Sylvia               036
22 The Kick Butt Crew                  Mark Bennett         032

    MANAGER OF THE MONTH : Robert Van Der Veeke - 18 points

Well, zig-a-zig-blimey.  What a month.  It's made a complete
change to all parts of the table.  With no less than 5 scores of
zero, the teams had their chance to clamber up the ladder of
greatness.  Paveley took that opportunity well - he's clearly
aiming for a place in Europe next year.  Bizarre events at the
top as Allan somehow extends his lead, yet is being hunted down
by Macdonald who flukes his way into 2nd.  Some fine mid-table
climbs from Chandler and Van Der Veeke.  Price, previously left
for dead at the bottom leaps up to 4th from bottom with 12
points (which is half of what he'd taken 8 months to score).
This leaves Bennett's team (ironically called The Kick Butt Crew
- ho ho ho) stranded at the bottom and asking to be laughed at.
CA                            News

Just yesterday morning a package from Quazar dropped through my
door, informing me of a new release.  The new game is called
Money Bags 2 and is a sequel to a game featured on Soundbyte,
the monthly Quazar Surround supporting disk magazine.  Money
Bags 2 is a Jet Set Willy type platform game.  All your money
has been mysteriously scattered around a strange world and you
have to work your way around the map consisting of several
hundred rooms and collect your money and work out how to make
your escape.  Money Bags 2 consists of over 1.5 Megabytes of
sound for the Quazar Surround, including sampled soundtracks
which play continuously throughout the game.  However, if you
don't have the Quazar system, you can still play the game, just
without a soundtrack.  Stick something on your stereo instead.
Money Bags 2 costs £9.99.  For this, or the information pack,
send money, cheques (payable to Colin Piggot) or an SAE to:

  Colin Piggot, [redacted]


CA                            Nooz

Righty-ho.  Everyone reading this page HAS to make a big effort
to get to the Leeds show on 22nd February.  As many SAM
companies as are possible are going to be forced into the hall
up in Wetherby and we want to see a stunning response from FRED
readers.

Even if you're not planning on spending millions of pounds, come
along.  Marvel at the up and coming games on display, chat to
the programmers and make fun of Colin Macdonald.  I'm going to
be there [Don't let that put you off - CM] and I'm sure that the
person who beat you to slot D on FRED will be there so you can
give him a good kicking (joke).  It might be my last show for a
long time because the Gloucester one is close to exams.

So come along, be merry, spend money and let's make it a really
busy show.  No, dammit, let's make it the busiest.

Be there or be a squashed antelope tongue.

CA                            News

Congratulations go to the programmer of Kaboom!, Wayne Coles,
for landing himself a well paid job as a programmer for some big
PC firm.

Kaboom! suffered a couple of delays, and this was down to Wayne
attending interview after interview for a job in programming.
Wayne took the source code for the SAM game, Kaboom!, with him
and the people doing the interviews were so impressed with the
AI routines and optimisation routines that they gave him a job,
which is going to earn him somewhere in the region of 20 grand a
year!

But before anyone panics, Wayne will still be programming on the
SAM.  He already has a number of programs underway.

Well done, Wayne!



CA                     Extra Information

Now it is the winter of our disc contents,
The utilties are missing, but the games are Heaven sent.

In slot D we have our traditional "January issue wouldn't be the
same without a Christmas game".  It's called Santa '96 and you
play Santa Claus!  Using your knowledge and wisdom of elf
workers, you must control numbers and production and ensure
every little child gets what they want.  A wonderful idea, and
not only provides superb entertainment but reminds you how fussy
kids can be.  I got sacked even when I provided them with 4
presents each!  That's just selfish.  Do you know what I got for
Christmas this year?  A bar of chocolate and a machine which
swears when you press a button.  Do you hear me complaining?

Thanks to John Eyre for that.

Then we have a little game which I found from John Teare.  I
haven't a clue why I hadn't used this earlier (at least I don't
think I have!), but it's lovely.  It's the closest SAM match to
CA       Too Much Information Running Through My Brain

Space Invaders ever.  And it's very playable indeed.  I can get
to level three.

We also have a puzzle game called Squiggly from G. Morris.  He
was the guy who wrote the two SAM C games last month.  This one
is also in SAM C, and although it appears a little tedious at
first, it is actually a really addictive game.  To add a little
more incentive, you can try and beat my score.  I got 877 points
and got to something like level 17 before, erm, a power cut
ended my otherwise wonderful play.  Thanks again to Mr. Morris.

Next up John Eyre shows off his skills again with a nifty little
searchword game (or two or three depending on how much disc
space is left).  I'm not going to explain the rules - just click
on the word you think you've found and then on it's position in
the grid.  And listen out for some wonderful toons.  Thanks to
John, who incidentally has given me 17 points for his
contributions in my FFL team!  Yippedy skippedy skopperdy doo.

CA          Too Much Information, Driving Me Insane

Oh, what else is there?  Erm, screens galore, letters in
abundance (sorry to Stephen McGreal who sent another letter
which is wonderful and everything, but it's about 12 pages long
and on paper, and it's too cold to type that much in.  Buy
Outwrite and send letters in on disc - I'll give you a bonus
point in FFL if you do!).  And we've got the next part of The
Useless Ones.  Oh, and let's not forget that little demo from
Peter Vinnivombe - very clever.

Then we get into some serious adverts, with a scrolly on one of
them!  Wooh.  Incidentally, Mr. McGreal, don't think that means
more points in FFL.  It's still an advert, scrolly or not.

And we've got FFL, modules, some show reports (will someone
please explain what was on that picture of me at the show that
was so hilarious?) and a wonderful menu from our old mate Dan
Doore.

