USE CURSOR KEYS TO SCROLL TEXT. USE CURSOR KEYS TO SCROLL TEXT. 8 Bit MESSAGES AND ADS PART 4 MESSAGES AND ADS PART 4 To: 999 (all members) From: 3SQ Tim Parsons Subject: AQR Cartridge (Ram Disc) Through the pages of Micro Mart I got an AQR Quarter Meg Cartridge made by Advanced Computer Products for my M128. For a start it was an unknown quantity, I had an idea what it was by reading my ADU (ADFS Utilities Rom) Manual, in that it could be loaded with 16 * 16k Rom images etc. I did in fact find this idea to be a bit of a pain. I then spied a review in the at one time recommended Micro User, that got me look ing for an ACP 1770 DFS version 2, with a little luck, a fellow SoliNET member came to the rescue, this Rom is now a permanent rom in my Master. With the AQR Cartridge fitted when I switch on I get Advanced 1770 DFS (320K Ram Disc),if the members are not aware a Ram Disc is in memory and not in a Disc Drive, as a result there is no Noise or Wear and it all happens very much quicker !. Did you spot the mistake, 1 quarter of a Meg. is 256k, so how do I get 320k, well the clever gadget takes into account the 64k of SWRam as well, or 32k, or however much is available at the time.So this is added to the 256k of the AQR Cartridge and totals 320k capacity. The Disc is then Formatted for use with a command which is in the ACP DFS, after which it can be configured as any Drive number you wish, preferably Drive 0, it starts of as Drive 8 !.The whole side of a DFS 80t Disc can be copied onto the RAM Disc, from where all the programs will run without ever making a noise, ideal of course for a suite of programs which continually access the Disc, you must remember to of course copy the Ram Disc back to a real disk, before switch off if there have been any changes to the DATA !!. I have found one particular program that greatly benefits from being on a RAM disc, and that is a very good rendition of REET PETITE by Jackie Wilson, do you all remember the video on Top ofthe Pops the Malteser with the big mouth with big red lips ??, no I dont remember it either !!. My copy came from Bombay. I hope I havent got anybodies hopes up too high, cause I have never seen any more available anywhere. But I can recomend the weekly purchase of Micro Mart, you should be able to get a few bargains, like I have in the past, and Ive made a few more friends into the bargain. Mind you I understand that Jim Hay had a raw deal once. By the way an added bonus of the ACP DFS is that it CAN read and write to Watford Electronics DFS formatted 62 file Double and Single Density Discs. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: 3SQ Tim Parsons Subject: Hard Disc Drive I have a spare Rodime 5 meg Drive, it does work, it is slow and it is old and it is BARE, it is also full height and HEAVY (for posting). I know it works cause I have had it fitted in my Hard Drive Assembly to help locate a fault in it. Does anybody want it, or should it be in a Museum ? I have at the moment a fully working Hard Drive set up fitted with a SEEGATE 251-1 40mb Drive, if this should ever pack up, I would be very upset, does any of you know what sort of drive this is SCSI or IDE or whatever ?, can it be directly replaced with a different make or model of the same capacity, if any body can help I would be very pleased to hear from them, I could then explain in more detail the type of Host Card and Controller that I have. I find a Hard Drive is absolutely indispensable, it is one of those things that until you get one, you never know how you survived without one. But then on the other hand, there is another saying, what you never have you never miss !!!. OH DEAR. At the time of writing 12/12/93 my dearly beloved Drive has just died, hopefully it will soon be restored to its former glory, I feel sure my "spare" drive will be no good cause I reckon it is the Power Supply !!!. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K2T (Jack Tourle) Subject: K1J's conundrum The #30 is a red herring. The manager asks for only #25, so out of the #27 paid by the guests, the waiter puts #25 in the till and #2 in his pocket! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K2T (Jack Tourle) Subject: 4TK's plea I am sure that many of us husbands will sympathise with Henry Frost's plight. But he's lucky that he gets keyboard time while shopping is done; in our household I do the shopping! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: K1J + 999 From: 4MD Subject: Conundrum explanation The penultimate sentence of the conundrum in Issue 31 is designed to be misleading. Instead of reading "...and 2 pounds in the waiters pocket is 29." it should read "...and 3 pounds from the manager equals 30." The waiter has obviously robbed the three customers of two pounds such that they have paid 27 pounds instead of the 25 pounds intended by the manager. ie. The 5 pound refund becomes a 3 pound refund with the 2 pound difference being pocketted by the waiter. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: 3PM Subject: K1J's Conundrum Tut! Tut! It's all down to the General Theory of Relativity. You've stumbled in the fourth dimension and tousled future and past event cones. There's now `25 in the till..yes? The three diners now have `1 each and the waiter now has `2. So what's the problem? Look behind the past event horizon and you will see the `27 the diners used to have less the `2 the waiter nicked for his future. It's still in the till. But if you do find a pound..it's MINE. Quod Erat Demonstrandum and furthermore .. Nil Illigitimum Te Carborundum. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: L1M Subject: The TD-ROM help offered The TD-ROM is only suitable for use with the 8271 Disc Controller. It then works perfectly. All help is offered by a Menu, which gives you all kind of messages. The message "Searching" comes up when you change the Option from fast to slow I created a TD-disk with help from a little program, which is chained by the !Boot, thus automatically calls the Rom by *TD. It is a very clever program and can be used for loading two Roms too. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: L1M (Janny Looyenga) Subject: WANTED OLD 'USERS' Is there anyone who wants to get rid of his/her old Electron Users from the year 1990 as they did not appear anymore in Holland then. And I am too interested in the very old ones before May 1984. When you are looking in your cupboard: Maybe you'll even find: A & B Computing from April '85 June '85 Acorn User from January '84 March '84 Micro User from January '84 December '85 Post a message and let me know! Or did you find even more older ones? From the beginning '82/'83 ?? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: L1M (Janny Looyenga) Subject: MASTER 512 Is there anybody who knows or has a program which supports and uses the 512 card - without having to load DOS? There are new ROMS for the 1Meg Board: who can tell their numbers? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K2I (John Wilson) Subject: Educational Uses I am the proud owner of two lads, Matthew (6) and Ben (9). Both are keen BEEB users and I am convinced the machine has helped their education as well as providing hours of fun. We have acquired quite a mass of real educational software (much of it from Rickett's excellent catalogue) and of course, the expected selection of games and adventures. Nearly all of it is in regular use, so I don't want to sell it yet, but I am keen to hear from anyone with offspring of similar ages who may be interested in swaps, loans, advice etc. A final request: After aeons of trying to complete Pantheon I obtained the cheat sheets, but I've still got a problem. When we try to assemble the space ship at MARK 23 the whole screen breaks up and corrupts. Any thoughts? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To : 999 (All) From : 2J3 (C.J.Richardson) Subject: For Sale Software on tape: All software on tape is yours for 30p an item unless otherwise noted. This price does not include post and packing. Graphics adventure creator. BBC only. Castle of Riddles. Draughts and Reversi. Alien 8. Game. On Tape: 1.00p (large box+manual) Mini Office II BBC only 10 Computer hits. Games including: Chuckie egg. Ghouls. Gisburne's Castle. Tarzan. Special Operations. Tales of Arabian Nights. Felix and the Factory. Eddie Kidds Jump Challege. Mr EE. Sorceror of Claymorgue Castle. #1.00 for this item. Pole Position. Missile Control. Utilities package. Containing: Sound shaper. Envelope editor. Epson screen dump. Teletext Screen Editor. Disassembler. Karls Kavern. Hell driver. Bug Byte Graphics package. Space Jailer. Warehouse. Hunchback. Vortex. Caveman adventure. Repton 2. Yie ar Kung Fu. Winged Warlords. The Mine. Escape From Moonbase Alpha. Lazer Command. Mr Wiz. Felix in the Factory. Manic Miner. Arcadians. The Computer Programme Volume 1. (Tutorial with manual). BBC