Hardcore Volume 5 No. 1 1985 02 BASUG GB

hard core THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH APPLE USER GROUP FORMAT- 80 : ENHANCED FOR THE APPLE Il, Ile and Ilc. THE WORD PROCESSOR FOR THE APPLE ”...80 far ahead of the others, there is no second place”. This is what an American magazine said about a British word processor. And since then we have improved the product by 1.) Putting DOS 3.3 and ProDOS versions on one disc. 2.) Making it Ilc and Apple mouse compatible. 3.) Adding a spreadsheet function to give fully integrated text editing, Mail-list incorporation and calculation facility. And all without changing the price. So if you want a word processor that will work on any Apple II with 64K(*), on any 80 column card, and on most hard disk drives, and is above all simple to use, or just want to find out where the quote was taken from, please contact: ELITE SOFTWARE COMPANY 93 Eastworth Road, Chertsey, Surrey KT16 8DX. Tel: 09328 67839 PRICE: £129 + VAT (£148.35) (* ProDOS version requires 128K Ile or IIc) February 1985 | HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group — Page 3 THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH APPLE SYSTEMS USER GROUP 4 Baitorial . " P.0.BOX 174 WATFORD WO2 6NF sue eee : Press Officer BASUG Ltd. is a non-profit-making 7 Working the Bulletin Boards Tony Game company Basug Committee limited by guarantee. Quentin Reidford Chairman Norah Arnold Secretary Roger Gear~Evans Treasurer Graham Attwood Software Library Richard Beck Courses Richard Boyd Meetings, Local Groups Keith Chamberlain Membership Tony Game Bulletin Board Roger Harris Literature Library Jim Panks ACC Representative Bob Raikes Peter Trinder Ewen Wannop George Zitterstein SIG Mac, Update Prestel Press Officer Fran Teo Administrator Peter Baron Teresa McKenzie & Peter Blair Hardcore Editor Assistants RRR RRR IIIT RI IRIE RIT RTI BASUG Telephone No. ifivitliit® Please note: This number is ONLY. Bulletin Boards: BABBS | ~ BABBS 2 Chris Williams: (Mon-Fri 7pm-9pm) SeHile dneth)) 77HtRa Hotline (fii) Aifie dinni (COPYRIGHT (C) - The contents of this journal are copyright of the British Apple Systems User Group and /or the respective authors. However permission will normally be granted for non-commercial reproduction by user groups affiliated to the International Apple Core, provided the author and source are properly credited. The opinions and views expressed are those of the various contributors, and are not necessarily supported by the British Apple Systems _User__Group. 10 Apple - BEC Transfer Andrew Jackson 12 Jazz Ron Anastasia 14 Mac Software 15 SIGMac Peter Trinder 16 512K Mac RAM Disc 17 PLE Escape Tables M. Peter Trinder Long & D. Steward 19 Beginners Pages John Sharp 20 Tip R. C. Lowe 21 Local Groups 22 Courses 25 Book Reviews 34 Software Reviews 39 Epson Pages 41 Letters 44 Product News 46 Diary Peter Baron This issue of HARDCORE was printed on a Juki 6100, mainly with the aid of FORMAT 80, Madeleine and Herald Elite daisywheels. The Editor is extremely grateful to Mark Whelan of Flite Software for his considerable help. Front Cover: Produced by Norah Arnold on a Macintosh. The December cover was also done by Norah, but on an Apple II, not a Mac as stated. Page 4 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 Editorial So, this is Hardcore ! After arranging my first edition, I think that now I understand the significance of ‘Hard’ in the name ! The experience has impressed. on me, again, the incredible enthusiasm and devotion shown by the people who start and run organisations like BASUG. Well, who is this Editor bloke you have never heard of before ? Certainly not a computer whiz kid ! On the face of it, well qualified with an upper second in Zoology and a Ph.D., gained by part time research, in Parasitology. But, the onset of rheumatoid arthritis at age 44 made me wonder just what these qualifications were worth. What the hell, I did them because I wanted to. It's a shame that hardly anybody supports research into some of the diseases which affect millions of people in the third world, but that's politics. I came into computing later in life, directly as a result of disability. The Apple first served as a sort of much needed mental bicycle, later it was and now is used for more practical purposes. Though my experience with other computers is limited, I still feel that the Apple II series is good. The range of serious applications to which these machines have been put is a testimony to their real value to society in general. Therefore, it is all the more regrettable that progress is so often seen, by manufacturing companies, in purely financial terms. Personally, I still feel that people are worth while, What of Hardcore's future ? Evolution is inevitable and we hope to selectively develop the magazine along the lines suggested by the Chairman, on the basis of the excellent work done by previous editors. 