Thankyou and goodnight.
CA                          Thanks

Numero Uno : COLIN "BigMac" MACDONALD
Middle Man : COLIN "Large Coke" ANDERTON
Dogsbody   : ALLAN "Free Barbeque Sauce" CLARKSON

And FRED's favourite French Fries are:

  John Eyre          Stewart Skardon     Dean Nicholas
  Stephen McGreal    John Teare          Wayne Coles
  Martin Wilson      G. Morris           Dannii Minogue
  Martin Quested     Dan Doore           Carling Black Label
  David Fulton       Peter Vinnicombe    Father Christmas

FRED 77 (lucky number, that) will be available in the middle of
next month.  Order lots of things from:

  [redacted]

If anyone would care to donate money to the "Colin Macdonald is
completely skint" crisis fund, ring : [redacted]
DN                         PD Column

Yes, it's true, the PD column is finally back! Sorry about the
five month or so absence, down to a few reasons - laziness being
the main one. If you've got some new PD and think that it's
fab / crap, then write a small review for Fred. On with the
show...

ILLUSION - Andrew Collier

This is a collection of loads of small programs all written by
Andrew Collier or his brother Ian. Here is a rundown of what's
on the disk:

Crystal Quest - guide your floating ball around the screen,
collecting crystals. Quite a high quality game for PD.
Deflection - on Fred 38, a strategy game where you must find the
position of various deflectors by firing lasers at them.
Pie Chart - a pie chart drawer, quite accurate but unfortunately
the finished item cannot be printed out.
Missile Base - also on some old Fred, simply protect your cities
DN                             PD

or whatever from alien attacks.
Sensible Demo - yet another former Fred program, it was one of
Andrew's first demos but is still quite impressive today.
A-mazing program - a picture of a maze. Stunning.
Screen dissolver - a useful screen dissolver program, which is
easily used, but the effect isn't too great.
Pipetris - a playable demo of the game which appears on
Syncantium, it is basically a cross between Pipe Mania and
Tetris. Pieces of pipe fall to the ground, you must make a
network for the water to flow through.
Snooker - a simple snooker game. Quite slow, but the movement of
the balls is convincing enough.
SAM Mines - a version of the well-known game, and also a Driver
version.

Also on the disk are a Spectrum emulator and a chemistry test in
he style of an adventure. The best programs on the disk are
probably the Pipetris demo and Crystal Quest, both of which are
remarkably good for a PD disk. The other bits are a bit of a
DN                             PD

mixed bag, but overall the disk is easily worth the money.

Overall : 74%

Terminator 2

Hmm. This is a disk I picked up from Michael Stocks at the last
show in April. Upon returning home, I tried to load it, but
found that the DOS had an error. After using a DOS from another
disk, I loaded it up. At first, there is a rather nice picture
of the T2 logo, which then fades out and is replaced with a
picture of a (poorly drawn) hand. A message then flashes up
saying "You must pass 20 walls" or something like that, and
inviting you to press fire. This I did, but then the screen went
black. A new message flashed up on the screen, saying something
like "You and John Conner must escape on bike". The computer
then crashes. I'm not sure whether this is supposed to be a demo
of the old Speccy game or what, but it sure is confusing and, in
another word, terrible.
DN                             PD

Overall : 40%

Utility Collection - Paul Crompton

As you may have ascertained from the title, this is a collection
of utilities all written by Paul Crompton. The first one on the
disk is Data Manager, which is simple but effective database.
Next up is Dir-Util, a directory utility. It's nothing special,
and has been done many times before. The next program is a
simple Diary program, which is nice enough, but is anyone going
to really make a diary on computer.

What follows next is a collection of conversion programs. There
are programs for converting text, either Fred to text or text to
notepad (or vice versa), and also screen converting programs -
Sam to BMP or BMP to Sam. These last two are probably the most
useful, although as I don't own a PC I couldn't see how good the
program was.

DN                             PD

The final three items on the disk are an Undelete program, a
sector editor and something called Upside Down, which is
apparently part of the code for the screen conversion programs.
Overall, it's not a bad package as such, but for Sam owners who
have quite a few disk mags, etc. there will probably be very
little new material.

Overall : 64%

You can get Illusion and The Utility Collection for £1.50 from:

Sam PD
[redacted]

while Terminator 2 demo is £1.50 from:
DN                             PD

Zodiac PD
[redacted]

That's all for this month - goodbye!

Letters & Reviews

                   Lettereview From John Eyre

Dear FRED,

This isn't intended as a proper review of SAM Vision, just a few
observations after using it for the first time.

I received my copy of SAM Vision in the summer and had intended
to use it straight away to produce a game for FRED magazine.
After a quick look at the manual I had second thoughts; it all
seemed very difficult and the graphics routines were too
limiting for what I wanted. So I put SV away for a rainy day and
produced a couple of games using standard SAM C and assembler.

It wasn't until late October that there were sufficient rainy
days to prompt me to look at SV again. I decided not to jump
straight into writing a complete program but to experiment with
the various functions building on the simple examples in the
manual and examining the listings of the demonstration programs
on the disk. I tried loading files, setting up timers, running
compiled Etracker tunes, producing dialogue boxes and menus,
                   Lettereview From John Eyre

"grabbing" and "putting" sprites and generally getting used to
handling 19 bit numbers, structures and pointers. I suspect that
it was time well spent. Trying to get things to work is a lot
easier when playing with little snippets of code than in a much
larger program.

After a while it didn't seem quite so difficult. The SV software
was very well behaved. Which is more than can be said for the
new disks I was using, all of which seemed to have boot sector
errors. Then there was the odd power cut, due to gale force
winds, when I had intended to save but.....

My aim was to have a game for the FRED Christmas edition so it
had to have a seasonal theme and be fairly simple because time
was short. The game has the very original title SANTA 96 and
involves controlling resources to produce enough toys for
Christmas. The music came from an unknown source; my apologies
and thanks to the originator.

                   Lettereview From John Eyre

Once acclimatised, I found SAM Vision very impressive. I don't
remember any crashes using the tools or with any compiled code,
other than through my own errors or "gale induced" blips in the
power. I managed to bamboozle the original SAM C IDE tools into
submission on a number of occasions, so either SV or I have
improved.

