Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/magazine/volume_05/issue_03

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 221KB | 4,601 lines

Spacetech (p8) 50th Edition of Archive!
5.3
Unfortunately, we didn’t realise in time that last month’s Archive was
the 50th edition! Have I really been producing this magazine every
single month for over four years now? Those of you with copies of the
first edition might like to dust them off and see just how far things
have come in that time. Will we still be here to celebrate number 100?
What will Acorn be producing in another four years time? I still find it
very exciting to be involved with the Archimedes range of computers.
5.3
Christmas Shopping
5.3
Last year we had a lot of people ringing us up just a few days before
Christmas saying “Could you possibly get this to me in time for
Christmas?” We always try our best to get goods out to people quickly.
(It would be interesting to know how you think we compare with other
companies!) However, if you are in a rush, there are a couple of extra
services we can offer.
5.3
Firstly, if you add £1 to your order, we will send it by first class
post. Mind you, packages above 800g, the second class limit, go by first
class anyway because we don’t use parcel post − it is too slow.
Secondly, if you add £10 to the order, we will send it by over-night
carrier. However, you must ensure that there is someone available to
accept and sign for the goods when they arrive, otherwise it can take
even longer than using first class post.
5.3
Christmas Wishes
5.3
As another Christmas approaches, it’s a joy to wish all our readers a
very happy and peaceful Christmas. We hope that 1992 will be a very good
year for you all.
5.3
      Adrian, Ali, Ray, Roger, Paul & Sue.
5.3

5.3

5.3
Products Available
5.3
•    4th Dimension game fix − If you are having problems running any of the
Fourth Dimension games, it is probably because they are trying to get a
quart into a (1M) pint pot. To make things easier, Fourth Dimension have
produced a configuration saver program which is available FREE from them
(not from N.C.S.!).
5.3
•    A5000 memory upgrades − Atomwide now have memory upgrades available
for the A5000. The 2 to 4M upgrade is £130 through Archive and the 4 to
8M is £470. This latter upgrade requires the MEMC to be taken out and a
socket put in its place − definitely not a DIY job, unlike the 2 to 4M
which can be undertaken by any sensible, technically minded person. The
price of the 4 to 8M upgrade includes two-way carriage.
5.3
•    A5000 1FD − the 1M floppy disc version of the A5000 (a “Product not-
Available”!) We said (quoting Acorn, by the way!) that the version of
the A5000 with 1M RAM, no hard drive and no monitor version would be
available in January. They are now saying that they will be available
“in small quantities only during the first quarter of 1992”. Rumour has
it that they will only be selling them to VARs (Value Added Resellers −
companies who sell complete systems with an Archimedes at the centre)
and not releasing them to the general public. So those of us who want to
supply a real “quality” system with an Eizo monitor and a SCSI drive
will have to wait for several months to come. Well, not quite....
5.3
•    A5000 monitor upgrade − A growing number of people are feeling that
the Acorn multisync monitor does not do justice to the quality of the
computer, so we are now offering the Eizo 9060SZ as our recommended
alternative. It provides a dot pitch of 0.28mm instead of 0.38mm and
better linearity. If you want an Eizo 9060, just add £200 to the price
as quoted with the Acorn monitor. So that means we have some spare
multisyncs....
5.3
•    A3000 monitor upgrade − As a spin off from the offer above, we have
some Acorn multisync monitors for sale that would be ideal for use with
the A3000. At £310 inc VAT, they are only £60 more than the Acorn
standard resolution monitor but allow you to go into the higher
resolution modes unavailable to users of standard resolution monitors.
5.3
•    A5000 IDE hard disc upgrades − We can now supply a 100M second
internal IDE drive for the A5000 for £380. This is a fast drive (as
IDE’s go!) and fits under the floppy drive.
5.3
•    Acorn printer sheet-feeder − Acorn are hoping to have, “fairly soon”,
a sheet-feeder unit for their inkjet printer. It should be available by
the time you read this − but ring before ordering, just to check! The
price is £69 +VAT or £77 through Archive.
5.3
•    Archivist is an “easy-to-use” database from Oregan Developments.
Designed in accordance with LEA guidelines, it is “ideal for education”.
The price £24.95 inclusive or £50 for an additional site licence from
Oregan Developments.
5.3
•    ARM3 prices down (and up!) − After dropping the price of their ARM3
upgrades to £199, Watford Electronics have put the price back up to £249
saying that it was only an “Acorn User Show Special Offer Price”. Aleph
One have just brought their price down to £249 +VAT. (£280 through
Archive) The A3000 ARM3 upgrades are now £249 + £35 fitting charge or
£340 through Archive. As I write, the CJE ARM3 is still available at
£199 +VAT or £225 through Archive.
5.3
•    Bonjour de France is a series of four Genesis applications on 9 floppy
discs for use in teaching French at Key Stages 3 and 4. The cost
including a teacher’s guide and over 100 worksheets is £95 +VAT from Oak
Solutions or £103 through Archive.
5.3
•    CalcSheet − Trail Software have produced a RISC-OS compatible
spreadsheet called CalcSheet which is aimed particularly at users with
1M computers and floppy drives. Features include keyboard short-cuts,
1000 columns by 9999 rows, 80 built-in functions, graphing facilities,
timed auto-save and macro facilities including a learn option. The price
is £99 +VAT or £520 +VAT for a site licence. A demo disc is available
from Trail Software for £5, deductible from the purchase cost of the
software itself.
5.3
•    Cataclysm (not ‘Catalysm’ as in all the big glossy adverts) is a new
arcade game from 4th Dimension. You have to avoid the inundation of your
spaceship by adjusting valves, pumps etc within a given time limit.
Watch out for the pressure valves, dissolving blocks and filters. £24.95
from 4th Dimension or £23 through Archive.
5.3
•    Chameleon is a utility for doing quick and easy colour changes to Draw
files. It provides a range of 16 and 256-colour palettes, including a
256 level grey scale, and allows selection and changing of colours from
each palette. It also has an HSV (hue, saturation, value) palette.
Chameleon is £25 +VAT from 4mation or £27 through Archive.
5.3
•    Colour printer drivers − Ace Computing have added to their wide range
of RISC-OS printer drivers one for the new Deskjet 500C sheet-fed colour
inkjet printer. The price from Ace is £15 inc VAT and p&p.
5.3
•    Glimpse is described by Sherston Software as the simple way to find a
clip art file. It allows you to view a miniature version of the file in
a filer window. Files can be loaded directly from a Glimpse window into
Draw, Paint or any RISC-OS application. The price is £8.50 +VAT from
Sherston.
5.3
•    Grievous Bodily ’ARM is another game from the 4th Dimension stable. It
is an arcade style game involving beating up some drug-smuggling baddies
using your expertise in kicking and punching and using weapons picked up
along the way. £24.95 from 4th Dimension or £23 through Archive.
5.3
•    Hilighter is Sherston Software’s new text and graphics presentation
package. It allows you to display information in a RISC-OS window and
have it linked so that users can explore the information provided. The
price is £45 +VAT from Sherston.
5.3
•    Holed Out Compendium − Fourth Dimension have released a version of
HoledOut that consists of HoledOut, Extra Courses 1, Extra Courses 2 and
HoledOut Designer − all in one pack for £24.95 or £23 through Archive.
5.3
•    J − The language J is now available for the Archimedes. Version 3.4 is
available from I-APL for £17.00 + £2 p&p. This includes A Dictionary of
J and Tangible Math rewritten in J.
5.3
•    Notate is a music composition program from Longman Logotron aimed, as
you might guess, at educational users. Its range of facilities includes
up to eight staves, synthesised and sampled sounds, accidentals and
repeats, auto-checking of note length relative to bar space remaining,
chord facility, configurability for different levels of user, auto
transposition, Midi file input and output and direct playing on Midi
instruments. The price is £57 +VAT or £64 through Archive.
5.3
•    Oak PCB for RISC-OS − Oak Solutions now have a PCB layout and
schematic design package available for just £150 +VAT (£160 through
Archive) or there is an educational price, including a site licence, for
£120 +VAT. Facilities include four copper layers, automatic generation
of drilling and solder resist layers, automatic movement of tracks if
components are moved, hard copy via RISC-OS drivers or via a supplied
HPGL driver, comprehensive parts library for both PCB and schematics.
5.3
•    Polyglot is a foreign language character generator which provides fast
and easy access to foreign language character sets when using RISC-OS
applications. £19.95 from Risc Developments. (Although it has the same
address as Beebug Ltd, they ask us to make clear that this is a separate
company.)
5.3
•    Recall is Sherston Software’s database designed with National
Curriculum in mind. The price is £39.95 +VAT from Sherston.
5.3
•    Revelation 2 is the CD-ROM edition of Longman Logotron’s education-
based art package (£119 +VAT or £125 through Archive.). Revelation was
created with particular emphasis on facilities for taking images from
other sources such as digitisers, scanners or video frame-grabbers and
processing them to create totally new pictures. Revelation 2 adds
various extra features including extra colour mixing, colour processing,
image effects (sharpening and dithering) and extra fill options.
5.3
It also comes in a CD-ROM version for £139 +VAT or £145 through Archive.
5.3
•    SmArt Suite is a linked graphics system from 4mation. When you load a
picture, different parts of it can be changed by selecting from a menu.
The package which is £55 +VAT (or £59 through Archive) comes with over
24 files on subjects including cars, shops, churches, maps of Britain.
Also available, as separate products, are discs on the subjects of
Leisure, Heraldry, Faces, Fashion, Homes, Trees and Gardens and
Dinosaurs. These discs are £16 each +VAT or £18 through Archive. SmArt
Filer is an application for those who wish to create their own sets of
SmArt files − £35 +VAT or £38 through Archive.
5.3
•    Teletext Adaptor Front End − The RISC-OS front end (written by Geoff
Titmuss) for the Morley Teletext Adaptor was mentioned 12 months ago in
Products Available but it is now available through The Really Good
Software Company at a price of £29.95.
5.3
I have had a play with it and would say that Geoff’s software brings a
new lease of life to the adaptor. It is a full multi-tasking RISC-OS
application and the Teletext screen appears in a RISC-OS window. Just
click on any of the numbers in the window and that Teletext page appears
in due course. Best of all, you can flick back to any of the previous
ten pages you have been looking at. This means that if you want, say,
the television programmes, you can select page 601 and get on with some
other work while the three screens making up that page are loaded, then
select 602, then 603 and finally 604. Then you can look at any of the TV
program pages at the click of a mouse button. One other extra feature is
that you can set your computer’s internal clock from the Teletext clock,
at the click of a mouse button. (See the review on page 27.)
5.3
•    Touchtech 3000 is an infra red touch screen for the Archimedes from
Microvitec which fits onto their Cub 3000 monitor. At £300 +VAT, it
comes with a suite of nine programs to develop colour recognition,
finger painting, simple addition, shape recognition etc for the teaching
of very young or special needs children.
5.3
•    Yes Chancellor 2 − Chalksoft have now released an Archimedes version
of their economic simulation package, Yes Chancellor. You are in the hot
seat at Nº 11 Downing Street and have to keep the UK economy from
collapsing. You have, amongst other things, to set taxes, control
interest rates, do wage bargaining and deal with membership of the
European ERM. This simulation is aimed at adults and economics students
and includes an information booklet written by a former Senior Official
of the Inland Revenue. The price is £23 +VAT or £25 through Archive.
5.3
Review software received...
5.3
We have received review copies of the following software and hardware:
CalcSheet, Converta-Key, Fun & Games, Sky Hunter, !BasShrink, Fun School
3 (under 5’s) & (5−7’s), Yes Chancellor 2, Revelation 2 (to be reviewed
by a Revelation 1 user, please), Holed Out Compendium, Notate, Glimpse,
Hilighter.  A
5.3

5.3
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously affect your
spiritual health.
5.3
The Christmas season is a time when we tend to think, amongst other
things, about peace. There are some hopeful signs in certain parts of
the world, like the Middle East and South Africa, that moves are being
made towards justice and peace − although there is still a long way to
go.
5.3
I mentioned last month about the problems there are in so many marriages
and homes, and the root problem both at the international level and at
the personal level is the same − lack of peace.
5.3
OK, so what’s the solution? Well, the bible teaches simply and plainly
that unless and until individuals have peace with God, they cannot have
real peace with each other. In other words, until you have got your
relationship with God right, you haven’t really got a hope of getting
your other relationships sorted out.
5.3
You think that’s a load of rubbish? Well, maybe you’re right but the
more I read of the bible’s analysis of the problems that we face in our
lives and in the world, the more it rings true.
5.3
Things don’t always go right for me but one thing I can say is that I
have a deep peace in my heart that makes it possible to face the
difficulties of life. Where do you find out about this peace? Where else
but in the bible?! I know I keep saying this, but do read it.
5.3
My prayer this Christmas is that you will come to know the real peace
that only God can give.
5.3

5.3
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661)
5.3
4mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (−22974)
5.3
Abacus Training    29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
5.3
Acorn Computers Ltd    Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (−210685)
5.3
Ace Computing (p10)    27 Victoria
Road, Cambridge, CB4 3BW. (0223−322559) (−69180)
5.3
Aleph One Ltd    The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (−812713)
5.3
Alpine Software    P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon, BT63 5UT.
(0762−342510)
5.3
Arnor Ltd    611 Lincoln Road, Peterborough, PE1 3HA. (0733−68909) (−67299)
5.3
Arxe Systems Ltd    P.O.Box 898, Forest Gate, London E7 9RG. (081−534−1198
evenings)
5.3
Atomwide Ltd    23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(−896088)
5.3
Baildon Electronics    1 Fyfe
Crescent, Baildon, Shipley, W Yorks BD17 6DR. (0274−580519) (−531626)
5.3
Chalksoft    P.O. Box 49, Spalding, Lincs, PE11 1NZ. (0775−769518)
5.3
Clares Micro Supplies    98 Mid
dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(−48512)
5.3
Colton Software (p20)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (−312010)
5.3
Computer Concepts (p32/33)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (−231632)
5.3
Dalmation Publications    37 Manor
Road, Teddington, Middlesex  TW11 8AA.
5.3
David Pilling    P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
5.3
Digital Services    9 Wayte Street, Cosham, Portsmouth PO6 3BS.
(0705−210600) (−210705)
5.3
DT Software    13 Northumberland Road, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV32
6HE.
5.3
DT Software    FREEPOST, Cambridge CB3 7BR. (0223−841099)
5.3
I-APL Ltd     2 Blenheim Road, St Albans, AL1 4NR.
5.3
Ian Copestake Software    10 Frost
Drive, Wirral, L61 4XL. (051−632−1234)(−3434)
5.3
IFEL (p18)    36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286)
5.3
Longman-Logotron    124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (−425349)
5.3
LOOKsystems (p9)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (−764011)
5.3
Morley Electronics     Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(−6373)
5.3
Oak Solutions (p6)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (−620419)
5.3
Oregan Developments     36 Grosvenor
Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, B74 3PE.
5.3
Ray Maidstone (p15)    421
Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603−407060) (−417447)
5.3
RISC Developments Ltd    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (−60263)
5.3
Sherston Software    Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH.
(0666−840433) (−840048)
5.3
Southern Printers    47 Drake Road, Willesborough, Ashford, Kent TN24 0UZ.
(0233−633919)
5.3
Spacetech (p16)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset, DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753)
5.3
Techsoft UK Ltd (p19)    Old School
Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd, CH7 4DA. (082−43318)
5.3
Technomatic    468 Church Lane, London, NW9 8UF. (081−205−9558) (−0190)
5.3
The Really Good Software Company    P.O.Box 60,
Ashton-under-Lyme, OL5 9WW.
5.3
Trail Software    P.O. Box 283, London, SW11 2LL.
5.3
Turcan Research Systems    83 Green
croft Gardens, West Hampstead, London NW6 3LJ. (071−625−8455)
5.3
Watford Electronics    250 Lower
High Street, Watford, WD1 2AN. (0923−37774) (−33642)
5.3
Word Processing (p29)    65 Milldale
Crescent, Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, W Midlands  WV10 6LR.
5.3

5.3
Small Ads
5.3
(Small ads for Archimedes and related products are free for subscribers
but we reserve the right to publish all, part or none of the material
you send, as we think fit. i.e. some people don’t know what “small”
means and there are certain things, as you can imagine, that we would
not be prepared to advertise as a matter of principle. Sending small ads
(especially long ones!) on disc is helpful but not essential. Ed)
5.3
•    2M upgrade for A3000 (Morley expandable to 4M) £35. Phone Donald on
031−336−4491 (eves/weekends)
5.3
•    A3000 colour 2M ram, serial upgrade, monitor stand, Acorn DTP, FWPlus,
various games £700. Epson MX100 type III wide carriage printer + stand
£100. Phone Simon on 081−969−2565.
5.3
•    A310 colour 4M ram, 20M Acorn drive, IFEL 4-slot bp, can take RISC-OS3
ROMs, recently overhauled, £875 o.n.o. Phone 0734−572020.
5.3
•    A310 with 4-slot bp + lots of software £550. Citizen C120-D, 9-pin NLQ
printer, £90. Armadillo A448 sampler £75. Phone Lenny on 071−703−5675.
5.3
•    A440/1 ARM3 (30 MHz), VIDC enhancer, Eizo 9060 £1700 o.n.o. Panasonic
KX-P1124 with 63k buffer £200. MultiStore 2.0 £199. Phone 0780−66449
after 6 p.m.
5.3
• Acorn DTP £55, Pipedream III £40, Revelation I £20, Graphbox £20,
FWPlus I £10, Droom £8, Craftshop I £8, Grass £8, Picture Builder £5,
Twin World £10, Interdictor I £8, Apocalypse £5, Pawn £5, Guild of
Thieves £5, Jinxter, Fish .....  Phone 0273−682240 evenings.
5.3
•    Acorn JP150 inkjet virtually unused £210 o.n.o. Phone Arthur on
0276−22031.
5.3
•    Akhter 5¼“ dual 40/80 floppy drive £70. Fascia for A310 with single
floppy − offers? Phone Arthur on 0276−22031.
5.3
•    Autosketch v1.04, System Delta V2, Solid Tools V2, orig. discs &
manuals. £80 the lot. Phone Derrick on 0286−871181.
5.3
•    Beebug scanner with sheet feeder £400 o.n.o. Phone Martin on
0705−370623.
5.3
•    Brother 1509 dot matrix A3 printer with tractor feed £120 o.n.o. Phone
Arthur on 0276−22031.
5.3
•    Canon BJ130e bubblejet, 360 d.p.i., wide carriage (A3), CSfeeder,
tractor feed £360 o.n.o. Phone Arthur on 0276−22031.
5.3
•    Hard drive, Seagate ST125-1, ST506, 20M, 28ms access time, as new,
£80. Phone 023066 −630 (Bedford area).
5.3
•    Laser printer Mannesman Tally MT906, LaserJet II emulation, exc cond,
complete £425 o.n.o. Phone Ruislip 0895−630344.
5.3
•    NEC 40M ST506 drive for A410 £100, WE Mk2 hand scanner £80, FWPlus 2
£40. All o.n.o. Buyer collects or postage extra. Phone Miles Sabin on
081−980−2455.
5.3
•    Oak High Speed 100M SCSI internal drive, 2 months old, already full
£300 o.n.o. Juki 6100 daisywheel printer £50. Phone Ian Pomeroy 0245
−325205.
5.3
•    Prolog X manual − Has anyone got one they would loan or sell me? Phone
John on 0462 −893799.
5.3
•    Scanlight 256 £150 o.n.o., Watford 5¼“ drive + interface + backplate
£80, Canon LBP4/8 FX cartridge £75, D.A.C. fan quietener £12, Pipedream
3 £80, Presenter II hotlink £30, Orrery £70, Chocks Away £15, Powerband
£12, various fonts & discs etc. Phone Chris Bollard on 0752−783663.
5.3
•    SCSI interface for A3000 (Lingenuity) £135. Schema 1.18 £75, Hot-Link
Presenter 2.5 £38. Phone John on 081−395−6425.
5.3
•    Wanted − Laser Direct Hi-Res interface. Phone 0457−862743.
5.3
•    Wanted − Prolog Programming in Depth by Covington, Nute & Vellino.
John Carr, 81 Ameysford Road, Ferndown, Dorset, BH22 9PZ.
5.3
•    Wanted − SCSI controller and/or hard disc for A310. At least 80 M,
preferably internal. Phone 0883−345157.
5.3
•    Watford hand scanner A300/400 £90, FWPlus £20. Phone Mike on
0742−342870.
5.3
Charity Sales − The following items are available for sale in aid of
charity. PLEASE do not just send money − ring us on 0603−766592 to check
if the items are still available. Thank you.
5.3
(If you have unwanted software or hardware for Archimedes computers you
could donate for charity, please send it in to the Archive office. If
you have larger items where post would be expensive, just send us
details of the item(s) and how the purchaser can get hold of them.)
5.3
Artisan £10, Archimedes Buffer £2, Desktop Games £4, The Wimp Game £9,
First Word Plus £10, Corruption £5, Graphic Writer £5, Timewatch £5.  A
5.3