1 only hope | can match their enthusiasm and competence. As ever, we need writers. We need expertise in interesting areas, so if you are an expert don't keep it to yourself, tell us all about it. If you are not an expert, but more of a fiddler, play us a tune with your WP. If you need help, write a letter. There is a tremendous amount of talent out there. DATA PROTECTION ACT This item is included simply for information. We expect to have an authoritative article on the subject in our April issue. The Act is concerned with the use, storeage and processing of personal details by automatic equipment. It is intended as a control and regulation measure, in particular, where there is a risk to a person's privacy. Sections 23 and 24(3), which deal respectively with compensation for damage caused to a person by loss or unauthorised disclosure of data, and the right to have information corrected or erased, came into effect on September 12th 1984. The Home Office has indicated that other parts of the Act will come into operation at various future dates. In particular, the provision for registration, which seems likely to affect a large number of computer users, seems due for implementation during the period July to September 1985, with the appointment of a Registrar. Obviously it would not be appropriate for me to attempt to deal with any details, though I do note that Part IV deals with exemptions and that Section 33 exempts personal data which is held by an individual for the purposes, only, of managing his household, family or personal affairs or which he holds only for recreational purposes. But, it seems that organisations like BASUG will have to register, along with many businesses. Obviously, those who could be affected should consult a lawyer at the appropriate time. The Registrar's address ist- The Registrar, PO Box 465, Manchester, M60 7ED. Apart from the Act itself, a very useful reterence which can be consulted 1s:- Sizer R. & Newman P. The Data Protection Act. A Practical Guide for Managers and Professionals Incorporating an Annotated Copy of the Data Protection Act 1984 236p., Gower, 1984. ISBN 0 566 02645 4. February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems Liser Group Page 5 Chairman's Corner By Quentin Reidford ['Q] Being elevated to this position now means that I have the unenviable task of trying to follow in the foot-steps of Bob Raikes who has expended an cnormous amount of energy and enthusiasm into his period as BASUG Chairman. It seems appropriate to say thanks to Bob, as without his enthusiasm | am sure that BASUG would not exist to-day. Thanks also must go to Yvette, Bob's wife, who not only helped and encouraged him during his chairmanship, but also managed to edit ‘HARDCORF'. Goodness knows how you both did it, but I hope you enjoy a well earned rest. I must also announce that John Rogers has resigned from the committee because, happily, he is swamped with work in his business. John is the reason that BASUG has an excellent software library. He toiled for months from the earliest days of BASUG putting all our disks together. The collation of the original library was an enormous task and has allowed us to continue his work, upgrading to DOS 3.3 and enhancing the collection daily. As John leaves the committee for new challenges, his place at the table has been taken by George Zitterstein. George fills the much needed role of Press Officer for the group. His enthusiasm and professional knowledge will help us to achieve the goals we have set for 1985. This year we have two major aims within the Group. The first, will be to enhance ‘HARDCORE’, under the guidance of our new editor, Peter Baron. We intend to re-design the magazine, from the front cover, through the layout, to the back page, to give you a professional addition to your bookshelf. The contents will also be improved by, in the first instance, giving a box of ten disks to the contributor of the best article in each issue, with further cash prizes for the best letter and the best hint, tip or program listing in the same issue. With this in mind we wish to have volunteer SIG writers, with special interests or expertise, to contribute a short SIG article for each issue. This way members, remote from the more active centres of computing life can participate in topics of interest. If we succeed in achieving half of what we intend for ‘HARDCORE’ this year we shall be in a position of PAYING CASH for articles. The second major event for 1985 will be the introduction of BASUG-GOLD. This will be a subset of TELECOM GOLD allowing you full use of that service, for about one-fifth of the normal cost. This will be the first time a user group in Europe has given its members the facility to participate in a nation-wide Bulletin-board system. In fairness, it will be much more than that with the ability to ‘chat! with other users, in real time, send and receive telex messages, buy and sell goods and much, much more. MOST of you will be able to access this service with a LOCAL telephone call, and it 1s a Multi-user system, allowing us in the future to perhaps provide on-line games with PEOPLE. 1985 will be a bumper year for BASUG as we will continue to provide the support and encouragement for our members as before, and enhance your computing, whether it is in business or as a hobby. Press Officer George Zitterstein. Having taken on the responsibility of Press Officer for the Group, | suppose it would be a sensible idea to introduce myself to you, the reader. I joined the fraternity of computer addicts quite late in my career. My formal education began with the intention of becoming one of the World's great Brain Surgeons...but a short while at University convinced me that, as | couldn't stand the sight of sharp scalpels, let alone the attendant results of their use, perhaps, | was in the wrong line! Page 6 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 Following a couple of years in the armed services, I turned to what had originally been my hobby, radio communications. From being a licenced Radio Amateur, I became a professional with one of the better known institutions. Perhaps | should have entered one for the mentally bewildered instead...but I persevered for 26 years, before taking early retirement. During those years, I went