Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_04/issue_07

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 11.4 KB | 278 lines

Hints and Tips
4.7
•   Ballarena − I would advise using the mouse to control your ‘bat’
because the keyboard is not very responsive. Also, note that the ‘Auto’
bat does not always respond fast enough to catch the ball, and there is
nothing you can do about it! I was very disappointed in the final
message which just congratulates you, and ends your game. The passwords
are: PUNKANDJUMP, MONTPELLIER, SEA SEX SUN, VL 86 C 010, MOUNTAINEERS,
GRENOUILLE, BLUBEDILOMAR, BRAIN KILLER, RHYTHM BOX, BOUBOULOID, MENFOU,
32 BIT POWER, MARTINI, SEE YOU SOON, ETERNA. Mike Gregory (& Russell
Lamb).
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•   Changing !Edit’s default file types − Answering my own Help!!! plea in
Archive here’s how to change the default filetypes for !Edit:
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*DIR ADFS::4.$.RISC-OS.!Edit
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 (or your path here)
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*GOS
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*L. !RUNIMAGE 8000
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*BREAKSET 8004
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*GO 8000
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*SAVE “!RUNIMAGE” 8000+1F2C0
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 8008 8000
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*BASIC
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*L. !RUNIMAGE 8F00
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$&1B208=“ReadMe” These can be changed
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$&1B214=“DataFile” to suit your needs
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$&1B220=“ExecFile” with any string up
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$&1B22C=“EditFile” to 10chars in
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$&1B238=“!Run”        length.
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*SAVE !RUNIMAGE 8F00+1F2C0 8008 8000
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Rob Davison, Southland, New Zealand
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•   ‘Cheapo’ dialog boxes − You can make use of Wimp_ReportError instead
of writing code for a dialog box when programming wimps. The following
code fragment is an example:
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DEFPROCsave_file(name$)
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IF FNfile_there(name$) THEN IF
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 FNdialog(“A file of that
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name exists. Overwrite it?“)=FALSE THEN ENDPROC
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REM save file
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ENDPROC
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DEFFNdialog(str1$):!block%=1
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:$(block%+4)=str1$
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SYS“Wimp_ReportError”,block%,
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19,“Message from
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applic“ TO ,resp%
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=resp%=1
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where the string “Message From Application” is <20 characters in length.
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The only disadvantages are that all other desktop activity is suspended,
the machine beeps (if wimpflags bit 4 is not set) and that the user has
to answer “OK” or “CANCEL” instead of the more logical “YES” or “NO”.
However, this saves a great deal of programming and can be very useful
at times (This is why FWP2 stops printing − See Archive 3.10 p 25). Rob
Davison, New Zealand.
4.7
•   Cleaning A310 keyboard contacts − I recently had a very nasty
intermittent fault on my A310. It began as a line of 222222222’s being
printed at the cursor, for no apparent reason. Also the ‘2’ key of the
numbers keypad wouldn’t function occasionally. This was accompanied by a
more worrying symptom where the screen display would suddenly go hay-
wire and only occasionally would right itself after switching the
machine off and then on.
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Eventually, it was cured by cleaning the key-contact of the ‘2’ (keypad)
and on the basis of “If it works, don’t fix it”, I didn’t clean any
other keys. After having the machine checked at a local dealer (£17.50)
and some discussion with Archives’ Technical Help, it was assumed that
the screen break-up was due to CMOS *Configuration settings somehow
being changed to Monitor-Multisync, by the spurious keyboard input. The
problem has not occurred since.
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For anyone else with keyboard problems, here’s how I cleaned mine: Lay
the keyboard upside-down and remove all 8 screws under the keyboard base
and gently lift off the base. Remove the 6 larger screws, securing the
PCB to the keyboard top-cover. Lift out the complete PCB and keys unit.
The keytops are all secured in a frame which is, in turn, secured by 20-
odd small screws from the PCB underside. Take them all out (and put them
somewhere safe) and, keeping the whole kaboodle together with a firm
grip, turn it over and set it down right-side up. The complete set of
keys can now be lifted slowly off the PCB, exposing the rubber contact/
covers. These are glued with a weak glue. I found that all the rubber
bits stayed stuck to the PCB. I gently peeled away the rubber contact/
cover at the offending key position and marvelled at how the dirt had
managed to penetrate so far, considering that the cover was stuck down.
The keyboard key contacts (A310) are just gold plated discs of PCB
copper, easily cleaned with switch cleaner and a non-hairy paper-towel
or cloth. If you have to blow away any bits, use a camera ‘puffer
brush’. If you have to use your mouth to blow away grit, crumbs etc,
wait for any teeny drops of condensation to evaporate. Spit doesn’t make
a good contact cleaner and some spirit-based cleaners may tend to
dissolve the pcb-surface varnish which will be smeared over the
contacts’ surface. Your local electronics hobby shop (e.g. Tandy) should
have cans of switch-cleaner at £2 − £3 (which is a lot cheaper than £120
for a new keyboard(!) and well worth the extra effort of DIY).
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D.P.Allen, Surrey
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•   Data cartridges for tape streamers revisited − Further to the hint in
3.6 p2, the metal variety of DAT can become unreliable after three or
four writes and so it is better to use the non-metal variety e.g.
Memorex tapes. Mr Chapman, London
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•   RISC-OS printing hints − Printing out with the RISC-OS printer drivers
is very easy. However I found several areas which are not well explained
and one or two things which are down right misleading!