5.3
Oak Solutions
5.3
New artwork coming to you direct
5.3

5.3
Hints and Tips
5.3
•    AMX mouse − To replace the Archimedes mouse with an AMX mouse from a
BBC computer, all that is necessary is to change the plug on the AMX
mouse for a miniature 9 pin DIN plug. The correct plug can be obtained
from Maplin Electronics (0702−554161). It is stock number JX19V (price
82p +p&p). Cut the original 20 way IDC connector off the mouse cable and
then solder the wires onto the new plug. The pins are very close
together, so a fair amount of care is required. It is easiest to start
with the middle pins and work outwards. I found that the plastic housing
supplied with the plug was just too wide to fit into my A3000 but it can
easily be cut smaller with a sharp knife.
5.3
Paul Marshall, Loughborough.
5.3
(Has anyone got the connections to do the same sort of thing but with a
BBC Trackerball? Ed)
5.3
•    Cops and Plague Planet − I should like to pass on the following advice
received from Alpine.
5.3
Both Cops and Plague Planet re-configure the character set used to their
own. If you have a copy of Alpine Software’s ALPS (Adventure Language
Programming System) this contains a copy of the default Archimedes
character set e.g. $.!ALPS. Resources.defaultchr.
5.3
Copy this file to the appropriate games directory (e.g.
$.COPS.defaultchr), and add the following line at the very end of the
appropriate !Run file (e.g. for Cops):
5.3
Print <Cops$Dir>.defaultchr
5.3
This will then automatically reset the computer to the default system
font upon returning to the Desktop.      Rob Brown, Tadworth
5.3
•    Corruption and Jinxter − I have recently transferred a number of the
earlier Magnetic Scrolls adventure games from floppy to hard disc and
have encountered certain problems with their usage of the Shared C
Library !System module.
5.3
Fish! does not use the Shared C Library at all. Both The Guild of
Thieves and The Pawn came with version 3.50 of the Shared C Library and
they function with more recent versions without any difficulty. However,
my copies of Corruption (version 1.12) and Jinxter (version 1.30) came
with version 1.01 of the Shared C Library and they will not function at
all with any of the more recent versions.
5.3
What I wanted to achieve was an easy means of starting either program
straight from the Desktop and automatically loading the “old” version of
the Shared C Library. After some trial and error I have found one way
round this by modifying the !Run files for both applications.
5.3
Firstly, version 1.01 of the Shared C Library needs to be copied to a
suitable directory within the !System application on the hard disc (e.g.
$.!System.oldModules.CLib_v101).
5.3
Unfortunately the command RMEnsure will not only check for a particular
version of a module but it will also accept more recent versions. In the
!Run file I have therefore used this command to check whether a
subsequent version (e.g. 1.02) of the Shared C Library is already loaded
and, if not, the most up to date version is loaded from the !System
application. The command RMKill is then used to delete this module
before loading the “old” version 1.01 of the Shared C Library. Finally,
after exiting the program, the “old” Shared C Library is deleted, the
latest version (currently 3.75) is re-loaded, and the !Run file finally
returns control direct to the Desktop.
5.3
| !Run file for Corruption
5.3
| (or Jinxter − change references from “Corruption” to “Jinxter”)
5.3
| (requires Shared C library version 1.01 dated 13-Jun-88)
5.3
|
5.3
IconSprites <Obey$Dir>.!Sprites
5.3
WimpSlot -min 512K -max 512K
5.3
|
5.3
Set Corruption$CLibLoaded 1
5.3
RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 1.02 Set Corruption$CLibLoaded 0
5.3
If Corruption$CLibLoaded=0 then If “<System$Path>” = “” then Error
System resources cannot be found
5.3
If Corruption$CLibLoaded=0 then RMLoad System:Modules.Clib
5.3
RMKill SharedCLibrary
5.3
RMLoad System:oldModules.CLib_v101 .Clib
5.3
RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 1.01 Error You need SharedCLibrary
5.3
version 1.01 ONLY
5.3
Unset Corruption$CLibLoaded
5.3
|
5.3
Set Corruption$Dir <Obey$Dir>
5.3
Run <Corruption$Dir>.Corruption.f1 <Corruption$Dir>.Corruption.f2
5.3
|
5.3
|
5.3
RMKill SharedCLibrary
5.3
RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 3.75 RMLoad System:Modules.Clib
5.3
RMEnsure SharedCLibrary 3.75 Error You need SharedCLibrary
5.3
version 3.75 or later
5.3
Desktop
5.3
WARNING − any other programs active within the Desktop should be closed
down and any files saved before starting either Corruption or Jinxter −
especially those programs which use the Shared C Library! Perhaps
another reader can find a way round this?
5.3
Rob Brown, Tadworth
5.3
•    Elite − When you start Archimedes Elite, it prompts you to enter a
word from the manual, as an anti-piracy precaution. When it says “type
the word exactly as shown” it means the input is case sensitive. You
have to remember to take the Caps Lock off. This falls into the category
of “obvious to most people” but hopefully this hint will save somebody
the frustrating quarter of an hour which I spent trying to get the thing
to work when it first arrived.
5.3
People who are used to the 8 bit version of the game should watch out
for little things which have changed. For example, furs are now illicit
cargo in the same way that narcotics and firearms are. You are told this
in the manual but you have to look for it pretty carefully!
5.3
Neil Hoggarth, Winchester  A
5.3

5.3
Impression Hints & Tips
5.3
•    Position holding − My repeated plea for a way of holding the current
position in a document when you expand and contract the window has been
answered! A box of four Archive mugs is winging its way to Bob Potter of
Bath. He gave me the basic idea which I have amplified slightly.
5.3
Basically, as Bob pointed out, when you expand and contract the window,
Impression returns to the position that was current when the window was
small. (Surely, CC, this isn’t very sensible, is it? You are more likely
to change the current position when working in the full size window. Why
not change it whenever you move about within the document?) Anyway,
given that this is how it works at present, all you have to do to
maintain your position is, as soon as you have shrunk the window, press
<cursor-left> (and then <cursor-right> if you want to) so that the
current position will be displayed and remembered within the small
window. The only slight disadvantage with this is that if the small
window is very small, you will find the cursor near to the top of the
window when you expand it, not near the middle. Thanks, Bob!  A
5.3

5.3
Ace
5.3
From 5.2 page 34
5.3

5.3
Comp Conc
5.3
NEW
5.3

5.3
Comp Conc
5.3
NEW
5.3

5.3
Comment Column
5.3
•    Clip art conversion − Further to Roland Nitsch’s appeal for help on
clip art conversion, Arts & Letters does export to CGM, so he should be
able to convert with !CGM->Draw (Careware 13). However, one person did
send me some Clip Art which they claimed was supplied with A&L in CGM
format which did contain an incorrect header. The file was easy enough
to zap though. (I think it was that the length in the header was out by
1.) One of the problems with CGM is that it does not support Beziers.
One way round this is OS2 Metafiles, which do. I am currently working on
a Draw <-> OS2 Metafile conversion which should be available soonish.
Keith Sloan
5.3
•    DXF converting − Following on from Jim Markland’s comments last month
(page 28) I have looked at !Draw->DXF and there are a few problems...
5.3
    1) DXF does not support filled polygons of greater than four sides, so
filled areas are a bit of a challenge
5.3
    2) Autosketch only supports a subset of DXF and does not recognise
line widths. (Not a problem with AutoCad or others, I guess.)
5.3
    3) DXF supports cubic splines and NOT Beziers (in 2D as far as I can
tell). A cubic spline is NOT exactly the same as a Bezier. There is
mention of Bezier surfaces, but this appears to only apply to 3D.
Anyway, with Autosketch, I have only been able to generate splines in 2D
and also, with limited access to AutoCad, the same. I have coded a test
program that translates a Draw Bezier’s control points to DXF spline
control points but the result produces somewhat bulbous curves. If
somebody could send me a sample DXF file with a true Bezier, I could fix
and enhance the program. Either that or send me a good algorithm for
converting Bezier control points to spline control points.
5.3
(I know some PC magazine articles say that DXF supports Beziers, but I
think they are incorrect, just as they are incorrect about a lot of the
things they say about CGM. There are NOT a lot of different standards −
one standard and one extension − there are just a lot of PC programs
that only implement a subset and have varying interpretations of the
standard.)
5.3
I have an application !DXF-CGM available on request if somebody is
desperate to get from Draw to DXF i.e. Draw −> CGM via !Draw->CGM and
CGM −> DXF via !DXF-CGM.
5.3
    4) A lot of PC and Mac packages will accept Encapsulated Postscript
files, so it should be possible to print to disk with the Postscript
printer driver and then with some knowledgeable editing of the output,
create a file that could be imported. Or wait for the new CC’s
!ArtWorks.
5.3
    5) Has anybody got any free documentation on WMF format − Windows
Metafile Format ?
5.3
Keith Sloan, Cobblestones, Stairfoot Lane, Chipstead, Sevenoaks, Kent
TN13 2RD.
5.3
•    IDE review − The thing that would put me off an IDE drive would be the
20“ cable restriction. I would have thought one internal and one
external disk would be pushing it, let alone the 3 disks Ian Copestake
is talking about. Keith Sloan
5.3
The answer you will get is “It does work. I’ve tried it!” but that’s
what worries me about IDE − it’s not based on defined standards but on
what seems to work. What happens if your particular IDE interface just
happens to have slightly lower current drive than the ones they were
using when they tried it out?
5.3
In the original article that Michael Tubby wrote, he said that the
maximum cable length was 12“ but when I showed the article to Ian
Copestake to see if he thought it was fair, he said that it was actually
20”. Ray Maidstone, on the other hand, reckons that 20“ is pushing it
for the type of electronic driver circuitry that is used in IDE. (See
page 26.)
5.3
•    IDE review − I have just read the article(s) on IDE versus SCSI in
Archive 5.2 p16, and feel I just have to comment.
5.3
I have an IDE drive with an ICS interface and I think that you are being
extremely biased towards SCSI. There are several downright misleading
‘facts’ in the articles that do not do justice to IDE:
5.3
    a) My drive (a Seagate ST1144AT, 130Mb, bought independently from the
interface) does not run at 472k/s in Mode 0 like the one you tested, but
at 750k/s. This is such an enormous difference! As most of the article
keeps on bashing on IDE’s ‘slow speed’, I think this makes the evalua
tion completely worthless. In fact, ‘general’ SCSI drives are usually
around the same speed, up to, say 1Mb/sec (my IDE drive peaks at 1080k/
sec!). Why you mention 4M/sec for SCSI in your ‘Relative merits’ list is
beyond me: no drive on the Archimedes gets any faster than around 1.2M/
sec, so it is completely misleading to mention 4Mb/sec.
5.3
    b) Your speed comparisons compare one IDE drive with eight others on
ARM2 machines! How can you do this in the light of a fair comparison?
This is incredible!
5.3
(Let me give an answer to (a) and (b). Larger drives tend to be faster,
so you really need to compare drives of similar size in order to decide
which is faster. I have no way of measuring peak speed, but the Frog 45M
SCSI drive runs at an average speed of 796 k/sec and the Oak 50M HS
drive runs at 1122 k/sec compared with your 130M at 750k/sec. In March
1990 we reported that Oak had a 512M SCSI drive running at 1.57M/sec and
since then they have got an even faster one but I haven’t got the new
speed. Sorry, but SCSI drives ARE faster than IDE drives.
5.3
Why mention 4 M/sec for SCSI? Because SCSI is not only used for hard
drives but for other devices that might want to go that fast − you could
even have a couple of Archimedes computers back to back communicating at
4M/sec via SCSI − or even a bank of seven Archimedes! Ed)
5.3
    c) You argue that buying a SCSI interface saves money in the long run.
That’s only valid if you buy non-hard disc SCSI equipment in the future.
Even if you do, IDE interfaces are so cheap that you can afford a SCSI
interface later if you really need one. It becomes an even more invalid
point when you realise the prices of the SCSI add-ons that you’re
talking about, or even the differences in prices between hard drives.
This can easily be more than the price of an IDE interface!
5.3
Frankly, I think this is another example of you, I’m sorry to put it
this way, abusing being an editor and a seller. Be fair, what gives you
more profit, a SCSI or an IDE package? But still you have the cheek to
criticise the IDE manufacturers for the same thing! Is Archive a non-
profit organisation?
5.3
(Yes, Archive is a profit making organisation but I can’t tell you
whether we would make more profit on IDE or SCSI as I haven’t done any
comparisons of profit margins. In any case, if profit were our only
motive, we would sell both SCSI and IDE! Ed)
5.3
As an aside, prices for hard-drives in England are astronomically high.
I can easily get a drive for 30% (!) less than quoted English prices
anywhere in Holland or Germany! I wonder why everyone (including you)
recommends buying interface and drive at the same time!
5.3
So, in my opinion:
5.3
    a) I think you should have delayed publishing a speed comparison until
enough data had arrived. (Can IDE users help here by giving us some
speeds? Ed.)
5.3
    b) I think you should re-think and re-publish your reasoning behind
buying SCSI and IDE. There is much more to be said for IDE than brought
forward in the article.
5.3
    c) I think you should stop putting your mouth where your business is,
but rather try to help people reach a decent verdict when choosing
between IDE and SCSI. As most people have or are going to buy hard
drives, it is vital that there are fair comparisons dealing with this
subject.
5.3
John Kortink, Netherlands.
5.3
•    Ovation vs Impression − I have been using Ovation for over a year and
liked it a lot, but when I bought a LaserDirect Hi-Res printer, I found
that graphics (including borders) did not print out properly. There was
apparently a bug in the LaserDirect driver software, which I understand
has now been rectified (I must return my disc to CC for the upgrade).
Therefore, I bought Impression, despite my intense dislike of the
‘dongle’. It is in general excellent, although I do miss a number of
Ovation features.
5.3
In particular, I like the Ovation method of storing a document, as this
includes various preferences (such as viewing scale and rulers on/off
and their units) with the document. The quick <ctrl-key> combinations to
switch these options on and off for the current document are very handy.
I also like the intelligent use of desktop space when a document is
opened (instead of Impression’s silly little window which always has to
be expanded and re-positioned) and its longer menus rather than the
interminable dialogue boxes in Impression, which may have started out
small in version 1 but which are now much too long. It also seems to be
easier to select font styles (e.g. bold and Italic variants) from
Ovation’s menus.
5.3
Ovation’s built-in lines/arrowheads facility is invaluable for me, and I
am slowed down a lot by frequently having to import lines from my Clip
Art library. The border thickness setting is also surprisingly useful,
and I find Impression’s borders much more limiting as a result.
5.3
Even so, Impression scores positively in the areas of multiple views,
printing in pamphlet form and retro-active style changes, although I
understand that the last of these will be included in the next release
of Ovation. Neither of these DTP packages uses the same <ctrl-key>
conventions of a lot of other Archimedes software (such as PipeDream),
and I find it can be confusing switching between the various appli
cations to find that, for example, <ctrl-V> does different things and
produces ‘forced errors’ (to use a tennis term).
5.3
•    Reviews policy − (Colton Software have asked me to publish the
following statement....)
5.3
Dear Sirs and Madams,
5.3
I would like to protest in the strongest possible terms about your
policy of reviewing products from your own company and not reviewing
competing products from other manufacturers.
5.3
I refer to your article Archive Mugs (Archive 5.2 p45). Colton Soft
ware’s PipeDream mugs have been available for much longer than the
Archive equivalent, they are completely Acorn hardware and software
compatible, their use will not void your Acorn warranty and they are
cheaper (£3 each or £5 for 2). What’s more, they are prettier.
5.3
I look forward to seeing an in-depth review, with colour pictures, of
the PipeDream mug in a forthcoming issue of Archive.
5.3
I remain your obedient mug,
5.3
P.E.N. Guin
5.3
Percy Edward Norbet Guin of Colton Software
5.3
P.S. What about our key rings?
5.3
We, at Archive, take this sort of criticism very seriously as our
reputation for editorial integrity and impartiality is extremely
important to us. We have therefore asked Robert Chrismas to do a
comparative review of the two mugs and also to look at the key ring.
(See below − although we could not manage any colour pictures, sorry!)
If other suppliers feel similarly aggrieved, do please send us your mugs
and we will include them in the earliest possible issue. Ed.
5.3
•    PipeDream mugs − Within days of the publication of Archive 5.2, which
included the  controversial review of Archive mugs, a fax arrived at
Beverley Towers. The fax, from Colton Software, complained that it was
not fair to review Archive mugs unless rival mugs were also reviewed. It
was signed by Percy Edward Norbet Guin, who seemed to have got himself
into a flap about the matter.
5.3
Colton have since sent me a mug and a couple of key rings to review.
5.3
These mugs could be compared with Archive’s mugs, but, unlike these fine
mugs, comparisons are odorous. The facts must speak for themselves.
Colton’s mugs are mug shaped and about the size of a mug. They work
perfectly as mugs and look a lot prettier than some mugs. The unmistak
able Pipedream logo covers nearly a quarter of the outside. On the back
is the cryptic slogan ‘PIPEDREAM Breaking down the barriers’ and, below
this, the words, ‘Colton Software’. Percy’s letter hinted at a RISC-OS 3
version of the mug which presumably will not need a !Fonts disk either.
The present mugs are made in England, so you don’t have to boot DOS.
5.3
Colton’s key rings are, I’m sorry to report, the usual tacky wire ring
and blob of plastic arrangement. Inside the plastic blob is the message
‘Pipedream 4 The Works’. I flipped it over hoping to find ‘Colton
Software The Business’ but there was just a numeral four and a kind of
traffic light arrangement which probably means something to penguins.
5.3
I have looked into the mugs and there are no bugs at all; but then there
isn’t a user manual, a keystrip or a threatening letter from FAST
either.
5.3
The mugs cost £3 each or 2 for £5 which is jolly good value and
certainly a lot cheaper than PipeDream. Add 85p for p&p − it comes in an
excellent purpose-built polystyrene packing.
5.3
It is good to find that Colton are diversifying their product range − in
times of recession, it is important not to rely on just one item. Of
course, we wish PipeDream 4 every success, but it is reassuring to know
that if it lays an egg we can still look forward to the Colton egg cup,
the Colton dinner service and the Colton (Capo-De-Monte of the North†)
genuine porcelain sentimental figures.
5.3
Robert Chrismas, Gosport
5.3
†Cambridge? The North? Robert obviously thinks in terms of “Watford and
the North”. Or perhaps he was thinking of the North Pole? Or do penguins
live in the AntARCtic?  A
5.3

5.3
Hardware Column
5.3
Brian Cowan
5.3
The recent Acorn User Show was a much-hyped event. I suppose I must
admit to having been partially responsible myself. There were rumours of
some exciting new products but, as usual, many failed to materialise.
A5000 machines were in remarkably short supply notwithstanding all
Acorn’s publicity. The high density floppy disc drive from Arxe Systems
was shown in prototype, built on an Atomwide Apec card, but no produc
tion models were available. While it is true that I saw the 386SX card,
it was only a bare card with no components on it! However, I am assured
that both these products will be available soon; this is certainly not
another Mach Technology story. I shall also be discussing my experiences
with Cumana. (No, he won’t! I faxed the comments through to Cumana to
give them the right of reply and, following their comments, I thought it
was better to delay before we publish anything! Ed) But first some good
news....
5.3
RAM expansion for the 540
5.3
The A540 comes with 4M of RAM, but with sockets for three extra RAM
cards each containing 4M. So there is the potential to have a maximum of
16M of RAM. The main problem with all this is the price that Acorn are
charging for the RAM cards: something in the region of £500. When you
consider the present price of RAM, this is quite extortionate, even
considering that each card needs its own MEMC chip as well.
5.3
Doing the rounds at the Show I came across a RAM upgrade card for the
540 from DT Software. I was immediately struck by the elegance of its
design. This is a most beautiful small card containing the RAM chips in
neat line together with a MEMC and one other chip. The board is produced
to a very high professional standard − inspiring confidence. DT’s boss,
David Knell suggested I try one out so that I could let Archive readers
know all about it. I took it home, plugged it in my 540 and turned it
on. It worked. There is really not much more to say!
5.3
Over the past few weeks I have had the benefit of an 8M machine and I
have got quite used to it. There have been no problems at all. You
really don’t notice any difference, except that you don’t run out of
memory as I seemed to have been doing. I like to run Impression with a
fairly large font cache because of all the strange fonts required in
scientific documents. So if you want to run the PC emulator, a terminal
emulator for logging onto a mainframe computer, and the odd calculation
in an Edit Task Window, then you could be in trouble. There is certainly
a variant of Parkinson’s law in relation to RAM! But with the RAM
upgrade life has become much sweeter. I understand the board is
perfectly compatible with the Acorn upgrade boards; they can be mixed in
any combination. All in all a super product. The price is £249.95 +VAT
for one-off.  A
5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3
Language Column
5.3
David Wild
5.3
Probably the most important arrival on the scene recently has been the
Acorn Desktop Development Environment, which replaces the old Software
Developers’ Toolbox and the assembler package. While it is probably true
that most programmers don’t want to write large programs in assembler,
this new environment offers something for nearly everyone writing in a
compiled language.
5.3
Although the two assemblers, one producing stand-alone code and the
other giving an output file in ‘aof’ format, are the heart of the
package, there are many other good things in it. Perhaps the most
important is a new version of !Make which will work with any compiler or
assembler producing ‘aof’ files and allow the managed production of
programs incorporating modules, some of which may need recompiling or
re-assembling before they can be linked.
5.3
Although the system, as supplied, seems to assume that you will be
working in ‘C’, instructions are given for extending the system to use
other compilers as necessary. This extension is not very complicated and
doesn’t involve taking away any existing capability.
5.3
A text editor, !SrcEdit, is provided which gives the facility for
suitable compilers to go back to the source file when errors are
detected so that they can be corrected and compilation continued. Only
the new ‘C’ compiler offers this at present but the documentation
suggests that versions of other compilers will do so in future. In
addition to the magic characters offered by !Edit, the new editor offers
the extended editing facilities that were used in Twin. !SrcEdit gets
over the problem with having too many fonts but it is slightly disap
pointing to find that, although you can include different fonts in your
text on the screen, they are not saved with the text and so cannot be
printed. There are several other minor improvements but one which will
be very helpful to programmers working with languages like LISP, is a
bracket matching facility which will find the corresponding bracket at
the other end of the clause, and give an error message if there is no
bracket.
5.3
There is an improved version of !Debug which will work, at least at
machine code level, with any program produced by the linker with the
debug switch set. More recent compilers will allow you to step through
at source statement level and display the source as you go. Pascal
programs can be debugged at source line level but the source isn’t
displayed; we are promised a later release which will rectify this.
5.3
A new version of !FormEd is provided which, while it makes life very
much easier by allowing you to create or edit one window at a time,
doesn’t give any really new facilities.
5.3
In addition to !SrcEdit, !Make, !Debug and !FormEd, which Acorn groups
as the interactive tools there are several non-interactive tools. This
group includes the two assemblers and the linker, together with programs
for analysing ‘aof’ files, a program for maintaining libraries and a
number of programs which can be called text analysis programs. One lists
the words in a file with the number of times each is used, another
compares two files and lists the difference between them and another
gives the number of lines, words and characters in a file.
5.3
While some of the non-interactive tools, such as the assemblers and the
linker are essential for programming, the text analysis ones are a
little more of a luxury. What is exciting about them, though, is that
they are all command-line programs which are managed by a front-end
module which turns them into multi-tasking, RISC-OS programs without the
individual program needing to have all the WIMP management details
written into it. Instructions are given for adding this facility to any
program, such as a file filter, which doesn’t need any input once it has
started running. This front-end allows for the dragging of input files
and the dragging of save boxes for output together with the provision of
a scrollable window for printed output.
5.3
The linker is one such tool and the files that are to be linked can be
dragged into a window and the completed ‘aif’ file can either be dragged
to where it is wanted or the program can use a default destination
written into a definition file. One useful feature is that the file
list, which can include a ‘via’ file, is retained until you move it.
This is extremely useful when you are developing a program which needs
minor alterations − you can go through a cycle of edit, compile and link
with very few key presses other than those needed for the editing.
5.3
One of the few problems with the package is that anyone wanting to use
such non-interactive tools must have the package with the front-end
module and one or two other programs. I wrote to Acorn who have told me
that they are prepared to license the distribution of the necessary
files with “suitable” programs, in the same way as the Shared ‘C’
Library, but this will not allow you to send a program to someone else
unless you can justify the cost of the licence.
5.3
I have suggested to Acorn that one solution to the problem might be to
sell a text pack, comprising the front-end programs, together with those
I have described as text analysers, for a much lower price, possibly £20
as against the £200 for the full package.
5.3
For a keen programmer, the package is money well spent as I am sure that
it will make the work of developing programs very much lighter. I was
slightly disappointed to find the documentation, which is generally very
good, describing ‘C’ as “the language of choice” as I feel that the use
of the ‘aof’ concept takes away any need for such a choice. A completed
!runimage file can include many modules from different languages
depending on the type of problem to be solved and the experience and
skills of the programmer.
5.3
I hope that many libraries will become available and that they will be
judged on their effectiveness rather than their language base. I would
argue that if I produce a module to carry out a particular task, you
should subject it to all reasonable tests to decide on its fitness for
the job but you are not entitled to ask questions about the source
language any more than you are entitled to disassemble commercial
programs.  A
5.3