through the phases of being an engineer, studio manager (the euphemism used for a sound balancer/mixer), programme producer, sports reporter/broadcaster and finally, as Database manager/co-ordinator. Sick of 'red tape! and being the target of those who ‘pass the buck’ in a downward direction, | decided to take the option of carrying my own can, as a freelance journalist, specialising in sport and technology. I did so, with the wish to make use of my Amateur Radio and other technical interests, whilst still maintaining my sports background. However, the micro has proved so dominant that I am attempting to set up business as a consultant to the small business first buyer and user. Writing is, however, my first love and I am attempting to break into the micro elite, in spite of the fetish for the contributions of the under-twenty-fives! (comment not to be regarded too seriously!). The main projects, at present, are a couple of books which, when released, I shall, obviously, give splendid reviews under some pseudonym! Seriously, though, 1 am looking forward to serving B.A.S.U.G. to the best of my ability. I shall be sending articles to as many magazines as will take contributions on behalf of the Group, not only those devoted to computing. The radio and electronics press, trade and advertising weeklies, as well as Newspapers will be canvassed just as assiduously. Approaches will be made to companies advertising Apple hard- and software, with regard to promoting a membership drive. The duty of a Press and Public Relations department is to convince as many as possible, of the subject's viability and value, with the aim of implying its neccessity to the consumer. Apple users need B.A.S.U.G. as much as B.A.S.U.G, needs members. My job is to convince the consumers of the former. You, as a member or an already committed "Hardcore reader, can help the hard-working administrators and committee, by "spreading the gospel". Note the intrusion of yet another cliche...but irs inclusion is permissable on the grounds that any and all devices are excusable when embarking on as big a task as encouraging membership of an organization facing enormous competition. We have to acknowledge the fact that, in Britain, the attributes of Apple have been underplayed, underpublicised and underutilised. The manufacturers’ enthusiasm appears to have been rekindled by Mac ... but we have Il, Me, I and Lisa owners around the country. We all know their superiority, for our own purposes, over the "toy" machines flooding the High Streets. Those machines attract an enormous specialized Press, with a flood of magazines and owner groups. We can all do something to redress the situation by explaining to others why we use Apple and how much benefit we gain from belonging to B.A.S.U.G. It is up to you as well as me. Should you have any ideas on the subject, I should be delighted to hear from you, either by letter or the "600 Ohm twisted pair" Lonely Apple David Pearce, Apple Il+, Wedel (Het) Dawes) a(R Small Ads Alpha Syntauri Music System with keyboard. Virtually unused. New Price more than £2000 inc VAT. I am asking only £1500. Ring Z. Lawrence on iii, #% Buz» Lo: hi I+. £10. Lower case chip for Apple llr. E10. Phone February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 7 Working the Bulletin Boards By Tony Game. Incredibly, | have now been custodian of BABBS | for four months and thus can, perhaps, usefully make a few observations that may be of help to users. I intend, in this article, to think more of already existing users rather than the growing army of first timers. The great snag with Bulletin boards, and this applies to communications in general, is undoubtedly the telephone charges. With the cost of five minutes at cheap rate being 38p, and the shortest time to do anything useful on a board being about 15 minutes, it will cost you getting on towards a pound for each call. It is essential, therefore, to get the best possible value from your call. I suggest that the first step towards this is to plan your call carefully before hand. Since you will not be able to see more than a small part of what there is in your quarter hour, you must make sure that you know which part of it you want to use, so that you go straight there. If possible also decide whether or not you are going to leave a message anywhere, and if you are, and if your software supports it, write this message or messages beforehand, and have them in disk files ready for the fastest possible insertion, I have been quite astonished at how few people do this. Typing at 5p for 45 seconds is not an efficient way of using bulletin boards! 1 will deal with the methods of sending pre-written text files in a future article for those unfamiliar with them. I would strongly suggest that you have a pencil and paper handy before starting. One of the first things that will happen is that you will be given a list of messages that are, hopefully, awaiting you. If you forget their numbers the subsequent search for them will be lengthy and expensive. Even if you have no personal messages you will probably want to scan the open pages, and it will be a great help to jot down interesting message numbers for later reading. Remember that this scan, starting at any chosen message number, is available. Often it will be possible to decide what you want to read from a scan rather than going through each message in detail. To make this more readily possible, may I make a plea that you ensure your headings are as informative as possible. Not too long, however, as one of the BABBS program's limitations is that these titles