Programming disk load and save functions is made easy. Menus can
be put together in no time and adding background music is simple
(producing music worth listening to is more difficult, so I
didn't try). Access to all 512K memory and store/retrieval of
sprites is much better than with standard SAM C. The Utilities
Screenpack and Spriter provided on the disk are very useful too.

To make the most of SV you need to know about pointers. You can
get the fundamentals from a book but real understanding comes
with actually using them and what better way to gain experience
than using SV to produce something for your favourite disk
magazine.
                   Lettereview From John Eyre

I did find a number of problems apart from bewilderment when the
use of pointers moved beyond the bog standard. A minor
irritation is not knowing whether SV Library items have just the
first or all letters in uppercase, or all in lowercase. The
manual is not always consistent and I'm sure in at least one
case has every option except the correct one. Having faithfully
followed the manual it's annoying to fail at the compile or
assemble stage. It's a pain having to search the stdsv.h file to
see what will be recognised but usually quicker than
re-compiling a lot of code, as Sod's Law dictates the right form
will be the last you try.

The SV graphics functions are based on 8x12 pixel blocks which
is fine for text and for the game I produced but it severely
limits any fine graphics work. At the moment I haven't tried
anything too adventurous and have only used the SV library
facilities rather than introduce my own assembler code or
attempt to access SAM ROM routines.

                   Lettereview From John Eyre

The SV cursor function is great for use with SV menus but can
lead to problems if you want to change the screen whilst the
cursor is active. I had intended to have a time limit in SANTA
96, using SetTimer() to step through the months to December
printing the current month on a calendar. To do this I wrote a
nifty little function that reset itself.

int prn_month ()
{
 Paper(15); Ink(10);
 printf("\ a\4\31%s",month[mth++ ]; // print then inc month
 tmr=SetTimer(200,prn_month); // reset & get timer number
}

Unfortunately I couldn't use it because there was a clash with
the Cursor() routine that left odd blobs when the cursor was
moved. When called, Cursor() doesn't return until a key is
pressed. The timer is interrupt driven and works quite happily
in the background provided the routine called on time-out
                   Lettereview From John Eyre

doesn't use the screen. It would be useful if the cursor could
be temporarily disabled while writing to the screen. Ideally the
cursor co-ordinates, defined to a single pixel, should be
continuously available.

One of these days I'll remember that although every other
function has decimal line and column numbers, in printf()
default print formatting is in octal, e.g. \a\11\16 is
equivalent to at(9,14). I'm sure I read somewhere a preceding 0
was needed for octal.

Enough whinging! There are ways around all these problems and
one small paragraph on the good points with a page full of
problems doesn't do justice to SAM Vision. It is an extremely
well produced piece of software with lots of useful features. It
might look frightening to begin with but the beast can be tamed
and it's well worth taking the trouble to learn how to use it.

John Eyre
CA                    Reply To John Eyre

Thanks for the comments John.  As you'll have noticed, you just
missed the Christmas issue, though that's my fault.  Never mind,
though, because I'm still in the festive spirit, and the New
Year issue wouldn't be the same without a Christmas item on!
And this is an amazing program too (I'll stop there and wait
until the Disc Contents bit).

If any bright spark out there can find a clever way around the
pointer problem, write in.  Now.

By the way, John, thankyou so so so so much for putting that on
disc.  My fingers are dropping off.  Cheers, mate.







                Letter From Martin Rover Wilson

Dear sir/madam,

    Thanks for the mailshot and info.  I recognised the nicely
printed Fred label as soon as I picked it up.  Unfortunately I'm
not resubscribing at the moment, purely on a financial basis.
The worst time of year what with Christmas and Car insurance and
a few other things.  I have splashed out on a copy of SAM Elite
mind you, but I've been waiting for a SAM version since 1991.

I do subscribe to SAM Supplement but that's been a while since
the last issue.  So long, I wonder if it's finished.

There was a question I was going to ask about the status of some
disckmags.  SAM Supplement I believe is PD or Freeware.  On your
list you mention SCPDU issues.  Weren't these also PD/Freeware?
 The reason I mention this is that they're the same price as
Fred issues which are commercial.  Basically I thought you might
like to put an article in Fred clarifying what is PD and what
has protected commercial status.  Probably a lot of copying has
                   Letter From Martin Wilson

gone on purely through lack of knowledge with regards to what
shouldn't be copying.  This can be quite a vague situation
especially as once commercial software for the Spectrum is
treated as PD with regards emulators etc.  Has any of the early
Fred issues been released into the Public Domain?

On the games front, I don't think I'll be buying Momentum as
quite frankly I always found Spindizzy, Gyroscope and Marble
Madness boring.  However, Kaboom sounds really good.  Perhaps
I'll get that one in the new year once I'm bored with Elite.

Anyway, the real point of this letter is just to wish the whole
Fred team a really great Christmas and a prosperous new year!

Yours sincerely,

Martin Rover Wilson


CA                   Reply To Martin Wilson

Thanks for the letter, and I hope you had a good Christmas and a
Happy New Year too.

Let's hope you've come to your senses now and re-subbed and
you're reading this.  Any man in his right mind would get on his
SAM and write a couple of top notch games, and then you'll get
money-off vouchers and have reduced or even free subscriptions
to FRED!  That's what I'd do if I didn't get everything free
anyway (ha ha, what a great feeling of power I have).

I couldn't help you on the SAM Supplement front.  We haven't
heard anything from them in ages.  Any news we get shall be
passed on.

Moving on, your question about SCPDU is actually simpler to
answer than I'd ever thought possible.  The answer is it's not
PD.  It's commercial.  Everything on the FRED price-list is
commercial.  SCPDU is ABOUT Public Domain, the stuff on it
isn't.
CA                   Reply To Martin Wilson

There are a couple of PD libraries in the SAM world.  The
biggest is Derek Morgan's SAM PD and there's one from Zodiac's
Michael Stocks which is also pretty good.  I haven't got all my
stuff with me so I can't give you their addresses, but just
have a scout through the last few issues of FRED and you'll find
them.

