For years, we've heard of the "paperless society" that was due to arrive sooner, rather than later. The concept looked great on, ahem, paper. If everything went as promised, we would see business transactions, correspondence, personal banking and communications performed solely with electronic media. In turn, this would eliminate the need for paper and save valuable natural resources. Naturally, computers were to play an integral part in this revolution.
Using the purely unscientific process of glancing at the volume of faxes and reams of mail I receive both at the office and at home, I suspect that society is not quite ready to abandon the use of paper. ReRUN, however, has made some progress in this area, though. Replacing the ReRUN booklet with disk-based documentation was our contribution to help Commodore 64 and 128 users join this elite electronic society.
This March/April 1992 edition of ReRUN is the third ReRUN disk that we've released that employs the new user interface. As with two earlier editions of ReRUN that share this interface, we have included a Letter to the Editor option on this disk. We encourage all our ReRUN users to write and mail their responses to us with this convienent option. In turn, you stand almost a sure chance of seeing your letter and name published in this column.
What's New In This Edition
To say "thanks" for your letters and encouragement seems inadequate at times. Regardless, please keep them coming! Moving right along, the March/April 1992 issue of RUN magazine placed a heavy emphasis on utilities, for both programming and daily use. First on the list was Basic Bloodhound, a program written by RUN's renown author, Stephen Dirschauer. This program runs in the background, maintaining a constant display of the current line number and the value of any selected variable.
Tony Brantner is back with another sports-oriented game. Richochet is a deviant of tabletop air hockey. One player can challenge the computer, or two players can battle each other in this fast-paced game, where guarding your goal area is as important as trying to shoot the puck through your opponents's goal.
If you've ever tried to quickly copy a relative file created by a database to another disk, you know it's not easy. That's because most disk utilities only copy program, sequential, and user files. Copying a relative file usually means having to run the database, load in the relative file to be copied, swap disks, and save the file to the second disk. If you have more than a couple of relative files to copy, you better set aside a sizable amount of time for the process.
For that reason, we're offering Henry Sopko's Copy Rel 64. This machine language program for the C-64 copies relative files quickly and efficiently. It sure beats struggling with using the database to do the copying process.
Flashcards 128 is the next program on the list. The author, Ken Hoke, makes his living flying commercial airliners. Flashcards 128 was developed as an alternative method for 3x5 cards normally used to study the various flight systems of his assigned aircraft. If the program works well for an airline pilot, you can be sure that it'll do wonders for improving the study skills of you and your children.
Programmers know that moving large portions of the C-64's memory to relocate video memory and character sets is not always an easy task. Video bank switching is made easy with Video Bank Switcher 64. It performs the calculations needed to relocate the screen and character set addresses and then generates the Basic program necessary to make the switch.
The March/April 128 Mode contained a rather interesting program for the C-128. VIC/VDC is a handy utility written by Mark Jordan that lets you copy your present screen, whether 40-column or 80-column, to the other screen mode. The process is performed with the addition of a few newly created Escape key combinations of keypresses, making the process fast and easy.
Moving on to our bonus programs, there's Jay Taplin's Bunny Chase, a C-64 Pacman-like clone where your bunny must elude hungry wolves. Dr. Hugh McMenanmin wrote Print Shop to RUN Paint, a conversion program for the C-64. This pure machine language program converts your favorite Print Shop graphics for use in hi-res mode in RUN Paint as shapes. Best of all, not a single pixel is lost in the process!
You'll find a commercial quality C-64 game, Raging Thunder, is the next program on this disk. The objective in this multi-level game is to stop a fleet of ships and aircraft before they stop you.
This edition of ReRUN also holds a special treat for GEOS lovers. Unlike the standard Commodore DOS validate command, Super Validate 64 and 128 are two programs that examine and analyze the individual files on both your GEOS and standard format disks for errors and other potential problems. After the analyzing process is complete a new BAM (Block Allocation Memory) map is written to the disk.
Finally, we received reports that Multi-Copy (September/October 1991) may not have worked with some versions of the 1541 disk drive. A new version is included on this disk that works with all models of Commodore 1541 disk drives.
Mail Call!
I'd like to share some letters that we've received from ReRUN users anxious to share their thoughts and ideas with us. Here are some of the things your fellow ReRUN users are saying:
Hello! I'm new to ReRUN and hoping that I will find a lot of programs to increase the use I can get out of my C-64. I'm Robert A Candelaria, Vice President of South Bay Commodore User's Group, Inc.
Our address is P.O. Box 1176, Redondo Beach, CA 90278
We enjoy exchanging newsletters with other user's groups so please write to us. Our BBS phone number is 213/643-8818. So far it looks like there is a good variety of program types on each disk and I'm looking forward to future issues.
Robert Candelaria
Redondo Beach, CA
Just a note to tell you the Domino game is neat and I beat the computer handily, but there is a minor prblem with the game. When fat fingers like mine inadvertently hit the Restore key, the program locks up. It would be nice if the Restore key could be disabled, so folks like me could make a "slip of the wrist" without our current score going out the window.
It would also be handy for us 128 users if a 5-space indent could be put into this letter writing program using the Tab key.
Stan Smith
Panama City, Panama
I feel this is a very logical progression for ReRUN to follow. The format seems very well thought out, yet simple enough for even the novice. I have no suggestions for improvements at this time, but I look forward to the refinements alluded to in the editorial. Until the next issue, keep up the good work, and best of luck in al the future endeavors of the coming new year.
Michael Clausing
Napoleon, OH
When I received this edition of ReRUN, I was a little skeptical at first. I remembered the Compute! Gazette disks I used to receive. If you did not have that month's edition of the magazine, you had no documentation for the programs, let alone a description of what each one was. That was one of the reasons I switched to ReRUN and RUN magazine.
So imagine my surprise when I had the documentation on the disk! It reminded me of the old LoadStar disks magazine. Everything is there. So I implore you to keep up the excellent work and to continue giving Commodore users quality programs.
Christopher Black
Fort Campbell, KY
I think the new ReRUN look is great! The new interface beats the old one by a long shot. I do have a couple of complaints about it, though. First, it disables my Warpspeed cartridge, which in turn slows things down. Second, it would be much easier to read through the documentation if I could just press one key to page forward rather than having to press the Control key in conjunction with another key. Make a few changes here and there, and you'll have a very good disk.
Dennis Page
Martinsville, IN
I like your new ReRUN disks. I am a very busy Grandma, and I usually don't have enough time to do more than read the manual, make a copy of the disk and then I'm off doing somet
