¢ADDING A MOUSE (Part 2)¢by Kevin Cooke¢¢¢ As promised, this issue I will be taking a look at the SAM desktop system. The first thing to note about SAM is that you DON'T have to own a mouse. Of course, a mouse is the best way to use SAM, but it is not essential. A joystick will work in the same way, but it is a little sluggish.¢¢ SAM is basically a desktop system similar to those on the ST and PC. In case you haven't seen one of these, it involves moving an arrow around the screen and clicking on various objects. At the top of the screen is a list of menus. These are basically a list of functions that can be performed by the program. To read everything on the menu you simply have to move the arrow to the menu name and click the left button. The menu then opens allowing you to read the functions on it.¢¢ On boot up you are presented with the main 80-column screen. This allows much more information to be fitted on the screen, and gives a more accurate representation of what will be printed out on a printer, but doesn't exactly do your eyesight any good. This main screen contains five menus; the first being FILE.¢¢ The FILE menu basically contains the standard DOS functions. Lock, Unlock, Delete, Rename, Format, Read sector, Write sector and Disk copy all behave in the same way as their DOS equivilants, and so need no explaining. Drive number simply tells SAM which drive to do all of the above functions on.¢¢ The next menu is the DIRECTORY menu. This menu contains the Directory function (same as DOS) and Show/Create/Edit EDI. EDI stands for extra disk information, and it basically allows 80x16 characters of information to be stored on a disk without loss of space. This means that if your disk is full you can still add some documentation to it. The only drawback is that whoever receives the disk has to have SAM to be able to read the information. With this in mind, the EDI functions listed above should speak for themselves.¢¢ The third menu is UTILITIES. This menu holds the SAM utilities: two character editors, the SAM memobox, the SAM monitor, the SAM texter, and SAM painter. I will describe these programs in more detail later on.¢¢ INFO/ACCESS is the fourth menu. From this you can select other programs and accessories. The only accessory available on the SAM disk is the FIREBALL game, although DGS have started supplying 2 new accessory disks. Again, I will look at Fireball in more detail later on.¢¢ The final menu is the EXIT menu. This just gives you the choice of either exiting to DOS or rebooting the computer.¢¢ Now onto the reviews of each individual part of the package.¢¢ Fireball is a small clone of Breakout that runs under the SAM system. Unfortunately, this is not as good as it could have been. The screen is much too small, the graphics are black and white, and (this is the worst bit) although you can start the game and select the options with the mouse, you HAVE to use a joystick to play it. Not exactly brilliant, eh? The best way to think of this game is as a bonus. Also on the disk is an accessory which simply opens a window. This serves as a programming example to assembler users, so think of Fireball in the same way.¢¢ The first utility on the disk is the MEMOBOX. This appears to be a VERY good card filing system; a little like Home Filing Manager. The first thing you have to do is format a blank disk to use with this program. It then allows you to store up to 96 cards on one disk. These cards are split up into 24 files, each of which holds 4 cards. This allows 4 cards to be in memory at once. Usefull functions with this utility include the search features (which allow you to search for a particular word/sentence in a card in memory) or search for a word/sentence in the first line of all of the cards. This is very fast as the first lines of all cards are stored in memory.¢¢ MEMOBOX also has many other features such as MASK (allows you to use one of three set input masks to put information onto your cards, or allows you to design your own) and PRINT ON/OFF which allows all cards sent to the screen to be printed to an Epson compatible printer. Overall, MEMOBOX is an excellent utility.¢¢ Next up on the UTILITIES menu is the colour/mono character editors. These are very much like the other character editors available, with a grid to plot your character on, an area to put your characters together, etc. The colour editor allows you to design characters for graphic modes like 12 and 13, whereas the mono character editor allows characters to be designed for graphics modes 0, 1 and 2. Although this package is not bad, it's not the best character editor I have used. The grid for plotting your characters on is MUCH too small and you will often find yourself plotting in the wrong square. The instruction manual does contain a short program to load the fonts into your own progams, but I hate to say that both character editors are merely ordinary.¢¢ The next utility is the SAM MONITOR. This allows you to look at the computer's memory. Functions here include Fill, Change, Load, Save, ASC dump, etc.¢¢ Next up is the SAM TEXTER. This is a very good word processor, containing all of the features you are likely to use. You get a choice of keyboard configurations (either standard or German), you can set margins with the mouse, you can change the screen colour, toggle wordwrap on or off, ask SAM to automatically centre text between two chosen points, move text, and format text.¢¢ When you have finished your text, you choose from a menu which font / mixture of fonts you want your text to be printed in, and whether to have it in NLQ or draft. You then even get a choice of how the inverse text will be printed - underlined, italics or as IMB standard graphic characters. This option allows you to use graphic characters that are not normally available.¢¢ Overall, SAM texter is yet another excellent package apart from one drawback - it does not save text in the normal format. This means that you cannot load text from your other word processors into SAM and vice versa. DGS has released a disk to allow you to do this, but this function really should have been available in SAM texter itself.¢¢ Now, the final part of the package: SAM PAINTER. I was really looking forward to this part - at last I could draw with the mouse! When you first load SAM painter, you are confronted with a graphical screen of options. To select one of these, you simply go to the icon and click the left button on it. Then, by clicking on the "grafik" icon, you get to see your picture. Functions in this program include draw, line, lines, rays, box (draws a filled frame) frame (draws a frame), disk (draws a filled circle or elipse), circle (draws a circle or elipse, fill, zoom, cut, paste, flip and flap (allows you to flip a cut picture either vertically or horizontally), text and modify (allows you to print text and change it's size), undo and clear. Add to this the ability to choose from 3 different brushes, a spray option, and have 128 colours on screen at once, and you have a great art package.¢¢ However, there are 3 things that let SAM Painter down: no ability to get a disk directory (how do you know what to load and save?), saved pictures not being in a standard format, and mouse control being a little sluggish. This leads to freehand lines having gaps in them if you move the mouse too fast - VERY easy to do. Again, DGS's new accessory disk should allow standard pictures to be converted to SAM painter format and vice versa, but you then have to spend more money.¢¢ So, what do I think of SAM in general? Well, it's an excellent package for what you get, but it's also let down on just a few small points. One thing I haven't mentioned is that the disk I/O occasionally appears to go wrong or not work at all. Twice I found myself getting annoyed at it not working, only to find that it suddenly started working again. The main problem though is the way in which it is not compatible with any other system. If the programmer couldn't find a way to do this, the accessory disk that fixes the problem really should have been put on side B of the disk.¢¢ SAM is definately worth a look, but you really do need to buy the accessory disk to go with it.¢¢¢SAM can be bought from DGS, 62 Thompson Avenue, Balby, Doncaster, DN4 ONU, England. The price for SAM iteslf is 13 pounds 95p, but I would suggest you also buy the SAM UTILITY EXTENSIONS disk at the same time. This disk costs 3 pounds 95p. All prices include p&p.¢¢¢¢MOUSE TRIVIA¢¢ Did you know that one of the original mice, the BBC mouse, had the lead coming out of it's side. The mouse itself was big, black with red buttons, and was the ugliest mouse I have ever seen. It's box like shape didn't exactly make it easy to use either!¢¢
