Hardcore Volume 4 No. 5 1984 10 BASUG GB

+ a om Ae 4O ba fl ace mp =| = - ~ 7 4 =» al A Oo me | A October 1994 o oD mio DOH B03 3D o> eee a m a eRe EN EST ee SEA eK) £1 PR Kee r — ‘i VOLUME 4 No. 5 Page 2 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October a1) HEMEL HEMPSTEAD Ad! AYLESBURY Aa05 SLOUGH 2 —~| | == =. on v 0 3! At oO a 3 ‘ = A405 ——“urems HOW T & ST ALBANS. — taat2) FIND wy NORTH Z =z —— L oe Ser ux LEE wor + COLONIAL WAY | (First gate on nght [tux | Seavices Limited} Radiett Road) ~_,—+*Computer Services [td COLONIAL WAY, WATFORD, HERTS WD? 4AT TEL. WATFORD (0923 7 Call in now for a Macintosh demonstration A special purpose language for multiple choice tests and quizzes, questionnaires and Computer aided learning (CAL) - €50 + VAT time user who ‘absolutely necessary bout computers and computer ges iginally developed for medical history taking has been evaluated in hosprials, schools end t saves time and provides comprehensive, structured records riginal MICKIE was developed at the National ‘al Laboratory by the late Or Christopher Evans nown as the author of The Mighty Micro’ end The Making of the Micro’) Full Apple implementation from SYSTEMICS LIMITED 21-23, The Bridge, Harrow, Middiesex HA3 BAG. Tel: 01-863 0079 FY icra easement he Noon Poca! beaten IE [ BASF DISKS _| - individually numbered - 5.25" single sided, ! single density - suitable Apple J[,//e & /// - box contains 10 disks 1 BOX £ 15.50 NO 10 BOXES £140.00 EXTRAS [ie PAY VAT, POSTAGE & PACKING Send order & remittance to: | SYSTEMICS LIMITED, 21-23 THE BRIDGE | HARROW MIDDLESEX HA3 5AG | 01 863 0079 Access & Barclaycard accepted | October 1984 BASUG Ltd. is a non-profit-making company limited by guarantee, Basug Committee Bob Raikes Chairman Norah Arnold Secretary Roger Gear-Evans Treasurer Graham Attwood Software Library Richard Beck Courses Richard Boyd KeithChamberlain Tony Game Meetings, Local Groups Membership Bulletin Board Roger Harris Literature Library Jim Panks Software Library Quentin Reidford John Rogers Special Release Software Peter Trinder Updates EwenWannop Prestel Fran Teo Administrator Yvette Raikes Hardcore Editor Daphne Jenkins Peter Blair & Jim Panks Assistants BASUG Telephone No.: Newbury {ifi))) dietiith, Please note: This number is administration ONLY, Bulletin Boards ((liiitity) Stati, Founder members of Computer Clubs. the Association of OPYRIGHT (C) - The contents of this journal re copyright of the British Apple Systems Jser Group and /or the respective authors. | lowever permission will normally be granted for non-commercial reproduction by user roups affiliated to the International Apple! ore, provided the author and source are roperly credited. he opinions and views expressed are those f the various contributors, and are not ecessarily supported by the British Apple stems User Group. HARDCORE = The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 3 THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH APPLE SYSTEMS USER GROUP Fe is Chairman's Corner P.0.BOX 174 WATFORD WD2 6NF 5 FORTH ftugh Dobbs 9 User Hostility Bob Raikes Seth Proctor Peter Knight Dick Menhinick Jim Panks 10 Assembler Review 13 Mac Notes 14 Applewritter //e 15 Epson Dx100 16 BASUG Telephone Numbers 18 Quiz Writing Hugh Dobbs 20 String Print R. C. Lowe Software Library 22 Beginners’ Page 23 Courses 25 Local Groups 26 Book Reviews 30 Keyboard Lowercase Mod. 32 Children's Software G. G. Wood & Elizabeth Raikes 33 Administation 34 BASIC Note John Sharp Dick Menhinick Adam Broun Education Norah Arnold 37 Lister Roger Harris 38 DS: Bob Raikes 42 Sorting R. C. Lowe Readers’ Letters 45 Reinventing the Whee! 47 Diary Yvette Raikes MEMBER OF THE INTERNATIONAL APPLE CORE HARDCORE is produced using Applewriter J, and printed on an APTEC Flowriter with a Madeleine Daisy-wheel Front Cover: An optical illusion produced on the Macintosh by Norah Arnold, Page & HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 Editorial Thank you to those who responded to the request for help with utilities. We have Roger Harris's programming aid "Lister" in this issue. If any more of you want to tell us about your favourite utility - either one you have written yourself or a commercial one - please write in. You don't need to write a lot, just what it does and why you like it. I also have some books tor review, two on Visicalc and one each on the Apple /// and CP/M. Any takers? Unfortunately, the Expert Systems article has had to be held over again but it will appear in the next issue along with a revicw of a commercial Expert System. Do remember that the copy date for the Christmas edition is earlier than usual. Please get your items in by October 26th. We expect To put out a bumper edition then but this does not mean that there will be space waiting for late entries. Please will all those who currently have books or other items for review ensure that these are reviewed for the next issue or that, where this is not possible, you have let me know. Most of the people who donate their products for review want to see them reviewed for Christmas. Try not to let them down. WANTED Have any of you longed for a chance to be the first to read what goes in Hardcore? Well, here is your chance, We are looking for a new editor of Hardcore to take over from the end of the year. The job is not difficult but does take up quite a lot of time particularly in the fortnight following copy dates. Anyone willing to take on the job will be given the opportunity to see the Christmas edition produced and will be given lots of help and support during the production of their first issue if they need it. Anyone who wishes to apply or to ask for further details should telephone Bob Raikes on 0525 370621. Lonely Apple The following member would like to get in touch with people who use Apple I+ or U-computers in Norway: ides ihans yarns 1 HID RRR Chairman's Corner Our new committee members are now finding their feet, and progress is being made. Volunteers in the Software group are currently working on moving the Software Library from DOS 3.2 to 3.3. The machine Code course in October will happen, and a Logo course is promised, Mid-Apple are hosting a meeting with help from Richard Boyd on Communications, and there are > new releases in the Special Release Software series in the course of preparation. There have been 2 moves of note. Fran Teo has moved recently, apologies if there has been any delay in mecting orders etc. Those who know Fran will realise how unsettled her circumstances have been. We wish her the best of luck in her new home, The Bulletin board has also moved. Its founding father Quentin Reidford has taken the plunge in trying to go commercial. There is a board still on his number, but it is no longer the BASUG one. Tony Game has taken over the board, and Peter Trinder has stepped into his shoes as Press Officer. If you have any news that may be of interest, or an unusual application tor your Apple, please let him know. As you will see, Yvette is relinquishing her position as editor of Hardcore after the fext issue. We are urgently looking for someone to step into the breech, Anyone interested should contact myself, Norah Arnold or Jim Panks, There is a great deal of work involved, but the job is rewarding in the personal and financial sense. Apply NOW. At BASUG we aim to be both amateur and commercial. If our standards occasionally fall below those that both you expect and that we expect of ourselves, please let us know. Remember BASUG is run on YOUR behalf. If on occasion we seem not to be acting with this in mind, please let myself or someone else on the committee know, WARNING. There have been problems with the 64k Printer Buffer Card from Peanut. It wouldn't work with Visicalc or Logo. Peanut have offered to fix it. Anyone else had any problems? Apple users need Hardcore to do it. October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 5 FORTH A Quick Introduction to Forth on the APPLE by Hugh Dobbs Newtown School, Waterford, EIRE. The computer package supplied to schools by the Department of Education included a variety of languages: four versions of BASIC, Comal, Pascal, 8080 Assembler, 6502 Assembler, PILOT. This paper is a brief argument in favour of one language which was not included: Forth, 1 have used BASIC extensively, especially APPLESOFT; it is an easy language to write in, and mistakes take little time to correct if you can find them, but most versions lack any structure more advanced than a subroutine, and most are interpreted and therefore slow. 1 have used Pascal; in it, program development is much slower since it is compiled and there is a lot of time spent switching between compiler and filer, reloading source code and editing it, and so on; Pascal programs can be highly structured and, being semi-compiled, run fairly fast. The UCSD version of Pascal also has the advantage of being portable over many different computer systems, The language is however fussy in the punctuation it requires and in the need for the declaration of data types and so on. I have also used 6502 Assembler language extensively. It is very hard to get things right in it; it is unstructured and has none of the features of higher-level languages; but it is very fast indeed when running. Somewhere in the middle, there is a need for a compromise, especially in applications where computers control machinery: you need the system to be able to make decisions quickly, but also you need to know what each part of your program does and to be able to change sections of it easily without affecting others. One suitable language is Forth, which is fast but structured, combines the ease of a high-level language with the speed of machine code (very nearly), is both an interpreter and a compiler, and is available on a wide range of systems. Since versions of it are in the public domain most Forth systems are fairly cheap (often under £50), and there is a fair degree of standardisation with only two major dialects and a few eccentric versions which conform to neither. The version I use on the APPLE is from the Forth interest group in USA, written by Kuntze but typed in and assembled by me, and it still has bugs in it but is on disk no. 84 in the sottware library if anyone wants to try it out. I am also using GraFORTH for its turtle-graphics, and evaluating Metacrafts FORTH which is a _—_ powerful and well-thought-out version with overlays. 1 also have Forth running on a BBC machine (r q Forth, Acornsoft and the JWB-FORTH ROM), ‘on Atoms (Acornsoft), on a ZX-81 (Artic), on a Spectrum (HL-FORTH) and naturally on an Ace, and 1 am collecting information on other implementations. The APPLE version starts up when its disk is booted, clearing the screen and announcing “THE 4TH APPLE". What follows is a condensation of what happens in about three periods' worth of Computer Studies (whether at first year, second year or fifth year level). Forth, like any other language, has a certain vocabulary, Unlike most other computer languages, but like natural languages, it grows by the addition of new words to its vocabulary. The new words are defined in terms of the existing words and thereafter can be used in exactly the same way as the older words - in fact a large part of the Forth nucleus is made up of words which have been defined in Forth rather than in machine code. Most words are defined using the Forth word [:) (colon). A word in Forth can be made up of any sequence of characters which does not include a space, an ASCII NULL, or an ASCII CR character, and here the word is just a colon. By general agreement, when a Forth word is likely to cause confusion in a typed article (je. in an English sentence), it may be enclosed in (squarebrackets). Here is an example of a ‘colon definition’; lots more will follow: 3 BELL 7 EMIT ; Here the colon says 'I am going to teach you 4 new word using words you know already’. The new word is to be called [BELL], and the colon puts a header into the vocabulary with the word's name BELL, a link pointing to the most recently defined word before that, and an address which directs the interpreter to handle BELL as a word which has been defined Page 6 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 using [:] It then turns on the compiler, which processes the rest of the