Just a reminder to everyone that copying commercial programs is
illegal and although you're not going to get caught, you are
going to kill the SAM companies off a lot sooner than they could
go on for.  Don't do it.








            (Sensible!) Letter From Stephen McGreal

Dear FRED people,

I have some E-tracker related problems [Sounds painful! - CA]
and if anyone can help then it'd be groovy.

I'm writing a GamesMaster game which plays music using the
GM-TRK utility from FRED 69.  The game has a BASIC loader/intro.
I'm trying to use the interrupt player from the E-tracker
program disk to play some intro music in BASIC before the GM
code is CALLed, and the GM-TRK to play a different piece of
music while Gamesmaster is running.

Unfortunately, when I copied the interrupt program into my BASIC
program, the intro music played perfectly but the SAM crashed
when Gamesmaster tried to play the in-game music with CALLCD
32,3.  I've found out I can stop it crashing by changing the ADR
variable in the BASIC thing, but then I can't make the SAM play
the intro music.  Can anyone help?

                  Letter From Stephen McGreal

Also, does anybody know (on either player) how to stop the music
going a bit funny when CLS is used?

Oh, and Merry Christmas FRED people!

Stephen McGreal

P.S. Can anybody get more than 20% on Epicentre?  How?


CA                 Reply To Stephen McGreal

Tish.  You're not very clever are you?  Can't you even operate
interrupt driven gizmo code routines?  Eh?  Are you stupid?  I
know the answer because I'm so intelligent, but I'm not going to
tell you because, erm, I want the FRED readers to have the glory
of answering it.

And a very Merry January to you!
                   Letter From Martin Quested

Dear Colin,

    It doesn't seem a year since I last received your Christmas
mailshot.  Although I don't make very much use of my SAM Coupe
these days (indeed, I am now studying for a degree in Computer
Science, using SUN workstations!), it is good to hear that guys
like you aren't letting the Coupe die!

    With this in mind, I'd like to ask you if there are any
contingency plans for the end of March '97.  You may (or in
Dundee perhaps not) be aware that Channel 5 Broadcasting intends
to launch some time then... and the Government, in it's wisdom,
decreed that in 1990 C5B should use VHF channel 40 (I think),
but it's engineers were not briefed or expected to adjust any
SAM Coupes that they come across.  I too have failed to make any
difference by adjusting the components in the power pack/TV
modulator.

    After C5B has begun transmissions, the SAM's signal will
                   Letter From Martin Quested

suffer severe interference from C5B and vicew versa (as we know,
the Coupe picks TV signals up quite well) - rendering the Coupe
obselete.  Is there anything that can be done or will we all
have to go out and buy a SCART cable?

    I've already written to West Coast Computers about the
matter, but, not having gained any response, I fear the worst
for WCC's financial state [You and a million others! - CA]

    Perhaps you'd be kind enough to let me know what the SAM
experts are planning to do - you might also consider it your
duty to let all the other SAM users know... or even do a special
deal on SCART cables?!

    Thanks for your help, I look forward to an update!

                       Yours sincerely,

                          M. Quested
CA                  Reply To Martin Quested

That'll have SAM owners all over Britain panicking!

Everyone in the SAM world is well aware of the Channel 5
problem.  However, it's not going to be as big a problem as
you're making out.  Videos are being retuned because the Channel
5 signal will go directly through them.  However, the SAM goes
directly into the TV, so this problem is eliminated - we can't
pick up BBC when the SAM is plugged in, so Channel 5 is going to
be the same.

The only problem that could occur is that the SAM will pick up
some of the waves from C5B.  However, if there is an effect,
it'll only be in a few areas of the country.  In Scotland, they
don't even need their videos re-tuning.  If there is a problem,
you're likely to know about it now because the Channel 5 test
signal is already being broadcast.

There are ways of changing the SAM's signal and these will be
published in FRED if the event arises.
                   Letter From David Fulton

Dear Colin,

    Sorry I couldnt send you a disk, but I don't have a SAM in
my possession at the moment.  I've just received the latest
edition of FRED but since I am at University, I will have to
wait until December before I can read it!  For the record, I am
now at Durham University studying Computer Science and my room
is very small.  Since I needed to bring my PC, there just isn't
room to take my SAM and a TV as well.  This is a little
unfortunate since I was working on some software for you.
Judging by the smaller number of items lised on this month's
disk, it would seem that you could really use some more
software.  I'll send you something nice for Christmas, but in
the meantime, this will have to do.

    I know there is a version of SimCoupe available for MS-DOS
machines (I think it uses a Linux boot disk) and, if I had that,
I may be able to find you the time to write something.
Unfortunately, Allan Skillman's web page still isn't sorted out
                    Letter From David Fulton

and I can't download the files.  I've tried to mail him, but to
no avail.  You don't happen to know where I can obtain a copy of
the program by any chance?

    Finally, I'm keen enough to write some software for you,
however, I don't have much in the way of imagination.  Could
anyone give me some suggestions as to what I could write?
Utilities would be easier than games, since my M/C isn't
wonderful, but I'm willing to try my hand at anything.

    Hopefully I'll be able to read the reply to this letter next
month, since I think I have some new software somewhere that wil
let me read the editorials and letters, somewhere at home.

                        Yours sincerely,

                         David Fulton


CA                   Reply To David Fulton

Durham University, eh?  I got rejected by them you know.  What a
bloody cheek.

There are up and running versions of the SAM emulator on the
PCs.  It runs under UNIX at the moment.  If you can't get a
version straight off the WEB pages, try e-mailing Allan, or
better still, the SAM mailing list.  Incidentally, for anyone
not in the know about that list, send me an e-mail at
[redacted] and I'll give you the
address to write to.  In fact, everyone mail me anyway.  I don't
get on the computers often any more and have had to unsubscribe
from mailing lists because after a week about 200 out of date
messages are piled up.

Keep trying Allan or the list, David, because I understand that
the emulator is running pretty much anything now.