5.3
IFEL
5.3
From 5.1 page 19
5.3

5.3
Techsoft
5.3
From 5.1 page 16
5.3

5.3
Colton
5.3
New coming direct to you
5.3

5.3
PipeLine
5.3
Gerald Fitton
5.3
I would like to say a bit more this month about PipeDream 4 (hereinafter
called PD4 because it saves a lot of space!) but first a few topics
arising from my correspondence.
5.3
Brackets or minus signs
5.3
Paul Witheridge points out something I never noticed before. Making the
default ‘Brackets’ instead of minus signs causes PipeDream to display
positive numbers with a trailing blank space. In some of my spreadsheets
I have chosen a column width which only allows enough room for the
numbers I expect. I use minus signs as my default. If your ini file has
brackets as the default and if you load my spreadsheet into your
PipeDream then your default (brackets with its trailing space) will be
used and the spreadsheet will show percent signs, %, indicating that
there is not enough space in the column for the number. If this has
happened to you then if you change the <Ctrl+O> option to Minus and the
display will be as I intended it to be.
5.3
Generally, if I use my ini default settings and save a file then, even
if your default settings are different from mine, your defaults will be
used instead of mine. PD3 saves with the file only those settings which
are different from the ini default of the PipeDream which has been used.
5.3
Manual recalculation
5.3
Paul Witheridge also comments that, with one of his larger spreadsheets,
auto recalculation in PD3 ‘wastes’ too much time, gets into a loop or
crashes with a stack overflow. Setting to Manual recalculation solves
all these problems.
5.3
Another obscure ini problem
5.3
Elwyn Morris transferred his !PipeDream directory to another disc with
another name. When he came to try to boot up the second disc he kept
getting a message from the ADFS to insert the original disc. He
discovered that by loading the ini file from the second disc and then
saving it the ADFS messages stopped! His theory is that somewhere within
the ini file he had stored the original disc name. I haven’t investi
gated this phenomenon but it should be possible to load the ini file
into !Edit and have a look.
5.3
Give us back our 11 days!
5.3
Betty Mines knows the answer to why my ‘everlasting’ calendar gives what
seems an unusual September for 1752. My calendar spreadsheet correctly
follows the 2nd of September that year with the 14th. It is with some
regret that I am unable to quote Betty at length but she tells us that
Julius Caesar misjudged the leap year correction by about three days
every 400 years. By the time Pope Gregory had a look at whether Easter
was turning up in the right place (the first Sunday after the first full
moon after the Spring equinox) in 1582 we were about ten days adrift.
The Roman Catholic countries skipped the 10 days following the
4th October 1582 but we waited until 1752 when we were one more day out.
I’m not sure which country was the last to change from the Julian to the
Gregorian calendar but I believe one country waited until 1924!
5.3
On a somewhat seasonal note, Betty says that, before 1752, Christmas
fell nearly two weeks later than it does now, so that then the expecta
tion of a white Christmas was realised more often.
5.3
MultiStore to PipeDream transfer
5.3
Brian Varley saw me at the AU Show and told me about a utility he had
written which will convert files written in MultiStore to PipeDream
format. If you wish to reverse the process he has another program which
will do this. Each program costs £20 and you can buy them from him.
(Contact Brian Varley via Abacus Training)
5.3
AutoSave in PipeDream
5.3
I have had about a dozen letters arising from a Risc User utility which
AutoSaves every few minutes from !Edit and !Draw quite successfully. It
fails with !PipeDream. Why? We don’t know but Barry McElroy from South
Australia has a solution. His solution is to throw away Risc User’s
AutoSave and use the AutoSave utility available on the David Pilling
PipeDream Extras disc. It is unfortunate they have the same name as they
are two completely different programs.
5.3
Running macros
5.3
From several sources, I have been told that an alternative way of
running a macro which is sometimes most useful is to drag it over the
open PipeDream window that you want it to operate on. If you do that
then you won’t execute the macro on the wrong file by mistake.
5.3
The function atn2
5.3
C J Mills explains that mathematicians use a different nomenclature from
the rest of civilization when referring to ‘polar angles’. PD3 works
clockwise from the North Pole (giving the Northing first followed by the
Easting) whereas mathematicians work anticlockwise from the x axis
(giving the x coordinate followed by the y).
5.3
In PD4, atn2 doesn’t exist but atn_2 does. The syntax of atn_2 uses the
mathematician’s convention of Eastings before Northings and gives the
polar angle anticlockwise from the x axis!
5.3
PipeDream 4
5.3
That brings me round to Pd4. Perhaps a measure of my growing familiarity
with, and confidence in, PD4 is that I am writing this month’s PipeLine
article in PD4 rather than in PD3 before exporting it to Impression
(Paul’s preferred format for Archive). As I write, the
9th November 1991, I have version 4.01 which seems to react more
‘smoothly’ than version 4.00 and I definitely pronounce it to be
‘usable’. I have been given a date for version 4.10 which I don’t think
is meant to be a secret but, just in case, let me tell you only that it
is a date well before Christmas! By the time you read this, etc, etc.
With any software having the sophistication of PD4, there are bound to
be residual bugs and so Colton Software would like you to let them (on
me!) know if you find a bug − in any version of PD4.
5.3
New features
5.3
Let’s start with the good things about PD4. These are the features which
I believe will wipe out the opposition and endear you to PD4 long after
you have recovered from the trauma of changing from the PD3 with which
you are so familiar.
5.3
Template files
5.3
Gone is the ini file with all its problems for the likes of me who get
files from you (but without your ini file) and can’t find out why you
have a problem because with my ini file it doesn’t happen. Gone is the
saving of blank letterhead, invoice and even blank label files. With
PD4, I can save a template containing text, drawings (e.g. a logo), the
appropriate printer driver and the file is saved with the cursor at the
right place for me to start typing, running a macro or loading a block
from another document. The template is saved with the <Ctrl+FI> command
which, in PD3, was used to save the ini file. When you use the New
document command from the icon bar, you can step through all your
templates until you find the one you want to load for the job in hand.
5.3
Mouse control
5.3
This is improved and I have yet to learn all the tricks but here are
some that I have found useful.
5.3
To change the width of a column (e.g. to widen column A) you drag the
edge of the column (the line between the A and B at the top of the
sheet) with the mouse. You can also drag the wrap width with the mouse
one column at a time or you can ‘link’ together a range of columns so
that they all have the same right margin. Better still, for many
tabulated documents, is the auto width option which automatically widens
a column if you need a little extra space.
5.3
You can drag the mouse over a range of cells to mark the block or you
can use the mouse adjust button to mark the second point of a marked
block (rather like Impression).
5.3
There is a click box at the top left of the PD4 window which replaces
<Ctrl+Q> or it will mark the whole sheet.
5.3
Arrays
5.3
Arrays are an interesting new feature which I have used and like. An
array can be a range of slots (as in Schema) or (unlike Schema) it can
be a hidden spreadsheet of many cells located within one slot. The
advantage of arrays is that all the cells within the array can be
processed by a single instruction. This leads to simple operations such
as adding together a couple of numeric arrays or more sophisticated
processing such as the idea I have outlined in the paragraph below
called ‘Thesaurus’ (guess what that might do).
5.3
Arrays can contain mixtures of numbers and text and can be operated on
by your custom functions (see below).
5.3
Variable names
5.3
As in the Basic language, you can now give meaningful names to vari
ables. You can give a name to a fixed value or to a slot or to an array
and the values you want can be in a dependent document and (of course)
they can be variable. It seems to me that PD4 works more quickly with
names than with cell references so this is a feature I am going to
exploit.
5.3
Custom functions
5.3
You can write your own functions. In practice, you write a custom
function in a separate spreadsheet which PD4 then calls into memory as a
dependent document. These custom functions can process a mixture of
numbers and text and the language includes ‘flow control’ commands such
as Repeat − Until. Unlike the blanket iteration of PD3, in PD4 you can
use a custom function to target your iteration. Custom functions will
accept arrays of mixed numbers and text as the input parameters and will
output either single values or an array of mixed numbers and text.
5.3
Thesaurus
5.3
No! There is no thesaurus in PD4 but I can see how, in principle at
least, a custom function could be written which inputs one word and
outputs an array of synonyms. If someone likes the idea and is willing
to think this through up to the point of writing a specification of the
Thesaurus function then maybe we can all add our few favourite synonyms
to it as we can, at the moment, exchange user dictionaries. What is
important is that we all agree on the syntax of the Thesaurus function
before we start!
5.3
Charts
5.3
The charts which were (I quote Colton Software) ‘fragile’ in version
4.00 are much more ‘stable’ in version 4.01. It is an understatement to
call them ‘stunning’. Furthermore, they are ‘hot linked’, work in the
background and they are fast.
5.3
WYSIWYG
5.3
In PD4, when you change the line spacing, the screen display will change
to show the new line spacing. Tall fonts appear to be tall and not
squashed from above.
5.3
Converting from PD3
5.3
This is the nasty bit about PD4. It is not what you might call com
pletely ‘downward compatible’. Not every file created in PD3 will run in
PD4. Perhaps more difficult will be getting to know and use the new,
better ways of doing things, not least the improved user interface.
5.3
What’s missing?
5.3
Facilities which are in PD3 but have been removed from PD4 include
Iteration and Linking files. Multi file documents are retained in PD4
but are not documented nor are they fully supported. Some of the control
commands have been changed to make them more logical but the old command
has been retained but not documented. For example <Ctrl+BNT> is now the
documented command for changing number slots to text slots (and text to
numbers); previously, in PD3, this was <Ctrl+ENT>. You will find that
<Ctrl+ENT> has been retained but not documented.
5.3
Column and Row recalculation are no longer available. However, I find
that the ‘natural’ choice which has replaced Row or Column works much
more smoothly than in PD3 and the stack overflow problem of PD3 just
doesn’t happen any more. Background calculation is less obtrusive, so I
am much happier to use auto than I was with PD3.
5.3
What’s been changed?
5.3
There are two major changes in the syntax of the database functions
which seriously affect running PD3 files in PD4.
5.3
The condition is no longer a string and the single quotes must be
removed. The conditional sum dsum(A1A100,‘A1>0’) doesn’t work. The
condition must be expressed as a range; the above formula becomes
dsum(A1A100,A1A100>0). The # used to ‘fix’ a condition is no longer
required. The function dsum(A1A100,‘A1> B#1’) is no longer valid; you
must use dsum(A1A100,A1A100>B1).
5.3
Strings can be entered only with double inverted commas.
5.3
The hyphen can be mistaken for a minus sign. For example, Start-Finish
is a valid way of abbreviating the text phrase “start to finish” in PD3
but, in PD4, in a slot on its own, it could be the difference between
two variables (names) called Start and Finish.
5.3
The function index(col,row) has a new syntax which includes an extra
argument, the array over which the index is to be evaluated. The
arguments col and row are now offsets from the top left corner of the
array.
5.3
What is Abacus Training going to do?
5.3
One approach we could have taken (but rejected) is what I might call the
HCF approach (highest common factor − instructions which work in both
PD3 and PD4). However, the PD4 user interface is so much smoother to use
that, if we had done this, we would not be showing you how to get the
best out of PD4 nor would we satisfy PD3 users.
5.3
So far as the PipeLine discs are concerned, we have decided to rename
the PipeLine series which contain applications which run best in PD3 as
PipeLine 3 and create a new series of discs called PipeLine 4 with
tutorials, advice and applications which run in PD4. If you decide to
upgrade from PD3 to PD4 then you can convert your PipeLine 3 subscrip
tion to a subscription to PipeLine 4 at any time. What you will not be
able to do is to exchange your old PipeLine 3 discs for new PipeLine 4
discs for free.
5.3
4Sight and the PD4 Demo disc
5.3
I read and noted with interest David Holden’s remarks about Crippleware
in Archive last month. He asks “Would you . . . pay to watch a TV
advert?” Let me answer a question with a question. Would you be prepared
to pay to read a review of some software you might want to buy? Now to a
harder question. Would you be prepared to pay (a relatively small
amount) to try out some software you’re interested in before you pay a
lot more to buy it and risk finding out too late that (in spite of the
glowing review) it doesn’t do what you want? My own view is that
Crippleware does serve a useful purpose. A few months ago, I bought some
Crippleware (which shall remain nameless) and I was glad that I did
because then I didn’t waste money by buying the real thing.
5.3
Anyway, if you are tempted by PD4, you must make up your own mind
whether to take a chance on upgrading to PD4 from the glowing reviews
(or this column) or whether you should buy some Crippleware which might
help you decide (either way) with more certainty. What we (Abacus
Training) are offering is a pair of discs for £5.00. One is Colton
Software’s PD4 demonstration disc which has the Save and Print functions
and, I think, the SpellChecker disabled; undoubtedly this falls within
the definition of Crippleware. The second is our 4Sight disc which
contains tutorials and worked examples which are designed to help you
appreciate the new features (arrays, templates, variable names, custom
functions, smoother user interface, etc) of PD4 as well as sections
(with macros where appropriate) which we believe will help you convert
your favourite documents from PD3 to PD4.
5.3
As I write, 4Sight is not complete and the PD4 demo disc will not be
available until version 4.10 is released. However, this should be before
Christmas and, by the time you read this, the package should be
available so, if you are interested, let us know.
5.3
The PipeLine column
5.3
What I shall try to do here is to distinguish between PD3 and PD4
applications. So please, when you write to me, let me know whether what
you have sent in is suitable for PD3 or PD4 (or both). I don’t know what
proportion of you will upgrade from PD3 to 4 or to what extent those of
you happy to stick with PD3 will still need the support of this column,
but I will have to be guided by the correspondence I receive in
proportioning out the pages Paul is prepared to place at my disposal.
5.3
If you have just bought PD4 and would like to share your views on
whether or not it was worthwhile upgrading or if you have any advice,
comment or criticism (but not PD4 bugs yet!) then please write to me at
the Abacus Training address on the inside back cover of Archive.  A
5.3

5.3
The Engineer Speaks
5.3
Ray Maidstone
5.3
•    Hard drive mounts − Several customers have had cause to ship their
Archimedi to me for repair, and a hardware problem has come to light.
Some of you have purchased hard drives that have been mounted on thin
aluminium brackets. These rather flimsy brackets easily distort under
small amounts of G stress and, unfortunately, a few harddrives have gone
to the great hard disc graveyard in the sky. Aluminium was used by the
Airforce because of its tensile properties, and should (due to this very
fact) not be used to anchor a hard drive. These small brackets deform
under stress and leave the drive “flapping” about.
5.3
Another comment about brackets − a lot of them are fine for their
supporting properties but not very good when it comes to air circula
tion. This can be improved by either punching some 3/8“ holes in the
sides, or by buying a pair of Paul’s new nifty side brackets at £4 a
pair. We have had a few instances of over-heating causing premature
decease of drives, particularly with back planes full of podules and a
partly blocked filter. It is possible that, by reducing the bracket
size, this could have been avoided.
5.3
•    *Shut and *bye − The last word! I have not, at any time in my
comments, stated that the suggestions I have made are law, I have merely
offered the result of my findings to those who hadn’t a clue of what was
going on. There are a few small, old drives that need both, but most
only need one command to park. The removables, however, most certainly
do not park, and only the operating lever finally parks the heads. These
findings came about from observations of partially dismantled units
operating under standard command use.
5.3
•    LBP4 laser printers − I have been asked about switch on/off procedures
for these, and I reckon that, to minimise “spikes”, the order should
be... when switching on, either do so all together or the printer last,
and turning off, either do it all altogether or switch off the printer
first.
5.3
•    Cooling − Following the success of quietening the fans on Archimedes,
external hard drives have now been added to the list, and no heat
problems have arisen (mainly because of 14 months of actual proving
before releasing). Whilst assessing the quietening for these drives, it
was surprising to find just how mechanically noisy some makes of fan
were, as nearly 50% of the noise from the unit was being conducted
through the chassis assembly.
5.3
I have also been asked “If I don’t like Acorn’s cooling method, what
would I like instead?” My reply is that, in my opinion, the current fan
with or without a quietener (that never lets the fan speed drop below
75%) is not quite enough in the real world. Particularly if the filter
is on the inside, hardly anyone appears to pay much attention to keeping
the filter clean. Therefore, I have found a rather nice miniature fan
(currently being used by Morley in their external hard drives) that,
when introduced into the opposite side of the case to the present
arrangement, and being set to push air out of the case as the other
sucks it in, really gets some cooling done.
5.3
A cautionary note about airflow is not to stand external floppy and hard
drive units too close to the sides of the Archimedes, or soft surfaces
under the A3000, as “what goes in must come out” and I have seen several
instances of hot machines being caused by the proximity of external
surfaces. The A3000 has a power supply that runs quite hot and, being
encased in fireproof cardboard, (on the earlier machines, anyway) made
things even more heated. I am using the miniature fan, aimed at the end
of the P.S.U., to assist temperature differences in this rather enclosed
environment. If anyone is interested in more details, let me know. This
small fan gives off very little sound and certainly improves longevity.
The lack of space inside the A3000 generally adds to the poor cooling in
the P.S.U. and any air movement is better than none.
5.3
I made the comment above about fan quieteners not slowing the fan more
than 75% because, in the course of my development, I also tried systems
that reduced the fan speed to 40%, and also did one trial where I
stopped it all together for the first quarter hour, as no heat would
build up until after this. The fan would then thermostatically cut in
and then run in a varied way subject to temperature requirements. These
were all dropped due to the fact that, as the Archimedes box is not at
all aerodynamic, once the temperature began to build up, certain items
within it started to experience particularly large temperature rises
i.e. hard drive, P.S.U. and floppy drive. The final unit chosen simply
took the fan below the noise of air flare speed and, together with the
chassis decoupling grommets, removed so much noise that only the sound
of the hard drive rang in the ears. I would caution people against using
controllers that slow the fan excessively.
5.3
•    IDE cabling − I notice that IDE drive cables have been quoted as long
as 20“. I have it on very good authority that in some cases, even 12” is
pushing it. This is because IDE signals tend to be far more easily
corrupted than those on SCSI lines. So please be warned and keep them as
short as possible.  A
5.3

5.3
Help!!!!
5.3
•    Bridge program − Does anyone know of a bridge program for the
Archimedes? Either commercial or PD? Kevin Moore, Hove.
5.3
•    DTP editor − When Ian Lynch stepped down as DTP Columnist in December
1990, someone else offered to take over. Unfortunately, he seems to have
been too busy and hasn’t managed to produce anything. The lack of DTP
articles and ideas is a major omission in Archive. Is there anyone out
there who could to take over? If so, please get in touch with us as soon
as possible. Thanks.
5.3
•    Elite? − The Archimedes Elite manual states that rank is no longer
simply determined by number of kills achieved. Has anyone figured out
what criteria are used? I’ve been playing for weeks, I’ve got all the
gear (including a military laser) and I’m still rated “Mostly Harmless”.
Contact Neil Hoggarth, 18 Stanmore Lane, Winchester SO22 4AJ.
5.3
• Interference with dongles – Could anyone suggest a way of restoring
the screening on the printer cable on an Archimedes. I have a WorraCAD
and an Impression dongle with a dongle dangle to get the dongles down
below the desk. Can anybody tell me if there is any self adhesive
screening tape or other cure available?
5.3
J.R.McLachlan, Hertford
5.3
(WorraCAD is now supplied without a dongle, you may be interested to
know. Ed.)
5.3
•    Investment software − Does anyone know of any investment software for
the Archimedes? Either commercial or PD? (NOT Silicon Vision’s Share
Holder!!!) M Lowe, Loughton.
5.3
•    PC Emulator compatibility list − Some long while ago, John Eden did an
excellent job compiling a list of those programs that worked on the
(old) PC Emulator. With the advent of the new PC Emulator, it would be
good to create such a list again. Would anyone be prepared to be the
coordinator? In the meantime, if you would like to send your reports in
to us at N.C.S., just tell us which version numbers of which bits of MS-
DOS software work correctly and we will pass it all on to whoever wants
to volunteer to co-ordinate it.
5.3
•    Schema features − If you are using Schema and have ideas of features
that it should have or that it should not (i.e. bugs) please pass them
on to Mr J R Buckley, Bramley, Goring Road, Steyning, W Sussex BN4 3GF
who is collating such things for Clares ready for Schema 2.
5.3
•    User group − Is there one in the South Shropshire / Worcester /
Hereford / West Midlands area? If so, please contact Nigel Price on
0584−810484.
5.3
•    WorraCAD − If anyone could give help to a beginner trying to use
WorraCAD, please contact Nigel Price in Worcestershire on 0584−810484.
5.3
Help Offered
5.3
•    Scanned photos − If anyone wants colour or mono photographs scanned,
Peter Hughes is offering to do 10 photos, mono or colour for £5, all of
which will go to charity. Contact him c/o Promotional Designs Serving
Commerce and Charities (PDSCC for short!), P.O.Box 332, Bristol BS99
7XL.  A
5.3

5.3
Teletext Adaptor Software
5.3
Patrick Bean
5.3
Within days of my review of the Morley Teletext Adaptor being published,
in Archive (5.2 page 30), I received (via Paul), a copy of a multitask
ing display program for the adaptor, called !Teletext. This software was
originally sold by “Ivoryash Limited”, but is now marketed by some
people called “The Really Good Software Company”. In my review of the
adaptor itself, I did comment on some shortcomings in the original
program, in particular the lack of multitasking. Happily, almost all of
these problems are fixed in this new package, giving a totally “point
and click” system, running under the RISC-OS desktop.
5.3
The display
5.3
The main teletext window is resizeable and displays the mode 7 screen to
a good standard. The emulation does not however include double height or
flashing. Some colours look a little odd, as the standard desktop
colours are used. These of course can be changed from the palette in the
normal way. The output can also be changed to mono, useful for printing.
The character size does not change when the window is resized, only the
amount of the page that you can actually see at any one time. This is a
shame (at least for partially sighted people like myself) as the desktop
display is of course much smaller than the full screen mode 7 on the old
system. However, if this is a problem, one of the many PD screen
magnification applications should help. Graphics are shown by redefining
the system font. This means that international characters above ASCII
160 will not display correctly once !Teletext has been run.
5.3
In use
5.3
On running the software an icon appears on the icon bar. Clicking
<select> over this icon brings up two windows, one for the main display,
the other (called the remote) containing “buttons” for all the usual
operations such as “hold”, “reveal”, four channel presets and, of
course, the ten numbers.
5.3
A very useful option for recalling (from memory!) any one of the last
ten viewed pages, has also been included.
5.3
The point and click interface goes even further, however. Moving the
pointer onto the page display window and clicking on any three digit
page number will enter that page number as if from the “remote”. This
approach also works with the four “fastText” titles that can usually be
seen at the bottom of each page (just click on the one you want).
5.3
Pressing <menu> over the application icon (on the icon bar) brings up a
menu containing not only the normal info and quit, but also some handy
options for setting the computer’s real time clock to the teletext time
and for redisplaying the remote, if you have accidentally closed it. The
channel data file can be copied from the old disk, so you won’t have to
go through all that tuning again! If however you do need to make changes
this too is done using the mouse and this is considerably easier to do
as you just flick from channel to channel instead of adjusting the
actual frequency.
5.3
The program multi-tasks correctly but there is a significant delay each
time a page is transferred from the adaptor. We are told that this
slowness is because of the method used to connect the adaptor to the
computer. The ten page memory already mentioned helps in this respect as
the page asked for may already be in the computer’s memory and so will
not need to be transferred again.
5.3
Saving data
5.3
Pages can be saved to disc either in full colour or as a text file. The
colour files can be reloaded in to the system at any time (even when the
adaptor is not connected). The text files can of course be loaded into
!Edit. If you have a colour printer !Paint can be used to grab the
current screen as a sprite, for later printing.
5.3
Overall
5.3
This package is a vast improvement over the Morley software, and well
worth the asking price. The lack of double height is a pity, but this
omission is probably because of the limited number of characters
available for redefinition. The other comments (in my first review)
about the difficulties of writing inter-active software still hold true,
but this is not the problem addressed by this package. If you use your
teletext system regularly then it is well worthwhile upgrading. The
multitasking teletext software costs £29.95 from “The Really Good
Software Company”.  A
5.3