line, The (7] is not found in the vocabulary, so it is construed as a number and stored as such. {EMIT] is a word in the Forth nucleus and is therefore compiled. The [;] says ‘that is the end ot the definition’, and its main effects are to close the new definition, to mark the new word so that it can be found in a vocabulary search, and to turn off the compiler, The interpreter has then reached the end of your instruction, so it prints 'OK' and waits for you to do something else. If you now type BELL and press ‘return’, the interpreter searches its vocabulary (starting with the most recently-defined word), finds [BELL], and executes it. This produces a number 7 which EMIT converts to ASCII code 7 and sends to the current output device; unless you are using a printer, this produces a ‘bell’ noise on the speaker. Mf you type BELL BELL BELL and press ‘return', the bell rings three times before the interpreter responds with 'GK'. So far the transactions look like this: THE 4TH APPLE! BELL 7 EMIT ; OK BELL OK BELL BELL BELL OK because the interpreter absorbs your ‘return’ without actually starting a new line. Now that BELL has been defined it is in the Forth vocabulary and can be used in the definition of further words; for example, supposing you want to produce seven bells you could always type BELL seven times, but you can also do + BELLS 0 DO BELL LOOP ; after which 7 BELLS will produce the desired result and give the added benefit of being able to have 100 BELLS or even 32767 BELLS if you wish, What happens here is that the DO...LOOP inside BELLS counts up from 0 to whatever number comes before it (7 or 100 or 32767), and whatever lies between DO and LOOP gets done so long as the counter has not reached the limit. Computers are often used for simulations, Not having any special input/output hardware, I go in for simulated simulations. For instance, suppose I want to simulate an alarm clock or a burglar alarm, When the alarm goes off, a bell should ring until someone does something about it. Something which can be simulated by pressing a key on the keyboard, for instance. So 1 type + ALARM BEGIN BELL. - if 1 press ‘return' at that point the interpreter does not respond with its usual 'OK' because 1 have not finished my definition yet (no [5] yet). After ringing the bell, it should test to see whether anyone has pressed a key TERMINAL (or in some versions of Forth ?ESC, etc) - this checks and leaves a true-or-false flag. | want the BELL ?TERMINAL sequence to continue until the result is true, so UNTIL ; completes the definition, Now typing ALARM will set it off. The burglar alarm type would have to be a bit more resistant to being turned off, so I might use : BURGLAR BEGIN BELL AGAIN 5 in which case BURGLAR will start an infinite loop which can only be stopped by a machine reset or by turning off the power (don't try that until the end of the session!). To some extent this illustrates the structured nature of Forth; it is worth mentioning that any branching construct such as DO..LOOP or BEGIN...AGAIN or BEGIN...UNTIL or IF...ELSE..THEN can only be used within a colon definition (or equivalent), which means that it is impossible for branches to occur outside the current structure (compare the typical BASIC nastiness of GOTO from inside a subroutine or from inside a FOR...NEXT loop). Also the compiler checks the syntax to ensure that the branching structures themselves are properly constructed, Now I want to illustrate something of the speed involved. BASIC is relatively slow, and probably most people have tried the traditional APPLE squawk program 10 X = PEEK (-16336) : GOTO 10 and know how low a note that produces; even the variant October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 7 10 S = -16336 20 X = PEEK (S) : GOTO 20 gives a note which is not high enough to be satisfyingly musical, so most game programs in BASIC include a machine-code routine for producing notes. Forth is fast enough to do it alone (if you don't mind whether the notes correspond to actual — musical frequencies or not). A simple square wave output from the APPLE's speaker can be generated by producing a series of clicks at regular intervals, i.e. click pause click pause ... So I define + CLICK -16336 C@ DROP ; That defines [CLICK] to produce a number -16336, go and get the contents of that memory address (thus clicking the speaker) and DROP that value so as to end up with nothing (except a click). t PAUSE 0 DO LOOP ; That is like [BELLS] above, in that it counts up from U to whatever number you teed it (less 1); but inside the loop it does nothing. So 10000 PAUSE says 'go into a corner and count up from 0 to 9999; it takes much less time than BASIC's FOR A = 0 TO 9999 : NEXT A. : NOTE 100 0 DO DUP PAUSE CLICK LOOP DROP; That defines [NOTE] as a word which does something 100 times; what it does is take a DUPlicate copy of whatever number it was fed, do that length of a PAUSE, then a CLICK, and loop back again so that it produces 50 complete wave cycles at some unknown frequency. 1 NOTE produces type, and 1 NOTE 2 NOTE 3 NOTE the highest possible note of this will give a descending pattern, We can build up a ‘scale’ by feeding a decreasing sequence of numbers to NOTE: : SCALE 0 20 DO I NOTE -1 +LOOP ; Here [I] is a word which gives the value of the loop counter (to feed to NOTE), and since we want to count backwards I have to use [-I +LOOP] which says ‘count down | at a time’, rather than simply LOOP. Now try SCALE ... then + DOWNSCALE 21 | DO INOTE LOOP ; SCALE DOWNSCALE SCALE and so on. It is not very musical, but great fun to experiment with, Further words can be built up using these, such as : PRACTICE BEGIN SCALE DOWNSCALE ? TERMINAL UNTIL 5 - the effect of that predictable. Or should by now be : WHISTLE BEGIN CLICK AGAIN ; (but only at the end of the session - why?). Or + SQUEAK 0 1000 DO I PAUSE CLICK -I +LOOP 5 etc. probably ad nauseam, You can work in whatever number-base you like. There have been numerous BASIC programs published in the various computer magazines (probably at least $0014 of them) to convert numbers from hexadecimal to decimal or vice versa, but in Forth it is very easy: DECIMAL 120 HEX . will give you '78 OK', where $78 is the equivalent of the decimal number 120: {DECIMAL] sets the number-base to ten, and in nearly all Forth versions [HEX] sets it to sixteen. If you have a lot of conversions to do, you can define a word : TOHEX BASE @ HEX SWAP 0D. BASE ! 5 120 TOHEX This will give you '78 OK! if you started off in base ten, but if you tried it immediately after the previous example it gave you '120 OK! because you were already in base sixteen. What happens is this: [BASE @] gets the present number-base, [HEX] sets the base to sixteen, SWAP lets you get at the number you wanted to convert, and [0 D.J prints it as an unsigned number in the range 0-FFFF. If you wanted a signed number from -8000 to +7FFF you could use simply [.] instead, Finally (BASE 1] restores the old value of number-base. This word will now convert from any number-base that you care Page 8 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 to use into hexadecimal. The two standard number-bases are base ten and base sixteen; but supposing that you want to use base two, perhaps for making shape tables or for displaying the processor status register or the state of an eight-bit input port, you can define : BINARY 2 BASE ! ; and now [BINARY] will change the number-base to two. So DECIMAL 99 DUP HEX . BINARY . will give '63 1100011 OK*, in other words it takes the decimal number 99, makes a DUPlicate copy of it, and displays it first in hexadecimal and then in binary. It leaves you in binary, so that typing 99 will give ‘99 2 MSG @# 0', which means ‘unknown word', since [99] is neither a Forth word nor a number in base two. It is easy to develop simple control programs or ‘applications’ as they are known in Forth. If for instance there is a Digitalker card in slot 2 of the APPLE, the following makes it produce its complete range of words and noises: HEX TALK 90000 ICOAOC! BEGIN COAO C@ 2 MOD UNTIL LOOP ; TALK That counts from 0 up to $8F, the range of values that Digitalker translates. It puts value in turn into the Digitalker output register at $COAO ($COBO for slot 3, etc.), which starts the noise. It then enters a loop which scans the Digitalker status register (also at $COAQ) until the lowest bit becomes a 'I', which indicates that the noise has been completed and it can KO on to the next one. The current disk version of Kuntze's ‘6TH APPLE! is available trom the software library and includes demonstration screens on noises, a simple drawing application, the fig-Forth screen editor (use with care), a decompiler which handles most — ‘normal* words, a few utility words, an assembler which is licenced for ~—_ educational distribution but which is insecure, and a special vocabulary which allows Forth to read and display the time using a Glanmire Electronics Micro-Watch. It is public domain ‘software, meaning that you may copy it and distribute it further if you wish (RUN NOTES first for a notice to this effect) at your own risk! There is one known bug in the current issue: DRO and DRI do not do exactly what one would expect... also be warned that pressing reset at present kills DOS. If this matters (FORTH only uses RWTS itself) you can do MON *3EAG (reconnect DOS) *6104G (warmstart FORTH) If you have the disk, 12 67 INDEX will give you an idea of what screens are available; 12 LIST will display while the contents of screen 12, 12, LOAD will actually carry out the instructions on that screen. All screen transactions should be done in DECIMAL. Before you do anything, make a copy of the disk using the COPYA or COPY program from your system master disk. The disk VTOC hay been fixed so that all tracks up to track 17 (the CATALOG and VTOC track) are marked as used, so that any Forth screens (12 to 67) will be copied along with DOS and with the normal DOS files that occupy the latter half of the disk. I can supply an editor manual if needed - no room on the disk. For those who want a more advanced package there are at least five other Forth implementations for the APPLE: Kuntze has an extended version, Cap'n Software has one, Transforth is extended in various directions including maths, Metacrafts is powerful but I don't know much about it yet, and GraFORTH is a very powerful graphics and music language which supports recursion and allows the creation of ‘autorun’ packages but lacks some of the flexibility of the others (but it has to be seen and heard... and it is not too expensive either), For those with other tig-FORTH systems, the only thing above which will need changing (apart from the Digitalker section) is CLICK. Refer to your system manual for information on how to click the speaker; you will probably have to TOGGLE one bit of an output port, October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 9 User Hostility Why User Friendly? by Bob Raikes. Don't those patient, ever calm people who never get excited or angry drive you mad? They do me. How much worse it is when a dumb machine is the same. Such patience. However many times you put the data disk in instead of the program disk, that flaming machine simply beeps, displays ‘Insert Program disk and hit any key to go on and waits patiently. Absolutely maddening. 1 would like to make a plea for user hostile programs. No more endless prompts and quiet patience. How about the sound of a raspberry, followed by: “Are you stupid or something? I said the PROGRAM disk, you idiot", Then if you repeat the mistake:- "I've told you once. Put the PROGRAM disk in now. Come on, I'm waiting". If you make the mistake again, the program would initialise the disk, leaving only a file called 'SERVES YOU RIGHT" and a screen display of ‘DAMN HUMANS', No more of this simple prompt such as a ? Replace this with 'WELL??" and the sound of a tapping foot. Some programmers have come to these same conclusions before me I am sure, and have worked on some very subtle ploys. The most user hostile program I have met is an old version of Computer Ambush. After 10 hours playing (25 mins per turn!), it ‘crashed and destroyed the game when I tried to save it with 'DISK FULL ERROR'. Anybody got any other nominations? Small Ads For Sale: 48k ITT 2020, Applesoft in ROM, two ITT disk drives with controller, Ferguson 14" B&W TV, Parallel printer card with _ additional circuit to drive V26 serial, Transdata 300 thermal printer with keyboard, paddles and games, £500, Contact: Alan plea Duerden, i iia; BAY AERA E ENERO EKER RANE Apple I+ 64k, two disks, colour card, Centronics parallel card, paddles, docs, etc. £300, Contact: Derek Page on (ili ailil!