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•   PRM pages 1526-1528 sprite plotting commands must be with reference to
the address of the sprite not the name, so if you use
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SYS “OS_SpriteOp”,&122,
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spriteaddr%,“name”,0
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,xpos%,ypos%
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then, when printing, the error “Sprite Not known” will be returned. The
solution is to use &222 and an address instead of the sprite name.
Addresses for a named sprite can be found with
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SYS“OS_SpriteOp”,&118
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addr is in R2 on exit − see PRM page 406.
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•   PRM page 1532. Always use −1 (for current) as the destination mode
with “ColourTrans_Select-Table” if you specify a mode (even the current
one) ColourTrans will not set up the table correctly resulting in
strange looking sprites on printout.
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•   When rendering Draw objects remember to decrease ‘flatness’ to a lower
value. A useful way of calculating it is to divide the default (512) by
the print resolution divided by 90 eg. flat= 512/(printxres%/90) where
printxres% might be 300 − as read from
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SYS “PDriver_Info” TO,printxres%
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printyres% the 90 comes from a normal approximately 90 dots per inch on
screen. Rob Davison, Southland, New Zealand
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•   Saving the CMOS RAM settings − In recent editions of Archive (e.g.
4.3, p.10 and 4.5, p. 21) there have been repeated mentions of the
problem which arises when a battery failure deletes all the information
in the CMOS RAM.
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There is one very simple way of solving this problem: On Careware Nº 6
you will find the application !SysUtil by Jon Marten; one of the choices
it offers is “Save Configuration”!
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All you have to do is copy the Utility and the “ConfigFile” it produces
to some disc where they are easily accessible − not the hard disk!
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After the dreaded memory loss you simply load !SysUtil and drag the
ConfigFile icon onto the !SysUtil icon and confirm that you want to
change the configuration. Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany
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•   Shutdown of hard drives − During the recent experience I have had due
to the volume of hardware I’ve been setting up and testing, the
following items have come to light.
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MR45’s seemed to be suffering from corruption but, when reformatted, the
problem went away, so where did the corruption come from?
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A little further investigation revealed that a verify scan caused the
Closedown procedure of the drive not to occur.
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It was found that, in order to close the drive down properly, a *bye and
two ªShutdowns were required! At first, this was thought to only relate
to MR45’s but, in fact, it has been found that this is not so, and even
my own machine (A440/1 with standard Acorn hardware) does similar
things.
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So, how do you know whether your hard drive is shut down properly? If an
<f12> is followed by a *bye, a staccato blip from the drive LED should
occur and a short sharp click noise should emit from the drive itself.
This is not the closedown condition.
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A *shutdown will now give a flickering performance from the drive LED
and a multiple clicking from the drive lasting about half a second.This
is the shutdown condition with the heads parked and isolated from the
discs and closedown of the system can now occur. Ray Maidstone, Norwich.
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•   !UIM_Hack update (cf Archive 3.10 p 9) − This utility allows you to
edit characters in The 4th Dimension’s U.I.M. game. It has now been
updated and improved by the author, David Sheperdson, and has been put
on this month’s program disc.
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Impression Hints and Tips
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•   Beware thin lines − It seems that Impression can’t cope with the very
thinnest lines that Draw can produce. It does not display them properly
on the screen and sometimes doesn’t print them properly. The answer is
to use 1 mm lines instead. This came to light when Brian Cowan was using
graphs generated by the graph plotting utility (on Shareware Nº 31)
which apparently uses these thin lines. (This has only been tested in
version 2.05.)
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•   Double-clicking on a graphic opens the “alter graphic” window, (For
those who don’t read manuals.)
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•   Help! − Does anyone know how to create a new Master Page based on an
existing master page? It’s a real pain to have to change the margins
every time you create a new master page. Why can’t you have a new master
page just slightly different from an existing one? The particular
application was where I wanted to try two, three, four, five columns
etc. for a document and every time I wanted to change the number of
columns, I had to create a new master page, changing the margins from to
the 5 mm I wanted before changing the number of columns and the inter-
column gap. (Mind you, I did find one short-cut as a result of having to
do this over and over again. If you click in the first margin box, you
can use <ctrl-U> to remove the “12.7mm”, then press <5> and then <down>
will move you to the next box and you can repeat the <ctrl-U>, <5>,
<down> for each box. This applies to most of the dialogue boxes − <down>
moves you to the next box requiring input. Yes, I know it says this in
the manual, but I didn’t see it.)
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Anyway, can I put my plea another way? Is there any way of editing a
master page other than sliding the boxes around? Can you edit, by
entering numbers, the sizes of the margins, for example?
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•   Search & replace again − We mentioned last month that, when doing a
find and replace, <ctrl-N> finds the Next occurrence, <ctrl-R> does a
Replace of the marked text. Be warned though that, if the find box is
on-screen, <ctrl-A> no longer deletes the character at the cursor (as
<copy> does) it forces All the replaces to occur from the cursor
downwards to the very end of the document. I found this the hard way
while attempting to do a selective search and replace at the top of a
large document. I was changing a column of words into a list by
replacing
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 with a comma and a space. You can just imagine the havoc that the
“replace all” command reeked on my (unsaved!!!) document. You have been
warned! By the way, <ctrl-E>, presumably relating to Every or End, has
exactly the same effect as <ctrl-A>. (This has only been tested on
2.09.)
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•   Transferring text between documents − In Archive 4.2 p.8, there was a
hint about the transfer of text between two documents. The implication
was that this was not possible with Impression. This is not true − it is
just done differently. You select the text in question, press <ctrl-C>,
move to the appropriate spot in the other document, click once and
insert the text with <ctrl-V>! Jochen Konietzko, Koeln, Germany  A
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