5.3
ProTips
5.3
Peter Jennings
5.3
This is mainly a brief progress report on the latest version of Protext.
Arnor have now issued a new upgrade, which is version 5.09. This is not
yet the RISC-OS compliant one, which has now been put back to “early
next year”, but has some useful improvements.
5.3
The biggest improvement I have found is that this version seems to have
cured the “PROTEXT!X not found” problem when saving, although there is
no mention of this in the new ReadMe file. This just has the additional
note that: “This version contains an extra enhancement that will cause
the config, fsort and convert programs to be found even when they are
not visible either on the search path or in the current directory. If an
external program cannot be found, Protext will now also look in its own
directory for it.”
5.3
As all my Protext files are on hard disc within the !Protext directory,
I can now sort without having to exit the program first.
5.3
The upgrade seems to have solved some problems with loading and starting
up Protext which I have heard about, in one case after the initial copy
of the new version was found to be faulty and was replaced.
5.3
Backup files
5.3
Apart from the advantages which will come from a RISC-OS compatible
Protext, one improvement I would still like to see (and I have suggested
it to Arnor) is to change the prefix given to back-up copies from “B!”
to either “B.” or, better still, “Backup.” so that they are saved into a
separate directory. Protext creates new directories automatically when
they do not already exist, so there would be no additional action needed
by the user. As well as leaving more room in the main directory, this
would avoid the truncation, and possible duplication, of file names
which are already nine or ten characters long, as most of mine are.
5.3
Other people’s methods are often of interest, sometimes to copy or
improve. Mine is to file letters in a directory named with the last two
digits of the year, such as “92”. Each file name is made up from the
first six letters of the intended recipient’s name followed by the
numbers of the month and the day. So a letter to Paul Beverley written
on January the 25th would be named “Beverl0125”. If I also corresponded
with a John Beverley the file names would be modified to “BeverP0125”
and “BeverJ0125”. This keeps each year’s correspondence in alphabetical
and then chronological order. When the directory is filled, I rename it
by adding an “A”, to make it “92A” and open a new 92 for the rest of the
year or until this is also filled, when it becomes “92B”. This keeps the
same number for the current directory throughout the year and saves
having to remember whether a new one has been opened.
5.3
Marginal problems
5.3
I have received a query from a reader who has been having problems with
the left-hand margin in Protext documents. He keeps getting lines
indented by one character. This can be caused by a wrongly set up ruler.
The left-hand margin is set by Protext at the “L” on the default ruler.
When you set a new ruler, either with <ctrl-R> or by typing it in, the
new ruler should begin with a “>” only. If you have “>L” at the start,
you will see that the default ruler at the top of the page has moved
right one character to line up the “L” with the one on the new ruler,
thus setting the left margin one character to the right. This will take
effect from any lines typed below the new ruler.
5.3
Version 5.09 of Protext seems to have removed the bugs that bothered me
in earlier versions. If you still know of any problems, I would be
interested to hear about them, with or without a work-around, by way of
a letter to Archive. I would also be interested in any useful tips which
may be worth passing on to other users.  A
5.3

5.3
First Impression
5.3
New
5.3
Coming direct to you
5.3

5.3
Waterloo
5.3
Tord Eriksson
5.3
Numerous war games have been devoted to the epic battle of Waterloo, but
this is the first for the Archimedes. It is a conversion from another
computer, but the manual doesn’t say which. I presume it was a Spectrum,
as you will see....
5.3
The Waterloo game
5.3
What first impresses the buyer of ‘Waterloo’, by Dr Peter Turcan of
Turcan Research Systems, is the quality of the box, manual and map. It’s
the best I’ve seen; good layout, high quality paper and no big and
clumsy plastic boxes.
5.3
The manual covers everything you would want to know about the game − the
political prolog to the battle, the uniforms used by the different
troops, the names of the major officers involved and, not least, a very
good bibliography! A historian would be impressed!
5.3
There is very little to grumble about except the fact that the perspec
tive view over the battle field is not very realistic, (even if the
manual prides itself that it is much more realistic than other war
games) as I don’t think aerostats were used for battle reconnaissance
nor was the line of sight many miles. The visibility is outstanding and
with the help of the ‘telescope’ you can easily identify friend or foe
(pointing with the mouse outside the battle area is the easiest way of
using the ‘telescope’ close up − this is not mentioned in the manual).
5.3
The telescope gives you verbal information (amazingly enough!) and is
not too good at giving correct distances − everything is either ½ mile
away or 1 mile away. Otherwise it’s very handy in avoiding shelling your
own troops.
5.3
When shooting with black powder, as was the norm at the beginning of
19th century, the main practical difference from today’s wars, with so-
called smokeless powder, is the fact that black powder produces so much
smoke that visibility is a great problem! If you haven’t got fog before
the start, as Gustavus Adolfus had at Lütsen, you soon have man-made
fog! This is a fact of life that the game dispenses with by ignoring it.
5.3
Graphics of yesterday
5.3
The landscape, presented in 3D perspective, is 100% flat even if the
printed map tells another story. (I would have preferred a Lander-type
landscape.) The graphics are, on the whole, primitive: Horses are drawn
1 or 2 pixel wide, or if they are amassed, stacked cubes. (Low cubes =
infantry, double height cubes = cavalry). Trees are drawn in the same
way but the houses are fairly convincing, as are pennants and flags,
being 2D by default.
5.3
I think the game would have been easier to get used to with a bird’s eye
view instead, like standard war games. To avoid the gamester being all-
knowing, only a small part of the map could be visible at a time − just
as you ‘look east’ or ‘look west’.
5.3
It took quite some time to get used to giving orders in the way that the
parser likes. Still, due to the very friendly way it worked, you can
learn quickly, as the parser works like a Spectrum’s editor: The cursor
flashes at the offending word.
5.3
The fact that some names on the map are different from the names used
within the program is very bad: Rosomme, near Napoleon’s HQ on the map,
is Rossome from the game’s point of view!
5.3
Wellington’s rout
5.3
Another odd feature is when Wellington goes into a rout, which he does
quite often. The program says that you, as Wellington, are disorganised
and can’t give orders or receive reports. Then you run off the game area
and even if you stop in the middle of your own army on the way, you
can’t tell them a single thing.
5.3
At the same time, you can stand perfectly alone in your own square mile
without being disorganised?!
5.3
Each time Wellington has run off in his boots he has won the battle,
some way or other....
5.3
Game-playing
5.3
The rest is a delight: You can give some very complex commands like:
‘Reille, at 12.30 p.m. form a defence line from Hougoumont, linking with
Kellerman to Plancenoit linking with Lobau.’, or ‘Kellerman give support
to Drouot’, or ‘All corps, transfer 10 divisions of artillery to Orange’
or ‘All corps, shell enemy 1 ½ mile southeast Chantelet.’.
5.3
You read all messages passed to and from the different commanders (if
you set up the game that way!), you watch the guns shell the enemy etc.
5.3
Conclusion
5.3
If it weren’t for the rather primitive graphics, that remind me of my
Spectrum, I would recommend this, without hesitation, for anyone
interested in war games. You will certainly be busy giving orders,
making battle damage assessments and trying to keep away from your
enemy’s shelling.
5.3
The parser, also a dear echo of my Spectrum days, the manual and the
game itself were absolutely perfect (even if my computer crashed once −
the first commercial program to do so, not counting DTP programs).
5.3
After having played the game numerous times, both as Wellington and
Napoleon, the end of the battle is almost always the same: Wellington
wins! Sometimes he manages very well without the Prussian army, but
mostly 50% or more of the casualties on the French side are inflicted by
the army under Blücher (who was Swedish, I gather! Ed.). Without the men
in black, or light blue, history might have evolved quite differently...
5.3
Maybe, some time in the future, Dr Turcan will add Lander-like graphics
and more life-like soldiers and horses.
5.3
Then it would only be anti-war sentiment that would keep it from
stardom!  A
5.3

5.3
6502 Assembly on the Archimedes
5.3
Paul Skirrow
5.3
Until recently, I have been using System ADE+ 65C02 macro assembler on a
BBC Master Turbo for developing some very large 6502 programs (around
2.5MB of source code in total). When my BBC hard disk failed, I decided
it was time to move over to the Archimedes and develop the 6502 source
code there. I investigated the Cross 32 Meta assembler, but soon
dismissed it because it lacked many of the features which I used
extensively in the old 8 bit assembler. In particular it does not
provide any form of looping structures to allow a section to be
assembled several times (very useful where speed is important and you
want something to run as fast as possible by repeating 3 instructions a
large number of times). Neither does it allow string handling, whereas
ADE+ provides the equivalent of MID$ − invaluable for parameter
processing within macros.
5.3
Unfortunately the ADE+ assembler won’t work, as it stands, with any of
the 6502 emulators, because it is a two ROM system with the assembler in
one 16k ROM, and the linker and memory management unit (MMU) in another.
The linker will run on its own, so there is no problem, but the
assembler needs all of its variables set up by the MMU before it can
assemble anything. Fortunately, these variables are documented in the
ADE+ technical reference guide, and I eventually managed to coax the
assembler into assembling my source code by setting up its memory just
like the MMU would before it is run.
5.3
The end result is superb. The ADE+ assembler running under the 65tube
emulator is actually significantly faster than on a BBC Master Turbo
which had a 4MHz 6502 processor (this is largely due to the much faster
hard disks of the Archimedes). On the new A5000 it can assemble 600k of
source code in around a minute (or about 300 lines per second), and this
is still running under the 6502 emulator. This is the same order of
magnitude as the Cross 32 Meta assembler, which is rather surprising
when you consider ADE+ was written to work on a BBC model B computer
about 6 years ago (although to be fair, the meta assembler can cope with
a wide range of processors and this is bound to slow it down).
5.3
If anybody is interested in running the ADE+ 65C02 assembler on the
Archimedes I would be happy to supply my program and documentation to
make it run, and if there is enough demand I will cover the process in
more detail.  A
5.3