% during office hours. errrrrrr reer etter rier eeeirirrrricers Apple I disk drive + controller £160 APS 9" monitor £25 Various games in mint condition all at half price. Ring David Girdler on iis itumtet (4) shh Ean. 1H during office hours. AURA R EEDA R ROSSER R ARERR EERE REEEER REE ER Neptune 64k Extended 80-column card for Apple //e, £100 o.n.0. Ring Brian Poulton on (iii (tii Quick Tip by R.C. Lowe CONTROL CODE SPOTTING If you want to know if the name of a file on disk contains a control code try CATALOGing while in INVERSE mode, it wont tell you what the control code is or where it is but it will tell you how many (if any) are in the name. EDUCATIONAL/GAMES SOFTWARE Approximately 25 packages, used once in original boxes with all documentation normally only for sale in the United States and worth about £700 need Apple JL, JL+, Applesoft 48k, DOS 3.3 //e, disk drive or Franklin Ace, disk drive £100 the lot or will split Contact: James Nalty, 7 Harllee: His eesetiwvigy (LSA) cipaasiab Mathematicians do it with tables. Software Engineers do it in bits. Page 10 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 Software Review Apple Assembly Language Course Price: £14.50 Suppliers: Honeyfold Software Ltd. Standfst House, Bath Place High Street, Barnet, London ENS 1ED Reviewed by Seth Proctor This "course" comes in a video-cassette type box, consisting of a 5 1/4 inch disk and book. The disk holds the assembler, which may be used on any Apple X or on a //e, and a "tutorial"; the book, meanwhile, explains the codes of the Apple's processor chip - the 6502 - with various appendices having useful tables which are vital to programming. But what is "assembly language” and the "6502"? ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE. As most of you may be aware the Apple comes with a standard language - BASIC, or Applesoft. The main advantage of this language, believe it or believe it not, is that it is easy to read and to understand with its instructions being rather like English, and therefore relatively easy to use. So to print something one would key in "PRINT..."; to go in a loop ten times FOR X = 1 TO 10 ... NEXT X and so forth. However, this is not the language of the computer, for it is, putting it very simply, a collection of switches (which may be on or off) with those which run and control the Apple on a special kind of chip - a processor chip called the 6502 - and everything has to be scaled down to this Tevel. So, for example, BASIC programs are decoded into a format which the computer can understand - that is machine code. So, obviously, it would be better to write programs in machine code to cut out the decoding. Therefore why not write programs in this code? Because it is a laborious task whereby everything, as I said earlier, has to be scaled down, or decoded, by the programmer before writing the program, Even a simple PRINT statement requires a lot of work, so a compromise has to be reached between legible languages like BASIC and the iMegible machine code. This is assembly language, whose prime advantage 1s speed, for there is a closer relationship between assembly language and machine code than between BASIC and machine code. If one, therefore, wishes to write programs where ‘speed is the name of the game (e.g. animation or fast sorting), then one has to purchase an assembler which allows a user to write programs in assembly language and to decode them into machine code, The Apple Assembly Language Course by Malcolm Whapshott in the Dr Watson series is one which is available and under review now. This review - done with a //e - is split up to cover the package's four components - the course, the tutorial, the assembler and the package itself. THE COURSE. This makes the assumption that those reading the book have no prior knowledge of assembly language, so a "softly-softly" approach is given and maintained throughout. Thus one starts with an introductory chapter on understanding the language, and machine code, as well as understanding and writing instructions, Thence to the introduction and on through the various chapters of more concepts which are needed to write programs, including the necessary understanding of binary and hexadecimal numbers, so that by the final chapter one should be proficient in writing machine code programs with the assembler and knowledgeable about the built-in subroutines on the 6502 chip. Whether the course is fast or slow, is debateabie. | will admit that I found it slow, but I must point out that I have done work in assembly language (albeit three years ago on an ICL mainframe). However, 1 maintain that slowness is nothing like as bad as a fast breeze through, because the subject is quite complex if you are a complete novice at working in machine code/assembly language you need to take your time and not get dazzled and overcome by computer science. THE TUTORIAL. The disk tutorial consists of two main parts = questions & answers and 4 “counter” facility. The questions mainly ask the user to calculate the equivalents of given numbers in various bases - for example binary coded decimal to decimal, decimal to hexadecimal, etc., though not, say, binary to hexadecimal, which may be needed by some users. These are in addition to the descriptive text and a few questions & answers in’ the book. As regards the "counter" facility, this is a — very rudimentary, basic facility which has rows of numbers in boxes which are in two sets - decimal, binary & binary coded decimal, and decimal, binary & hexadecimal, The object of the exercise is to see what happens if one Elite 93 Eastworth Road Chertsey, Surre. Software KT16 80x , Company Telephone: 09328 67839 RAMVIEW This is Elites own 80-column card for the Apple //e. It is completely compatible with Apple's own 80-column card. The only differences are the price and the fact that our board can be upgraded to be a 64K/80-column card by simply plugging in 8 chips. RAMVIEW may also be purchased from Elite Software as an upgraded 64K board. RAMVIEW ts supplied with an instruction manual, fs fully tested before despatch and is backed by Elite Software's full one year's warranty. The price of a RAMVIEW {ts £60 + VAT (£69). The price of a 64K RAMVIEW {fs £120 + VAT (£138). Postage and packing ts free! Desler enquiries welcomed. Apple is « trademark of Apple Computer: Inc. Page 12 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1986 'A'dds or 'S'ubracts from the decimal number, which, incidentally, may be started between 0 and 99 with the first set of boxes and between 0 and 255 for the second. Methinks it was unwise of the programmer not to allow negative numbers in the boxes. That is to say if one has a 0 display then when | is subtracted the display goes to either 99 or 255 with the appropriate equivalents given. This could be confusing, I hope that this will be changed. THE ASSEMBLER. The course's assembler is very adequate and allows the user to enter, list’ and cun assembly language/machine code programs, as well as to insert spaces and to move code. Subject to my notes in "The Package" below | must admit to being disappointed with the assembler for various reasons:~ 1) When entering assembly code labels may be used to refer to a particular section of memory. However, upon leaving this facility, the assembler changes these into their memory locations. So, for example, if a section of code is called LOOPI and a screen location defined as POSITION! then the entry may look like LOOP! STA POSITIONI | | IMP LOOP! However this could be changed to 773° STA + ha | IMP 773 This, 1 feel, deteats the main purpose of using such labels - to read the listing easily without necessarily having to refer to peripheral codes or text, True, they help the programmer in writing the code, but how about reading it some time afterwards? This is especially so with large programs which use many subroutines. For example, one may remember that POSITION! is the first screen location, but not 1024, and so forth, 2) My second disappointment was that to insert code, say omitted in the entry facility, the programmer has to first calculate how many bytes are needed, then insert the appropriate space using the insert facility, thence back to the entry facility to enter the relevant code. All very cumbersome and time consuming, and | certainly found that is better to start from scratch. An facility would have been far better. for small programs it tad! 3) The assembler does not allow the user to have comments with the entered code, which is a great shame as machine code/assembly language programs are sometimes long and difficult to follow. (Having said that please see "The Package" below). These apart, as 1 said, the assembler is okay and has added facilities, as one would expect, to save and load programs (though only using drive 1) and to go in and out of monitor, The only problem I encountered using these was that they were not described in a clearly marked section, which in the event was fairly late in the book; it may have been better to have a ‘help' facility on disk (to be printed to screen or paper) or, as I said, a clearly marked section in the book. THE PACKAGE. I must confess that I was disappointed with the overall packaging of the course. In the book there were a great number of misprints and dropped lines (normally after subscripts like }. Also lower-case inputs are nbt Whsid’ despite there being two assemblers - one each for the J and //e. This, 1 feel, devalues the course as many //e products recognize the existence of lower- case characters and cater accordingly. Another problem encountered was the fact that only drive 1 may be used, which is fine until one exits the assembler and subsequently wishes to re-RUN it. It needs a program on the course disk in drive 1, otherwise the assembler program crashes. In short one has to go through the irksome task of ensuring that the right disk is in drive 1 - the data disk when loading/saving programs or the course disk when wishing to RUN the tutor or assembler. Another commemt to note is that the book is not spiral-bound - unlike Apple manuals - which may be disconcerting for some users; I am told that this would raise the price to an unacceptable level, so this is fair enough. Furthermore there are no reference cards supplied - these, 1 feel, would be of great benefit as at some stages of the course 1 was referring to a program/exercise, the solution, the Apple character-set and the Apple = screen locations. For ease of referral the last two could be given on cards as well as in the given appendices. (Such "cards" need not necessarily be expensive stiff card, a pull-out section could do). October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 13 However, 1 have reviewed the First Edition of the course, and by the time this reiew is printed a second edition should be for sale (or be imminent), This has, so I am promised, no misprints or dropped lines and does allow for comments in the assembler. As regards my other comments these are being considered for future editions. In short the publishers are very much aware of the need to continually improve their wares, so the second edition should be far better than the first - if so then the product has been greatly uplifted and should not collect dust on seller's shelves. (A note to our continental member The second edition, unlike the first, will be available on the continent. Questions of where, please, to the publishers). SUMMARY. On the whole the course is good value-for-money, and is an inexpensive introduction to the complexities of assembly language. However, 1 would imagine a would-be serious programmer may have to invest in a more versatile assembler which would give the useful aids mentioned above, although not only would it be wise to see the latest edition before looking elsewhere but it may be best to buy this course in any case to make sure that assembly language is Mac Note by P. Knight. MICROSOFT MULTIPLAN FOR APPLE MAC. For: Very powerful when "opened", 63 columns wide (10 char. cols.). 