This From Dave Edwards 07/01/2026
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Hi Chris,

Here are the companion discs for the Let's Compute! magazine - the first one is 'official'; issues 2-12 have been reconstructed from the programs published in the magazine. The quality of the programs published in this magazine are very low; the magazine was aimed at children aged between 7-12 learning about computers for the first time but the magazine felt very 'dumbed down' in tone compared to publications like The Micro User. Interesting, Mike Williams and Mike Goldberg submitted some of the better games for the magazine - Games Magic, for example.

I have put the programs exactly "as they appeared" in print; some of them do not work for this reason. The Card Index Database appears to be missing a part. The Adventuring series published five modules but didn't complete before the magazine was shut down, so the individual modules were never put together to form a coherent whole.

All in all, Let's Compute! seems to have been a big step backwards but the discs may be of interest to archive completionists.

Let's Compute! Disc 1
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Al's Gorithms
Bird Basher
Bones Demo
The famous BBC Micro dancing skeletons animation, showing a bunch of bony magicians performing tricks and jumping up and down.

Games Magic Editor
Games Magic Part 1
Particle Movement
MPG Calculator
Music Maker
Roobix Timepiece
A puzzle game with nine dials and pins. Try to align all twelve clock faces to 12:00 simultaneously.

Screen Dumper
Sea Wolf
The Key Man
Turtle Logo
Typing Tutor
Word Square Solver

Let's Compute! Disc 2
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Clown Picture
A graphics demo which displays a picture of a clown face using circles only.

Day Of The Week
A simple utility to tell you the day of the week for any date.

Gingerbread ROMs
Calculates the ingredients you will need for the amount of Gingerbread men you intend to cook.

Knockout
A utility to assist you in playing a competition where the winners play each other. Trees of 4, 8 and 16 teams.

Games Magic Part 2
The simple maze-game is improved with roaming nasties.

Which Fuse?
An educational demo in which The Safe Scientist shows how different electrical equipment is safely fused.

Worm Picture
A graphical demo which displays a cartoon-like worm, drawn using only circles.



Let's Compute! Disc 3
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Interest Calculator
A mathematics demonstration which shows you how much interest money put into a savings account will generate.

Hydraulic Jack
A demonstration of the functionality of a hydraulic jack. Part of The Safe Scientist series.

Games Magic Part 3
The simple maze-game is improved with collectables and sound effects.

Pop Quiz
A simple quiz on current chart music featuring very well-known artists like Bombalurina.

Witches' Brew
A mocktail maker giving ingredients.


Let's Compute! Disc 4
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Acids, Alkalis And Indicators
A simple chemistry experiment showing the effects of adding alkalis to acids.

Card Index Database Part 1
The first part of the Card Index database.

Secret Coder
A simple encrypter/decoder for your own messages.

Bonfire Hangman
A version of Hangman where all the keywords have a firework connection.

Games Magic Part 4
The simple maze-game is improved with a high score table.

The Sauce Bottle Game
A hardware project utility designed to be used in conjunction with the article.

Shooting Stars
A ASCII-based two player reaction shooting game.



Let's Compute! Disc 5
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Brain Game
Concentrate and try to see which letter has been struck in this simple game.

Card Index Database Part 2
A second module to add to the Card Index database.

French Numbers
Test yourself on the French numbers with this simple rote learning package.

Healthy Lifestyle
A multiple-choice questionnaire which will reveal whether you are living a healthy lifestyle.

Mickey Picture
A picture of Mickey Mouse's head, drawn completely using elipses.



Let's Compute! Disc 6
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Calendar
A Mode 0 calendar with an ASCII-generated cat for good measure. Designed to be printed out. Choose your own year.

Primary Colours
A look at how mixing primary colours produces secondary colours. Part of The Safe Scientist series.

Cyclist Calculator
Calculate how far you travelled on your bike by carefully inputting your wheel diameter, teeth and how many pedal rotations you made!

Card Index Database Part 3
The loading module for the Card Index database.

Snake Game
Quite possibly the worst version of Snake ever created.




Let's Compute! Disc 7
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Guess The Weight Of The Cake
A program to keep track of the guesses of the weight of a cake. Designed for use at a village fete.

Card Index Database Part 5
The next part of the Card Index database. Part 4 seems to have never been published!

Golden Crown
A text adventure set in the mystical land of Karnia where you must recover the King's stolen crown.

Pinball Wizard
A utility designed to be used with the hardware project pinball machine detailed in this issue.

Rocket Lander
A simple mathematics quiz in the form of an estimate of the gravity of nearby planets. Part of The Safe Scientist series.

Valentine's Verses
A pseudo-random poetry generator for Valentine's Day.

Let's Compute! Disc 8
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Adventuring Part 1
A routine to introduce the player to writing his own adventures.

Cart Index Database Part 6
A routine for sorting the cards in the Card Index database.

Car Race
A simple game in which you guess which car will run the race. You could play it for, oooh, seconds.

Labyrinth
A program to accompany the hardware project to build a simple maze.

Nature Park Challenge
A simple management-type game in which you decide whether to kill or breed animals within your park.

Pedometer
Perhaps one of the most pointless programs ever written, this "calculates" the metres a pedometer has measured by counting the clicks it has made.


Let's Compute! Disc 9
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Adventuring Part 2
A useless module for the adventure game programming series which was never completed.

Card Index Database Part 7
A routine for printing out the cards in the Card Index database to an external printer.

Braking Distance Calculator
A program which tests your knowledge of safe breaking distance based on the speed of your car.

Double Memory
A not-real program which claims to double the memory of your computer. April Fool.

Shoot 'Em
A two-player ASCII-only shoot the target game.

Star Gazing
A game which displays a load of stars and lets you guess how many there are. Riveting.


Let's Compute! Disc 10
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Bar Chart
A bar chart which measures rainfall. Input your readings and admire the results.

Card Index Database Part 8
A routine for changing a card within the Card Index database.

Guess The Letter
Guess the letter from A to Z, helped by Higher or Lower prompts from the computer.

Magnets
A demonstration of the attraction and repulsion properties of magnets. Part of The Safe Scientist series.

Pacman
An ASCII version of Pacman, written entirely in Basic using arrays. Features dots, ghosts, eyes and power pills.


Let's Compute! Disc 11
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Adventuring Part 4
A module demonstrating Actions in the Adventuring series which was never finalised.

Bacteria Growth
A demonstration of how bacteria grows in different conditions. Part of The Safe Scientist series.

Compass Directions Quiz
A quiz which shows an unlabelled compass and then accepts the student's guess at which direction is asterisked.

Safety In Numbers
Peter's Project No. 5. A variant of the magic square puzzle, presented in the form a model of a container to store uranium.

Snap
A game of snap with words rather than picture cards.


Let's Compute! Disc 12
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Adventuring Part 5
A module showing Object Locations in the Adventuring series which was never finalised.

Decision Maker
A random answer picker, designed to be loaded if someone asks you a question that you can't think of the answer to.

Spell
A game which shows a word for a very short period of time then invites you to spell it.