5.3

5.3
A5000 and RISC-OS 3 − More Comments
5.3
Paul Skirrow
5.3
After reading the Archive preview of the A5000, we turned up at the
Acorn User show within an hour of it opening on the first day, and
despite having a large cheque ready in our sweaty hands, we were still
too late to take a machine away with us. We (a small electronics firm
designing and building computer controlled audio test equipment) ordered
three at the show and Acorn did eventually manage to get them to us
within a week, although we did have to argue with them a bit, and I
understand that many people have had to wait quite a while.
5.3
The A5000 Learning Curve package comes with around 20 discs, 20 manuals
of various sizes and a plethora of update sheets, release notes and
addenda − quite overwhelming even for the hardened Archimedes user but
well worth the extra £38 over the cost of an A5000, although I doubt
that many will want to use First Word Plus or Acorn DTP when they see
the alternatives. Both have major shortcomings, for example, First Word
Plus cannot use the Acorn printer drivers and hence misses out on most
of the benefits that RISC-OS brings, while Acorn DTP can only show the
document at a few sizes (50%, 100%, 200%) which is very limiting (I
often use 130% to make an A4 document fill a mode 78 screen width). The
list goes on and on. I would recommend one of the many serious DTP
packages, such as Impression, or Ovation − they are vastly superior for
both word processing and DTP.
5.3
The machine itself is a joy to use. It feels extremely fast and smooth,
and it took me quite a while to find anything which would slow it down
at all. In particular, text rotation in Draw is superb, while Chocks
Away in ARM3 mode is simply awesome. The following describes some of the
new features and the way in which they are implemented.
5.3
Resources filing system
5.3
This is effectively a ROM filing system which holds Draw, Edit, Paint,
Configure, Chars, Calc, Help and Alarm, as well as the basic font set
(Trinity, Homerton and Corpus) and a massive directory containing all of
the sprites and text messages used by the system (this makes it easy for
Acorn to produce foreign language versions, and I think Acorn are
working on an Italian version which Olivetti will sell). These resources
can also be used by other programs running on the machine to save
duplicating them. An icon for the resources appears on the icon bar next
to the disc drive icons, so it is always accessible. The user can choose
which of the built-in applications should install themselves on the icon
bar when the machine starts up, and any which are not installed can then
be loaded later by opening the resources filing system and double
clicking on an application to run it. Note that not everybody will want
to have them all running automatically, because they all claim workspace
memory even though they actually live in ROM. Draw, Paint, Edit and
Alarm use 80k, 80k, 48k and 48k respectively (compared with 288k, 256k,
224k and 64k in RISC-OS 2).
5.3
Draw
5.3
Draw, like any application on the A5000, is very smooth and fast. Text
and sprite rotation are simple and virtually instantaneous (vertical
text is ideal for labelling diagrams and is long overdue) and text can
be edited so you no longer need to delete and re-type. There are a lot
of keyboard short-cuts and start up options which can be saved, as for
any other application, in a !BOOT file created by the Task Manager.
Colour rendition has been improved, by dithering, to extend the
effective colour range. The thin-line selection bug has been fixed and
the grid drawing has also been speeded up significantly. There is also
an undo option in case you delete something by mistake.
5.3
There is a new option, similar to that provided in Draw Plus, which
converts an object to a path outline − this is very useful with text
objects which, once transformed, can be manipulated as graphics objects.
It certainly makes FontDraw redundant, although it does not provide the
flexibility of FontFX.
5.3
A major new feature is the ability to interpolate between two objects
(which must contain the same number of points). You specify how many
steps to use and Draw draws the specified number of intermediate objects
and interpolates the colours. This is very nice for creating shading
backgrounds, fading from any colour to any other at any angle, as shown
below:
5.3
This feature can also have some uses in blending shapes together − you
could transform a car into a robot, if you wanted, provided the two
objects had the same arrangement of lines. Draw actually creates new
objects in the Drawfile which then behave like any other discrete object
(although they are grouped with the two original objects). This means
that the new grouped object can be stretched and rotated, but you cannot
change the angle of one of the original objects and expect the interpo
lated objects to change accordingly. Computer Concept’s forthcoming
ArtWorks package wins here because it doesn’t create new objects, but
does the interpolation during the rendering phase. Thus the initial
objects can be changed and the interpolation will still work correctly.
5.3
As far as I can tell, the Draw file format is identical to that used in
RISC-OS 2, with the addition of rotated text and sprite objects. Old
applications are certainly quite happy to load the new Draw files and
there does not appear to be any compatibility problem at all, although
they obviously cannot use rotated text or sprites.
5.3
Paint
5.3
Paint is also very fast, especially at sprite rotation but, unlike Draw,
it modifies the original sprite, as expected (so rotating by +30° and
then by −30° does not restore the original, whereas Draw and Impression
always keep the original untouched). Again, there are plenty of key
short cuts and configuration settings to determine how you want Paint to
start up.
5.3
Shear and scale are also provided and it is possible to replace a colour
with transparent, or transparent with a colour, but only globally.
5.3
Unfortunately, Paint can still only use the system font and knows
nothing of outline fonts. The palette is still awkward to change and
there is no provision for simple contrast or colour adjustment as found
in many scanner packages. These are glaring omissions and I am sure that
they will be included in Artworks. I have also managed to crash Paint a
few times, usually when doing a sprite rotation, although it is not
repeatable.
5.3
Paint file format
5.3
The sprite file format is unchanged, which is useful while transferring
files between RISC-OS 2 and RISC-OS 3 machines. Unfortunately, this
means that there is no 24 bit colour support, and no resolution
information stored within the sprite file, although I understand that
Acorn are working with key developers to produce a new format which
supports both. 24 bit colour is essential for serious colour type
setting, although is not too relevant for the majority of users. Storing
the image resolution within a sprite file simplifies image manipulation
because it allows scanned images to be dropped into DTP systems and
printed at the original size without any problem. Some scanner software
overcomes this by producing Draw files which contain the resolution
information in addition to the sprite image, but this is clumsy.
5.3
Meanwhile, Impression users with scanners should know that a 30% scaling
of a mode 12 sprite will print using a one to one correspondence between
sprite and printer pixels on a 300 dpi printer. (This is because a mode
12 sprite has pixels which are 2 OS units wide, and 1 OS unit is 1/180“,
so a mode 12 pixel is 1/90” or at 30%, 1/300“). Printing mono scanned
images will therefore give better results if a scaling of 30%, 60%,
90%... is used with the “Enhanced graphics option” turned off. Now you
understand why sprites should have size information stored with them to
make things simple...
5.3
Edit
5.3
Edit has a few changes − in particular it supports two levels of
wildcards (magic characters for novices and full wildcard expressions
for the experts). It can also load and save Basic programs directly
(with or without line numbers) so Acorn no longer include the Basic
editor with this machine. At first, I was a bit unsure about this, but
you quickly learn to appreciate the benefits of editing a Basic program
without line numbers, especially when you can do it from the desktop.
For those that really want it, the old Basic editor module (ARMBE) works
without problems.
5.3
Unfortunately, there is still no support for TAB characters, i.e.
actually doing a TAB operation when a TAB character is encountered −
instead it appears as [09]. Expanding TABs to spaces is clumsy because I
want to be able to edit source files with the TABs left in them.
5.3
Printer support
5.3
The old printer drivers have been replaced by a new printer manager into
which printer definitions can be loaded and a large number of printer
definitions are supplied. This is more complex to set up than the old
printer drivers but, once set up, it is very easy to use. The new
printer definitions are more specific to particular printers, so, for
example, the HP Deskjet Plus driver knows that the printer cannot print
multiple copies automatically like a LaserJet and it also uses the
compressed graphics modes to minimise data transfer and provide fast
printing.
5.3
It is possible to have multiple drivers on the icon bar and make one
active by simply clicking on it. This is very useful if you have two
printers on a machine (we often use a Deskjet Plus on the parallel port
for A4 and an Epson FX850 on the serial port for labels). It is also
possible to have one driver for a network printer and another for a
local printer.
5.3
Printing of sprites and grey level images can now use dithering instead
of half-toning and this gives much better results on printers with
300dpi resolution or less (where the control over the dot size used for
the half-tone is poor).
5.3
A utility is also provided to download RISC-OS fonts to Postscript
printers where necessary, so all of the low-cost Archimedes fonts can
now be used by any Postscript printer or typesetter. This will be useful
to us for downloading a “box font” which we designed ourselves so that
we can put boxes round key definitions.
5.3
Font manager
5.3
The font manager can now generate and cache transformed text (e.g.
stretched, rotated or sheared), and this facility is used by Draw for
fast rotating and transforming text. Hopefully, we will also see other
applications making use of this feature (in RISC-OS 2 applications have
to go to great lengths to rotate text by 90°). The font manager can now
cache single characters instead of 16 character chunks and this improves
speed and memory usage significantly (a single large Dingbats character
will no longer flush a large part of your font cache and waste time by
generating 15 unwanted characters).
5.3
Pinboard
5.3
Pinboard is similar to the numerous backdrop and StickyBd programs
around, but better than any I have seen. It is very straightforward to
use, with full control over icons, grouping, gridlock, tidy etc. It can
also ‘iconise’ a window (<shift-select> on the close box) and reduce it
to an icon. While iconised, menus belonging to the application can still
be accessed by using <shift-menu> over the window icon (<menu> alone
gives the pinboard menu). This feature has been present on Apple Macs
and Microsoft Windows for a while and is extremely useful for keeping
your desktop tidy.
5.3
There is an error in the documentation about Pinboard. It can’t be
enabled or disabled via the configuration application, as the manual
suggests, but it should work after a cold start, or after running a
!boot file containing Pinboard commands.
5.3
Filer
5.3
Copying, formatting, deleting and verifying now take place in the
background (if there is enough free memory) and this really is very
pleasant to use. It is even possible to be formatting a floppy, deleting
a directory and copying another directory all at the same time. Loading
of applications still holds everything up, although it is about twice as
fast as an A440 with an ST506 hard disc. The free space display now
appears as a bar graph in its own window. This stays on the screen until
closed and is updated as disc operations take place.
5.3
PC/MSDOS format discs are recognized automatically and treated just like
an Acorn format disc, and this is even easier to use than PCdir or
MultiFS, being totally transparent. Similarly, the PC hard disk
partition can be double-clicked to open a directory viewer onto it. The
format command now supports a wide range of disc formats, including the
360k, 720k, 1.2M and 1.44M PC formats.
5.3
The filer uses smart quotes ‘’ in its messages which would be quite
nice, except that old BBC applications running under the emulator know
nothing about characters with the top bit set and end up translating
them into keywords. For example, 6502 Basic now says “File PAGE fred
TIME not found”.
5.3
Another bug in the filer appears when interactive help is in use. When
moving the pointer over sub-menus the error “Message token... not found”
sometimes appears. This is not serious as it usually goes away if you
repeat the operation, but it is annoying.
5.3
Boot files
5.3
Boot files can now be created using the Task Manager which will save a
!boot file on your disc and configure the machine to auto boot when
powered up. It will also set the disc option (using *OPT4,2) and
configure the number of the drive onto which you save the !boot file.
5.3
You need to take care when doing this because it saves everything about
the current state of the machine, including window sizes and positions,
options, icons and paths names for applications which have been seen
etc. This means that if you have opened a filer window onto a floppy,
the name of all of the applications seen on that floppy will be stored
in the Boot file. So every time you start the machine up, the boot file
gets executed and in turn it tries to run the boot files on the floppy
which it knows about. This isn’t a problem providing you know about it,
but it can be confusing. The solution is always to start from cold when
creating a boot file and to think very carefully about what you are
doing. You should not attempt to create a boot file after you have been
using the machine for any other task, because it will end up taking a
long time while it boots all of the applications it thinks it ought to
know about.
5.3
Configure
5.3
Configure has been improved so that it can now control much more (but
not all) of the configuration settings stored in CMOS RAM. Again, some
care is needed because some of the settings (including font cache size
etc) are also stored in the boot file described above and these settings
override the configuration settings stored in CMOS RAM.
5.3
Squash utility
5.3
This is similar to Spark, although possibly a bit faster. However, it
cannot compress directories into a single file − it can only compress
each file within a directory. Squashed files must be unsquashed by
double-clicking on them before they can be used (whereas Spark decom
pressses them as they are loaded and is therefore much more friendly).
5.3
Unfortunately, the RISC-OS 3 release note says that there is a bug in
Squash which occasionally causes it to corrupt files! I would therefore
be very wary of using it on anything important (and certainly would not
use it without decompressing the squashed file and comparing it with the
original). This is a great pity because it would be nice to have a good,
fast compression program available to everybody. I suspect that Spark
suffers from similar bugs, and certainly wouldn’t trust it with anything
important. Hopefully Computer Concepts have got it right with Compres
sion, but this remains to be seen (no, I don’t work for them − I just
happen to think that Impression is the best thing since hierarchical
filing systems...).
5.3
Interactive help
5.3
Help is built into the ROM (accessed via the Resources filing system)
and now gives help on menu entries. Most of the Acorn applications are
now much more helpful.
5.3
Basic
5.3
Basic V version 1.05 is built into ROM, while Basic VI (also known as
Basic 64) is supplied on disc. The difference is that Basic VI uses 64
bit floating point arithmetic and will use the floating point co-
processor when available. Without a co-processor, it provides much
higher precision arithmetic (with a slight reduction in speed). The co-
processor is still a few months away and will cost around £500.
5.3
PC Emulator v1.70
5.3
This is not supplied with the A5000 as standard, but does come with the
A5000 Learning Curve pack. It is very similar to V1.60, but will work on
any RISC-OS machine (unlike v1.60 which will not work on the A5000) and
it has support for 1.44M high density floppies. The speed of the A5000
makes the PC emulator quite usable, although it is very difficult to put
an exact figure on the improvement. Do not be tempted to run Norton SI
and expect a meaningful result because this is not a real PC and cannot
be quantified as one. Direct screen access can be very slow, making most
games unplayable, whereas text and graphics output via BIOS calls, hard
disc access and maths programs are pretty quick (especially if they use
the maths co-processor). Suffice it to say that Turbo Pascal v5.0 can
compile over 50 lines per second and it is very usable − the only
problem is slightly sluggish cursor movement in the editor. Unfor
tunately, it still doesn’t support any form of extended memory, so you
are stuck with the 640k limit. This isn’t a big problem, but considering
Acorn have gone so far with this product, you would expect them to
include this. Meanwhile, the 8087 maths co-processor emulation is superb
and definitely worthwhile because it really does speed up maths
intensive programs quite significantly.
5.3
New screen modes
5.3
There are now 47 screen modes and these include modes similar to
Impression modes 66 and 82 which nearly everybody uses (incidentally,
the various NewModes modules which I tried worked fine, so you can still
use your favourite modes from a RISC-OS 2 machine). The highest
resolution available is 800x600 in 16 colours, and many modes use a 60Hz
refresh rate (instead of 50Hz) to reduce flicker. The system is very
fast when using the bigger screen modes, unlike ARM2 machines which slow
to a crawl if you start using 256 colour modes, this machine just keeps
on going. (Atomwide’s A540 modes disc, which seems to work OK on A5000,
provides, amongst others, mode 102 which I use all the time which is
1152 × 448 in 16 colours. Ed.)
5.3
Pipes
5.3
This is a method for communicating between two multi-tasking processes
which is used extensively in the UnixTM world. One tasks sends output to
another task via a pipe, and the pipe itself appears just like any other
input/output stream or file. Acorn have implemented this as a RAM filing
system, called “pipe:”. One program creates the pipe buffer and
specifies its size, for example:
5.3
*CREATE pipe:TEMP
5.3
The sending task can now open this file and write to it in the normal
way (e.g. using OPENOUT and BPUT), while the receiving task can open it
and read from it (using OPENIN and BGET). Unlike a normal file, tasks
will be suspended as necessary. For example, if a program tries to read
from the pipe when there is no data in the pipeline, it will be held up
until data appears. This doesn’t stop the entire machine, just the task
waiting for data. Similarly, any task sending data will be suspended if
the pipe buffer becomes full and restarted when the receiving task reads
some data from the pipe.
5.3
Pipes can be used for simple tasks such as filtering output before it is
displayed (e.g. removing control characters etc). They could also be
used for buffering data (to printers, for example) or for transferring
data between applications. In RISC-OS 2, data is either transferred in
chunks using special inter-task messages, or by saving to a scrap file
on disk. Messages are more difficult to program so many tasks use the
scrapfile on disk which is clumsy if you are short of disk space or
using a floppy based system. Pipes will allow tasks to communicate in a
much simpler manner.
5.3
Programming interface
5.3
Acorn have put a massive amount of effort into improving the operating
system routines available to the programmer. This will not immediately
affect the user but, given time, it is hoped that applications writers
will make use of these new routines to make their jobs easier and their
programs more powerful. The rotated text facility is just one example
and there are plenty more.
5.3
Personally, I hope that they now support Draw files properly to get
round the current mess. If you use C there is a library of routines for
manipulating Draw files, provided in the SharedClib. If you use any
other language this library is not available, so you have to render Draw
files yourself. This means that programs like FontFX and Graph must each
include a large chunk of software which really ought to be in RISC-OS
itself. If anybody knows about this, please let me know.
5.3
Compatibility
5.3
The following applications work without any problems: Translator
(V6.45), Spark (V2.14), Pipedream (3.14R), View and Viewstore (under the
Tube emulator). However, FontFX doesn’t work because it gets confused
about the new font paths (with fonts in the Resources: filing system
etc). ChangeFSI fails because it gets its menus corrupted. PC emulators
V1.60 and below don’t work, but V1.70, supplied with the Learning Curve
works fine. Programs which use any kind of disc protection are unlikely
to work because of the different floppy disc interface. Chocks Away
works fine, but Saloon Cars doesn’t.
5.3
Impression (V2.13 and V2.14c) also fails because it cannot “see” its
dongle through the new printer interface. Computer Concepts say that
version 2.15 will be available “real soon now”. (We have 2.14e which
seems OK on the A5000. Ed.)
5.3
Hardware
5.3
The new shape is much better and fits onto a typical desk well because
it is now 19“ wide (for rack mounting?) and a lot less deep. It has the
on/off switch at the front of the unit and even provides a switched
mains outlet at the back so you can now turn the whole system on by
pressing a single button at the front of the machine. (The documentation
says it is only for connection of a monitor, but I think I will ignore
that and add my printer and teletext adapter at the same time − I doubt
that there are any problems there, just don’t plug an electric fire into
it!)
5.3
The fan in the A5000 is at the rear of the machine which makes it a
little quieter and there is space for two floppies at the front. The
power supply is now on the right hand side (moved over from the left
hand side in the A400 machines).
5.3
At the rear, most of the sockets are similar to those on current
Archimedes machines, but there is now only one monitor output and that
is a 15 way VGA type socket, as found on most PCs, and this also
provides automatic monitor detection by the computer. The BNC composite
video socket is not provided.
5.3
Inside the machine, RISC-OS 3 is fitted in four large EPROMs, providing
2M in total, and there is also space for another ROM. Acorn intend that
this be used to provide extensions to the operating system without
replacing the main RISC-OS ROMs. This could therefore be used to provide
foreign language support, or even to extend RISC-OS and upgrade some of
the modules.
5.3
The A5000 comes with 2M of RAM at the moment although the next low cost
version may only have 1M. Personally I think that 1M is very restrictive
and makes the machine difficult to use, despite having so much in ROM.
2M is a reasonable amount, but you still run out fairly often (try
running the PC emulator with an EGA display mode and 640k of PC RAM on a
2M machine − it isn’t easy). 4M is ideal and makes the machine much
easier to use. The memory upgrade requires a memory board to be plugged
inside the machine and Atomwide already have a 4M board available for
£110 +VAT (£130 through Archive) and it is expandable to 8M but this is
an Atomwide only upgrade involving taking the MEMC off the main board
and adding a header mechanism. (The 4 to 8M is available now at Archive
price of £470.) Acorn’s more expensive board will restrict you to 4M
total and isn’t available yet.
5.3
Software protection
5.3
Every Acorn A5000 has a unique machine ID which can be read by software
running on the machine. This is quite new to personal computers although
it has been available on larger machines for a while, and is intended as
a form of software protection. You tell the software supplier your
machine ID and they sell you a version which will only work on that
computer (or alternatively the software can configure itself by reading
the ID the first time it is run).
5.3
Personally, I am not very happy with this kind of protection. We have
standardised on the Archimedes and now use several of them in various
departments, including software development, accounts, customer support,
production testing, documentation etc. If a machine fails anywhere we
can replace it within minutes and have the system running again, but if
we have protected software on the A5000 which only works on a single
machine we will lose this flexibility. It also means that you cannot
share a package between two machines (for a few months I used a single
Impression dongle on two different machines and moved it between them as
necessary), surely software suppliers have no right to restrict such
practices? I can lend out or share anything else that I buy, so why not
my software (providing only one copy is run at any one time)?
5.3
Acorn monitor
5.3
The multisync colour monitors supplied with the A5000 are quite
reasonable. There are four knobs on the front panel to control vertical
size, horizontal position, contrast and brightness. There are also a
couple of switches to select between auto and manual screen height, and
normal or extra width. There is no control to adjust vertical position
and the A5000 TV configuration option is useless because it loses the
top or bottom line if it is used (this seems like a bug to me).
5.3
The dot pitch (the physical spacing between the different colour dots on
the screen) is 0.38mm which is poor compared with the more expensive
monitors with a 0.28mm dot pitch, but quite adequate for normal use (the
larger the dot pitch the more fuzzy the resulting image will look,
regardless of the resolution the computer is generating). It is not as
sharp as my old Mitac monochrome multisync, but this, along with all of
the other mono multisyncs is sadly no longer in production. Most
manufacturers now concentrate on the PC market, and only provide mono
VGA monitors. If you want a multisync you have to have colour. For
tunately, Acorn have realised this problem, and made most of the screen
modes produce a reasonable display on a VGA monitor. This means that you
can buy a cheap, high resolution monochrome VGA monitor (for around
£100) and still have the flexibility of using different screen modes
with it, although some of them are a bit squashed (vertically) to make
them work correctly on the VGA monitor.
5.3
Documentation
5.3
RISC-OS 3 comes with a User Guide and an Applications Guide as well as
the usual Welcome Guide. This is about twice as many pages in total as
you get for RISC-OS 2 but, surprisingly, you no longer get a Basic
manual with the machine. This seems strange considering the masses of
books and disks which Acorn supply with the Learning Curve pack, but
presumably they expect fewer people to be writing their own programs and
more to be using the applications provided.
5.3
A new Programmer’s Reference Manual for RISC-OS 3 is being written, but
I don’t know when it is likely to be available. Until it appears, it is
impossible to use any of the new operating system calls which Acorn are
enthusing about. (If anyone is desperate to see a copy, we have ordered
an (expensive!!) photocopied pre-release version of the RISC-OS 3 P.R.M.
from Acorn. If anyone is desperate to refer to it, they could make an
appointment and come and read it in the office but I suspect that it
will be chained to Adrian’s desk!)
5.3
Other improvements
5.3
I cannot hope to cover everything in an article of this size, and there
really are a lot of minor improvements. For example: clicking with
select over the task manager brings up the task display, <shift-f12>
bring the icon bar to the front of the window stack, <ctrl-f12> opens a
task window, configure allows the screen to be blanked after a specified
time, windows expand automatically if stretched into a screen bound
aries, Alarm can save plain text files and can show a list of the alarms
etc. Many of these improvements really are nice and you miss them when
you go back to using RISC-OS 2.
5.3
Summary
5.3
The A5000 is a very impressive machine which is extremely nice to use.
It certainly makes the old A440 feel very slow and clumsy, and I can
highly recommend upgrading.
5.3
Many people predict a flood of second-hand A400 machines now, similar to
the flood of A300 machines over the last few months. However, it is
important to remember that you can now upgrade an A400 machine to an
ARM3 processor for around £280, and this will run only slightly slower
than the A5000 (which uses higher speed memory). RISC-OS 3 will be
available for A400 machines some time next year (I would guess that
Acorn will price it around the £100 mark to encourage people to buy it).
So for a £300 upgrade you get something very close to an A5000, but
without the 1.6M floppy disks, the slightly higher speed and the
capability for higher resolutions displays. A difficult decision, but
either way you end up with a very impressive machine.  A
5.3
A5000 Audio Filter and Other Comments
5.3
Jeremy Mears & Arthur Brend
5.3
Jeremy starts... Stunning as Acorn’s new machine is, it is still not
faultless. I would like to highlight the main oddities I have encoun
tered and include details of the audio filter bypass operation for the
A5000, described in Archive 4.7 p 21 for the rest of the Archimedes
range. One listen to the output from the A5000’s audio jack and the days
of lifeless, ‘deflated’ audio on my 310 came rushing back. Acorn is
still piping the filtered audio for the internal speaker to the
headphone jack, which means that the output you get through an amplifier
or headphones is nowhere near as good as the un-filtered sound that the
machine is capable of.
5.3
The audio filter on the A5000 is just the same as on previous machines
(excluding the A3000). The connector is the same 10 way jumper plug,
which, looking from the back of the computer, is located 2 cm in front
and 1cm to the left of the 3.5mm jack. Still looking from the back, row
1 is on the left and row 2, surprisingly, is on the right. The nearest
pin of row 1 is the left channel and the far pin is the right channel.
Connections to these pins and using any of row 2 for ground works fine
(and it’s a lot cheaper than paying £25 for one of Ray Maidstone’s mini-
boards!)
5.3
Monitor problems
5.3
Finally, my biggest ‘quibble’ about the A5000 is the distortion present
on the Acorn multi-sync monitor. This is a problem I have looked into,
and it appears only to occur in its worst forms in non-multisync modes.
The only symptom in mode 39 (which is an absolute joy to use in the
Desktop) is de-focusing in the centre of the screen which is easily
cured by keeping the contrast down a bit. The same cannot, however, be
said for the other forms of distortion.
5.3
In non-multisync modes, there is a definite bulge in the centre of the
screen, so that when whole or part of the screen is scrolled horizon
tally, the effect is as though you are looking through water! The above
distortion also occurs on a friend’s machine, along with bending of the
display. Often, the display on my monitor will twitch and wobble in low
resolution modes, noticeably increasing as the monitor warms up. The
later symptoms of twitching and movement could just be a fault in my
display, though personally I suspect they are a feature of this make of
monitor. If you are simply a desktop user using multisync modes, this
problem will not be at all significant, except when using packages such
as ProArtisan which leave the desktop and run in non-multisync modes,
where distortion can be more noticeable.
5.3
If, like me, you use mode 13 as a convenient mode for programming/
coding, the problem may well be more serious. I have written to Acorn
about the trouble and they say they are aware of the problem and busily
(I hope!) trying to sort it out. (You get what you pay for! Acorn have
used a relatively cheap multi-sync monitor. If you want to buy, say, an
Eizo 9060SZ to benefit from the higher resolution (0.28mm dot pitch
instead of 0.38mm) and better linearity, N.C.S. can supply it with a
Learning Curve A5000 instead of the Acorn monitor, for an extra £200,
making a total of £1999. Ed.)
5.3
Overall
5.3
These problems aside, the A5000 is a phenomenally powerful and value-
for-money system. £1800 gives you a 40M hard drive, 2 M RAM, 1.6 M
floppy, multi-sync, a superb Basic and Assembly language and hundreds of
pounds worth of quality software. RISC-OS 3 is significantly more
polished than its predecessor, particularly with the new multi-tasking
PC Emulator and main applications now in ROM. Also, as if that weren’t
enough, according to the November issue of BBC Acorn User, Acorn may be
going to bundle the JP150 inkjet printer with all A5000 Learning Curves!
− the output from this being almost as breathtaking as the A5000
itself.  A
5.3
Arthur Brend sent us some “comments from an A5000 owner”. Many points
had been mentioned elsewhere so I edited them out. If the remainder
seems to lack continuity, it is the scars left by the editor’s knife,
not Arthur’s pen.
5.3
In transferring from an A410 with a standard resolution Acorn monitor, I
expected a more dramatic increase in clarity from a multi-scan monitor;
differentiating between zero and eight remains a problem for a 61-years
old pair of eyes. Or is it that Acorn should now abandon their system
font in favour of something elegant? The screen presentation now seems
dreadfully coarse and old − has it changed since the Beeb?
5.3
On the other hand, the screen reflects much less and can be used in
brighter sunlight. Also − a real bonus − it does not attract dust and
dirt.
5.3
Transferring Pipedream from the A410 to the A5000 proved no problem;
likewise all the other working files. Not having an interconnect cable,
I did it by the disc-ful. (Does anyone know of suitable software to make
a serial-link transfer reasonably painless? Ed.)
5.3
I have configured the system to blank out the screen after 5 minutes’
idleness. The first time it happened was only slightly disconcerting.
The screen is re-activated by any keystroke or mouse movement. Beware of
keystrokes used for this purpose − whatever you strike is entered into
the work in hand.
5.3
The shutdown command from the Task Manager menu is very convenient.
Remembering Ray Maidstone’s article (Archive 5.1 p26), it will be
interesting to know whether he thinks that it does everything that it
should.
5.3
One last task awaited me before I could say that I had successfully
transferred from Archimedes to A5000 − dreaded printing! Text printing
was no problem. There was no need to change cables − all worked as
before.
5.3
Graphics printing worked, but the result was grey instead of black. I
have fought printer drivers before and shall no doubt have to do so
again. Suffice it to say that a little note in the Read_Me file for the
Canon Bubble-Jet BJ-130e to the effect that DIP switch 2-1 should be ON
would have saved me hours, expletives, sweat and tears.
5.3
But there is always a silver lining; my struggles did lead me around and
into a complex set of menus and options. When − only when − one
understands them and has carried out all the setting up, the system is
an improvement.
5.3
One may now stand equipment weighing up to 25 kg (½ cwt to we old
dodderers − quite a weight) on top of the computer which should
accommodate most large-screen multisync monitors.  A
5.3

5.3
PD Column
5.3
David Holden
5.3
When I first offered to write this column I had in mind something
similar to the regular features in certain lesser magazines. Since
Archive started Archimedes PD, it seemed strange that it was now the
only publication which almost ignored it. This is even stranger when you
bear in mind that, unlike the others, Archive derives only a small part
of its income from commercial advertising and so is in a unique position
from which to compare PD with commercial software without upsetting the
advertisers.
5.3
Having read a lot of letters in the past weeks, I believe that this is
not what you want from me. If you just want to know what’s available,
and from where, it is simpler to send for a few catalogues. I have lots
of these and I can assure you that after you have read a couple, they
become very repetitive as the same programs appear in most of them.
Several people have asked if it is possible to have proper reviews of
some of the better PD programs. This seems like a good idea because, if
you glance at your newsagents shelves, you will see at least three
magazines now devoted entirely to reviews of PD and Shareware for the PC
Amiga and Atari computers.
5.3
If Paul permits, I would therefore ask you to write to me and tell me,
in depth, about the programs you use regularly. Tell me about the
programs’ strengths and weaknesses. Preferably, put it on a disc as a
text file and if I find that a program is popular, I will pick out the
most interesting parts from your comments and include them in my next
article. That seems a good way of telling everyone what users think of a
particular program and a lot better than conventional reviews, which
would simply be my opinion.
5.3
The Indispensable PD
5.3
From your letters, there would seem to be certain programs which no
Archimedes user can afford to be without. The names crop up repeatedly,
so if you haven’t got any of these then I suggest you rectify the
omission at once. So far as I am aware they all appear on Archive
Shareware or Careware discs.
5.3
!PCdir (Careware 7)
5.3
One of the earliest non-trivial PD programs, this is still the best way
of transferring files between Archimedes and PC discs. It opens a filer
window on a PC disc just like a normal ADFS window. Perhaps with the new
PC emulator, !PCdir might be thought less useful but I doubt it. You can
install !PCdir on a 1Mb machine while running a major application like
Impression. You can then drag text files directly from a PC disc to an
Impression window. You will need a lot more than 1Mb to do that with the
new PC emulator.
5.3
By the way, if you read the text file with !PCdir you will see that it
is actually Careware, that is, a donation to a named charity is
requested. I wonder how many of you, who told me how useful !PCdir is,
have actually sent a cheque? (Although N.C.S. does make donations to the
author’s charity from the Careware money. Ed.)
5.3
On this subject, a lot of people have told me how much they like my
utility Desk Aid. The printer control and text printer seem particularly
popular. Thanks for all the kind comments but I couldn’t help noticing
that some of the names didn’t appear on my list of registered users.
Since Desk Aid is Shareware and not PD you really should register and as
it’s free, you might just as well have included the registration form
while you were writing to me. It wouldn’t even have cost the price of
another stamp!
5.3
!DosForm
5.3
One feature missing from !PCdir is the ability to format. I can
recommend !DosForm for this job. Anyone who has formatted discs using
the PC emulator will know how long it takes. !DosForm is a desktop
application which operates as a background task, so you can format a
pile of PC discs while doing other things. There is no text file with
the version that I have, just a copyright message in the program saying
that it is written by ‘Garf’. Well, whoever you are, thanks Garf.
5.3
!Menon (Shareware 38)
5.3
A lot of people find !Menon invaluable. It is an application to open
directories or run applications without the need to work your way down
through a long file path and wait while the Filer loads all those
unwanted sprites and sets up all those unwanted OS variables that
inconsiderate programmers have put in their !Boot files. !Menon also has
a ‘hot key’ feature so that you don’t even need to use the !Menon menus.
5.3
!DrawPlus (Careware 13)
5.3
This is an improved version of !Draw by Jonathan Marten. If you use
!Draw, you really must get DrawPlus. Speaking as someone whose artistic
ability on a scale of one to ten is about minus five, I am not qualified
to say very much about it but the general opinion seems to be forget
!Draw and get a copy of !DrawPlus.
5.3
The existence of applications like !DrawPlus makes me have grave doubts
about Acorn putting !Draw, !Paint and !Edit in ROM for RISC-OS 3. Many
people prefer the PD programs !ED or !StrongEd to !Edit and, with the
new desktop text editor from Risc Developments, I wonder how long it
will be before !Edit is superseded?
5.3
!ArcFS
5.3
This is an application which is invaluable if you need to look at discs
containing files archived with !Spark. Many PD libraries and magazines
now archive their discs. When you install !ArcFS, it allows you to run
or copy archived files directly from their own filer windows. This saves
lots of time de-archiving files just to find out what they are. Earlier
versions had a few minor bugs and quirks but these now appear to have
been fixed.
5.3
Free PD?
5.3
Paul suggested I might like to comment on the fact that Beebug are
giving ten discs of PD software with each A5000 sold. At first sight,
this might seem like a good idea. It costs very little and the purchaser
gets lots of PD software to play with. For PD and Shareware authors it
might seem that anything which distributes programs is a good thing but
I have some reservations. For PD programs to be widely available we need
good PD libraries. If programs are to be given away with computers, how
will they survive? If no-one is buying the discs, why should anyone
bother to continually update and improve their programs and send the
updates to the libraries?
5.3
I am inclined to the opinion that this is not such a good idea. One or
two discs to give the new Archimedes owner the idea that you don’t have
to spend a fortune on software is fine. More than that is stopping the
legitimate libraries doing their valuable work.  A
5.3

5.3
Piano and Guitar Fonts
5.3
Stewart Watson
5.3
These are two Fonts designed by Toby Richards to enable easy assembly
and manipulation of piano and guitar chord boxes. For example:-
5.3
Getting started
5.3
The fonts come in an application folder which can be immediately loaded,
or the application folder can be opened and the fonts copied into your
!Fonts directory, from where they can be used like any other font.
5.3
Both fonts are best manipulated in Draw, DrawPlus or some other graphics
package rather than directly in a DTP program, as windows are often more
easily moved around the page. Once you are happy with your finished
chord box, it can be imported into your DTP program like any other Draw
object.
5.3
Using Piano Font
5.3
Firstly, install the piano font and then load Draw. The author suggests
using Zoom, but I found that, when starting to use these fonts, it was
best to set a text size of about 100 pt. This enables you to see clearly
what is happening on the screen.
5.3
The next step is to input some information. I suggest that, the first
time you use these fonts, you start by inputting a complete stave, (you
will notice that the cursor moves forward). Then move the cursor back to
where it was and then input your other information. Having done that,
you will probably be able, quite happily, to follow the author’s
instructions to input all the extra information first, and the chord
window last, as it is the only symbol that moves the cursor forwards.
5.3
Using Guitar Font
5.3
The procedure is exactly the same as with the piano font and, once
again, it is only the chord window that advances the cursor.
5.3
Documentation
5.3
The instruction leaflet supplied with each font is well structured and,
as long as you remember that it is only the chord window that moves the
cursor forwards, you should have no problems
5.3
When I received the review copy of the fonts, I had one or two queries
which I raised with the author and, by return of post, I recieved a most
helpful letter with a revised version of both the fonts and the
documentation which more than answered my questions.
5.3
There are several uses for these fonts, and I’m sure anyone involved in
education will see them as a boon and a great time saver. When combined
with a music notation package such as ScoreDraw (see page 51), they
could prove an invaluable aid in music publishing.
5.3
This is a really clever idea, well presented at a very reasonable price,
and I’m sure it will arouse a lot of interest and maybe we will see some
more specialised fonts in the future.
5.3
Piano Font costs £5.50 inc p&p, Guitar Font costs £5.50 inc p&p or both
fonts can be purchased together for £10.00 inc p&p.
5.3
These fonts are available from Dalmation Publications, 37 Manor Road,
Teddington, Middlesex TW11 8AA, (cheques made payable to Toby
Richards).  A
5.3