255 rows. Editing quite good. Display very good. Against: On opening, displays keyboard of US machines. Thus typing on bottom line of UK keyboard produces characters displaced one key to right AND Return key (L-shaped on UK board) and backspace and spacebar do other things! Also for US a “dollar” command will globally label all numbers in selected column. No such choice for " How to SUM? Not much good in M'PLAN manual. A useful guide which one can understand will be found in Cary Lu's "The Apple Mac Book" - an excellent book quite without parallel. Lastly, why doesMicrosoftUK documentation not include supply of a backup disk. It Costs £25 for a replacement disk outside warranty. This is the charge also levied by Microsoft UK for a backup disk! Surely this is a not-clearly-displayed cost which comes under the Trade Descriptions Act and of interest to Trading Standards Officers. However, USA documentation (left in box "in error according to UK office) tells you how to get it for $10. Of course, you're still stuck with US keyboard - no E sign, etc. Who released this package in UK? The program also does not recognise dual disk drives - asks for Master disk when it is already loaded in other drive. In returning package to P & P I said that we could alter key caps but surely that would infringe disk warranty, also that I didn't know how to amend program for 2 disk drives even if it were possible. Where can 1 get a reliable UK-style spreadsheet for Mac which is anglicised for 2 drives? I have hobby and business interests waiting for me to erect a working system about 18 cols. by 250 rows (10 char. cols). 1 also. badly want a Tele/Address package plus 3 - 4 option boxes so that I can sort on name, company, telephone number, etc. 1 suggest Microsoft (particularly UK end) should "pull up their socks" and read recent criticism in US press of their "Word" and lack of a Hotline. I have just rung Apple USA and they say they are not doing a Mac/M'Plan despite their C'LOE.DMO.400 which | ordered. BEWARE! There are disk drives appearing on the market which use metal positioning bands to move the head. On an Apple disk drive the track positioning is considerably —_ less accurate so in order to ensure consistent booting track 0 tends to be fairly wide. This means that a disk initialised or copied on a metal band type of disk drive may prove difficult to boot on a standard Apple drive. The converse does not apply. Computer Operators do it in shifts. Database programmers do it with relations. Page 16 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 IMPORTANT NEWS FOR APPLEWRITER USERS + bu Dick Menhinick (with a Little help from Apple UKI) The following instructions if carried out accurately, will allow your copy of Applewriter //e to be modified to enable the NUL character (Decimal 0) to be sent to your printer. NUL cannot normally be sent from Applewriter since the NUL code is not accessable from the keyboard. Unfortunately, NUL is needed in many printers (Epson FX80, Taxan KP810) to activate functions such as underscore, super and supseript, proportional spacing etc. In the case of the Canon PW1080 and Taxan KP810 near letter quality (NLQ) printers the absence of NUL is particularly irritating since it without it, the second (optional) NLQ typeface cannot be selected (there are 14 different NLQ typefaces available for the Taxan KP810 nowt). The following instructions apply only to Applewriter //e. They modify the program to enable the ‘Delete’ key on the Apple//e produce a NUL code wnen in 'Control-V' mode. Delete worke normally unless Control-V has been pressed (This hae been printed on a Taxen KP610 with the standard and italic NLQ typefaces, using Applewriter //e ) General instructions are in this typeface. You type the inatructtons printed tn thie typeface 1. Boot your DOS 3.3 master disk 2. Remove the write protect label from your Applewriter //e disk. Put the Applewriter //e disk in your disk drive and close the drive door. 3. Now type the following lines, each followed by the RETURN key. BLOAD APWRT) [E CALL -151 1CK2:KA EA EA EA 3EBA:EA EA EA EA 3D0G UNLOCK APWRT][E BSAVBE APWRT][E;A$1900,L$2F56 LOCK APWRT)[E BLOAD APWRT)(F CALL-152 1D01:EA BA BA BA 4033:KA KA BA EA 3D0G UNLOCK APWRT](F BSAVE APWRT][F,A$1900,L$30D1 LOCK APWRT) (F That completes the modification, Fit a new write-protect tab to your Applewriter diskette. You should now Boot the Applewriter disk and give it a try! Remember, to get the NUL character from the Delete key you will need to have pressed Control-V first , but as it will be part of a longer commana string for the printer you would normally have done that anyway! Now, a short demonstration of what can be done with # Taxan KP610 now that we can awitch typefaces! Taxan Plain typeface Taxam outline typerace axan Gothic tppetace Taxav Hpcex rywreSave Taxan Handwatting! Toxan KPBold typaraca Toxen Toll tupeface October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 15 Epson DK IOO The Epson DX100 Printer and Keyboard. A review by J. W. Panks. Epson have for some years been connected with dot matrix printers. These have been of good quality and reliable. They were probably the first company to introduce printers at a price that most users could afford. In recent months Epson have announced many new products. These have included computers, printers and plotters. One product that has been added to the range is a Daisy Wheel Printer called the DX100. This has been overshadowed by the other products and has not been widely advertised. The Epson DX100 is in fact a Brother- manufactured printer similar to a Brother HRIS. It is designed to be a low cost, high quality printer with dual use as a computer printer or a typewriter. It is available with either a Centronics or — RS232C interface. The printer is built on a chassis which appears to be very strong and is encased in plastic which is a similar colour to the Apple beige. The top lifts up to provide easy access to the ribbon and daisy wheel. The print head is pulled across the platen by the usual wire cable type mechanism. It appears to be capable of this job and should prove reliable. The electronics are at the feat. of the machine under the platen. The tear panel has D-type plugs for the printer interface and for the optional keyboard. Also provided is a DIN type socket for the optional sheet feeder. Dip switches have usualy been hidden inside the machine; on the Epson they are placed on the rear panel, which makes changes to them very casy. There are two provided. The first selects the language of the daisywheel; the second is used to sect page lengths. They are well documented in, the manual. On the front of the machine is a group of switches that allow Line Feed, Top of Form, Copy, Selection of Line and Pitch settings. The printer is designed for medium use, and would be ideal in the home or for light office use. The print speed is slow in comparison with other more expensive daisy wheels or dot matrix printers. | have timed various print times for text and the average speed is 13 characters per second, The print head is bidirectional and coupled with the 3k buffer provided as standard makes the printing of single pages fairly quick. Longer articles take time and if you need the computer back whilst long articles are printed you will need to acquire a large buffer. The noise is acceptable providing the printer is positioned on a surface that does not vibrate, and is solid. | placed the printer on a fairly shaky table and the machine nearly threw itself on the floor. It does tend to shake, although putting some foam underneath cuts the noise and shake in half. The features ofe the machine are very good and are not found on some that cost well over £1000, It will print at 10, 12 or 15 characters per inch with Proportional spacing if required, The appropriate daisy wheel will be needed to get the best from the different pitches. Double strike, shadow printing and underline are also available. Two colour printing can be done when the printer is used with a computer; when a keyboard is used the red print becomes a corrector providing you change the small ribbon. The machine has a very useful copy facility which uses the 3k buffer to copy documents without the computer being tied up. | found this useful when writing similar letters to many people, and I think that it is cheaper than using a photocopier. The letter is loaded into the printer buffer and then you use the copy key on the printer to print it out. If you run a small business this would be useful coupled with the optional sheet feeder. The printer has a useful top of form key which allows you to load single sheets to a pre-determined position by simply placing the paper and pressing the TOF button, The next time you press the button it ejects the paper. Other commands that can be entered in off line mode are line spacing and pitch. These can also be set by software from within programs. Other features include auto underline, auto strike out, super- and subscript, half line feed in both directions and the setting of print head movement to 1/120th of an inch. Line spacing can be set to 6, 4 or 3 lines per inch by using the front panel or from software. The line spacing can be set in increments of 1/48th of an inch trom software, which could make it easy to use the printer for graphics. The Epson is compatible with Wordstar and uses standard Diablo protocols. | have used Page 16 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 it with Applewriter Il, Format 80, Letter Perfect, Wordstar and Zardax with no problems, If you wish to use it in Proportional Mode you will have to configure your program to the printer. On some this is easy, on others it may take some time. If you ‘really need proper proportional spacing you would be wise to get advice before buying any particular program, There is an optional extra 48 character keyboard for the Epson which turns the DX100 into a super typewriter with all the latest fancy electronic typewriter facilities, including auto correction. The keyboard plugs into the rear of the printer and can remain there when the printer is being run by a computer; there is an on/off switch on the keyboard. The keyboard is a standard QWERTY keyboard with optional keyboard overlays selected from a switch. This allows the use of different daisy wheels. Other features included are pitch and line spacing switches. The keyboard has adjustable feet for angle and this can be set at 15, 10 or > degrees, Some of the keys not normaly found on a keyboard are super- and subscript keys, correction and relocation keys (used for auto correction), express return key (and back space) and a code key. The code key allows the setting of decimal tabs and line indents. The keyboard allows automatic correction in the line that you are typing and it also has a 48 character buffer. The keyboard is ideal for those that like myself find setting up the computer for text entry a waste of time when only a small letter or label is required. It also has the tendency to stop the wife moaning about spending more money; she understands a typewriter but is not interested in learning the word proccessor. That is the only problem with the keyboard. My wife constantly outruns the buffer. It would appear that the printer can handle data from the computer quicker than the keyboard. This has the tendency to cause major problems with fast typists. They find it hard to slow down to the speed of the print head and as they rarely Jook at the keys or the typing they find that they have lost many characters. However I find the keyboard excellent but I only type at 20 - 30 words per minute. As I said previously the machine is really a Brother in disguise and therefore Brother ribbons and daisy wheels are required. There are a fair number of daisy wheels available for the DX100 but they are fairly expensive at roughly E18 each. Therefore if you need Plenty of different types you should bear in mind the cost of the daisy wheels. Printer ribbons are better priced and you can get one for between £3 to £4 depending on the Supplier. You can get Single Strike ribbons which