Welcome Tape. Instant Recall database. Software on disc: All items are #1.00 each unless otherwise noted. Prices do not include postage and packing. Gemini Database Cheat it Again Joe 4 Revs plus four tracks. Bulletin Board system. Two discs #2.00 Commstar auto Dialling software plus manual. On Disc at 5.00p The Account Book from Apricote studios on 2 discs with extensive manual. Dambusters. U.S.Gold BBC only Blockbusters. Domark Summer Olympiad. Tynesoft Bruce Lee. U.S.Gold BBC only Repton Thru Time Brian Clough's Football Fortunes. Monopoly BBC Bonanza containing Wizzys Mansion, Space Ranger, Last of the Free, Psycastria, Thunderstruck, Ultron and Contraption. Play it again Sam 10. 2 Discs 2.00p Watford Disc Drive utilities. Boxed, on disc with playing board and plastic tanks etc, Tank Attack 5.00p Hardware: Speech Recognition system and Speech synthesis system. Plugs into the user port complete with info and software. Plus SPEECH. #15.00p the lot. This does not include postage and packing. Viewstore ROM with manual and disc 5.00p not including p+p. Books: Transferom manual. 10p BBC User guide. 5.00p The Century Computer Programming Course for the BBC Micro. 1.00p (large) **Prestel System User Guide. Free ACORN DFS User Guide. 1.00p Disc Doctor manual. 1.00p First Steps with your BBC Micro. 50p Watford DFS and DDFS Manual. 1.00p Programming tips from the BBC Micro. Selected articles from the first year of the Acorn User. 2.00p (Excellent!) Cumana disc drive guide. 1.00p Prices do not include postage. So for larger books (Acorn User articles for instance) postage will be about 2.00p. For smaller books about 50p. The book marked * is free because it is a bit dog-eared, but there must be some body out there that really needs it. Kits: For the John Ilsley electronics articles Project 1. Moisture detector #1.40 Made up #2.50 Project 2. Continuous alarm #2.20 Made up #3.00 Project 3. Light pen #3.00 Made up #3.74 Kit prices include p+p. These items unlike everything else from 8BS are NOT dispatched by return of post. There may be a wait of a couple of weeks occasionally. Although there are kits ready for dispatch as I write this (26.11.93). Also: New 5.25" DS DD discs #3.40 for 10 this price does include postage and packing. Order any quantitiy at any time. I always have a large number in stock. Contact: To: 999 From: K2J Destroyed Realities Disc-Based Magazine for the BBC B and Master. The new magazine's first issue is now ready and available at the following address: Mr.D.C. Lowless, 82 Main Street, Pembroke, Dyfed, Wales, SA71 4HH Covered in the first issue : Public Domain software - an informative guide to the libraries still running. Programming articles - Animation using screen bank switching... even on the model B. Letterheading in View. Mandelbrot - using a different plotting method. Fractal triangles. Games - the Public Domain game Pantheon. Graphics/demos - Several compressed graphics screens. 3D wave animation. Utilities - Worried about reconfiguring your master. A program to do it for you in the event of a replaced battery. A disc copier which takes advantage of sideways and shadow RAM on the Master to copy whole 40T DFS discs in one disc swap. The disc will cost 1.80 which includes the disc, the software, and the packaging. Make all cheques/P.O.s payable to D.Lowless. To: 999 From: Chris Richardson Subject: Last free space on disc A tiny bit of room so I shall just list the latest developments 14.1.94 before quitting for final de-bugging etc. 77 Active members. 108 on the books. 7.26p in credit. YES!!! things are looking good. Acorn User Show on 22, 23 and 24th of April at the Harrogate International Centre. I have been promised a small amount of room at this event to show off 8-Bit Software. I have the promise of at least enough room to put up a banner and hand out a few freebie discs (I know the thought of handing out free stuff hurts, but it has to be done). With a bit of luck, we will be allowed a little more space, enough maybe for a couple of computers and some hardware to show off. More details in the next 2 issues, but please make sure that YOU can get there. For now. Any ideas for the stand (if I can get one), any ideas/help with a banner/advert for the show, any volunteers to help. Any hardware/software loans/donations for display, would all be welcomed with open arms. By the way. The Harrogate flower show is on at the same time! Press Break for Main Menu