CA                    Review Of Chess Mate

              Jupiter Software / Quazar  -  £9.99

Colin Macdonald was given Chess Mate quite a few months ago to
review.  Either he forgot, or he couldn't beat the computer and
didn't want everyone to know.  Both, I reckon.

Chess Mate is the first chess game for the SAM.  It's got no
competition, so they could surely just bundle together any old
rubbish and get the sales from the fact that it's chess.
However, on the other hand, we've got Jupiter Software behind it
and they're known to put a class touch to anything they do.  So,
is it to be a Super or a Drooper?  Well, let's press F9 and find
out.

The intro to the game is pretty simple.  Just a load of waffle
about Quazar and a bit saying press C for contrast or RETURN to
start.  Jupiter is spelt wrong on the scrolly bit too.  Ho ho.

Well, after pressing C a few times, I press RETURN to enter the
CA                    Review Of Chess Mate

game.  The first thing that strikes you is the bigness and
boldness of everything.  It's an incredibly simple lay-out.
There's been no time spent on fancy stuff, they've just decided
to keep it simple, and in my opinion this is a good idea.  When
you're playing chess on a computer, there's a lot of looking at
the screen and you don't want to be squinting to focus.

The movement is easy, just type in 2 sets of co-ordinates for
the initial position and destination.  There's 8 difficulty
levels, and if you want, you can change this level during the
course of the game.  All levels are pretty good.  If you're
rubbish at chess like me, then level 1 is hard enough.  Level 3
is beyond comprehension!  Computer intelligence was the thing I
was expecting the game to flaw on, but this is a definite good
point.

If you screw something up and fancy cheating, you can take back
moves.  If you don't have a clue what to do, you can get the
computer to make the move for you.
CA                    Review Of Chess Mate

The feature I was most surprised, and pleased, to see is the one
where you can force the computer to make a move.  On higher
levels, the computer can take absolutely ages to move, and it's
a pain waiting for it.  Pressing the key (I forget which) forces
the computer to make the best move it's discovered yet.

If you've got Quazar, you are told handy things like 'Check',
'Illegal Move' and so on.  If you don't, you can always just
read it off the screen.

There's not much more to say.  The only annoyance I have is that
you can only have 1 player games.  Those of us with mates would
love to play each other, but there's no option to do that.  I
really can't think of anything else missing.  I don't see the
point in 3D graphics and death animations because if you want
to see that sort of exciting game, you don't play chess!

It's certainly a game I'll go back to.  I'm determined to beat
that blasted computer!  Well done, Jupiter and Quazar!
CA                    Review Of Chess Mate

Playability - 92% (Thanks to the quick option)
Lastability - 90% (But only if you like chess)
Graphics    - 80% (Not impressive, but they're easy on the eye)
Sound       - ??  (Don't own a Quazar!)

Overall     - 91% (A Gold FREDal)

Jupiter's address is: Jupiter Software,    Cheques to T. Ekins
                       [redacted]







SS                 Review Of SAM Elite

SAM Elite.....Don't make me laugh! What a cop out.

I'm afraid that I feel that Revelation are taking us SAM users
for a bunch of mugs. SAM (Ahem!) Elite, or Speccy Elite as I
will now refer to it, is a dreadful let down for those of us who
were under the impression that a SAM version had been written
from scratch.

Basically you will find that SAM Elite is the original spectrum
version ported over to SAM disc, which has had a few
modifications made to it, so that it loads and saves to disc.

It's my personal feeling that you may just as well go out to
some charity shop, pick up the spectrum version on tape for
about 50 pence, and snap shot it under the emulator, and simply
keep making snap shots to save your progress.

Hey presto, you've not only got SAM Elite, but also a spare
nine odd quid in your pocket to spend on some real SAM software.
SS                 Review of SAM Elite

You may feel that I'm being a bit nasty here, but I don't like
to see a company which is perfectly capable of producing a
proper SAM version of Elite blatantly ripping SAM owners off.

I'm afraid that's how I see it, and I'm pretty sure that this is
how you will all see it.

So take my advice, don't bother. Save your money for a REAL SAM
conversion like Lemmings or Sophistry.

Value for Money : What a con. -50%
Playability     : Well, it's still got that. 70%

Ooooooh, you want a proper review, look in an old copy of Your
Sinclair. I thank you for listening to my views.

[Crikey!  An unhappy man if I ever saw one.  Well, at least
no-one can say we only include favourable reviews of FRED or
Revelation games.  Hmm.  Cheers, Stewart. - CA]

Show Report

DD                    The Gloucester Show
                                by Dan Doore

Foolishly, I promised to do a report on the Gloucester show on
the 26th October 1996 and so here it is.

But before I start I have to say that I was more than a bit
gutted to have left Leeds a mere week before the NSSS and
therefore missed the chance to meet the Sam community on what I
like to call 'home turf' and take them to a better place than
Europa.

Enough of this, on with the report.  My journey to Gloucester
involved three trains and a bus and was completely free of
incident despite the lamb madras I had eaten the previous night,
and I got to the hall in plenty of time.

So there I was, amongst loads of people I didn't know (since
this was the first show I'd ever been to) and I wasn't yet in
the mood to jump on a table and shout "Hey Everybody! I'm Dan!".

DD                        Show Report

Given this, I  went for a mooch about to see what was on offer
before I revealed my identity to the masses.

Upon entering the hall you would have been greeted by a throng
of bodies huddled around the FRED stand trying (and mostly
failing) to beat Wayne Coles at the pre-release copy of Kaboom!
which looks like an absolute stonker without a doubt but more on
the FRED stand later.

Moving on around the room revealed stands from Saturn Software
and some bloke with a Speccy and a VideoFace digitising people
for money and then printing them out on the loudest dot matrix I
have ever heard.