produce perfect copy although they don't last long and Multi Strike which produces reasonable copy but lasts five times as long as single strike. Nylon Ribbons which are similar to normal typwriter ribbons in a cassette are available but the print quality is only fair and quickly becomes poor after use. The documentation that accompanied the printer was adequate without being too technical, The machine tested was a sample machine and the actual documents supplied may be improved on the production model. Other add-ons include a sheet feeder and a tractor unit. These are fairly cheap compared to other printers. | have not tried them out but if the quality is as good as the printer then they would be a good buy, providing you can justify their use. My conclusions are that this printer is a high quality printer at a reasonable price. The speed is not very impressive but for a fast daisywheel you will pay a lot more. If you want top quality, coupled with medium use, without paying a fortune, this printer is for you. I must thank EPSON (UK) and in particular John Sharp for allowing me to use the printer. It has been enjoyable and 1 will now be able to produce an Applewriter Glossary file for the Epson DX100. IMPORTANT PLEASE NOTE There aré two major telephone number changes for BASUG. Please alter these numbers in your books (or wherever you keep them). These numbers are valid as from NOW. ADMINISTRATION (Fran Teo) Newbury | (lit) Wei BULLETIN BOARD (Tony Game) Felixstowe | (jiittit) @ Runs BASIC, CP/M. PASCAL @ = Multi-operating systems @ large software range @ Twin built-in disk drives @ 64K RAM expandable to 192K DERING PC2000 A new concept 64K RAM, twin disk drives £795 Complete business system with ftware, Phone (0924) 499366, ext. CC Telex 83147 VIA OR, a Page 18 HARDCORE * The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 Quiz Writing Writing A Quiz Program In BASIC by Hugh Dobbs, Newtown School, Waterford A number of my students have been seen expending great efforts on writing quiz programs to baffle their friends; I was alarmed to see how much of the work was unnecessary, and tor the past few weeks we have had an intensive course on the subject. As observed, a typical program would run like thist 10 PRIN FRANCE" 20 INPUT A$ 30 IF AS = "PASS" THEN GOTO 60 40 IF AS <> "PARIS" THEN GOTO 10 30 PRINT "RIGHT" 60 PRINT "WHAT IS 32 + 45" 70 INPUT AS 80 IF A$ = "PASS" THEN GOTO 110 90 IF AS <> "77" THEN GOTO 70 100 PRINT "RIGHT" 110 oeoe ETCooee WHAT IS THE CAPITAL OF I have of course syntax errors and standardised the line numbers, but the overall structure is as shown. A little calculation shows that for a 100-question quiz one would need 500 lines of BASIC code, including 200 GOTO statements, any one of which might be to a wrong line number -- for example, did you notice that line 90 there should end with "GOTO 60! so that the question gets asked again? [ call that the Hard-Work Version (HWY). removed numerous Clearly it would be much better if all that testing and branching could be done just once; so I introduce the Subroutine Version (SV): 10 GOTO 1000 100 PRINT QS; 110 INPUT AS 120 IF AS = "PASS" THEN GOTO 150 130 IF A$ <> R$ THEN GOTO 100 140 PRINT "RIGHT" 150 RETURN 1000 LET Q$ = "WHAT 1S THE CAPITAL OF SPAIN" 1010 LET RS 1020 GosuB 100 1030 LET Q$ = "WHAT IS 5 TIMES 7” 1040 LET R$ = "34" 1050 GOSUB 100 1060) JonsETCZ.: "MADRID" Calculation here indicates that for a 100-question quiz you need 307 lines of BASIC, with a total of 3 GOTOs; and whereas you have 100 GOSUBs they are all identical so that any mistyping should be obvious. The subroutine is placed ahead of the main program for two reasons: first, most versions of BASIC search through from the start of a program for the line number addressed by a GOTO or GOSUB (which takes longer for later lines in the program), whereas the RETURN already has the absolute address of the GOSUB which called it on the stack and does not have to search for it; and second, when you LIST the program the bit that does the work is displayed first, which is almost certainly what you want, The difference between these two versions becomes more obvious when you get dissatisfied with the way the program works at present and want to add facilities to it. One obvious deficiency is the lack of scoring. You decide to keep a score, which means setting up a counter and adding one to it for every right answer, and then printing the score at the end. On the HWV this involves adding the following lines: 5 LETS = 0 55 LET S 9998 PRINT "YOUR FINAL SCORE 9999 END 1s "38 . for a total of 603 lines so far; the SV only requires: 3 LET S 145 LET S = 5 9998 PRINT four’ FINAL SCORE IS " 9999 END .. for a total of 311 lines. But perhaps you would like the score to be printed every time you get the answer right; to do this with the HWV: 57 PRINT "YOUR SCORE SO FAR IS " 107 PRINT "YOUR SCORE SO FAR IS 157 ....ETC.... s+ only 99 of these, making 702; while for the SV: 147 PRINT "YOUR SCORE SO FAR IS "3 S s+. Suffices, making 312 in all. This looks pretty good, but further savings are still possible depending on the October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 19 abilities of your dialect of BASIC. So far I have been assuming a fairly minimal Microsoft BASIC, and the two programs will run with minor changes on most machines, Some BASICs such as Sinclair and Atom BASICs allow a ‘computed GOSUB' -- that is, they allow 'GOSUB <expression>' as well as 'GOSUB <line__number>'. (For the Apple use ON...GOSUB or one of the & extensions to BASIC). With these the whole program can be inverted: 40 LET'S = : 20 LET Q = 30 GOSUB 1000 +Q* 30 GO IF Q$ <> "END" THEN GOTO 70 50 PRINT "YOUR FINAL SCORE IS "; S; " OUT OF "; Q 60 END 70 LETQ=Q+¢+1 380 PRINT "QUESTION "; Q 90 PRINT ey 100 INPUT A: 110 IF AS = "PASS" THEN GOTO 30 120 IF AS <> RS THEN GOTO 90 130 PRINT "RIGHT" 140 LETS =S+1 150 PRINT “YOUR SCORE SO FAR IS "; 5; "QUT OF "3 Q 160 GOTO 30 1000 LET QS = "HOW MANY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE ALLOWED FOR IN THIS TEST" 1010 LET R$ = "JUST ONE" 1020 RETURN 1030 LET Q$ = "WHAT IF THE COMPUTER'S ANSWER IS WRONG" 1040. LET R$ = "TOUGH" 1050 RETURN 1060 ...ETC.. 4000 LET Q$ = "END" 4010 RETURN This version has a total of 318 lines, and will run more slowly than the SV, but it has an advantage if you are very short of memory space: 'GOSUB 100! will take up more memory than 'RETURN': Sinclair, 5 bytes as against 1 (think); Atom 5 bytes ('GOS.a') as against 2 ('R.); thus saving 400 or 300 bytes on the latter part which more than makes up for the extra lines. Of course both BASICs mentioned require further lines for dimensioning string variables, etc. and the Atom will refer to $Q rather than QS throughout. Other BASICs have READ, DATA etc., which allow of further improvement: 10 LET S = 0 20 LETQ = 0 30 READ QS, R$ 40 IF Q$ <> "END" THEN GOTO 70 50 PRINT "YOUR FINAL SCORE IS "; S; " OUT OF "; Q 60 END 70 LET Q=Q¢ 80 PRINT "QUESTION “ 90 PRINT QS; 100 INPUT AS 110 IF AS = "PASS" THEN GOTO 30 120 IF A$ <> R$ THEN GOTO 90 130 PRINT "RIGHT." 140 LETS = S41 150 PRINT "YOUR SCORE SO FAR IS "; S 160 GOTO 3: 1000 DATA "IS THERE ANYTHING TO BE GAINED BY USING DATA STATEMENTS", "YES" 1010 DATA "WHAT IS THAT", "BREVITY" 1020 ....ETC.. 9999 DATA "END", "PHEW" 3 Q That brings the total down to 117 lines, including the printing of the question number which was not part of the first two versions. Further space can be saved by packing more than two DATA items per line, but I don't recommend it until the program is fully debugged as the layout used makes it very easy to see which question has which answer, and to check question number Q you simply work out Q*10+990 and LIST that line: Most versions of BASIC will allow you to leave out the quotation marks around the DATA items, but this can give rise to invisible errors as follows: if you type 1050 DATA what is 7 + 8, 15 and press the space bar before pressiny <return>, the instruction READ QS, RS will pick up what you would expect for Q$, but R$ will be the three-character string "15 ", and the victim who types "15" in response will be marked wrong. Incidentally the reverse may also apply: if the correct answer is "15" then "15 " will be wrong. This does not usually apply to spaces at the start of a string... Anyway, only remove the quotation marks after the program is working Properly, and only then if you are short of Space for the later questions. The invisible errors can be brought out in APPLESOFT by using INVERSE before LISTing the DATA section; they can often be produced by careless editing. Finally, perhaps your computer has disks. A quiz program is an example of serial data Processing, and can easily be rewritten to take its input from text files on disk. Since Page 20 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 all the disk operating systems | have met have been different (!) I shall just give an example using APPLESOFT and DOS 3.2 of 3.3.02 10 LETOQO- 0 20 LET S = 6 30 LET DS = CHR$(4) 40 PRINT “WHICH QUIZ WOULD YOU LIKE "; Su 60 PRINT DS; "OPEN"; FS 70 PRINT DS; "READ"; FS 80 INPUT QS 90 IF QS <> "END" THEN GOTO 120 100 PRINT DS; "CLOSE" 110 PRINT "YOUR FINAL SCORE IS "3 35 “ OUT OF "3 Q 11> END 120 INPUT RS 130 LETQ=Qe 1 140 PRINT DS 150 PRINT "QUESTION NUMBER "; Q 160 PRINT QS; 170 INPUT AS 180 IF AS = "PASS" THEN GOTO 70 190 IF AS <> R$ THEN GOTO 150 200 LETS -S+1 210 PRINT "RIGHT. YOUR SCORE SO FAR 1S. *3 S 220 GOTO 70 This takes only 23 lines, but of course you still have to write the questions and answers. To do this you can use any suitable text-editor, such as the APPLE DOS Toolkit editor (BRUN EDASM). Type in questions and answers alternately, finishing up with END in place of a questions WHAT IS BLACK AND Gt OVER N AND READ ALL A MONITOR WHAT IS THE SOUL OF WIT BREVITY END Obviously this program can be used with any number of different quizzes, simply by writing different text files to go with it, so it is worth while building as many improvements into it as you can. Perhaps you would like the screen cleared before each question... perhaps you would like unnecessary spaces removed trom answers input... perhaps you would like the program to present a menu of the quizzes on the disk and allow the victim to choose one by simply pressing a key... perhaps the victim should only be allowed three attempts at a question... perhaps the victim should be allowed to escape without attempting all 100 questions... it's up to you. String Print by R. C. Lowe In response to Word Wrap by Tony Game in the August Hardcore, here is a shorter faster routine that does the same thing. When compressed, it only uses a few lines. | have altered this routine that | have been using for some time so that it is compatible with Word Wrap. The only problem that | have found with it is that, as it is recursive, it will run out of stack space if the string to be printed is too long or if the line length is set too short. 30 REM STRING PRINT NS 60 IF LEFTS (NS,1) = " " THEN NS - RIGHTS (NS, LEN (NS) - 1): GOTO 40 50 IF LEN (NS) < PL THEN PRINT NS: RETURN 60 5 = PL 70 FOR PS = PL TO! STEP - 1 $0 IF MIDS (NS,PS,1) = " " THEN S = PS:PS = | 90 NEXT PS 100 PRINT LEFT$ (NS,S): 110 NS = RIGHTS (NS, LEN (NS) - S) 120 GOSUB 40 130 RETURN by Jim Panks All 3.2 software disks have now been distributed and when they are returned the 3.3 will be sent out. If you have ANY difficulties ring your respective manager, the address and phone number is in the manual supplied, Also:- Any members wishing to help in the software library should get in touch with the software group manager at the P.O. Box or ring the number on the back of the membership card. Although we have quite a few helpers we will not turn anyone away. The more helpers the better. NEW DISKS. New Software Disks are being released, These will include a very fast disk copy program. Full details will be published prior to Christmas. FORMAT-80 FOR THE APPLE ][ AND //e Format-80 is simple to use. Text entry 's as easy as using a typewriter. Editing and formatting is achieved with single key strokes. "’D" for delete, “|” for insert, “J” for justify, “C” for centre, etc. Easy to remember commands because they make sense. What you see is what you get. Format-80 performs virtually any editing and formatting function you can imagine, and displays on the screen the text exactly as it will print out. It supports all Apple compatible printer: Format-80 also includes a sophisticated mailing list, which comes complete with full sort and selection capabilities. The program resides entirely in memory, including the mailing list. All drives are free for text and mailing list data It comes complete with a tutorial manual and a concise, easy to use reference manual, plus a handy user reference card, and is supplied on a standard DOS disc. The disc is not copy-protected, System requirement: 64K APPLE]| //e, and most Apple compatible machines. Disc Drive. 