USE CURSOR KEYS TO SCROLL TEXT. USE CURSOR KEYS TO SCROLL TEXT. 8 Bit GENERAL MESSAGES 1 GENERAL MESSAGES 1 From : K2J (D.Lowless) To : 999 (All members) Issue 2 of Destroyed Realities is now ready... finally. Get in touch if you are interested in a copy. 80Track, Double sided DFS only this issue. About 350Ks worth of PD, articles, software etc... My address is 82 Main Street, Pembroke Dyfed Wales SA71 4HH ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From : K2J (D.Lowless) To : 999 (All members) I have recently obtained a copy of the Dynamics ROM by Lars 0sterballe. This is an excellent ROM as it allows us to put all our favourite routines in SRAM. I am interested whether it is legally allowed to put things like $.Library.Aform in ROM. This is a very useful way to use the ROM as it means that on the Master you don't have to reach for the Welcome Disc every time you want to format a disc. In theory, you could initialise the ROM when you switch on and provided you are fairly careful you could just type *AFORM every time you wanted to format a disc. The other option would be to try and persuade those at Pineapple Software to put a Rom image of ADU in PD. And all their other software for that matter! Has anyone bought anything from Computer Concepts recently. I just bought The Accelerater ROM + disc for 10 pounds! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From : K2J (David Lowless) To : 999 (Everyone) I have a very extensive collection of Acorn Users and Micro Users and am willing to lend these to members if they send return postage and packaging. Its best to ring me to see if I've got the mag you're after first. My Tel. no. is Preferable if you ring after 6pm. I've also got some Micro User discs. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, From : K2J (David Lowless) To : 999 (Everyone) Has anyone had a good look at the Toplace program on one of Lars 0sterballe's PD discs. Has anyone put this to good use? It offers a lot of possibities for development. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K6Q (Leslie Roberts) Subject: 'RUN' prevention If you wish to prevent a BASIC program from being RUN, add the following temporary line as the FIRST line of your program. PRINT'"Bad program":?12=7 The ?12=7 cancels the 'RUN' or 'CHAIN' command and returns the computer to the immediate (keyboard) mode. It does this by directing the computers Primary Text Pointer to the input buffer (page 7). This fools the computer into thinking that it shouldn't actually be running a program, but waiting for instructions. This idea could be used in conjunction with a fix to prevent your program being listed, but make certain that the RUN prevention is the FIRST line of the program. If you feel that a hacker could list your program and realise what you have done, enter just the second half of the line - the part after the colon. Not many people would realise the significance of the figures. In order to restore your program to running condition; let us say that you entered the line as line number 5, type: 5 and press This will delete the offending line. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K7H (!Shawty! - DSPD) Subject: DSPD News Digital Solutions News ---------------------- Digital Solutions has just released 3 new products into the 8BS Library and should be available as soon as they have been vetted. The New products are :- Window Kit ---------- A Font and a collection of procedures for the creation of character based windows on the Master 128, with an emphasis on using the font to produce your own procedures. Graphics Kit ------------ A Collection of procedures for the creation of 2D and 3D graphics on all BBC Computers, including example programs. Music Tracker Utilities Disk ---------------------------- A Disc containing various utilities and text files of information about music tracker, which is also available from 8BS, suitable for all machines. Digital Solutions may soon be setting up their own bulletin board, this depends on the availabilty of hardware & software for the BBC and whether or not I can afford a telephone line to be installed. We already have our own mini econet system, and if the BBS gets off the ground access to our network and latest versions of our software will be available. If for any reason you wish to contact Digital Solutions then we can be contacted at the following address.. Digital Solutions PD co P.J.Shaw 68 Millbank Road Darlington Co Durham DL3 9NH ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K4V (Trevor Crapper) Subject: Help Received I want to go public and thank both Colin Culpitt-Smith for his excellent work in making me up the fittings to make two single disc drives into a double. Colin got another single drive free and this works a treat. Thank you very much indeed. Now my old friend Tim Parsons for his tireless work on my behalf. This man is regular saint and is willing to help anybody with anything, assistance no charge. Many Many thanks Tim and long may you prosper. My thanks also to Steve Flitham about the dual drive conversion. Regarding playing chess at one move per issue, well for a 40 move game that is 80 issues which equates to around 8 years which is twice as long as our current matches are running and some players can knock 'em off in 6 months. It's a wee bit long, good idea though!! Just imagine a game running into a hundred moves!!! To one and all thank you for the pleasure you are giving me. Trevor Crapper ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K5K (David Robinson) Subject: HELLO! ------------------------------------ Hello from new member David Robinson Hello from new member David Robinson ------------------------------------ I am very impressed with my first issue of the 8-Bit Software magazine (issue 34). Talk to Charlie is a super program, which I am sure will go down well with son Matthew (8). I also liked Roy Dickens's Wot Next. I have not tried ARC yet, but it looks useful. I have thought for some time that we need something akin to the PC's PKZIP. Altogether, interesting and entertaining, but there is so much in it that with my limited spare time I won't have finished it before the next one is due! I shall probably only take every 2nd or 3rd issue (though I suppose this will mean I will miss the replies to my messages - would a mailbox facility be possible? Or is that how the Messages for You section works?) EDITOR....... YUP A seasoned BBC user, I started in 1984 with a model B, to which various accessories were added. The BBC B got ill a couple of years ago and has now been retired to the loft, it's place being taken by a Master 512. I don't get much time to play with the computer, due to the usual family & home committments, as well as a number of hobbies. My interests in computing cover most areas, excepting most games. I have recently been experimenting with sampled sounds and have collected lots of .WAV format sound samples, though I havn't recorded any of my own yet. I have managed to play a few back through the BBC's speaker via a home written (slow) conversion program. I like writing BASIC programs and hope to submit the odd program or two, when time permits. Well, that's all for now, you 8BS members seem a friendly and helpful bunch - pleased to make your acquaintances! ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K6L (Richard Chamberlain) Subject: Hybrid Music 5000 Are there any 5000 users out there in Beeb land? I am also a member of Solinet, and would like to exchange ideas etc. with anyone who uses the above. I am still rather a novice, but have put one or two pieces into Solinet. If anyone wishes to contact me directly my address is on file with 8BS. Otherwise leave a message on the monthly disk for me. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To : 999 (Everyone) From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin) Re : Watford (again) Once again, I thought it would be wise for me to mention another interesting offer from Watford Electronics. They are selling off BBC-compatible 30Mb hard disk drives for well under two hundred pounds (compared with over five hundred a few years ago). This will probably be your last chance to buy a decent hard disk for your Beeb. They are also selling a variety of other bits and pieces for the Beeb, far too much to list here and some of it quite interesting, so I suggest that anyone interested in picking up hardware add-ons has a look at the last couple of pages of their ad in Acorn User or Acorn Computing (on display for flicking through (or even buying) at many newsagents). ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To : 999 + YJ2 From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin) Re : Soundtracker filetypes CocoTrak (Coconizer) &365, STmodule &CB6, Symphony &10B, SoundTracker &001, TeqMusic &CC5. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To : 999 (Everyone) From : 483 (Daniel Shimmin) Re : 8BS Anagrams The following are anagrams of "Eight-Bit Software User Group" It is huge software bug report. Figure writes huge bootstrap. Whoops, if brutes regurgitate. Brutes outweigh profits rage. Huge twit argues profits bore. Oops! sure-fire water-tight bug. Argue if Peterborough twists. Of brighter gratuitous sweep. Ugh! brute Tories pig software! Fire-arrows bug up the egotist. Repetitious bug growth fears. Fatuous ghost-writer beer pig. Fraught power bruise egotist. Boast huge pigs torturer wife. Piggish outer software brute. Software brutes huge pig riot. Beware tortuous pigs fighter. Bug-free ghost-writer utopias. Huge warts of brute pig Tories. Outweigh first-rate pub-goers. Frogs outweigh pirate brutes. It is bugger up other software. Ugh! tiger tower profits abuse. Regurgitate posh robust wife. Profits where bug outrages it. Pigs forswore huge attribute. Group outweigh briefest rats. Tories bug huge software trip. Ego of treasurership bug twit. The longest words found using some of the letters: SURREPTITIOUS TREASURERSHIP Anagrams produced with SuperGram, a computer program for the Archimedes/A3000 range of computers. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 + K5A (Robin Moffat) From: 15A (Steven Flintham) Subject: Messaging system improvements To reply to each of the suggestions in issue 37 in turn: 1) Message to ASCII transfer This could be implemented quite easily either as part of the messaging program itself or (probably) by modifying 7TO3. I have now added simple printing facilities to the system - if anyone still wants message to ASCII transfer facilities I will implement it but I think the ability to print messages out will probably be enough for most people. 2) Viewing messages on a program like the editor I'm not quite sure what is wanted here. Does K5A mean viewing the messages from an issue while editing messages (as suggested several times before) or a facilitiy to take the messages on an issue and view/print them individually AS IF they were messages you had created in the editor? The first is a good idea, but I don't see how I can include it in the messaging system without producing major compatibility problems by storing the message file being viewed in sideways RAM. The second is also a good idea and I might write a program to do something like that, but it isn't exactly an improvement to the messaging system. Basically, the program would have to read the *RUNnable file from the issue disc, using the solid line between messages to detect where they end. The trouble would be that the 'message terminator' is not just a single character but a whole line (actually 39 commas). 3) Automatic insertion of spaces As I mentioned in issue 37 I can't implement a full 'wordprocessor style' continuous insert mode because of the difficulties with control codes. I could however provide an insert mode where every character entered shifted the current line up (as with CTRL-f6) before being entered, shifting extra text off the right of the screen rather than onto the next line. In other words, provide a facility for CTRL-f6 to be pressed 'automatically' when another key was pressed. I will do this if anyone thinks it will be useful but otherwise I will just leave it as it is, since I suspect K5A was thinking of a 'proper' insert mode. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, To: 999 (all members) From: K4R (Robin Morom) Subject: 'Mandlebrots' in Issue 37 Congralulations to Steven Flintham for tackling a VERY difficult-to-explain subject. Just a few points if I may. As it happens it was not my query as he says. It was from Robin Moffatt (K5A). It is easy to distinguish us. Just remember that Robin Moffatt is taller than I am. A more important point is that in trying to simplify the explanation Steven says "All positive real numbers have one and only one square root." Well, actually NO. All positive real numbers have TWO and only TWO square roots. E.g. the square roots of +4 are +2 and -2. As he points out later in the same paragraph -2 times -2 is +4. I am sure that this is only a slip but it might cause confusion to someone new to all this maths. Another cause of confusion is that electrical and electronics engineers use i to signify intantaneous current and so they use the letter j for the square root of -1 and you may see this in some books. Just remember that in dealing with complex numbers: j=i=SQR(-1) However, a very good article. Thank you Steven. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, PRESS BREAK