Along from that monstrosity was Mr Colin Piggot who was
demonstrating the Quazar 16-bit surround sound card for Sam.
It's huge!  It's the size of a lunchbox and has sounds to match
as it was blasting out samples of the Human League (although
some would have thought this would have been prohibitive to
DD                        Show Report

sales...).  Steve Nutting was there with his full set of goodies
as well as some strange bloke who took great pains in telling me
all about 'The Secretary' in great detail; thanks must go to
Paul Walker for rescuing me at this point.

Format was, of course, there in force with a large stand selling
all sorts of Sam and Speccy material and Nev Young as the 'one
man sideshow' showing off the Sam Harddrive and trying to blag
people into optimising HDOS for him.

Next to him was Crashed with Allan Clarkson and James Curry
trying to bribe people into getting subscriptions with a free
Speccy game: "Look, it's still in its packaging!" they cried.  A
cheap trick if ever I saw one.

Up on the stage were Jupiter Software, Zedd Soft and Zodiac who
were trying to sell punters Sam C guides and Conquest
respectively.  Allan Skillman later set up his portable PC on
the stage and was demonstrating SimCoupe, the Linux-based Coupe
DD                        Show Report

emulator.

Tucked away in the back room was Derek Morgan who was selling
items from the vast Sam PD range (somehow I managed to acquire
seven blank discs from him and promised to start copying lots of
stuff) as well as a few other vendors and enthusiasts.

This reminds me, when I went to have a chat to Derek in the back
passage I came back to find the main hall practically empty,
later on discovering that the entire FRED posse had buggered off
to the pub and it seems I was the last to know. *sniff*

More on the FRED stall (Now that Colin and Co were back from the
pub).  Ando was conspicuous by his absence although the
'Anderton Effect' was suitably recreated by a couple of
remarkably lifelike illustrations stuck to the wall behind.  As
mentioned earlier, the hit of the show was Kaboom! which if you
don't know is a Bomberman/Dynablaster clone which is so close to
the original that you won't believe it's running on a Sam.
DD                        Show Report

Also at the FRED stall was Stefan Drissen (whom I had promised
to purchase a SamDAC off weeks in advance) who had dragged with
him across the Channel a pair of enormous speakers and possibly
the most lethal power adaptor I have ever seen which looked like
an electrified throwing star.

Armed with these speakers, a SamDAC and a copy of the
ever-improving Sam MOD player, a battle of wattage ensued
between FRED and Quazar as to who could blast the other one's
socks off.

I will offer no opinion as to who was the loudest. :)

If I have one moan about the show it is this:  How come a bunch
of people who use a Coupe can possibly mispronounce my surname?
Beats the hell out of me.

After the show had packed up, Messrs Macdonald, Drissen, Pavely,
Skardon and myself adjourned to pub to seek refreshment and then
DD                        Show Report

the real merriment began, but I will not be the one to spill the
details since Colin would get *much* more satisfaction from
telling it.

Fin.


[But that's not the end, because there's more!  Just flip the
 page to see... - CA]










SS                 Gloucester Show Report

Ah ha! Yes, the Gloucester show. Let me think. I suppose it
wasn't a bad day really, but I must say the attendence was a
little low. Those of you who didn't come along just for the
chance of meeting me should be ashamed of themselves.

Anderton, you impudent young boy, what was the reason for your
truancy? I expect a full explanatory letter from you mother or
else I shall be forced to expell you.

Those of you who did go to the show will no doubt remember the
posters being displayed at the FRED stall, which were produced
by a budding young artist, reading something along the lines of
"We appologise for the lack of Anderton at this show, and hope
that the below will make a more suitable replacement"

You missed out on a god few drinks Colin, that'll teach you.

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, anyway, Anderton wasn't there owing
to the fact the he was too lazy to get up.
SS                 Gloucester Show Report

All of the regulars were there, so we'll start at the entrance
with the show organisers, FORMAT Publications, who as usual were
rather suspiciously selling hardware for West Coast, and
software from Revelation (Who are they trying to fool?). Jenny
was there, and this made a vast improvement to the stall, nice
to see you there again Jenny, Leeds just wasn't the same without
you!

Moving swiftly along, next to FORMAT was SD Software, and Nev
Young was there showing off the SAM Hard Drive interface, and
with a small selection of second hand Spectrum Software, the
majority of which I've already got. Bah!

Next along was the Crashed stall, and I spent a rather large
amount of time behind the stall myself! If you read Crashed,
you'll find out why soon enough. Needless to say, I purchased
many a back issue of Crashed, and some of their Spectrum games
that they are selling.
Hi guys!
SS                 Gloucester Show Report

Next along from the Crashed Crew, was the refreshment's, and I
pity you if you need me to describe what was there, except to
say that there was NO alcohol! Tsk.

Right, big step up on to the stage, and along to Jupiter
Software, who were selling amongst other things, their SAM C
book which I've finally got a copy of. Hurrah!

Next along was Zodiac, Zed soft, whatever you want to call them.
Michael Stocks gave me the hard sell, and showed me a new game
called Mage Fire, which is basically a really SAMified version
of that classic speccy game Chaos. Brill!

A giant plunge off of the stage, and it was in to the back room
or the demonstration area as certain people like to call it.

In her usual position was the lovely Carol Brooksbank, who being
the kind soul that she is, was helping numerous people with
their problems, well computer ones anyway!
SS                 Gloucester Show Report

Also, there was a couple of nice people selling computers,
ranging from speccy 48k machines through to an Acorn Archimedes.
This is where I bought my second SAM for just 20 pounds. Hurrah,
now I can do some networking, and write some articles!

And in his usual place, was Derek Morgan, minus the SAM video
digitiser. What's happened Derek? What's the hold up?

Right, a quick brisk walk back to the main hall taking my new
SAM with me, I went through to a stall where a man was just
standing with his SAM set up. Sorry, I don't know who he was,
but he seemed to know Steve Nutting pretty well, so I assume
that they were together. Talking of Steve, he was there selling
SC_Wordpro which I still haven't got! Must get around to buying
that!

Next along was Hall Video Products who also happened to have a
Spectrum video digitiser than work at great speed. Dead good.