80 Column Card. (supports most 80 column cards) Also available as an upgrade to existing users of Format-80, including revisions to the reference manual, details of new features, and upgraded software. Ramview: 80 column board for the //e, upgradeable to 64K. PRICES Format-80: £129.00 Upgrade: £25.00 Ramview: £80.00 ELITE SOFTWARE COMPANY, 93 Eastworth Road, Chertsey, Surrey, KT16 8DX Tel: 09328 67839 Page 22 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 Beginners’ Page MORE PEEKING AND POKING By John Sharp In the last HARDCORE we began to look at PEEKing and POKEing. Before continuing it is worth a few minutes to consider how to save yourself a lot of work when you have a list of POKES to enter into a program. If they are in a sequence as is most likely, why not let the computer do the work and use a loop to do it: 10 FOR N = 768 TO 776 20 READ P 30 POKE N,P 40 NEXT 50 DATA 1,32,221,221,206,0,3,248,96 It will not have made much less work in this case but it will do so when there are many more POKES to do. Now so far we have been mainly POKEing. How can we use PEEK in a program to let us do something constructive? One way might be to see if you have an APPLESOFT or PALSOFT machine, ic. an APPLE or an ITT2020, One way is to look into a location you know to be different; lan Trackman suggests location 62447, If you PEEK (62447) and get @ number other than 0 then you are running on an Applesoft in ROM machine. PEEKing Is often useful to find out other things in programs. It could be used to find out if you are in FLASHING or INVERSE or NORMAL mode when you want to PRINT a new string. This uses the location we dealt with last time. For example:- 10 X = PEEK(50) 20 IF X = 255 THEN PRINT "YOU ARE IN NORMAL MODE" 30 IF X = 127 THEN PRINT “YOU ARE FLASHING AT ME!" 40 IF X = 63 THEN PRINT "YOU ARE INVERSE" This may not be a common occurrence but it could be useful if you were printing in different modes and wished to know which one you used last. Another case might be to test which key someone had pressed last. If you PEEK (-16384) then the value you get will get will be the ASCII value of the key pressed. This is illustrated by = the following: 10 FOR N = 0 TO 1000 20 X= PEEK( -16384) 30 IF X > 127 THEN PRINT CHRS(X);: POKE ~16368,0 40 NEXT N The POKE -16368,0 is to reset the switch to read the next character typed in . You could use it to see which was the LAST CHARACTER typed on the keyboard, or indeed if any had been typed in whilst the program was running, without having to rely on the key being pressed at a specific time when the program requests it. This suggests the following program for a simple reaction timer. 10 TEXT : HOME 20 FOR N = | TORND (3) * 4000 : NEXT 30 PRINT "READY" 40 FOR N = 1 TORND (3) * 4000 : NEXT 50 PRINT "STEADY" 60 FOR N TO RND (3) * 4000 : NEXT 70 PRINT "GO.. 80 POKE -16368,( 90 FOR N = | TO 300 : X= PEEK ( -16384) :IF X > 127 THEN GOTO 110 100 NEXT 110 PRINT "YOUR SCORE WAS "CAN YOU MAKE IT LARGER 120 END 1000 -N ; A tew comments would help those who do not understand, Lines 20, 40 and 60 put a random delay into the program between each statement, The resetting of the keyboard in line 80 stops you cheating by pressing a key before the "GO" comes up. POKING THE HI-RES SWITCHES. Have you ever tried to play a game and found instead of the correct graphics page the one from the graphics game you played before comes up. This is particularly common with the Integer games on the Software Distribution Library Disks. It means the switches are set wrongly for jumping between the various pages. These are POKE switches, If you read the APPLESOFT MANUAL it is confusing to say the least. An easier summary as follows is not foolproof because the switches are interdependent, but it usually works. POKE -16304,0 ....TEXT TO GRAPHICS POKE -16303,0 ....GRAPHICS TO TEXT POKE -16302,0 ....GRAPHICS & TEXT TO FULL GRAPHICS POKE -16301,0 ....FULL GRAPHICS TO GRAPHICS & TEXT POKE -16300,0 ....PAGE 2 TO PAGE | POKE -16299,0 ....PAGE 1 TO PAGE 2 October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 23 POKE -16298,0 ....LO-RES SWITCH POKE -16297,0 ....HI-RES SWITCH The last two are the most relevant ones if you have the trouble with being in the wrong type of graphics. Just press CTRL-C and type in the relevant POKE followed by a RETURN and rerun the program, THE ESCAPE KEYS AND OTHER EDITING FACILITIES. If you are a beginner you have probably glanced at the REFERENCE MANUAL and thought "Yes I'll look at that some other time, maybe in a few years time", Well there are some pages you might understand that are not in hieroglyphics. For example the pages on the ESC codes for moving the cursor on pages 34 and 35. Althoughmost AUTOSTART ROM users are familiar with ESC IJKM they are not always aware of the ESC DBAC set. They give you similar movements, but with one difference. If you press ESC ABCD then the hext key you press actually works. It is not a "get you out of using the ESC key sequence". If you are a poor typist and are continually mistyping CATALOG titles, you probably use the ESC IJKM keys to run up the Catalog and then along the row with the -> key. How many times do you forget to press R for the RUN twice or use some other means of getting out of the ESC sequence only to find youhave typedUNM YPROGRAM andhad SYNTAX ERROR come back at you. Well if you get into the habit of using ESC D as the last ESC character to move the cursor onto the line you want, there should be no such trouble. Whilst on such facilities, do you know how to slow down or temporarily stop listings. A slow listing can be achieved by typing SPEED = 180 or some other number less than the normal 255. When you then LIST the letters will come out slowly. The lower the number the slower; with SPEED =! they take a very long time. Remember to reset to SPEED = 255 before you run the program. To slow the listing down so that a few lines come up at a time before stopping, use CTRL S. Type LIST and press RETURN as normal, then put one finger on the CTRL key and keep it there, Then press the S key. Each time you press it the listing will either move or Stop. In order to get back into BASIC type CTRL C. THIS WILL NOT WORK ON AN APPLE WITHOUT THE AUTOSTART ROM (including the ITT 2020) or if you are listing an INTEGER program, Courses Following the review of one of their courses in the last issue, we have heard trom the University of Salford, They run three Apple Il courses: The Apple for beginners. Getting more from your Apple. Machine code programming on the Apple. Their next courses run in January, April and July 1985 and during 1985 they are prepared to offer a discount of E10 per course to BASUG members. Two books based on the courses are duc for publication soon, They are "Getting the most {rom your Apple II/Ie/Ilc" (Addison-Wesley) and "Machine-level programming on the Apple Ii/lle" (Prentice/Hall). There is a disk associated with each book. For further information please contact: Conference Office Maxwell Building University of Salford Salford MS 4WT Telephone: 061-736 5843 extension 449. Assembly Course. BOOK NOW for APPLE ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE COURSE October 20th County Hall, Central London. A tew places still left. See separate application form. BASIC programmers do it but get it wrong. FORTH programmers do it in reverse (polish). BBC Micro users do it down a tube. Sinclair users can't do it without peripherals. Sinclair users can't do it - full stop! STOCK CLEARANCE In order to make room for new stock the following items are offered for sale at lowest ever prices. Everything must be sold so any offer made will be considered. N.B. VAT INCLUDED IN ALL PRICES! USED HARDWARE APPLE Il EUROPLUS £275 APPLE DISC DRIVES FROM £145 CONTROLLER CARD £40 PARALLEL PRINTER CARD £35 SERIAL PRINTER CARD £30 COMMS CARD £30 DIPLOMAT COMMS CARD £50 SMARTERM 80—COL £75. DIGITEK 80-COL £75 DOS 3.2 CONTROLLER CARD £20 PAL CARD £25 ITT 2020 £195 ITT DISC DRIVE (APPLE COMPATIBLE) £125 MONITORS FROM £35 VARIOUS PRINTERS FROM £145 APPLE POWER SUPPLIES £50 110V POWER SUPPLIES £30 GAMES SOCKET EXTENDER f4 ORBIT ACCOUNTS PACKAGE £200 APPLE Il CARRYING CASE £35 APPLE Il CARRYING BAG £5 COMPLETE APPLE II SPARES KIT INCL. MOTHERBOARD, KEYBOARD, POWER SUPPLY, DISC DRIVE, ALL ROMS, RAMS & TTL CHIPS, SERVICE MANUAL ETC. £750 OR WILL SPLIT Ile PADDLES €15 APPLE II PADDLES £5. Ile 80--COL CARD £50 APPLE I| AUTO-REPEAT KEYBOARD MOD £10 MODULATOR £10 APPLEBAG £7.50 DUST COVERS FROM £4.50 DESKTOP WORK STATION WITH 4 SWITCHED 13A SOCKETS £20 NEW 13A PLUGS £7.95 for 20 SILENTYPE PRINTER £30 APPLE I] MANUALS £3 EACH VERSAWRITER GRAPHICS SYSTEM £60 KOALA TOUCH-PAD FOR Ile £45 ALF MUSIC SYNTHESISER £95 USED SOFTWARE (ALL ORIGINAL) ADVANCED VISICALC £100 VISICALC £50 DESKTOP PLAN £15 FORTRAN £40 WORDSTAR £90 MICROSOFT CP/M AND MANUALS (NO CARD) £25 WORD HANDLER II £25 STAR TEXT (40/80 COL) £50 MAGIC WINDOW (40 COL) £45 MANY GAMES HALF PRICE — ‘PHONE FOR DETAILS SPECIAL OFFER FLOPPY DISCS BULK PACKAGED (NO SLEEVES OR LABELS) DOUBLE SIDED/ DOUBLE DENSITY 5.25” DISKETTES. 5 YEAR GUARANTEE 100 OR MORE 10-99 £1,00 EACH £1.25 EACH SLEEVES AVAILABLE AT 10p/DISC EXTRA ADD £1.80 P&P ALL PRICES INCLUSIVE OF VAT BARCLAYCARD ACCESS BERKSHIRE MICROS LTD — BRACKNELL (0344) 484423 October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 25 Local Groups Herts & Beds Group. Come and join us. October 2nd - Macintosh Demonstration. A look at some of the software. November 6th - Which DOS? A look at ProDOS, Fast DOS, Diversi-DOS, etc. Why not bring your favourite DOS ‘to tell us about? December 4th - Communications. A look at ASCII Express and Prestel editing in colour on the Apple. If you have any ideas for future meetings or can contribute to those above ring Norah or John Arnold on (ssi: sratbilll, Berks and Hants Group. This meets on the 2nd Monday of each month in FURS Building, Reading University at 7.30, Please note the front door will be locked at 7.45 for security reasons. There's no bell! Meetings commence with coffee and members' problems, followed by a “formal lecture” (how formal depends on the speaker!) and question time, and will wind up with general chat time when members can seek help or merely chat to one another. We'll probably adjourn to the nearest pub around 9.30. We don't intend to be excessively parochial and stick strictly to Apple hardware and software - there's interesting software available elsewhere on other micros too, We brainstormed at the August meeting and came up with a list of possible meeting subjects, such ast Shopping basket (add-ons, ctc), Assembly language, Low-cost spreadsheets, Which database?, Low-cost in-house hardware repairs, etc., How the bit-copiers copy, Inter-Apple Communications, How to avoid costly errors, Parlez-vous Pascal(e)?, Other languages, Word processors, Graphics, There must be many other subjects of interest to us all. October meeting (8th) - Databases. What are they? Some examples. November meeting (12th) - Home servicing and repairs. Tell us about that strange fault and how you fixed it or ask how to fix one you haven't solved yet. —_— Preventive maintenance, rather than fault correction, And so on. WHERE'S THE FURS BUILDING? Contact: Bob Mould, ‘if (toon grb (Bh Tied invaasieneald HRA triage: Waedlly, fh RTS. AUGER: for a map. peewrrerrerrrrrrrttrttrttttti titi iid St Alb Other addresses: ery, A405 O) Herts Group meets at: The Old Schoo! mt 1 Branch Road Parkstreet Village Aaos St, Albans oi Perk Essex Group el a Ist Wednesday 6 "Tree Top Hotel" Drench Re Epping Rastett \\ ra Essex Group wate St Alternating 3rd Wednesdays Havering College of Technology Hornchurch and ITEC Harrow Contac