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Amiga Collections: MegaDisc
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MegaDisc 02 (1987)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip
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MegaDisc 02 (1987)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf
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1987-04-21
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8KB
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188 lines
Q&A
=====
Dear Sir,
Many thanks for your return phone call last Sunday. Am
looking forward to the contents of the disc.
I would be obliged if you could let me know the corrections in
definition you had to make, in the "Jigsaw" program published in
"Compute!" of February 1987.
Yours faithfully,
N. L. Groves
Albury, NSW
The first thing we noticed about the "Jigsaw" was that the program
listing itself had been cut into pieces and jumbled around. Therefore,
the program would not run without error after error. Many AmigaBasic
programs start with initial variable definition statements, like:
DEFINT a-z
DEFSNG coLrs
I found these in the second column of the listing, almost
halfway down, and decided that this was the start of the program. But
what should I do with all those statements beforehand? I picked up my
highlighter pens and highlighted all the GOSUB statements and their
corresponding subroutine labels with different colours. This didn't
help me much, but it revealed that there was a whole subroutine missing
altogether i.e. CoLr.Shift:
Next, I looked at the first statements in the listing:
FOR irow=0 TO rLast
FOR icoL=0 TO cLast
Unless rLast and cLast were meant to be 0, they must be initialised
somewhere else. I found this `somewhere' in the third column, about a
third down:
'Make Bob strings and place piec
es on the screen
cLast=ncoLs.pzL-1:rLast=nrows.pz
L-1
So, in a bold move, I copied all the first one and a half columns and
pasted them after the above lines. Then, I went back and cut all the
same statements, so that DEFINT a-z was now the start of the program.
Voila! Now, I could correct all the real Syntax errors and Undefined
labels that I had made!
This left the two references to subroutine CoLr.Shift to worry
about. If you delete them, the program will run OK, but mad as I am, I
decided to write my own colour-cycling subroutine, here it is:
Colr.Shift:
FOR i=0 TO colrmax
IF i=colrmax THEN k=0 ELSE k=i+1
FOR j=0 TO 2
colrs(i,j) = colrs(k,j)
NEXT j
PALETTE i, colrs(i,0), colrs(i,1), colrs(i,2)
NEXT
RETURN
To make it work properly, I changed a few things at the start and
played around with the values for colrmax. Near the end of the second
block of code, starting:
faLse=0:true=-1
I replaced ncoLrs=9 etc. with the following:
d=5:ncolrs=2^d-1:colrmin=2:colrmax=ncolrs-23
Another change I made was to the section that reads new palette
colours (at the end of the second column of the listing):
RESTORE Nu.Colors
FOR i=0 TO ncolrs-1 'get new palette colours from DATA
FOR j=0 TO 2
READ colrs(i,j)
NEXT j
PALETTE i, colrs(i,0), colrs(i,1), colrs(i,2)
NEXT i
and I added a whole heap of colour data. You can make colrmax=ncolrs if
you want to, and give Nu.CoLors: 32 DATA statements, but moving the
pieces in the game becomes very slow and disjointed because of GOSUB
CoLr.Shift in the Show.Time subroutine. Fiddle around till you get what
you like.
Please refer to these Compute! issues for further information:
March 87 page 80 CAPUTE! and
April 87 page 80 CAPUTE!
These columns explain some of the same things in a different way.
We enjoy playing the game, now that it works, hope you do too!!
If you look in the programs drawer you'll find our radically revised
version called "JigSaw5"....
+++++++++++++++
Dear Ian & Tim,
I am interested in interfacing a TEAC FD-55 floppy to
the Amiga. Any help that you may be able to provide would be
appreciated.
Sincerely,
Barry Darby,
Currumbin, QLD.
** Commodore is marketing a 5.25" disk drive, the 1020, which is easily
interfaced to the Amiga. However, any 5.25" disk drive can be
connected, although it requires detailed knowledge of the innards of
the particular drive. It's necessary to build a controller, which can
cost up to $100. We're continuing to look into your specific problem,
and ask any readers who may have connected other 5.25" drives to their
Amigas to send us details. We realize that many users are interested
in knowing how to do this, so they can use the cheaper 5.25" disks for
storing large amounts of data. We've heard Amazing Computing Vol.1,
No.4 has an article on the subject, so we shall attempt to get a copy
of this to you Barry.
+++++++++++++++
Dear Amiga-Knowledge-Men,
I placed a deposit on a Sidecar ( about 2
months ago, and have still not seen it), and would like to know what
would be the best hard card to use with the Sidecar?
Can you also give me some advice as to which direction would be
best to take with regards to a modem:
a) install an internal modem in the sidecar, or
b) make use of the Serial port on the Amiga and have an external
modem.
If I chose option a), would I be able to use communication
software written for the Amiga.
Finally, is there any way of expanding memory on the Amiga, with
the Sidecar connected? Could perhaps memory expansion within the
Sidecar be utilized??
Your Sincerely,
Mark Mills,
Epping, NSW.
**Well Mark we hope you do see your Sidecar, if you really want it! The
last we heard, Commodore were going to receive one last shipment in May
or June (for a new retail price of $1595!), and that would be the end
of the Sidecar. The company in Germany which has been manufacturing
them is winding down production.
So your questions may become "hypotheticals"...
As far as hard cards go, any that had a good reputation for the
IBM PC should work with the Sidecar. Don,t go for some cheapy. The
only way of expanding memory on the Amiga with a Sidecar attached is
to use the Insider. This is a way of expanding memory internally on
the Amiga, and is available in Sydney for about $900 including
installation (which is advised as some cutting of the Insider board
is required to make it fit into the 1000). No expansion boxes will
work because of the overloading on the 68000 chip.
Commodore did allow for expansion within the Sidecar, but it
would seem to be a dead issue now. As the Sidecar will not be
marketed in the USA, it's unlikely they'll develop any peripherals
to make use of the ability. If you really want to a useful IBM
compatible system, you'll probably have to think hard about buying the
Amiga 2000.
In answer to your queries about modems we recommend using the
Serial port, if you wish to use Amiga communications software. A
modem placed inside the sidecar is possible, but would only handle
IBM format data, and no communication software written for the Amiga
could handle it.
We hope these answers have been of some help, and look forward to
receiving many more.....