SS                 Gloucester Show Report

Erm, I've just remembered that I left out Quazar, and Colin
Piggot, who was showing off the new-ish sampler module, and his
new release Money Bags 2. Things were again louder, probably
owing to the presence of Stefan Drissen and his SAMDAC's, which
he coincidentally didn't wear around his neck. "That's childish
now!" stated Stefan.

Next along were Saturn Software, I think, and they were also
selling their wide range of SAM products.

And last but by no means least were our very own FRED Publishing
minus Mr Anderton, although it appeared that the posters were
proving equally as popular as the real thing. Anyway, Colin M
slaved away galantly all day, taking advanced orders for the new
FRED release "Kaboom - Battle Valley". Believe you me, it's
mouth watering stuff. Also on sale was the wonderful Momentum,
and you can read up on my views about that in issue 74.


SS                 Gloucester Show Report

The FRED stall was also still remarkably full at the end of the
day, because I've bought practically all of FRED's titles by
now, except the ones that I've got no use for.

By the way Colin, I disagree with your comments that I'll buy
anything, and all you have to say is that it's in a pretty
plastic bag. I'll have you know, I'm more interested in the
colour of the disc, and the front cover of the manual. How dare
you insult my software selection methods.

People who were noticably missing from the show were Simon
Cooke, Mark 'Useful fact' Sturdy, and Colin 'Rather stay in bed'
Anderton.

I do hope that everyone enjoys my review of SAM (Ahem, Cough
cough) Elite, it is honest and un-biased.

And that just about wraps it up until the next show. This is
Stewart Skardon, News at FRED, Gloucester.

Star Trek: The Useless Ones (Ctd.)

STAR TREK : THE USELESS ONES

PRIME EXAMPLE (part 4)

By Robert Brady


        Previously on Star Trek : The Useless Ones...

        Involved in a space battle with the evil and quite
brain-dead Woppens, the USS Grapefruit, captained by Cpt. C.
Macdonald, was destroyed. Most evacuated successfully, but a few
were shipwrecked, on Wop Gamma 2, a small moon, with little hope
of survival, including most of the senior officers. Years later,
there was only one left.

        Colin Macdonald surveyed the land, and started his first
log recording in ten years.

        "Captain's Log. Stardate 86493.4. Forty years ago today
we crashed. It is 2409 now, and I am the only survivor. I have
lost hope of being rescued. In case anyone hears this ever, be
very careful and do not approach the plant which you will find
the bodies of my colleagues by. It killed them...."

        And now, the continuation...

        "Captain's Log. Stardate 86512.5. The Icicle is behaving
well so far. Although it has not yet gone on an important
mission, we are hoping that we might be assigned one any moment
now...", said Captain Round, the Captain of the USS Icicle, a
new ship. After the Woppen incident, which he was rescued from,
he'd gotten a triple-promotion for his innovative coding. But
that was over forty years ago, and he wasn't any closer to
Admiral than he was then.

        "Captain, we are being hailed," said his tactical
officer person.
        "On screen," said Round, quickly. Why they bothered
asking his permission to put stuff on the screen he didn't know
- he always said yes.
        "I am Gul Dukat of the CardoBajoran Alliance. We have
found something very interesting on a small moon you ceded to us
last year as part of the new border agreement. Wop Gamma 2 has
one human lifeform on it. Naturally, we have taken it prisoner,
but we would be interested to learn how much you would pay us to
give it back."
        "Is that all you want, Gul?" shouted Round.
        "No. We have something for you," he replied.
        "What, exactly?" enquired Round, cautiously.
        "Oh, just a botanical sample. We found it on the planet,
and you *are* entitled to it under the border agreement, so we
thought that we might as well give it to you - after all, what
have we got to lose," he shot back.
        "Well, beam it over," replied Round. He was not entirely
convinced about the Cardassian's honesty. Whilst this was not
entirely unjustified - Cardassians were to honesty what Fred was
to boredom - he kept having to remind himself that they were no
longer under the control of the military. "As to the human, does
it have a name?"
        "Well, it said it was Macdonald or something, but it
could hardly talk, especially after we removed it's toenails.
How much?"
        "Macdonald? Captain Colin Macdonald, USS Grapefruit?"
        "It might have been."
        "I should have known... Erm... A fiver?". (Fiver was
short for Five million pounds.)
        "Seven trillion quid."
        "Ten million quid,"
        "Two trillion."
        "Twenty million quid," replied Round, pleased with this
demonstration of his negotiation skills.
        "Fifty mill." snapped Dukat, defeated.
        "Done," said Round, feeling quite smug. "Beam him over
right away."

        Transporter Room 2 was the one that got the plant beamed
to it. The occupants watched as the plant grew, produced seeds,
which germinated and became chicken eggs which hatched, all in a
few minutes. The chickens ran around, and when they were within
a few metres of the two ensigns, killed them, by using
probability waves coming from their eyes - the transporter
people were turned into maple syrup. The computer noticed almost
straight away that two people had died, and five security people
went to TR2, and got turned into crude oil. The chickens ran
around, and probabilitied themselves into humanoids. They hid in
the closet. They saw Macdonald beam into TR2 through the door of
the closet - they'd probabilitied it so it was transparent one
way and opaque the other. It probabilitied Macdonald into a
floor tile and then probabilitied it into next door. Then it
probabilitied a small component inside the transporter panel
into a waffle.

        "So, we know there is something in TR2, " said Round,
worried about the lack of evidence as to what was going on.
        "Yes, and we know it killed eight people, " replied
Commander Graham Goring, in his first mention since part 1.
        "What do we do?" asked Collier.
        "Well, obviously we have to find out what the smeg is
going on in there - show us the security camera," replied Round,
to Goring.
        Graham Goring pointed at the security camera in the
corner of the room.
        All 5 people present, excluding Goring, groaned.
        Goring decided that it would probably be a better idea
to press the button on the computer saying 'Show Security Camera
Footage In Transporter Room 2'. He pressed it, and they all
looked at the screen.