Abe Savant (fi) Wail) (47H, MID-APPLE, for Birmingham and West Midlands. Contacts: Bill Watson on Hiiitinwili or Mel Golder on (fi) ‘te dl ( (HHH) 3 : Kent Group is peripatetic Check with Jim Panks on or with Dougal Hendry on iit mi) nb Croydon Group's meeting place: The Shirley Poppy Wickham Road Shirley Check with Paul Vernon on (lil 7 Bil FORTH programmers do it on a stack. Visicale users do it on spread sheets. COBOL programmers do it with a lot of words. LOGO programmers do it with turtles. Pascal programmers do it methodically. Page 26 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 Book Reviews Title: Applesoft Language Authors: Blackwood B. D. & Blackwood G. H. Publisher: Howard W. Sams Price: L11,85 Paperback, spiral bound, 9° x 6", 274 pp. First publ, 1981, 2nd edn, 1983 Reviewed by Brian Whalley The first edition of this book was briefly reviewed for Hardcore in December 1981, but it is difficult to know just how the second edition differs from the first since there is no comment in either the Preface or the Introduction, and no special foreword to this edition. The original review commented on the lack of Index, and this has been remedied. Surely this alone isn't the reason for the price going up by just over 50% (from the original £7.65) in only two years? George Blackwood claims in his introduction that the book is for beginners, for those who “want to learn how to program ... and have no opportunity for formal instruction", and who have "very little comprehension of computer programming". The chapters are termed "Lessons": Lesson 1 teaches the reader to load and save programs to tape, whilst Lesson 2 covers booting the disk operating system, loading and _ saving programs, and other DOS operations (such as CATALOG, RENAME, LOCK). Each lesson starts with a useful "Vocabulary" of the terms to be covered, but a genuine beginner who needs to learn the fundamentals may be feeling somewhat confused even as soon as the second page of Lesson 1, from reading the first and last of the twelve definitions for this opening chapter: "CRT - This abbreviation stands tor cathode ray tube. The picture tube in your television is a CRT. The CRT can be used to isplay the output from the typed-in input to your Apple computer". "VDM - This abbreviation stands for video display module, which is an electronic screen for displaying data or information", The second definition in the Vocabulary section for Lesson 2 would rapidly produce indigestion in any but the most enthusiastic of novice readers: “DISK or DISKETTE - A magnetic disk is a storage device that consists of a flat circular plate coated on both sides with some material (Mylar) that can be magnetized. The Apple Il uses a_ single density, soft sectored, 5 1/4 inch diskette as its virtual storage medium.The isk has a storage capacity of 118,000 bytes in the 3.2 disk operating system, and 146,000 bytes in the 3.3 disk operating system. The DOS 3.3 will store between 100 and 120 pages of normal text..." » and it continues with figures for tracks and sectors and allocations for data and the directory. The Vocabulary does not define byte, sector or track, nor do those words appear in the book's index. The Blackwoods do appear to subscribe to tidy screen displays, with details of HOME, HTAB, VTAB and TAB as carly as Lesson 4. Lessons 5 and 6 hurry the reader along to descriptions and discussions of variables and the precedence of arithmetic operators respectively. Lesson 8 plunges the reader into Relational and Logical Operators, whilst Lesson 9 introduces Problem Solving and Flowcharts - which seems a curious point at which to introduce a definition of "hardware": "HARDWARE - This is the name for all the physical units of a computer system. Hardware is made up of the apparatus rather than the programs". Lessons 12 and 13 cover single and double subscripted variables whilst Lesson 14 on String Arrays helps us to print on the screen various bits of the memorable sentence “HI SUE" before we settle down to the detailed flowcharting and code writing to solve a real problem: "to input three lines of variable length separated by a delimiter (;) to allow any length of name, any length of street number and address, and any length of city, state and zip code up to 255 characters each". Is that immediately clear? If so, then perhaps a misprint has crept into this review: What, then, are we to make of this curious book? To be fair to the authors, there's a good deal of common sense in it, and clear explanations of some of the complexities of programming. To be fair to potential readers, however, the good material needs careful seeking, and there's a great deal to confuse and dismay the newcomer to programming. The semi- experienced microcomputer owher could be helped forward provided that he or she is blessed with patience, and the ability to tolerate some very curious bits of English that are more Blackwoodian that American, but this is NOT a beginner's book, unless October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 27 that beginner is very serious indeed and is deprived of access to the many better introductory books available to the Apple user. Title: Apple BASIC Made Easy Authors: Gardner D. A. & Gardner M. L. Publisher: Prentice-Hall Price: £14.35 Paperback, 9" x 7", 246 pp. Reviewed by Brian Whalley This is an attractively produced book for the beginner in BASIC programming. David and Marianne Gardner are justified in their claim that the book "will teach you how to write BASIC programs on the Apple II or Apple Il Plus" and that there is no need to know anything about computers or to have any mathematical skill. The newcomer with an Apple, the Apple manuals, and the will to follow the book carefully, can certainly achieve the two goals that the authors set down of learning to program well and having fun doing it. There are some good diagrams, and a sprinkling of cartoons which are likely to appeal to the excited younger programmer even if not so much to the anxious adult! The book starts fairly conventionally with an introduction to the keyboard, PRINT statements, and the use of NEW, RUN and LIST. Chapter 4 has a quick look at graphics, whilst Chapter 5 returns the Treader briefly to hardware matters: the use ‘of the disk drive or the cassette recorder. The topics which follow are found in any BASIC programming book: variables, FOR... NEXT loops, IF statements, sound effects and subroutines, GOTO, strings and string variables, and the rest. There are, however some interesting features. Each chapter, for instance, is carefully structured, starting with an introduction to what it covers and ending with a clear summary of what has been learned, to which is appended a set of exercises. The exercises are nicely devised to provide interest for programmers of pretty well any age or background, and offer genuine problems without posing frustrating difficulties. Many of them could be of considerable value in any course in BASIC programming, whatever make of system is used, and are much more stimulating than some other so-called exercises I've seen perpetrated on beginners. Another interesting feature is a description of what the Gardners call "pseudocode", which is in effect a form of flowcharting but without its air of threatening technicality. Examples of simple program outlines are presented, along with a full Program listing and a diagram to link the two, for example: LINE NO. PSEUDOCODE 5-30 Set the graphics screen and color 35 For repetition = | to 10 40-90 Bounce ball from left to right 100-160 Bounce ball from right to left 165 Next repetition 170-190 Reset text and clear screen 200 End Smaller parts of programs are expanded in pseudocode: For DOT = 39 to 0 step -1 Plot a green dot in position DOT,O Pause Erase the green dot at DOT,O Next DOT It's not a new idea, but it's well used by the Gardners, and not overdone. Sound effects and hi-res graphics are well Covered without getting too elaborate. There is a useful chapter on PEEKS, POKES and CALLS - the chapter summary consists of a list of those specifically covered, but I would like to have seen that supported by a fuller list, perhaps as an Appendix. The book does in fact have five Appendices. The first covers disk initialisation and program transfer, and the newcomer to disk drives will find it useful in this easily located position. Appendix B is a shape-table generator which certainly works: it includes routines for disk and cassette Storage and recovery of shapes, though I'm at a loss to understand why the routine to DISPLAY a shape after BLOADing or SHLOADing requires a back-track to Chapter 26, The third appendix consists. of a clear description of the order in which the Apple carries out arithmetic processes, and an explanation of scientific notation which is clear if you are sufficiently motivated to concentrate hard. The final two appendices are a list of Reserved Words, and a Summary of Commands which could have been improved by including page references. There is a comprehensive: if slightly patchy Index. This is a useful addition to the books on Applesoft programming. Some of, the sample programs are rather unimaginative, and some could work rather better, but that's true of some quite expensive software! I would like to have seen rather more attention given to Page 28 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 good screen layouts, but that also is true of many professional programs, For example, it's disappointing and/or frustrating to. find that the oft-used demonstration of a Bouncing Ball performs merely across the top line of the screen; to find line 120 listed as "FOR PAUSE = | TO 25: REM NEXT PAUSE" when "NEXT PAUSE" should be part of the program (as in a Correct partial listing six pages earlier); to find curious line number Sequences such as 160, 162, 165, 170; and to find the program using GOSUB 900 when Line 900 is a REM statement, 1 continue to be puzzled at the variations in price amongst paperback microcomputer books of similar size and quality of production; this. one —is__ surprisingly expensive. However, it is a book that most beginners of any age would find both instructive and interesting, and one from which teachers of programming could garner some useful approaches. Title: The Apple House Author: John Blankenship Price: £13.95 Publisher: Prentice/Hall Paperback : 6.5" x 9" : 153 pages Reviewed by Jason W. Smith If you ever dreamed of having your house controlled by your Apple, then this is the book to buy! It details how to use your Apple in conjunction with various pieces of hardware to control your home for you. It makes very interesting reading for both the technically-minded and the not so technically-minded Apple owner, as it opens up some very exciting possibilities tor you and your Apple. After all, imagine talking to your house and having it respond by turning on or off the stereo or television and such-like things. Wouldn't it be fun to be able to have lights turned on as you enter a room or turned off when nobody is around? Maybe you have often thought it would be nice to have a phone-answering machine but didn't buy one because of the financial outlay. It could be accomplished using your Apple and two old tape recorders. What about a real-time clock, burglar alarm, speech synthesis and voice recognition. John Blankenship covers all these topics in great detail throughout this book to give a complete and workable intelligent home- control system which can all be controlled by your trusty Apple Il. All these facilities certainly sound very exciting, but there always has to be some minor requirement that you must fulfil, and the requirement for this book is that you should at least have some general knowledge of electronics as a minimum, Many of the pieces of equipment needed can be purchased from various sources (a list of vendors is given at the back of the book), but if you happen to like construction projects, and aren't too bad with a soldering iron, you can save money by building some sections yourself, Complete schematics are given tor some of the more appropriate areas. There are a few bits and pieces in the book that cannot be purchased anywhere and if you want them, you will have to make them yourself. The author recommends a number of appropriate books