¢FUTURA FEEDBACK¢¢ First up is a question from an 8-bitter who has recently upgraded to a 1050 disk drive:¢¢HOW DO I CUT A NOTCH IN A 5.25" FLOPPY DISK TO LET ME USE THE REVERSE SIDE?¢¢- The easiest way is to use a Disk Notcher; a small tool which helps you to position and cut the notch. These used to be readily available but are now quite hard to find. Try your local computer store or a micro show.¢¢ I used to use a Stanley knife to cut a notch in the left-hand side of the disk (of similar size and height to the one on the right). Use the notch on the right as your guide and be very careful with the blade (place a strong piece of cardboard underneath the disk)!¢¢ Some people use a paper punch to make the notches. Again, use the notch on the right as your guide.¢¢ Alternatively, you can build or buy a write-protect switch which will allow you to write to the reverse of a disk without the need to cut a notch. These switches are easy to fit. Micro Discount sell ready-made kits for about eight pounds. If you think you could build your own, check out Alan Hitchen's project in Futura issue 12.¢¢¢¢Next up are a couple of questions from Colin Doyle of Chester:¢¢HOW ABOUT A COLUMN IN FUTURA ON TRANSFERRING DISK FILES?¢¢- What does everyone think? Would a column on transferring files between disks and formats be of interest to you? Let me know. If there is interest, I'll kick off a file transfer column soon - I'll call it Transfer Tribulations (or something like that!).¢¢¢I'VE HEARD THAT 5.25" DISKS WILL SOON DISAPPEAR FROM THE MARKET. IS THIS TRUE?¢¢- Don't worry about the future of 5.25" disks. With so many "old" systems still using this format they will be around for a very long time to come - there are still thousands of old PC's which use 5.25". My only worry is that the quality of 5.25" disks might deteriorate over the next few years. As the market becomes smaller, companies might not concentrate so much on the quality factor!¢¢¢¢Eddie Cousins from Golspie is a fan of 'Wheel of Fortune'. He asks:¢¢IS THERE AN EDITOR FOR "WHEEL OF FORTUNE" ON NOSAUG PD DISK G06?¢¢- You don't need an editor for Wheel of Fortune. To change the words you must load the program and then press RESET. Next, list lines 8000-9000. These are the words even though it just looks like a lot of rubbish. The DATA statements are used to select a word. The words themselves are entered with the control characters. Just press control and then enter your word(s) as you would normally. Graphics characters will appear on the screen in your DATA statement but during gameplay they will be letters.¢¢ Remember to include a description of what the word is (THING, EVENT, etc.) as the first entry in your DATA statement. Let me know how you get on - perhaps you could create a version for Futura with 100 Atari-related words?¢¢¢¢That's all for now! Keep 'em coming!¢¢