5.3

5.3
Basic V, Windows and Task Windows
5.3
Jim Markland
5.3
Serious users of the Archimedes may find themselves confronted by one or
other of the following problems:
5.3
•    How to use the desktop effectively for real problem solving appli
cations using ‘homegrown’ code but without the hassle of writing
extensive graphical user interfaces.
5.3
•    How to present a programming environment to a novice which offers him
the satisfaction of using the Wimp, yet at a level he can comprehend.
5.3
Bearing in mind that many users are usually trying to solve real
problems, and are often not particularly interested in the computer
itself and frequently find that their targets can change mid stream; how
can they develop new code quickly, without a major effort, with a
minimum of knowledge and without reinventing the wheel to do it? How can
that impatient novice find some satisfaction? This article offers one
solution to these problems.
5.3
In terms of programmer productivity and ease of use, the APL language is
highly acclaimed and cannot be recommended too highly for many appli
cations. APL is an exceptionally powerful language which has very strong
and dedicated following. Software development time in APL is typically
very short in comparison with other languages. However, a really good
version of APL has yet to appear for the Archimedes and the user may be
forced to adopt Basic V as the interpreted language for use on this
computer. The development of pukka multitasking applications with pop-up
menus, icons etc is extremely time consuming in Basic V and not at all
cost effective if the real objective is to obtain an answer to a
technical problem reasonably quickly; neither is it satisfying to the
novice who wishes to see impressive results for his efforts. Surpris
ingly, the Acorn manuals give little guidance in these respects.
5.3
Assuming that a spreadsheet is either unavailable or unsuitable for the
task in hand, Basic V can in fact become a natural choice for some
applications, especially if an interpreted language is required. An
interpreted language removes the time penalty of compilation and can be
much more user friendly when it comes to error messages and debugging.
Basic V is also relatively fast and offers access to assembly language.
That Basic V is effectively free, is no disadvantage.
5.3
Now, utilities are becoming available which do ease application
development in Basic. Archway 2.00 from Simtron is an example of this.
Archway comes with extensive documentation and offers short cuts to the
development of full blown applications. The very extent of the documen
tation is, however, daunting. Many youngsters and busy not-so-youngsters
might trade grandiose results for less research in the first instance.
5.3
How then can one proceed using Basic V on its own?
5.3
Initial thoughts for vector graphics, say, might be to output DXF files.
As !Draw understands DXF (&DEA) at a basic level, suitable files can
then be dragged into a !Draw window, the results can be examined, edited
if need be for printing, or exported to another computer. Alternatively
CSV (&DFE) files could be used as fodder for graph plotting packages
such as Presenter or GraphBox. Either way output appears in windows.
This approach has a great deal to recommend it, but can one not do
better than this? Is it not possible to take more advantage of the
operating system and have the target application windows pop up and
update automatically?
5.3
Stepping back a little for the moment one may look at the overall
problem to define some objectives with regard to the following:
5.3
•    The format of the files in which the Basic codes are to be stored, the
editing and handling of them
5.3
•    The format of files used for the storage of data and the accessibility
of the data therein to humans for reading, editing and printing
5.3
•    The environment in which the programs will be run
5.3
•    The presentation and output of results.
5.3
As a result the following targets might be agreed upon:
5.3
Basic
5.3
•    Basic programs should be capable of being handled in either tokenised
Basic (type &FFB) or ASCII format.
5.3
•    Tokenised Basic files to be edited with the ARM Basic Editor with a
suitable Wimp front end. Basic ASCII text files to be edited in !Edit or
accepted as input to the ARMBE.
5.3
•    A new file type BasicText (Acorn type &FD1) is available for ASCII
format Basic. The use of this is desirable in order to enable Run and
Load Types to be defined and to identify the file with Basic.
5.3
•    In either case, having a mouse click action which automatically
invokes the editor would be very convenient.
5.3
Data
5.3
•    Data should not be stored in programs
5.3
•    Data files for input and output should, wherever possible, be in ASCII
format so they can be read/modified in !Edit or printed legibly. This
can also ease the transfer of data to/from other computers. Unfor
tunately, the use of such files is not always feasible or practicable.
5.3
•    User filetypes should be avoided. Remember that the detailed internal
formats used by a ‘jobbing’ programmer may change dramatically in a
relatively short time and that, in any case, there is a strong chance
that a user filetype will be picked which is already in use in the
public domain. (i.e. everyone likes to use the obvious ones e.g. &001)
5.3
•    Filetype Data (&FFD) is fine although other standard Acorn file types
recognised by other applications may be preferred if some flexibility is
required. &FFD files should contain an internal header to indicate the
format of the data to follow.
5.3
•    Files suitable for examination and editing with a suitable spreadsheet
type editor have obvious attractions. However data files which use
spaces rather than commas as delimiters can make files easier for humans
to read.
5.3
Environment
5.3
•    Data filenames should be passed to the program as a parameter at run
time. The program to be written should not respond automatically if a
user double clicks on such a standard filetype.
5.3
•    The program should be capable of multitasking. Any time penalty
incurred because of this is assumed to be acceptable.
5.3
•    A minimum of SYS commands should be employed. The need for the
Programmers Reference Manual should be reduced to the lowest possible
level.
5.3
•    Regularly used functions should be kept in a Library
5.3
•    Simple facilities for mouse click selections are desirable.
5.3
Output
5.3
•    Editable, resizeable etc. windows should be used for output to screen
in the desktop. These should pop up automatically.
5.3
•    Files that are output by the program should be in standard formats for
reading into external applications and for printing.
5.3
•    As a general principle, full advantage should be taken of applications
that are already available for the display of data, such as !Edit and
!Draw. The example programs provided in the recent Risc User “Mastering
the Wimp” series may provide a suitable platform for modification to
suit particular needs.
5.3
These guidelines give a framework to follow and, taking these on board,
with a little lateral thinking, the following very neat solution
emerges:
5.3
Having assembled various utility applications, most of which are in the
public domain or are available very cheaply, code to fulfil the above is
written to be executed from an !Edit task window. (If wanted, it will
probably be necessary for the programmer to encode the &FD1 and click-
to-edit features himself until suitable applications become more widely
available.) This immediately provides a multitasking capability with no
code overhead whatsoever. There is no need to initialise a task, to
establish polling loops and then, later, to close down the task. The
task window itself does all this for you. The task window is, however,
not used for editing, long listings or large amounts of output, (these
are more efficiently carried out in other ways), but is used for running
the program, the passing of filenames as run time parameters and access
to the operating system.
5.3
SYS“OS_GetEnv” is used to read the parameter string from within the
program, a short Library of Basic routines being required to parse it.
Other Library routines permit output files to be written to a RAM disk
(for speed). For text, these are in &FFF Text format, for vector
graphics they are in the ‘unreadable for humans’ (unlike DXF) &AFF Draw
format.
5.3
Here comes the clever bit....
5.3
Having created what are essentially scrap files of particular types in
the RAM disk, broadcast Message_DataOpen 5 is issued by a Library
utility so that any tasks already running and capable of loading the
same can then spring into action. Message_DataOpen is normally broadcast
by the filer following a double click on a file in order that suitable
pre-installed tasks have a chance to respond to the particular file type
without unduly launching a new copy of the task. The subterfuge of
issuing this message from the task window has the same effect. File
types other than &FFF and &AFF can be used, of course, providing
suitable applications are available which will respond to the message.
(Unfortunately the current version of !Draw does not respond to DXF
files in this way.)
5.3
Should this message be issued for &FFD Data files (and it’s a safe bet
that no commercial application is likely to react to these) it is
possible to have a tailor made external application respond accordingly
and, providing that application does not acknowledge the
Message_DataOpen, it is possible to have as many different applications
as required responding to the same message. It is, however, necessary to
define an appropriate, possibly null, RunType action for the &FFD files
in order to avoid unwanted error messages.
5.3
Hey Presto! The basics have been established for a ‘Hot Link’ with only
one SYS Command! (The other was used to read the run time parameter
string.) Output automatically pops up in an !Edit or !Draw window every
time the program issues the message.
5.3
In !Edit, the window is automatically redrawn each time, updating the
window contents on each message. In !Draw a new window is launched
preserving a record of previous runs. Either way, this is a very
positive step in the right direction. When output automatically appears
in these applications windows it then becomes available for drag saves
to disk through the filer, and can be printed or DTP’d, subject to the
facilities of the application in question.
5.3
For all of this, very little work is required. It should be stressed,
however, that this is not a true Hot Link in the Colton PipeDream sense,
which requires its own message sequence. It can, however, have a not
dissimilar effect providing target applications respond to the given
filetype. Unfortunately, the HotLink graph plotting packages which have
the Colton HotLink facility do not appear to respond to Message_DataOpen
for CSV files.
5.3
Two further tricks − SYS“Wimp_ReportError” can be used to give a two way
dialog box for simple run time choices and *Filer_OpenDir is useful to
open the RAM directory for direct drag saves. A higher resolution
multisync mode is very useful too so that work can be spread out for
examination.
5.3
System variables can also be used as a basis of communication between
the task window and other applications. Their values can be read using
SYS“OS_ReadVarVal”. This allows the use of tiny applications which set
system variable flags to be used as choice icons in filer windows and
which can be made to open and close automatically. The use of system
variable flags also enables the task window program to receive feed back
from a suitable external application to which data may have been sent
using Message_ DataOpen. A recent Risc User Wimp Debugger used system
variables as a basis for communication between applications; this,
itself, may have wider uses.
5.3
In using system variable feedback, it is important to be careful to take
account of the fact that the task window program is unlikely to be ‘in
sync’ with the Wimp Poll loops of external applications. This requires
that each party to the communication process knows what to do at the
right time. A by product of this asynchronous behaviour is that it is
necessary to be careful if, say, it is desired to have reasonably
accurate time-stamping of acquired data. In feedback systems where a
high level of automatic message passing takes place, it can arise for it
to be impossible to get any other messages into the system ...even to
stop the process. In this case, the opportunity for human intervention
is desirable to safeguard data. Once understood, however, these issues
are likely to be relatively minor for many purposes and should present
little difficulty.
5.3
Now the programmer has not directly used any icons, menus, polling loops
or big application directories and, outside the Library, no indirected
data yet a very practical solution to the initial problem has been
produced, saving lots of time. A maximum of four or five SYS Commands
has been used and it has been unnecessary to consider any task, window
or icon handles. Not bad! The potential benefit such applications could
offer to the programmer is considerable. To make the most of the
concept, however, more practical applications which will respond
suitably to Message_DataOpen are desirable. There is also a need for new
relocatable modules to give easy to use, but more comprehensive, dialog
boxes than that offered by SYS“Wimp_ReportError”.
5.3
With a suitable cell type editor, it should be possible to build a
simple interactive spreadsheet environment with the plus that a real
programming language lies behind it. In this case, a system variable
would be set by the cell editor as a flag for the task window program to
indicate that a scrap file update had taken place.
5.3
A version of !Draw which both responds to DXF files and updates rather
than supersedes its existing window would be ideal. It is not beyond the
realms of human ingenuity to display a Draw file, to drag the data
points around as required and to export the edited data back to the task
window for further processing or back-calculation. Graph plotters which
respond to the message for CSV/TSV or similar files would also be very
helpful.
5.3
Fortunately, users of file types such as DXF or CSV (for which there
appear to be few, if any, applications capable of responding suitably to
Message_DataOpen) do have another course of action open to them when the
target application has an icon resident on the icon bar. This is to
issue Message_DataLoad to that icon. Unlike broadcast Message_DataOpen,
however, this new message is very specifically targeted and it becomes
necessary to know the appropriate icon handle. The task window program
may either assume or request this information or, for the more adven
turous, it may interrogate the icon bar window using
SYS“Wimp_GetWindowInfo”. Whichever way is adopted, the desired effect of
data being automatically loaded into the target application(s) is
achieved once more when Message_DataOpen is issued. Also, for the less
faint hearted, users of Euclid will find that it is possible to launch
an object rendering in the Euclid editor window by sending a Mouse_Click
reason coded message to the Euclid filer; predetermined responses to
dialog boxes may be dealt with similarly. Both icon and window handles
can be found using SYS“Wimp_GetPointer Info”.
5.3
Finally, what about the Hourglass? This is of very limited use when
initiated from a task window as the Hourglass may still be active when
the Wimp passes control to other applications. An alternate way of
marking that a task window is active would therefore be useful. One
solution to this problem is to use SYS“Wimp_SetIconState” to invert the
colours of the Task Manager ‘switcher’ icon on the far right of the icon
bar. This can be toggled as required (albeit at the expense of a minor
amount of unwanted screen output in the task window) and doesn’t
interfere with other applications which do not use this feature. If the
inverted colours don’t appeal, the sprite can be redesigned!
5.3
Do note, however, that programs written along the lines suggested will
not run other than under the task window if they require run time
parameters and/or issue Messages and that, in certain circumstances,
several copies of the same program multitasking simultaneously may not
happily coexist. Several different programs may, of course, be run
sequentially from an Obey file, with onward communications as may be
necessary.
5.3
A relatively simple Basic V development and run time environment which
gives access to pop up windows is thus available to the programmer. If
this isn’t enough, he had better buy Archway and the PRM and knuckle
down for some long sessions. Pity it took so long to discover this
simple solution! It remains to be seen what improvements Acorn will make
to the !Edit task window option in the new release of RISC-OS.
5.3
Utilities required
5.3
•    !Edit, !Draw plus other suitable applications of your choice
5.3
•    Small Library of Basic routines. (Must be tokenised)
5.3
•    Tokenised files are edited using a Desktop utility which leads to the
Basic editor. It should also be capable of accepting BasicText files.
5.3
•    A utility to convert Basic files to and from BasicText format.
BasicText files should be capable of being handled with/without line
numbers.
5.3
•    A utility which will print both Basic and BasicText files, preferably
in a small point size for convenience.
5.3
•    A utility to run Basic in the Command Window for quick trials.
5.3
•    A utility to Close files which remain open following a run time error.
5.3
•    A utility to Change the Current Directory
5.3
•    Screen Modes enhancer/generator
5.3
•    Optional suitable cell type editor  A
5.3

5.3
Christmas Allsorts
5.3
Robert Chrismas
5.3
Christmas makes me cringe. It’s not that I am against a season of peace
and good will − quite the contrary. Nor do I object to the mixture of
sacred and secular; that goes with the human condition. However, at the
first hint of jazzed up carols and plastic overweight Santas I switch to
Scrooge mode. So I did not start with much sympathy for Sherston’s
latest product.
5.3
What you get
5.3
For £16.95 + VAT you get four A5 ‘Activity Cards’, three disks, a 28
page A5 booklet and a card showing all the draw menus.
5.3
One of the disks has a copy of !Draw. The others are full of 256 colour
!Draw files with a Christmas theme. The files are divided into direc
tories: Animals, People, Scenes, Reindeer, Cards, Food, Toys,
Decorations and Greetings. The disks are not copy protected and
institutions which buy the package are free to copy the disks and the
activity cards.
5.3
The clip art
5.3
The clip art is carefully drawn. It takes full advantage of the 256
colour modes. Since some of the colours are quite subtle tones, I was
not sure how well the drawings would print out, but an Integrex printer
produced very acceptable output. Monochrome output on a matrix printer
was generally unsatisfactory but you might use some of the drawings with
clear outlines in DTP documents. Laser printer output was clear enough
but not very exciting.
5.3
If all the fill colours are changed to white then, with a little editing
on a few of the files, you have some effective line drawings suitable
for manual colouring.
5.3
The drawings are constructed with many hidden, or partially hidden,
lines. Scaling calculations and re-drawing cause long delays on standard
Archimedes. Teachers should be warned that there may be cries of “Miss,
Miss” (or “Sir, Sir”), “it’s crashed”. However my ‘primary adviser’
(thanks Dave) remarked, ‘my children will happily sit and watch the
printer printing, they will not get bored watching a picture being
drawn!’
5.3
The guide booklet
5.3
The guide is divided into two parts. The first part has an 8 page guide
to the key features of !Draw. It includes sections on loading !Draw and
loading, saving and printing files. The second part has monochrome
prints of the some of the clip art. It gives the leaf name, scale and
the size of each illustration.
5.3
Three of the activity cards give step by step instructions to produce a
Christmas card, an Advent calendar and a Nativity scene respectively.
The last card covers editing lines in !Draw so that you can modify the
pictures.
5.3
Style
5.3
There are lots of guides to the !Draw program. Most try to explain all
its features. I have often tried to write guides like this. Unfor
tunately, most adults, and almost all children, given a comprehensive
guide book, skip through it, trying out ideas, and only reading a
fraction of the text.
5.3
Christmas Allsorts is quite different. The booklet manages to summarise
all the features of !Draw you need for the activity cards in a few
pages. It is written in short clear paragraphs, most no more than a few
lines, with important words emphasised in bold and lots of illustra
tions. It does not tell you everything about !Draw, but what it does say
has an excellent chance of being read.
5.3
The activity cards are equally clear and to the point. They leave some
room for creativity in the choice of drawings and their final arrange
ment. You will not learn !Draw from them but, with a little help or some
trial and error, you should be able to produce a design of your own.
5.3
More able secondary school children, already familiar with !Draw, will
probably be able to use the cards with little help, but I would be
inclined to do a demonstration ‘work through’ for the whole class first.
5.3
For younger children
5.3
The text on the activity cards is probably a bit too difficult for
children in junior schools. They might also have difficulty in selecting
!Draw objects and loading them successfully. My ‘primary adviser’
suggested that a teacher might create a file containing some suitable
drawings so that the children could concentrate on arranging these
first.
5.3
Conclusion
5.3
You could buy this package for the clip art alone. It is handy to have a
selection of drawings on one theme conveniently grouped like this. The
price does not seem unreasonable if you remember that they will be
useful every Christmas for years.
5.3
To get the best from the drawings you will need a colour printer.
5.3
I found the re-drawing time tedious, but this may have something to do
with a strong desire to buy an A5000.
5.3
The booklet and the activity cards are written in a clear effective
style.
5.3
I liked this package. Later on in the term I am going to use it with one
of the middle school classes who visit my college. Sorry Scrooge but,
after all, it is Christmas.  A
5.3

5.3
ScoreDraw
5.3
Stewart Watson & Jonathan Puttock
5.3
First some comments from Stewart Watson....
5.3
ScoreDraw is a utility which at its simplest gives greatly enhanced
printout of Rhapsody files. It does, however, offer several other
options, like the facility to save pages as Draw files, which can be
edited in Draw and then exported to a DTP package. It comes in the usual
Clare package which contains a single disc and a 28 page A5 manual.
5.3
Manual
5.3
The manual is clear and concise, and the instructions on getting started
are particularly good. I did feel that the chapter on exporting to DTP
was a bit skimpy, and when I tried to use it, I had a couple of false
starts before I achieved the required result. This was simply because,
having taken my Rhapsody file through ScoreDraw to DrawPlus, what I
should have done was draw a box round the section I wanted, then save
selection, rather than saving the whole file, which includes all the
extra white space at the top and bottom of the page. This was my only
minor quibble, otherwise the instructions are very easy to follow.
5.3
ScoreDraw disc
5.3
On the ScoreDraw disc is an update directory which upgrades Rhapsody II,
versions below 1.23, to enable them to communicate with ScoreDraw. Once
upgraded, ScoreDraw appears as an extra option on the Rhapsody II score
menu. There is room for Rhapsody and ScoreDraw on a single disc, and
then Rhapsody will load ScoreDraw directly when required. There is also
a demo directory and a music library of useful musical symbols.
5.3
Once a page is saved as a Draw file, extra information can be added,
e.g. phrasing marks, or extra text. Once again the instructions are very
helpful, and everything works exactly as described in the manual.
5.3
Summary
5.3
I have always felt that the poor print quality was Rhapsody’s weak
point, but now, adding ScoreDraw to Rhapsody II allows you to produce
publishing quality printout of music scores for less than £125. Well
done Clares.
5.3
Jonathan Puttock continues....
5.3
It seems that Clares do listen to customers and reviewers. When Rhapsody
II appeared, it was nice to see how many of the points in the review in
Archive (and other reviews) had been noted and acted upon. Thank you,
Clares!
5.3
However, there were clearly some aspects which they did not find
feasible to automate completely, such as phrasing marks and hairpins for
(de)crescendo. It was also a disappointment that fonts were still not
used in the headings and text. However, Clares promised that a new
program was on its way to deal with these problems by providing Draw
format output. That program, ScoreDraw, has just been released.
5.3
When I first heard about Scoredraw, I thought the price was rather high
for a file format conversion program; however, when I received it I
discovered that it does more than just file conversion. Scoredraw takes
a Rhapsody file, either from disk or through a link from Rhapsody 2
menus, and reformats it with more care than Rhapsody manages. The notes
are Draw objects instead of sprites, fonts are used for headings, lyrics
and dynamic markings, and more conventional notation is used for
triplets and 1st/2nd time bars. The user also has more control over the
formatting, so that, for example, the indentation of the first system to
make space for the stave titles can be removed.
5.3
Once the score is formatted, it can be printed direct from ScoreDraw.
Alternatively, it can be saved again as a Rhapsody file, with the extra
ScoreDraw formatting information included, or as a Draw file. Using Draw
then allows great flexibility in adding extra symbols or for fine
adjustment of the results, such as shifting overlapping accidentals or
moving a dynamic mark which clashes with a note stem. I was surprised
how easy it is to create very neat phrasing marks using Bezier curves.
On the disk there is a library of 17 Draw files, giving musical symbols
which are not provided by Rhapsody. These include appoggiaturas, bowing
marks for string players, coda and dal segno.
5.3
The only problem I had with the program was that sometimes it would give
fatal error type 3, when first loading a score, apparently when reading
in the fonts. However, on reloading the program I usually found the
error did not reappear.
5.3
The 28 page manual provides the information needed to run the program.
It includes a section of advice on editing scores with Draw and brief
notes on transferring files to a desktop publishing package.
5.3
ScoreDraw costs £57 through Archive, so it represents a significant
extra investment on top of the price of Rhapsody 2. However, as a
flexible music printing package with publishing quality results, the
combination of the two programs at under £120 must compare very
favourably with programs available on other machines.
5.3
ScoreDraw is available from Clares Micro Supplies for £61.95 inc VAT or
£57 through Archive.  A
5.3