on the subject of hobby electronics and the Apple J. The home control system described in the book has five basic functions. These are: Voice request, Phone control, Security Management, Event timing and the monitoring of movement throughout the house. The VOICE REQUEST module allows communication with the computer using a wireless microphone. With this module you can control the lighting, ask what time it is, turn on the security system, turn appliances on and off and much more. The PHONE CONTROL module will turn the Apple into an intelligent answering machine. It also allows you to contact the computer trom a distant location by phone and request information on the status of your house when you're not there or instruct the computer to Perform some operation such as turning lights on or off, The module for SECURITY MANAGEMENT monitors doors and windows and, because the system is intelligent, you could have it phone a neighbour if it detected an intruder. EVENT TIMING provides a means of establishing a list of events that need to occur on an ongoing basis. For example, the Computer might wake you at seven o'clock on weekdays but let you sleep until ten at weekends. The heating should be turned down or off when no-one is home and then back on just before someone arrives home. This information is held in tables which can be edited depending on how your lifestyle changes. The INTERNAL MOVEMENT module watches various sensors to keep track of where people are in the house. This information is used to decide what lights should be turned on or off as people enter or leave rooms, John Blankenship states that it is possible to use these modules alone, all together or with the addition of some of your own, This is due to the flexibility of the software provided, which is written in Applesott, The book is divided into four parts, Part 1 NEW DERING 10MByte HARD DISK DRIVE FOR APPLE COMPUTERS = only £1095 10 MBytes formatted capacity 4 times faster than floppies Full back-up CP/M software included Runs with DOS 3.3 and CP/M Error-free data transfer Up to 5 MByte size CP/M files Contract maintenance available . new DERING HDI hard drive offers a massive 10 MByte storage capacity for all Apple'and Apple compatible computers at an unbeatable ia Price. |t comes complete with Keele Codes CLIP back-up and compress software for CP/M, gi or 7" Gene ‘ : card, controller, power supply, cased ready lex IA OR, Attn. It is the work horse of any system. Page 30 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 is an introduction and an overview of the entire system. Part II describes all the hardware that will be required to make the system operational. Pieces of hardware that cannot be purchased are examined in greater detail than off-the-shelf items, Part Ill pertains to the actual program coding used to implement each program module. I must say that the main BASIC program is well structured and easy to follow, but I do not like the idea of program lines ascending in increments of one, two and sometimes five as this could be rather tiresome to type in. Luckily you can purchase an un-protected disk with all the software in the book for $12.50, Part IV shows you how to put the hardware and software together to create your Apple-controlled house. In summation I must say that I did find the book clearly written with no obvious errors in the text or in the programs supplied. This book has inspired me towards the idea of having the Apple controlling various things in my home. It is not a very large book at only 153 pages, but it certainly contains a great deal of information on turning your house into "the first Apple house on the block". Title: Using the UCSD p-System Authors: K.Buckner, M. J. Cookson, ‘A. 1. Hinxman, A. Tate. Publisher: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Price: 3 Reviewed by Adam Broun. This is a book aimed at "guiding the complete beginner through aspects of the (UCSD) system necessary for it to be used safely and sensibly". It deals with the UCSD system as a whole, examining the filer, editor, and other parts of the system, without being too specific about either language or machine. Of course, when one sees UCSD written somewhere, mentions of Pascal are never far behind, and the second part of the book relates to Pascal, insofar as it applies to the UCSD system. My biggest worry about the book, which stayed with me the whole time I was reading it, was that I could never be sure at whom it was aimed. The first chapter is entitled "Basic concepts of computing" and goes on to provide a fairly standard, if rather convoluted introduction to the concepts of information storage, memory, etc., including explanations of how to put disks into drives. Subsequent chapters go on to using the system in great detail, and throw jargon about like it was going out of style. For ‘example, in chapter 4, which our computer novice has been told to turn to in order to adapt the system to his computer, he is casually told of "A miscellaneous information file (SYSTEM.MISCINFO) containing the terminal character sequences needed to perform various output operations and the character sequences to be interpreted on input as requesting some operation". The book continues by giving thorough, if at times confusing, expositions of the rest of the system, and includes a few real pearls of wisdom, such as hints on how to undelete files. However most of the information covered is also in the standard Pascal manuals, and usually the manuals are a good deal easier to read, especially since they are Apple-specific. The book attempts to cover USCD implementations for several machines. To sum up: the book tries to do something very difficult, and probably fails - that is, to get a complete novice to computing to start off on the UCSD p-system. It may, however, be useful to the more experienced user in providing a condensed summary of the system, Finally, a warning to those who still have the old version 2.1 system: Many of the features described in the book are not available on the older systems, and a brief summary of these is given in an appendix. Keyboard lowercase Mod. Apple Il+ keyboard - Lowercase modification. by Dick Menhinick. Some months ago, I reviewed a book called ‘The Apple Il Circuit Description’ by Winston Gayler in Hardcore. In this review 1 mentioned a section in the book which described how Apple had allowed for upper and lowercase operation in the Rev 7 (two part) keyboard encoder but had tailed to tell anyone about it! Since then, a number of BASUG members have approached me and asked for details on how the Apple Il+ keyboard can be modified to make use of this feature so I decided to modify my own keyboard and write the process up for Hardcore. The KR3600 chip which Apple use in the October 1984 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 31 keyboard encoder has 9 outputs, of which only 7 are used, Bits 5 and 6 are normally the two most significant bits of the keyboards output ASCII code. However, this chip has been preprogrammed with two sets of codes, and if bits 8 and 9 are substituted for bits 5 and 6 respectively, the other key code set may be accessed. If you remove and examine your keyboard encoder board and compare it to figure 1, you should be able to identify the two 'bow-ties' or — 'butterfly-pads! adjacent to the RESET/CTRL-RESET slide switch. These sit above and below six holes which are laid out to accept another slide switch of the same type as the RESET switch, Examination of the circuit board, shows that the two ‘butterfly-pads' connect the data bits 5 and 6 with the outputs 5 and 6 on the encoder chip. However, if the other two contacts (the ones not connected to the ‘butterfly-pads') are examined, you will see that these are connected with the encoder chip outputs 8 and 9, Now, if you carefully cut the copper track between the two ‘arrow-heads' of both butterfly pads = and fit a suitable double-pole double-throw —(d.p.d.t)_ switch you will have the facility to switch between the standard Apple 'uppercase-only' keyboard, and a full upper and lowercase keyboard where the 'shift' keys work correctly! figure 2. I fitted my switch off the board using long connecting wires, so that 1 could mount it through the metal baseplate of my Apple just under the keyboard. This removed the Necessity to open the lid cvery time I needed to change the position of the switch. Software-Support. Of course, as soon as I had modified my keyboard I wanted to try it, so, after carefully reassembling the machine | switched on, loaded DOS and tried to type some BASIC lines in lowercase. It didn't. work! "Rats! I must have the switch in the wrong position" [ thought. I switched to the other position, 1 tried a couple of PRINT Statements - it didn't work! 44% 4!@** Apple!!!" 1 expleted! One of my greatest strengths is my unswerving ability to recognise when I am beaten. So I gave up and did something else. A few days later, I decided to have a look at the latest messages on the Bulletin Board, Out came my trusty ‘ASCII Express! disk and | booted up, dialed 0742 667983 (as it was) and waited. Up came the header and the greeting, and the acknowledgements, and the waffle and ... and we and... at last came the invitation to log in. I typed in my name. IT WAS IN LOWERCASE ON THE SCREEN! The dreadful Berk!" I mused. thought then struck..."¥ou In case you are now wondering what the hell I am going on about, I should point out that the good-old-trusty Apple Monitor keyboard input’ routine converts all lowercase keyboard codes into uppercase! Of course this routine is used by Applesoft which explained my earlier frustration. The solution seemed too easy! So you will find, that unless you are using a case-sensitive screen editor like P.L.E you cannot put lowercase prompts into your programs! However, if you have a GET Statement or are PEEKing the keyboard register you will get the lowercase you richly deserve. The following programs will accept lowercase from the keyboard. This list only mentions the programs that I have personally tried - there are undoubtably many more. Mousepaint, ASCII Express, P.I Magicalc (The Spreadsheet), P.PS.file, P.F.S.reports. o9 GPL Bay icro-Painter, The two illustrations were drawn using ‘Mousepaint! on an Apple I+. Cut putter fu at both post! figs Eom oe eos oe a _oUpper lowercase mode [__p Original ‘caps-tock’ mode tone Page 32 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group October 1984 Children Software LETTERS AND EARLY READING. by G.G. Wood. The recent challenge by Norah Arnold cost me many late evenings. Her request for children's programs encouraged me to complete a program for letter awareness and early spelling. 1 started nine months ago with the Big Letters program by lan Trackman which came ‘on my Basug Introductory Disk. It was easy to add a patch so that any key pressing was echoed on the screen as a large letter. My three year old daughter was very happy pressing keys and recognising the letters: "M for mummy, D for daddy", she would shriek after finding them on the keyboard. The initials of her name all gave great excitement and real learning. She rapidly became fluent in all the letters, and spent many happy sessions on my knee gaining confidence and reinforcement of her Alphabet Books. She still loves to type random letter groups and ask me to say them. "BUT", said my wife, "what about lower case letters", "What indeed", 1 answered, as Ian's program is only upper casc.. Well, the first modification had been easy and lan used a good modular layout with plenty of comment, so fond parent decided to further child's education. First figure out the method of encoding letters (it's not x,y as a mathematician would assume), then develop a keyboard routine which emulates the case switching method of apple writer, then realise I need descenders so extend the letter array trom 5*7 to 5*8, then selective erase to stop descenders interfering with the line below. lan really knew what he was doing to implement only upper casel! This took many tong evenings and somewhere on the way 1 got fed up with the 30 second wait while the program loaded its arrays every time it was RUN. This turned into a real challenge, | finally solved it using the keyboard value as a pointer in the ‘expression:- ON key