Archive Magazine 1995/ARCHIVE95.iso/text/products/volume_01/issue_09

Text File | 1995-02-21 | 7KB | 128 lines

Hardware, Software & Documentation Available
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Å  Trackerball Adapter. Pineapple Software have produced an interface to
enable owners of the Marconi trackerball to use this device on the
Archimedes computer. The adapter has a  user port type connector on one
end and a 1 metre cable with a mouse plug on the other. The cost is
ú13.95 + VAT.
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Å  3D CAD / Animation system from Silicon Vision. They are offering a 3D
wire-frame Graphics Development System for ú19.95 Ö öideal of games and
simulationsò. (Special price of ú17.95 for Archive members Ö see advert
on page ????. Order from Silicon Vision but quote your Archive member
ship number.) Also under development are, Super-Dump a önear-plotter
qualityò graphics dump program and 3D Solids Design and Animation
system. These are due for release öat the end of Juneò and users of the
simpler system can up-grade for the price difference between the two
packages.
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Å  CADVISE Ö Computer Aided Design VISualisation Extended can be used to
build up a library of 3D shapes. It comes with standard shapes and these
can be Éweldedæ together to make composite shapes. Hidden line removal
and perspective views available. ú59.95 (or ú37.95 for education) from
Academic Software.
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Å  Euclid 3D programmable graphics animation package. Provides a module
which can be called from BASIC or machine code programs to produce
orthogonal or perspective drawing with hidden line removal etc etc. ú45
from ACE Computing.
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Å  ArcTFS Ö a öfree textò database allowing you to cross-reference, file
and collate blocks of text of any size Ö getting away from the fixed
data formats of more Éconventionalæ databases. This is a more powerful
version of an existing program for the Atari ST. (Reviewed in June
edition of ST World) Sounds ideal for anyone trying to handle lots of
text Ö it can even store text in 1st Word Plus format as well as pure
ASCII text and they are hoping to add other WPæs to the list. ú29.95
from öTexellenceò Ö should be available by the time you read this.
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Å  ArcDFS (yes, confusing, isnæt it?) from Computer Spares Ltd is
a(nother) 5.25ò disc interface but this one comes with software to read
(but not write) DFS discs. We saw it at the M.U.Show and it looks really
well made and has a power outlet (as per BBC micro) so that you donæt
have to have a disc drive drive with a built-in power supply unit. The
cost is ú55.20 for single drive version, ú57.50 for the dual drive
version but you can subtract ú3 if you donæt need the dummy back-plate,
i.e. you are going to put it along side an existing podule.
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Å  Presenter Ö a presentation graphics package for ú24.95 from Lingenu
ity, the software division of Lindis International Ltd. It uses the WIMP
environment to display line, bar and pie charts, in colour or grey-scale
(useful for printer-dumps to produce OHPæs). Data can be entered
manually or imported from other programs (spreadsheets & databases) and
the output can then be used in other packages such as Artisan, Graphic-
Writer and 1st Word Plus. (I saw a development version of Presenter a
few weeks ago and it looked very impressive. I hope we may have one for
review before long. Ed.)
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Å  Servo Control package from Jansons. Use the printer port to control up
to four servos. For ú29.95, you get a small hardware interface (you
supply the servos), a software module, an interactive instruction manual
and a test environment to make sure all the servos are working properly.
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Å  ArcImEd Ö an art package with a difference, ú24.95 from Jansons. If
you are writing programs that involves drawing lots of diagrams on the
screen, then this program is a must! (My words, not Jansons Ö we saw it
at the Micro User Show. Ed.) Draw a picture in the usual mouse-driven,
art-package sort of way then at the click of a button, it saves it as a
BASIC program! That program can then be used as a procedure in another
program to draw the picture as and when required. It could save you
hours in the development of certain types of programs.
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Å  Modula-2 and FORTH. Two new language implementations, Modula-2
(ú89.95) and RISC FORTH (ú69.95) are now available from Blue Grey
Software. See the advert on page ??????.
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Å  Expansion Podule Ö a single width podule complete with a pre-decoded
podule interface providing an area on which small to medium-sized
electronics projects can be constructed. This will allow 8-bit memory
mapped and/or interrupt driven (IRQ and FIQ) hardware interfaces to be
developed very rapidly. Available ölate Julyò either as a bare p.c.b. or
fully populated with the interface chips. For further details, contact
Atomwide Ltd (0689) 38852. (Dealer enquiries only, ring 01-543-2349.)
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Å  Buffer Podule Ö a single width podule allowing you to extend the full
bus to devices outside the machine. You can connect simple and external
podules via a ribbon cable, (but not MEMC podules because of speed
limitations). Still under development but should be ready öin a month or
soò. For more details, contact Simon Brise of SGB Computer Services, 140
Disraeli Road, Putney, London, SW15 2DX. (01Ö874Ö5675)
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Å  Archimedes SpellMaster is here! It checks at over 10,000 words/minute
and you can store your user dictionary(ies) in battery-backed ram so
that you donæt need to load and save them on disc every time you use the
computer. The bad news is that on the Acorn ROM board it runs at only
about 2,000 words/minute. At the moment it only works on ArcWriter and
Inter-Word, but it can be accessed from BASIC and/or ARM code and since
it is written in relocatable module form, it should not be difficult to
link it in with other software.
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Compared with BBC Spell-Master, it has extra speed on its *-commands Ö
e.g. the ANAWORD program which I wrote to find as many words as possible
from permutations and combinations of various letters works 2.7 times as
fast as on the Master 128.
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Extra commands Ö when you are checking the text, if it finds an unknown
word you get five options, three as before: ignore word, correct the
word or add it to the dictionary, but you can also now browse the
dictionary in order to select the right word or get it to guess what the
word might be.
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It also has extra *-commands, so as well as *FUZZY (i.e. give me a word
that sounds like...) and *ANAGRAM and *CHECK, there are other commands
such as *TYPO which is the equivalent of the guessing facility and
*USERTOFILE and *FILETOUSER which can be used for converting ASCII word
lists into dictionaries and vice versa.
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Free Utilities Disc. If you buy SpellMaster through Archive you get a
free disc which contains, as well as a number of utility programs, a
Éword-gamesæ dictionary Ö we canæt call it a ÉScrabbleæ dictionary but
thatæs what we use it for. One of the utilities allows you to öcatchò
the words that are output by the various *-commands. (We used it to
catch the words given by *CHECK * Ö i.e. the whole of the dictionary Ö
it produced a file of 580k Ö all that, as well as the programs, is
squeezed into a 128k ROM. Clever, huh?!) Another utility allows you,
amongst other things, to do the Daily Express öTargetò word game without
any thinking! (No, we donæt take the Express!!)
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