5.3
Vox Box
5.3
Stewart Watson & Jonathan Puttock
5.3
Vox Box is a suite of four applications which further enhance Rhapsody
II. Like ScoreDraw, it comes in the usual Clares package with an A5
manual and two disks. Disk one contains the four applications and disk
two contains a large number of very good and very useful sound samples.
5.3
The four programs are: Perform − Enables the setting up of a play list
which can include Rhapsody files, MIDI files and sound samples. VoxBeat
− Turns sampled percussion sounds into a module to enable easier
programming of rhythm patterns. VoxSample − Converts sound samples into
voices for use in Rhapsody etc. VoxSynth − Synthesises Archimedes voices
digitally.
5.3
Perform
5.3
Perform is a RISC-OS application which can be loaded by double clicking
on the icon in the usual way. A menu is then obtained by clicking <menu>
on Perform on the icon bar. There are four options:- Info, Play, Panel
and Quit. The first and last are as usual; Play starts a previously
assembled Perform file; and Panel opens a control panel with play, stop,
pause, skip forwards and skip backwards controls.
5.3
Perform will play up to 12 Rhapsody files, MIDI files, or sound samples
in sequence. It will also load voice modules and Perform files, which
allows you to nest performance programs for unlimited playing time. The
only real restriction is that the files must all be available from your
filing system when required, which presents no major problem unless you
are multi-tasking using a single floppy system.
5.3
To set up a program, click <select> on the icon bar, and drag filenames
into the program window. There is a dustbin available in the program
window if required.
5.3
The manual is very clear, and assembling Perform programs could hardly
be easier. Programs can be saved for playing later.
5.3
If you have access to a sound sampler, it is simplicity itself to sample
the titles of your pieces and include these as part of a Perform
program. A neat application with lots of uses.
5.3
VoxBeat
5.3
Voxbeat allows you to assemble a drum kit with one sound (bass drum,
snare drum etc.) assigned to each note of an octave, giving a maximum
total of 12 different sounds. The whole set can then be saved as a
module which can then be used in Rhapsody.
5.3
It is the same idea as used on many multi-timbral synthesizers, where
one sound is a drum kit spread across the keyboard. The limit of 12
sounds in VoxBeat might seem a bit of a limitation but, in reality, one
module will be more than enough for most people’s uses. For pieces with
particular rhythm sound requirements special modules could easily be
built.
5.3
On the second disk there is a range of very good quality percussion
samples, possibly all you’ll ever need. Of course, you don’t have to
restrict yourself to percussion samples − any suitable samples, vocal,
instrumental or sound effect can all be included if required.
5.3
VoxBeat will be a boon to rhythm programming and, like Perform, is
simplicity itself to use.
5.3
VoxSample
5.3
VoxSample attempts to get over the problems of using sound samples of
acoustic instruments.
5.3
A VoxSample sound is made up of two parts, the initial transient,
followed by one or more cycles of the sample to form the sustain
section. Included are facilities to alter the pitch of the initial
transient, and amplitude and pitch envelopes can be added to the sample.
5.3
On disk two are a selection of brass, keyboard, percussion, strings and
wind samples, together with a directory of others which includes 5
basses, guitar, harp, marimba, choir and vibraphone.
5.3
These can all be loaded into VoxSample, edited and resaved under the
same or different names, but I must say that the quality of the sounds
provided is extremely good and may result in VoxSample being under used.
For myself, I would like to have seen one or two ‘different’ samples
included, just to show a bit more of what VoxSample can do.
5.3
VoxSynth
5.3
Each VoxSynth module provides 8 independent voices and each modules
takes up less than 5k. Each voice is defined by two waveforms, each
representing one complete cycle. At the start of a note, the first
waveform is used but it gradually changes into the second as the note
progresses. Waveforms can be drawn by hand, synthesised from harmonic
components or created using a form of FM synthesis. Amplitude and pitch
envelopes can be superimposed on the sound. Like VoxBeat and VoxSample,
facilities are included for playing sounds, either directly from the
keyboard or via MIDI, if available.
5.3
VoxSynth is by far the most complex program of the four, but it just as
easy to get going. It is just that, to achieve predictable results, a
certain degree of familiarity with harmonic theory is required. If you
don’t have that knowledge, you can either use VoxSynth to enhance your
knowledge or simply have a lot of fun experimenting with sound in a
random way.
5.3
The combination of Rhapsody II, VoxBox and ScoreDraw gives Archimedes
users a great deal of control over music input and output, be it written
or played. I find it very difficult to find fault with Scoredraw or
VoxBox and, at the price, they are exceptionally good value.
5.3
Jonathan Puttock adds...
5.3
I found VoxBox enormous fun. It is very easy to produce very passable
voices both from VoxSample and VoxSynth. The samples provided on the
samples disk are very good. Also, on one of the Shareware disks there is
a utility for stripping the samples out of Soundtracker modules. I found
that these were a good source of samples to play around with. (Was that
Shareware 39 which has a Soundtracker to Rhapsody converter? Ed.)
5.3
A major feature which is worth mentioning is that you can have Rhapsody
playing music in the background, and hear the effect immediately if you
are editing the voice that Rhapsody is using − remarkable!
5.3
I had one problem with VoxSample. It tries to produce a sustained note
by repeating several cycles from somewhere near the end of the sample.
The user has plenty of control over this but for some samples without a
regular pattern, it is impossible to get a good sound. It would be
better to fade out the sample at the end in these cases. At a particular
frequency, you can do this with the amplitude envelope, but the
amplitude envelope is fixed in time and when played, say, an octave
higher, the sample is only half as long. One could perhaps do with an
amplitude envelope fixed to the sample length in addition to the time-
fixed one. Nevertheless, overall I was very impressed with VoxBox.
5.3
What a pity Clares do not supply the Perform program with Rhapsody 2, or
at least with ScoreDraw. It is a nice adjunct to Rhapsody 2, and fills a
minor gap in the facilities provided with that program; but there must
be many users who would like to use it with Rhapsody 2, but do not want
to buy the Vox series of programs.
5.3
Vox Box is available from Clares Micro Supplies for £61.95 inc VAT or
£57 through Archive.  A
5.3

5.3
Techno-I  Digitiser
5.3
Brian Baker
5.3
Last July I purchased a Techno-I digitiser. What follows are my findings
to date. This is not the result of intensive study, but of occasional
use by an ‘average’ purchaser.
5.3
Opening the box
5.3
The package consists of a Techno-I interface card, a disc, mounting bits
and the manual. The A3000 version (£333.70 inc VAT) comes cased and
plugs into the expansion connector. The A300/400 version (£298.45 inc
VAT) is a single width podule which is installed in the backplane in the
usual way. I installed the card in my 440/1 with no problems. My only
complaint about the hardware is that the screws that are provided for
fixing the half width blanking plate, also provided, are slotted and not
the crosshead type as used on all other backplates. Basic static build
up precautions are required when handling the card. These, with the
fitting and checking procedures, are clearly explained in the manual.
Video input to the digitiser is via a composite BNC as standard, or an
S-VHS option (£119.85). Adjustments are from software.
5.3
The book
5.3
The manual is A5 wire-bound. The font is clear and the pages are easy on
the eye. There are two pages of index and 51 pages of information. This
includes some error message information, a specification list, file
format details (sprite and multimedia) and more detailed information on
some of the menu options.
5.3
The bulk of the manual is taken up with a step by step guide through the
menu options. The menu boxes are shown as they appear on the screen with
the relevant option highlighted. The text explains the use of the
option, and cross reference is made to more details elsewhere in the
manual. I find this an excellent way to lay out the information. It
makes any explanation easy to find and, if you forget where an option
is, the route to it can easily be found. This method is obviously easier
to do where there is a small number of options. On applications which
have a large number of options it may be difficult to do, but would make
using the program much easier.
5.3
There are a large number of printing errors. These are mostly spelling
errors rather than technical ones, so they do not mislead the user of
the program. These mistakes should have been corrected at the printing
stage as they would have easily been spotted if someone had taken the
trouble to read the proofs.
5.3
The software
5.3
The disc contains !TechnoI, the main application, !Telly, which is for
the viewfinder, Examples and ChangeFSI. I have not used the latter, so
it is not considered in this review. It has been suggested to me that
the use of ChangeFSI will not produce results equal to the original 25
bit colour resolution. If anybody knows otherwise, let’s hear from you.
5.3
The disc is not protected and is easily transferred to a hard disc or
backup floppy. A 256 colour mode is required for Techno-I. When you are
in the correct mode, double-clicking on Techno-I will load the two
applications and an eye will appear on the right of the icon bar. If
there is a suitable video input connected, the eye will be blue for a
colour signal and grey for monochrome. Two other versions of the eye
indicate incorrect mode or invalid signal. The manual says that Techno-I
has been designed to work on 1 Mbyte machines but having only 1M of RAM
does place certain limitations on what you can do when the captured
image is being processed. The section to which you are referred “for
more information” is not in the manual, so I do not know what these
limitations are.
5.3
Menus
5.3
Clicking <menu> on the eye icon gives the usual quit option and access
to the info window. The viewfinder can be turned on and the viewfinder
set-up menu is available from this menu as well as the main menu. The
save sprite window can also be displayed from here and from the main
menu.
5.3
The viewfinder can be 1/4 or 1/16 of the screen area. The update of the
larger viewfinder will be slightly slower than the smaller size. The
display can be in monochrome or (with a suitable signal) colour. The
display can also be adjusted for brightness, contrast and colour from
this menu. Adjustment of variables is generally by dragging a bar along
a slider. The keyboard arrows cannot be used, while holding down
<select>, to give fine movement of the pointer as they can with some
applications. As the digitiser does not capture the whole screen, the
section or the picture to be digitised is selected by positioning a
frame, which defines the required area, within an area representing the
full picture. This is the area that will be seen in the viewfinder. For
most practical purposes, this can be left in the central position. The
final option on this menu is to turn the gamma correction on and off.
5.3
The main menu allows further setting up to be carried out. The process
ing of the signal before it is displayed in the viewfinder, or captured,
is adjusted from the input video menu. The variables are noise filter
ing, hue, luminance delay, edge enhancement, colour, brightness and
contrast. The latter three are not the same adjustments used for the
viewfinder. The video source (TV/VCR, BNC/SVHS) can be selected.
Choosing auto will capture a colour picture, if present, or monochrome
if not. A monochrome image can be taken from a colour input if required.
The chrominance filter can be turned on or off.
5.3
Techno-I accepts various standards of PAL as well as two types of NTSC.
For some reason, the factory set default is for Belgium/Yugoslavia.
Selection of the decoding is by clicking on the symbol next to the
required standard.
5.3
Changes made to the default settings can be saved and will be used when
Techno-I is loaded. The factory defaults can be recalled if required.
Zoom lock and the cutting box can be enabled in this section. When
Techno-I tests its RAM, ROM and video processor, input information and
the results of these tests are shown in a status window.
5.3
The display window allows control over the way the captured image is
displayed. Techno-I captures two frames when it digitises. The frames
can be displayed separately or together in the window and they can be
interlaced or superimposed. The display can be dithered or pure. Gamma
correction can be adjusted by a slider or writable icon. It can also be
turned on/off from here as well as the from the viewfinder display. The
manual shows the gamma correction capable of being set to two places of
decimals but it can only be set to one place.
5.3
The sprite size window has four pre-set options and writable icons to
set the user’s choice. The pre-sets range from 512 × 256 to 640 × 512.
Changing the sprite size will cause the display of the captured image to
change to the new values. A writable icon displays the sprite name, if
it has one, the size of the sprite, in bytes, and the screen mode.
5.3
Digitising
5.3
Clicking on Digitise in the main menu will transfer the current input
into the main display window. The settings mentioned previously are used
to determine the way the image is displayed. The display can be flipped
around the X and Y axis and the RGB balance can be changed. A zoom
facility will scale X and Y from 1:999 to 999:1 independently. If
required, X and Y can be locked together to use the same scaling. There
are options to display the sprite within the window boundaries by re-
scaling or by re-calculating the sprite dimensions. The options will
also adjust the window boundary to fit the screen or return the scaling
to 1:1.
5.3
The digitising of the picture takes approximately 40 seconds, as do
changes from the display menu. Other changes to the displayed sprite
take around 30 seconds but can be done in combination. That is, the R, G
and B can all be changed at one time or separately. The same applies to
colour, brightness and contrast. All changes refer back to the original
stored images so that, each time a setting is changed, it is the
original which is changed and re-displayed, and not the displayed image.
5.3
Printing
5.3
The print menu, which cannot be brought up with the print key, gives
various choices. There is a choice of printing the whole scanned area,
the current window or a marked area (more about this later). The print
can be from 1:9 to 9:1 via writable icons or clicking on arrows, and can
be at the current zoom, scaled to fit the window or as a standard
sprite. The number of copies can be set as can the orientation. Techno-I
uses the RISC-OS printer drivers. If one is loaded, its name is
displayed.
5.3
My only experience of the print facility, so far, is that it does not
work. The few times I have tried it have resulted in a print of the
lower half of the image. As most users will be dragging the image into a
DTP package this is not too much of a problem. The image can also be
dragged into any other application that can handle sprites, such as
Paint and Draw. I do not have the facility to print in colour. I have
printed from Impression to my 24 pin dot matrix. The quality is better
than direct from Techno-I but not good. I think that, with a bit more
customising of the Techno-I settings, I will improve the printing from
Impression to an acceptable level.
5.3
Saving
5.3
There are two formats used for saving. There is the normal sprite
format, which is recognised by other applications, and multi-media. The
sprite saving window allows naming of the file and the sprite. It also
shows the size of the sprite, in bytes and pixels, the mode that the
sprite is in and the mode in which the sprite will be saved. The latter
is a writable icon. There is also a ‘save section’ option (more about
this later). The sprite can be saved to disc or dragged to another
application in the usual way.
5.3
Images saved as multi-media can be loaded back into Techno-I for further
processing. These formats are not compatible, so sprite files cannot be
loaded into Techno-I and multimedia files are not accepted by appli
cations which use sprite files. I assume that other applications exist
which produce multi-media files that can be used by Techno-I and vice-
versa. I have experienced problems in loading files back into Techno-I.
The display has to be set for single frame or the image is corrupted.
Whether this is a problem, or is just not covered in the manual, I am
not sure.
5.3
Cutting box
5.3
This is described in the manual as allowing a marked area to be saved or
printed. A selected area can also become the displayed sprite, anything
outside the box being deleted. Unfortunately, on the version of Techno-I
that I have (v1.01), this option has not been implemented so I cannot
say any more about it. A section of the sprite can be saved via the ‘get
screen area’ option in Paint.
5.3
Conclusions
5.3
Techno-I does produce excellent results. Although I have not been able
to compare it with other packages, I do not think the images produced
could be better.
5.3
I have been unable to obtain an acceptable colour image in the view
finder, so I usually use it with the settings adjusted for monochrome.
Because of the delay between the incoming image and update of the
viewfinder, short as it is, it can be difficult to capture the exact
image you require from a moving source. I use the viewfinder to set the
frame position and watch the T.V. screen to capture the right picture. A
picture cannot be grabbed from a VCR in still frame. The top of the
picture is distorted as Techno-I cannot lock onto the signal correctly.
At worst, the icon bar displays will appear and disappear and, if this
is allowed to continue, Techno-I will say it has run out of program
memory and quit. This can also occur in fast forward / reverse.
5.3
User values can be saved, but only one set. It would be useful to have
the facility to store more. You may, for instance, require one set of
values for colour digitising and another set for monochrome. Although
the factory settings can be re-called from within the program, user
settings are only available when starting Techno-I.
5.3
The manual requires re-printing to correct all the errors. These spoil
what is otherwise a good example of how to present information. The
print option should be sorted out and the option allowing use of the
cutting box implemented.
5.3
There is no registration card supplied with Techno-I which may mean
upgrades will not be readily available. I feel that this package has
been released before it should have been. Further work is required to
make the most of the hardware.  A
5.3

5.3
Cross-32 Meta-Assembler
5.3
Jahinder Singh
5.3
Computers produced by Acorn, from the humble BBC Microcomputer to the
present day range of Archimedes machines have all come with a built in
assembler and, by using the minimum of effort, the full processing power
of the computer has been available. However, just released from Baildon
Electronics is their ‘Cross-32 Meta-Assembler’. Now, not only can
Archimedes owners program in ARM code, but they can get down to some
serious development work on other microprocessors, micro-controllers and
digital signal processors (DSP’s) using the Archimedes.
5.3
The Cross-32 Meta-Assembler is a table based macro cross-assembler that
compiles programs for numerous different target processors on any
Archimedes with RISC-OS. This assembler uses a ‘meta-language’ to
describe the relevant aspects of the desired target processor. The meta-
language description is stored in the form of a table which is read in
early during the first pass. By using a flexible instruction table
structure, the assembler is thus able to compile assembly language
source code for most microprocessors, micro-controllers and some DSP’S
with an address word length of 32 bits or less. Also, by developing
tables that translate the assembly instructions into the equivalent
binary codes for the host processor and thereby allowing direct
execution, microprocessor emulation is possible. With this version, the
following processor families were catered for.
5.3
ARM 2/3
5.3
1802/5/6 COP400
5.3
37700 COP800
5.3
50740/37450 H8/300
5.3
6502/C02 H8/500
5.3
65816 NEC7500
5.3
6800/1/2/3/8/6301/3 NEC78C10
5.3
6805/HC05 PIC16C5X
5.3
6809 SUPER8
5.3
68HC11 TMS3201X
5.3
68000/8/10/302 TMS3202X
5.3
8041 TMS34010
5.3
8048 TMS370
5.3
8051 TMS7000
5.3
8085 TMS9900/95
5.3
8086/88/186/188 Z8
5.3
8096/C196 Z80
5.3
Z180/64180 Z280
5.3
(more to be released .....)
5.3
If you happen to use a processor other than the above, all that is
required is to write a new processor table or to modify an existing
table.
5.3
The package
5.3
The complete package offered by Baildon Electronics consists of a single
disc, a registration card and a manual. The manual is excellent − not
only is it very professionally produced but all aspects of the software
have been described in detail without causing confusion. It makes good
bedtime reading!
5.3
The software supplied on disc is installed in the usual manner − it can
also be executed from the command line or from within an Obey file. As
well as the main program, the disc contains the numerous processor
tables, example source files corresponding to each target processor and
a directory with !System (containing the current version of the Shared C
Library) and !SysMerge.
5.3
Using the software
5.3
A lot of credit must go to Baildon Electronics for the production of
this software. The cross-assembly process is very simple and consists of
first producing an ASCII text file containing the target processor’s
mnemonics and assembler directives. This text file is then dragged onto
the installed icon on the icon bar and, provided this source file is
syntactically correct, contains valid opcodes, operands, labels and the
correct directives, then the assembler will produce a hex output file
plus a list file if desired.
5.3
A lot of control is available with the input source file and the output
files. Each assembly line is free format − that is, labels need not
start in column one − with each line containing some or all of the
following sequence of identifiers:
5.3
  line#  label:   operator   operand(s)  ;  comment
5.3
Operands can consist of numeric constants (32 bit signed or unsigned),
string constants and arithmetic operators which, in combination with
labels, may be used to form operands. Most of the operators and their
precedence are taken from ANSI C.
5.3
The hex output can be controlled by having the option of producing pure
binary output (8, 16 or 32 bit), Intel formats (regular and extended) or
the Motorola formats S19, S28 and S37 corresponding to 8, 16 and 32 bits
respectively. The user also has the option of enabling and disabling
output to the hex file which is useful when defining locations in RAM.
5.3
An output listing can be obtained which also displays all the labels
with their corresponding values. Whenever an error is detected during
the cross-assembly process, the software informs you on what line the
error occurred. A detailed account of all error messages is included in
the manual.
5.3
The ultimate test
5.3
At work, I have just completed work on the development of a 6809
microprocessor embedded control system. The development of this system
was carried out on an in-circuit emulator connected to a PC. What I
decided to do was to convert my PC source input to an Archimedes format,
make some changes to assembler directives and insert two ORG (Origin)
directives to separate data from code. After performing the cross-
assembly process, I converted the produced hex file (text file) from
Archimedes format back to PC format and then onto EPROM. After applying
power to my hardware, the hardware functioned correctly.
5.3
Conclusions
5.3
As you have probably guessed, I like this package. Both the documenta
tion and the software are very easy to understand and use. For people
who carry out a lot of development work on a variety of processors, then
this product is ideal. A lot of time and money can be saved in the
learning and purchasing of individual cross-assemblers, leaving more
time & money for program development. Educational institutions would
really benefit from this package. During my undergraduate days I used
many different processors, but, each time I also had to learn how to use
the corresponding assembler. Using this product, which already has all
the necessary tables which I required then, would have saved a lot of
time.
5.3
I’ve used a lot of cross-assemblers at work such as the one marketed by
Enertec Inc (which targets 42 microprocessors and has a universal linker
and librarian), the one marketed by the Lear Com company and the cross-
disassembler by Logisoft and AD2500. Cross-32 compares very favourably
with these products.
5.3
However, a few minor points which I didn’t really like are as follows :
5.3
1)    The software should have stated the size of the program in bytes
i.e. at the bottom of the list file. Although this figure can be
calculated it is usual to display it.
5.3
2)    During the assembly process, the software temporarily takes over
the complete screen (goes to mode 0) and returns you to the desktop
after a successful assembly or if an error is detected. It would have
looked better if another window had opened containing all the relevant
details. Although you might not have much time to access other multi
tasking applications, it would have appeared fully RISC-OS compliant.
5.3
3)    At present there is no support for a linker or a librarian −
hopefully I will not have to wait too long.
5.3
Overall, a very good product which performs its function with ease.  A
5.3

5.3
Technomatic    468 Church Lane, London, NW9 8UF. (081−205−9558) (−0190)
5.3
The Really Good Software Company      P.O.Box
60, Ashton-under-Lyme, OL5 9WW.
5.3
Trail Software    P.O. Box 283, London, SW11 2LL.
5.3
Turcan Research Systems    83 Green
croft Gardens, West Hampstead, London NW6 3LJ. (071−625−8455)
5.3
Watford Electronics    250 Lower
High Street, Watford, WD1 2AN. (0923−37774) (−33642)
5.3
Word Processing (p29)    65 Milldale
Crescent, Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, WV10 6LR.
5.3