        They watched the footage of the events described above,
and then went back to the bridge.

        "Get me Dukat, " said Round.
        "His ship cloaked as soon as they beamed Macdonald
aboard," replied the tactical officer.
        "Get me ...", said Round, before he was interrupted by
tens of chickens beaming into the bridge. "What on Mars? This is
stranger than finding the Captain's Ready Room's ceiling
replaced with maple syrup back on the USS Grapefruit" he
exclaimed, as they began probabilitying themselves into
humanoids. They quickly took the crew of the Icicle captive, and
ordered Flight Control to set course for Earth at warp 15,
which, due to a recalibration of the warp scale, was about 15000
times the speed of light.

        Starbase One noticed the USS Icicle going at a high warp
factor directly toward Earth approximately fifty seconds before
it slowed down and went into high Earth orbit. By this time,
there were a hundred thousand chicken-plant seedlings ready to
be beamed down. Most of them were beamed in areas with large
populations. New York, San Francisco, Cairo, Mexico City,
Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Ipswich and Brasilia got 90% of
the seedlings between them. The seedlings began to grow, and
produced eggs pretty quickly.

        In a medium sized room in Starfleet Headquarters, a
memorial service was being conducted for Ambassador Jean-Luc
Picard, who had died earlier that week from a rare degenerative
mental illness, [the same one he had in the future bits in All
Good Things, the name of which I can't remember]. Attending were
various people who had worked with him over the years. However,
it was only minutes before chickens started coming into the
room. They quickly probabilitied the legs off most of the former
crew of the Enterprise D. Lieutenant Barclay had a lucky escape,
as he dived under a table, and the chickens didn't notice him.

        Six and a half minutes later, Reginald Barclay was
contacted via his DataPadd by the other remaining survivor on
Earth, Lieutenant Miles O'Brien. They were typing to each other,
so I present the dialogue in the form of a script.

        O'Brien : Are you OK? Yours is the only functioning
DataPadd on the planet, apart from mine.
        Barclay : I am in the middle of a room with *lots* of
weird things in. We need to get somewhere else.
        O'Brien : Right. I've got an emergency transporter here.
I'm beaming to a runabout in Starfleet Headquarters, and then
I'll beam you to the runabout.

        O'Brien put down the padd, and fiddled with the
emergency transporter. Just as the chickens came, he transported
away, and rematerialised in the Thames. The USS Thames, that is.
He quickly beamed Barclay to the back of the runabout, and then
set about getting the runabout's cloaking device operational.

        Barclay, meanwhile began contacting starbases and
things, and asking for help. Of the six within communication
range (the chickens had stopped all the subspace relays), four
had been invaded successfully, and one was not answering.

        Just as he was about to press the 'hail' button to hail
the sixth, he heard a massive sound.

        "This is Gul Dukat of the CardoBajoran Occupational
Force, or COF. Earth and all of Sector 001 is now property of
the CardoBajoran Alliance. If there are any survivors who have
not been killed by our chickens, then we have this to say to you
- we will find you. My colleague, Gul Kira Nerys, will take
great pleasure in your death."

        "I should have known the Cardassians were behind all
this," said O'Brien. "Back on DS9, we developed a biological
weapon for the Bajorans to use against the Cardassians or the
Dominion if they invaded. It worked. It was a plant that seeded
lots of chickens with some replicator components in them. They
can do anything, and they can be activated by the Bajorans. But
now the Cardies are allied with the Bajorans, they must've got
access to them, and are now using them against us. But we
destroyed them all - the only one left is on Wop Gamma 2 - where
we tested them - or at least it was in 2369. And now the Wop
system is part of the CardoBajoran alliance. That explains a
bit."
        "But why would they want to invade? They had a generous
treaty last year, and this year we gave way to even more of
their demands. They'd have been given Vulcan in two years time,
and Tellar a couple of years after that. The process of
appeasement is well under way - surely it should have worked by
now," replied Barclay.
        "It will never work. Cardassians are animals. Ever heard
of Setlik III?"
        "I remember you telling me about it on numerous
occasions. But that was over fifty years ago."
        "Yeah, but they are behind this, and somehow we've got
to stop them."
        "How can we do that?"
        "Ever heard of chronitons?"
        "Yes, they control how likely an event is to occur. They
are the basis of replicators and transporters, and all the
probability devices."
        "Back in 2371, there was an accident on the Defiant
involving chronitons. Some people beamed backwards in time.
That's exactly what we are going to do. We'll round up all the
survivors, and beam backwards and see what started this whole
thing off."
        "Didn't the Grapefruit crash on Wop Gamma 2 in 2369?"
suggested Barclay.
        "Yes, it did. Just after we tested the weapon on it. And
the Icicle rescued Macdonald and was the ship that the Cardies
infected with the plant. That'll be the critical event. 2369 it
is then. March?"
        "March seems fine. We are limited in space to normal
transporter range, so let's beam into a room of the Grapefruit
as it passes Earth back in '69."

        They quickly scanned orbiting spaceships and space
stations for other survivors and beamed them to the Thames. They
found Captain Jadzia Dax, Commander Tom Paris, Commander Graham
Goring and Captain Colin Macdonald. They managed to turn
Macdonald into a person again, with a little transporter
modification.

        Then they beamed away into the past....



What happens next?

Do they

        A) Succeed, easily.
        B) Succeed after a few more episodes.
        C) Get stranded in time.
        D) Fail, completely and utterly, only to be saved by
several first year cadets from Starfleet academy.

Don't bother sending anything in because I've already decided,
and the next six parts are with Colin anyway.



Written by Robert Brady,
created by Robert Brady.


Based upon :


(created by)    Roddenberry     Pillar    Berman   Taylor
Star Trek           x
Star Trek : TNG     x
Star Trek : DS9                   x         x
Star Trek : Voyager               x         x       x

Any resemblance of characters or events portrayed in this work
to real characters or events is purely intentional.