5.3

5.3

5.3
First Words and Pictures
5.3
Simon Anthony
5.3
First Words and Pictures from Chalksoft is an early reading package
aimed at young children and special educational needs students. This is
a very wide range to cover but Chalksoft make a very good stab at it.
The program is written with a careful balance between ease of use and
flexibility which causes a few problems, but they are easy enough to
avoid once they have been recognised.
5.3
The idea of the program is to present a simple everyday scene showing
articles or actions which have to be correctly identified. A word or
sentence describing part of the scene is displayed at the bottom of the
screen and the mouse or cursor keys are used to move a pointer in order
to select the relevant area. An illuminating arrow shows which area is
being selected before the choice is finalised by the reader. If the
answer is right, the selected area enlarges with a gentle tune as a
reward. If it is wrong, the computer ‘sneezes’ as they select it. The
score does not go down and there is no long term indication of failure
to put off the less able reader. After a preset number of questions
there is the option to have another go with the same or different scene.
5.3
The program in action
5.3
The opening screen shows the Chalksoft banner. Pressing <return> gives a
menu with options to allow you to alter every aspect of the program.
There are so many variables that an unassisted user can get lost in its
depths. I would prefer access to this menu to be hidden in much the way
that escaping from the program is achieved, that is by using ctrl +
another key.
5.3
The feel of the main program is pleasant and friendly. The artwork is
primary schoolbook type and the music sounds a little twee. This does
not make for an exciting game but that isn’t the idea. After the preset
number of correct answers has been made, a congratulatory message floats
down the screen while another tune tinkles away happily. There are ten
scenes each with eight questions. By changing the options, these will
easily last a morning without repetition. The options have been designed
in consultation with real teachers and are not just the whim of a back-
room programmer. Every time it is used, more and more subtle aspects
emerge due to the flexibility provided. It is not immediately obvious
that the program lifetime would be longer than a few hours but my
experience is that at least special needs students gain a very great
deal and keep coming back for more. The program is not disturbing to
other people in the same room.
5.3
The ‘off computer’ aspects of this package are very important. The
ability to print out the words, sentences and line drawings of the
picture elements and scenes allows colouring in, writing the labels by
hand and simple displays to be made. Learning is improved by using as
many parts of the brain as possible and so these facilities provide good
educational value. They show the care and attention to detail that
typifies the main body of this program.
5.3
One problem that I found is that older children with reading difficul
ties tend to be put off by the childlike presentation. Perhaps Chalksoft
could produce a version of the program with an older emotional feel but
set at the same reading age.
5.3
The program installs easily on a hard disc or network and can be run
from the desktop or autobooted from the disc. It is not copy protected
and so there is no danger of damage to the master disc destroying this
valuable addition to the educational range.
5.3
Conclusion
5.3
First Words and pictures works well. It does teach reading skills and
will hold the attention as long as the user doesn’t feel they are being
patronised by the style. In a group of mixed ability, this can be a
problem. At home or in a matched group of emotionally young pre-readers
there are no such reservations. At £22 plus VAT it is a bit pricey for
the impoverished parent but for an educational establishment it is good
value for money.  A
5.3

5.3
Southern Printers Archimedes Line Art Disc 2
5.3
Hugh Eagle
5.3
Southern Printers Line Art Disc 2 contains 40 Draw files in compressed
form (together with !SparkPlug to aid decompression). There are
altogether about 1240k bytes of data on the disc which costs £9.00 fully
inclusive from Southern Printers. Disc 1 in the series is still
available for £5.50 and you can buy both discs for £12.50. The low
prices are to discourage illegal copying. If you send an SAE, they will
send you a complete set of illustrations to help you decide whether you
want to splash out!
5.3
I don’t know whether there are any Archimedes users left who have not
discovered the fun that can be had with Draw files. You can print them
out and enjoy them for what they are, or use them for ornate letter
headings, or to liven up party invitations, or as illustrations in DTP
documents and a host of “interactive” programs like Genesis, Magpie and
so on. Unlike sprites, the lines and curves remain smooth and unjagged,
however much you scale them up or down or rotate them. Using Draw or
DrawPlus, you can stretch or distort them, select bits of them, change
colours and use bits and pieces from different drawings to build up
montages. With programs like Poster or DrawBender, you can bend them or
shape them any way you want them!
5.3
There is a wide variety of objects in this collection, but it is
probably fair to say that the majority can be categorised as fauna and
flora, buildings or locomotives. A lot of trouble has clearly been taken
over most of the drawings and they have been stylishly drawn. Some of
them, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, are very elaborate; on the other
hand there are some, like the smiley face, which take simplicity to
extremes! My favourites include the very handsome parrot.
5.3
Are they good value? There is now quite a lot of competition, ranging
from Archive Shareware to quite expensive professional offerings. My
preference is for simpler drawings, since they often have more impact
when printed. Also they are nicer to use because the computer can draw
them more quickly and you can get more on a disc! (There are some
particularly good examples, drawn with great flair, on Shareware 18.)
However, if you want the particular pictures in this collection, the
disc is certainly value for money. And full marks to Southern Printers
for making available a complete set of illustrations so that you can
make up your own mind.  A
5.3

5.3

5.3
Acorn’s New PC Emulator (Version 1.60)
5.3
Rob Brown
5.3
The first software PC Emulator was introduced by Acorn Computers not
long after the launch, in the Autumn of 1987, of the Archimedes itself.
Shortly afterwards, Acorn announced that it would be concentrating on
software emulation of the PC rather than trying to produce a hardware
solution. Thus, this early version of the PC Emulator (1.00) was, over
time, superseded by versions 1.09, 1.20, 1.21 and 1.33; the latter being
released in late 1989. Early versions were relatively slow and were
provided with very limited documentation; additional customisation or
configuration of the emulator was not, generally, a straightforward
task.
5.3
Although version 1.33 of the PC Emulator was an improvement over earlier
versions and was: “....designed for use with RISC-OS 2.00....”, it did
not function within the RISC-OS desktop and, when started up, performed
a reset and cleared the Archimedes desktop of any other tasks that may
have been running at the time. All these versions were supplied with the
MS-DOS PC operating system. Version 1.34, when included with the various
Learning Curve packages, was supplied with DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS.
5.3
I have recently obtained version 1.60 of the PC Emulator (as an upgrade)
and, in this article, I hope to give an impression of its more signifi
cant features. At the outset, it is worth mentioning that I have an
Archimedes A310, upgraded to 4M and fitted with a hard disc (but not
ARM3).
5.3
What do you get?
5.3
The full upgrade kit consists of 4 discs:
5.3
PC Emulator MDA/CGA/EGA multi-tasking (min 2M memory)
5.3
PC Emulator CGA single-tasking (min 1M)
5.3
Acorn DOS Support Disc (DOS format 720k)
5.3
CD-ROM Support Disc (DOS format 720k)
5.3
plus the following documentation:
5.3
PC Emulator Guide (manual)
5.3
Upgrade Kit Release Note
5.3
Supplementary Release Note
5.3
End-User Licence Conditions
5.3
Owner Registration Form
5.3
User Licence Agreement
5.3
The latter two have to be completed and returned to Acorn Computers (in
a pre-paid envelope), although it does seem as though these are designed
more for organisations than private individuals. Both PC Emulator discs
include an updated version of the Upgrade Kit Release Note as a ReadMe
file.
5.3
Documentation
5.3
The PC Emulator Guide is more extensive than previous manuals, and runs
to just over 30 A5 pages; it is well written with illustrations where
relevant, although there is no index. The documentation does make
reference to the inclusion of MS-DOS version 3.30, as opposed to MS-DOS
version 3.21 which was included with my original PC Emulator package.
However, the Acorn DOS Support Disc only includes the 3 files AMOUSE.
COM, GETFILE.EXE and PUTFILE.EXE. I understand from Acorn that version
3.30 of MS-DOS is not available as part of the upgrade and is only
supplied to purchasers of the complete package; but there is apparently
little functional difference between the two versions.
5.3
The software
5.3
For those with an Archimedes with the minimum 1Mbyte memory, there is
what Acorn describe as the “small” PC Emulator; this only allows single-
tasking and the basic PC CGA graphics. This is virtually identical to
version 1.33, except that it does start from and return to the desktop
leaving any other tasks intact. For users with 2Mbytes (or more) memory,
the “large” PC Emulator allows full multi-tasking and provides MDA (b/
w), CGA, EGA and EGA+ (VGA) PC graphics.
5.3
MultiFS
5.3
Both emulator discs include MultiFS (from Arxe Systems, version: 1.41a).
This appears to be a DOS only version of the product reviewed in Archive
3.12 p35.
5.3
Double-clicking on the MultiFS icon displays a series of DOS floppy and/
or hard disc icons on the icon bar, labelled as per DOS conventions
(e.g. the first floppy disc drive is labelled “:A”, a second would be
labelled “:B” and so on). These behave exactly like the ADFS (or SCSI)
icons and allow DOS floppy/hard disc directories/files to be displayed
as if they were RISC-OS; except that the display of DOS filenames is
truncated to 10 char-acters, instead of the full 8 character name and 3
character extension. MultiFS provides the usual desktop functions (such
as move, copy and delete, plus format: both 360k and 720k) for DOS discs
and also permits transfer between RISC-OS and DOS discs. There is a Name
Translation option which may need to be used to avoid any potential
problems in transferring files between RISC-OS and DOS.
5.3
The MultiFS !Run file is set up for a specific hard disc path-name, so
if you have a different name (or use a SCSI hard disc instead of ADFS)
this will need to be edited. Furthermore, it does not seem possible for
both MultiFS and the PC Emulator to access the same hard disc at the
same time, MultiFS produces an error message that the: “Hard disc
file....is in use by another application”.
5.3
MultiFS compares very favourably with the other desktop DOS utilities
that I have used previously: PC Dir (from Keith Sloan, latest version on
Careware 7) and PC-Access (from Minerva Software). Trying to run all
three products alongside each other is not to be recommended since they
appear to ‘clash’ in a variety of ways. PC-Access appears to have more
functionality than PC Dir, and in turn MultiFS appears to have the edge
in terms of features over PC-Access.
5.3
Installation
5.3
Whilst installation of either PC Emulator is basically straightforward,
it is a task that is best undertaken with the PC Emulator Guide to hand;
the manual has a specific section detailing the upgrade procedure.
5.3
For users of floppy discs, it is simply a question of updating the
!System and !Fonts applications using the !Merge application, included
on both PC Emulator discs, and then using the appropriate new emulator
disc in place of the old one. The !Fonts application is only included
with the “large” emulator and is used when operating within the RISC-OS
desktop.
5.3
For users with a hard disc, the procedure is still relatively straight
forward. Although the manual indicates that the old PC Emulator and its
associated files can be deleted at the start of the upgrade process, I
was more cautious and chose to defer this until I was satisfied that I
had completed the upgrade process correctly!
5.3
Having updated the !System and !Fonts applications and determined
whether to install the “small” or “large” emulator, its files are copied
to a suitable directory. If you are upgrading, you are warned not to
create a DOS hard disc file as you already have one. The PC Emulator is
now loaded (by double-clicking on its icon) onto the icon bar and the
existing path-name typed into the Hard disc drive file box of the
Configuration menu; this configuration is then saved, which should allow
the PC Emulator to start from the existing hard disc partition. Version
1.33 set a limit of 32Mbytes for each hard disc; although there is no
mention in the documentation for the new version of a similar limit, I
understand from Acorn that it does still apply. For obvious reasons, I
did not amend the size of my existing hard disc partition!
5.3
If you are installing the PC Emulator for the first time on a hard disc
there are four stages involved:
5.3
1.    Creating a RISC-OS file for use as a PC hard disc.
5.3
2.    Partitioning the PC hard disc for DOS.
5.3
3.    Formatting the PC hard disc.
5.3
4.            Copying the DOS files onto the hard disc.
5.3
Configuration
5.3
The inclusion of this menu option (only available when there is no PC
window open), simplifies the task of selecting the various PC Emulator
start-up options. There are five of these which, if changed, need first
to be saved before the appropriate emulator itself is started:
5.3
1.    PC RAM size. The default setting is “All”, which means that the PC
Emulator will emulate a PC with up to 640k memory. However, there does
not appear to be any provision of or support for expanded/extended
memory.
5.3
2.    Erase RISC-OS? This option is only available on the “small” PC
Emulator. This deletes specified RISC-OS modules to maximise the memory
available to DOS; but using this option renders inoperable the very
useful feature of being able to switch between the RISC-OS desktop and
PC environments.
5.3
3.    Floppy disc drives. This allows for additional 3½“ or 5¼” internal
or external drives to be added beyond the default of ‘A’ for the
internal 3½“ drive. If more drives are added than actually exist, an
error message is displayed when the PC Emulator is started that: “More
floppy discs specified than exist”, and any extra drives are ignored.
Although my external 5¼” disc drive is 40/80 track switchable, it is
also possible to edit the Configuration file to ‘DoubleStep’. This means
that I can leave the drive set to 80 track, and it will read/write from/
to DOS 5¼“ 360k (40 track) discs. However, there does not appear to be a
similar ‘DoubleStep’ facility within MultiFS.
5.3
4.    Hard disc drive files. This allows a hard disc drive to be created
or added, and/or existing path-names amended (see Installation above).
5.3
5.    Display adaptors. This option is only available on the “large” PC
Emulator. There are four basic types of display adapter available: MDA
(b/w), CGA, EGA and EGA+ (VGA), each of which uses increasing amounts of
memory. Within the EGA option, there are additional sub-options for EGA
monitor (normal or multisync) and EGA memory (64k, 128k or 256k). The
Task display indicates that the memory in use by the “large” PC Emulator
application can range from 1440k (MDA/CGA) to 1728k (EGA+), for the
“small” application it is 960k; these are based on a configuration of
the full 640k emulated PC memory.
5.3
In use
5.3
Running either the “large” or “small” PC Emulator is straightforward.
Its icon is first double-clicked and loaded onto the icon bar; selecting
this icon then displays the PC screen in a window (“large” PC Emulator)
or displays the PC screen in full (“small” PC Emulator). Users with
floppy discs will then need to insert the DOS system disc (to boot DOS
and obtain the A> prompt); users with a hard disc should find that DOS
should boot automatically (leaving them at the C> prompt).
5.3
However, I found that forgetting to switch on the external 5¼“ drive
connected to my Archimedes caused the PC Emulator to ‘freeze’ with a
blank PC window until any key is pressed and then the usual DOS prompt
of C> appeared; this is apparently caused by DOS searching through each
drive in turn for a ‘bootable’ disc. Furthermore, it is important to
leave the floppy disc drive(s) empty when booting DOS from a hard disc,
otherwise a: “Non system disc or disc error....” message will appear.
5.3
From the icon bar, there are a number of menu options: Info, Configura
tion (see above) and Quit are common to both emulators. Additionally,
once the “large” PC Emulator has been started, there are options to
Single task or Freeze the emulator. The latter ‘pause’ option, which is
also automatically selected if the PC window is closed, means that any
RISC-OS tasks will run somewhat faster; this can then be cancelled by
clicking on the PC Emulator icon to re-open the PC window.
5.3
Having selected the Single task option, it is then possible to switch
back to multi-tasking by clicking the middle mouse button (the same
method is used to switch from the PC screen of the “small” PC Emulator
to the RISC-OS desktop). The PC Emulator Guide states that: “When
running in Single task mode, the emulator will run slightly faster.
Screen updates in particular will be faster”. By way of illustration,
the following table shows the time taken to load a PC spreadsheet
program, to load a 100k file into it, and to re-calculate a simple 5,000
cell spreadsheet. All timings were based on loading from 3½“ floppy disc
and using desktop mode 15 (on an Archimedes not fitted with an ARM3
upgrade), timings for the previous version 1.33 are also included for
interest. (See table below.)
5.3
Whilst these are by no means comprehensive benchmarks; they do indicate
broadly comparable timings except when using multi-tasking operation
and/or the higher resolution PC graphics modes. It does not seem
possible to have more than one PC window open at once; trying to load a
second version of the emulator from a hard disc produces the error
message that the: “Hard disc....cannot be opened....”. Even trying to
load a second version of the PC Emulator from floppy disc fails,
irrespective of whether it is loaded before or after the hard disc
version, since no form of keyboard input appears to be possible in
either PC window.
5.3
Whilst the DOS screen colours are reproduced correctly when single-
tasking, this is not always the case when operating within the RISC-OS
desktop, particularly when using a 16 colour mode; this is less
noticeable in a 256 colour mode. I also found it necessary to alter the
horizontal/vertical control settings on my multi-sync monitor to obtain
a proper display of the higher resolution PC graphics modes. Obviously,
I had never needed to use its VGA setting before!
5.3
Once the PC Emulator has loaded the PC environment, you are largely on
your own as far as the Acorn documentation is concerned; but it would be
unreasonable to expect Acorn to provide a step-by-step DOS tutorial.
There are a few pages outlining the more commonly used DOS commands, and
one appendix in the PC Emulator Guide contains a list of suggested
“Further reading”.
5.3
In addition, the Acorn DOS Support Disc provides a Microsoft compatible
mouse device driver; unfortunately none of my (limited) range of PC
software uses a mouse, so I have been unable to try this out. The same
disc also includes the GETFILE and PUTFILE utilities for transferring
files from/to RISC-OS/DOS; but, in practice, I imagine that most users
may well find the MultiFS application more convenient. Not having a CD-
ROM unit, I have not had the opportunity to try out the CD-ROM Support
Disc.
5.3
Use with 40/80 track drives
5.3
In addition to the ‘DoubleStep’ facility already mentioned under
Configuration; DOS also provides a command − DRIVPARM − to control the
configuration of floppy disc drives. There is a brief note in the
Upgrade Kit Release Note referring to this command, with particular
reference to formatting discs from within MS-DOS version 3.21. In case
it may be of interest, part of my CONFIG.SYS file includes the following
commands:
5.3
DRIVPARM=/D:0/F:2/H:2/S:9/T:80
5.3
DRIVPARM=/D:1/F:0/H:2/S:9/T:40 where: D (drive) is a number with 0
corresponding to A, 1 to B etc.
5.3
F (format) is 0 for 360k, 2 for 720k.
5.3
H (heads) is the number of heads − usually 2 for double sided.
5.3
S (sectors) is the sectors per track − 9 for both 360k and 720k.
5.3
T (tracks) is the tracks per side − 40 for 360k and 80 for 720k.
5.3
In other words, I have set up the internal 3½“ disc drive to read/write
from/to DOS 720k (80 track) discs and the external 5¼” drive to read/
write from/to DOS 360k (40 track) discs.
5.3
Conclusion
5.3
With access to only a limited range of PC software, I am not in a
position to give a view on compatibility. However, Acorn provide a list
of the more significant PC applications that have been tested success
fully with the PC Emulator (including DBase IV, Excel, Symphony, Ventura
2.0 and Wordstar V6); they also provide a further listing of some
software requiring specific configuration (including Windows 3, under
EGA+) and a note of a few programs which do not work at all under the
emulator. Acorn also provide a technical description of the emulated PC,
in case it is required for specific PC programs’ installation routines.
5.3
Without a doubt, version 1.60 of the PC Emulator offers significant
advantages over earlier versions, including: better documentation,
easier configuration, multi-tasking operation (plus a ‘clean’ return to
the desktop from single-tasking) and emulation of additional PC graphics
modes. At an upgrade price of £34.08 (including VAT) from Acorn Direct
(for existing owners of the MS-DOS version), and with MultiFS included
‘free’, it seems a real bargain. The new price of the PC Emulator
(through Archive) is £96.  A
5.3

5.3
Fact-File
5.3

5.3
(The numbers in italic are fax numbers)
5.3

5.3
4th Dimension     P.O. Box 4444, Sheffield. (0742−700661)
5.3
4mation    11 Castle Park Road, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, Devon, EX32
8PA. (0271−25353) (−22974)
5.3
Abacus Training    29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
5.3
Acorn Computers Ltd    Fulbourn
Road, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, CB1 4JN. (0223−245200) (−210685)
5.3
Ace Computing (p10)    27 Victoria
Road, Cambridge, CB4 3BW. (0223−322559) (−69180)
5.3
Aleph One Ltd    The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(0223−811679) (−812713)
5.3
Alpine Software    P.O.Box 25, Portadown, Craigavon, BT63 5UT.
(0762−342510)
5.3
Arnor Ltd    611 Lincoln Road, Peterborough, PE1 3HA. (0733−68909) (−67299)
5.3
Arxe Systems Ltd    P.O.Box 898, Forest Gate, London E7 9RG. (081−534−1198
evenings)
5.3
Atomwide Ltd    23 The Greenway, Orpington, Kent, BR5 2AY. (0689−838852)
(−896088)
5.3
Baildon Electronics    1 Fyfe
Crescent, Baildon, Shipley, W Yorks BD17 6DR. (0274−580519) (−531626)
5.3
Chalksoft    P.O. Box 49, Spalding, Lincs, PE11 1NZ. (0775−769518)
5.3
Clares Micro Supplies    98 Mid
dlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich, Cheshire, CW9 7DA. (0606−48511)
(−48512)
5.3
Colton Software (p20)    2 Signet
Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA. (0223−311881) (−312010)
5.3
Computer Concepts (p32/33)    Gaddesden
Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6EX. (0442−63933) (−231632)
5.3
Dalmation Publications    37 Manor
Road, Teddington, Middlesex  TW11 8AA.
5.3
David Pilling    P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
5.3
Digital Services    9 Wayte Street, Cosham, Portsmouth PO6 3BS.
(0705−210600) (−210705)
5.3
DT Software    13 Northumberland Road, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV32
6HE.
5.3
DT Software    FREEPOST, Cambridge CB3 7BR. (0223−841099)
5.3
I-APL Ltd     2 Blenheim Road, St Albans, AL1 4NR.
5.3
Ian Copestake Software    10 Frost
Drive, Wirral, L61 4XL. (051−632−1234)(−3434)
5.3
IFEL (p18)    36 Upland Drive, Plymouth, Devon, PL6 6BD. (0752−847286)
5.3
Longman-Logotron    124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4
4ZS. (0223−425558) (−425349)
5.3
LOOKsystems (p9)    47 Goodhale Road, Bowthorpe, Norwich, NR5 9AY.
(0603−764114) (−764011)
5.3
Morley Electronics     Morley
House, Norham Road, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 7TY. (091−257−6355)
(−6373)
5.3
Oak Solutions (p6)    Suite 25,
Robin Enterprise Centre, Leeds Road, Idle, Yorkshire BD10 9TE.
(0274−620423) (−620419)
5.3
Oregan Developments     36 Grosvenor
Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, B74 3PE.
5.3
Ray Maidstone (p15)    421
Sprowston Road, Norwich, NR3 4EH. (0603−407060) (−417447)
5.3
RISC Developments Ltd    117 Hatfield
Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4JS. (0727−40303) (−60263)
5.3
Sherston Software    Swan Barton, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH.
(0666−840433) (−840048)
5.3
Southern Printers    47 Drake Road, Willesborough, Ashford, Kent TN24 0UZ.
(0233−633919)
5.3
Spacetech (p16)    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset, DT5 2EA.
(0305−822753)
5.3
Techsoft UK Ltd (p19)    Old School
Lane, Erryrs, Mold, Clwyd, CH7 4DA. (082−43318)
5.3
Technomatic    468 Church Lane, London, NW9 8UF. (081−205−9558) (−0190)
5.3
The Really Good Software Company    P.O.Box 60,
Ashton-under-Lyme, OL5 9WW.
5.3
Trail Software    P.O. Box 283, London, SW11 2LL.
5.3
Turcan Research Systems    83 Green
croft Gardens, West Hampstead, London NW6 3LJ. (071−625−8455)
5.3
Watford Electronics    250 Lower
High Street, Watford, WD1 2AN. (0923−37774) (−33642)
5.3
Word Processing (p29)    65 Milldale
Crescent, Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, W Midlands  WV10 6LR.
5.3

5.3

5.3
Norwich Computer Services 96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD. 0603-
766592 (764011)
5.3

5.3
PC Emulator version:    v1.33
v1.60       <−−−−−−−− v1.60 “large” −−−−−−−−>
5.3
        “small”         CGA    EGA(256k)  EGA(256k)    EGA+
5.3
                normal    m/sync
5.3
Load spreadsheet program:
5.3
single-task     39s     37s     36s
37s     38s     38s
5.3
multi-task    -     -     39s
39s     39s     40s
5.3
Load 100k file:
5.3
single-task     1m 00s     1m 03s
1m 03s     1m 03s     1m 10s     1m 18s
5.3
multi-task    -     -     1m 21s
1m 21s     1m 21s     1m 21s
5.3
Re-calculate 5,000 cell spreadsheet:
5.3
single-task     28s     28s     28s
28s     32s     38s
5.3
multi-task    -     -     38s
38s     39s     39s
5.3

5.3
    21 West Wools, Portland, Dorset, DT5 2EA. (0305−822753)