have all to be held in memory. If you address your message to ALL then anyone reading it will be asked automatically if they wish to reply. There are several features of the BABBS boards that have been carefully designed to save you money, and again I am amazed at how little they are used. First of all is the incredibly useful command Cul K. This always interrupts anything that is scrolling down the screen, and returns you to the menu you were last at. Thus if you don't want the automatic scan of the latest messages, or if you have specified a read of a number of messages and change your mind while they are being shown, a Ctrl K will stop everything and take you back to the menu. When you have used the board for a while and know the opening credits backwards you can skip these with Ctrl K. Ctrl S$ works just as it does with standard Apple programming - it pauses temporarily so that you can read the screen after which any key will start up again. Never ever use Ctrl C. It locks up the lot! The other feature which can save a lot of time, when properly used, is the semi colon. This has been designed so that the program believes it is a return. A warning first, though. Do not use semi-colons in any of your text. Whenever the program sees one it thinks it is a return. The great value of this of course is that you can stack up a number of commands in one entry. Thus First name;Second name;Y;Password can be entered at the prompt for ‘What is your First Name?', and will take you straight into the program. This is especially useful and timesaving if your software allows automatic log-on (which most do), and again I am astonished at how seldom it is used. 1 hope to deal with auto log-on in a later article. In the program proper commands can similarly be stacked Page & HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 so that for instance from the Main menu M5MjR31545 will take you automatically to the Messaging menu, then to Mail private, then to Read, then to message number 1545. This can save a surprising amount of time once you have got to know the menus well enough to remember the commands. Another lovely feature which many people obviously do not understand (I should mention that all these features are fully documented in BULLETINS on the board), is the ability to hit a key and have it obeyed, if it is a valid command, before the menus have finished scrolling. This is a great time saver. In a way it makes the Expert User mode rather obsolete although for those of you who really do know the hoard thoroughly this mode is still useful. It does not show the menus but just a line of the commands. You must know them however, as there is no way of seeing the menus once Expert mode has been selected. This mode, as well as many other useful terminal changes, can be chosen from the Utilities menu, Here, lower case can be selected if you have a chip or an 80 column card, and also Nulls can be put into the beginning of lines if you find that you are losing the first one or two characters of each line. If you do change your set up remember to write it to the disk and it will be remembered every time you log on. Finally, in this article which has been aimed at helping already regular users rather than complete beginners, DO PLEASE remember your password. You will not be allowed on the board at all if you get it wrong. You would be astonished at how often people do get into this quandary. Should it happen to you, forfeit one turn, do not pass go, do not collect £100, and use the pseudonym ‘SILLY for What is your first name? 'BOY' tor ‘what is your second name?', and DOPE for your password. This will let you on and you can leave me a message of enquiry about your password. Incidentally the private messages are private. Only the addressee and myself are able to see them. | have been asked a couple of times about the contents of private messages in a context where it was really quite reasonable for me to have revealed them, but of course in practice this is something that I can never do. RAMODRIVE e/c aa Apple Disk Emutation by RICHARD KRAEMER Copyright 1984 Precision Software Milwaukee DISK EMULATION for Apple//c or Apple//o with 64k or 128k EXTENDED 80 COLUMN CARDS Fully compatible with DOS 3.3, Apple Pascal 1.1 the 80 Column Display and Double Hi-Res Graphics RAMDRIYEe/c features audio-visual access indicators, re-initialise directory ability, easy setup for turnkey operation, end menu driven documentation, The program ‘may be modified and 1s copyable. Booting on an Apple//c or an Apple//e fitted with an ‘extended 80 column card will run the comprehensive documentation. RAMDRIVEe/c includes SPEEDOS 4 fast DOS Utilily ‘and RAMCOPY 8 disk copy utility for use with | or more disk drives. RAMCOPY is compatible with all non ~ protected DOS 3.3, Pascal 1.1, CP/M and ProDOS software. Reviewed in Apple User and Hardcore August 1984, PRICE £29.95 + SSp Post/packing Please send cheque with order UK. Distributors:- Coastal Computing Supplies & Services, 16 Malt Kiln Lane, Newbiggin, Ulverston, Cumbria LA12 ORJ, England Telephone (0229) 88408 Overseas orders Please add £1.55 post/packing Also available: CP/M RAMDRIVE//e for Apple//e with extended 80 Column Card. Compatible with CP/t™ versions to 2.23, and Microsoft type 280 Cords. Price £29.95 + SSp Post/packing SPECIAL LIMITED OFFER send only £50.50 for BOTH versions (£91.50 overseas) WRITTEN DEALER ENQUIRIES INVITED February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 9 - VALUE - VALUE - VALUE - cPAI CPA cCPA3 CRAG CPAS CRAG CPA CPAS CPAd CPAI2 CPAI4 CPAIS CPA20 CENTRO? APPLE COMPATIBLE PRODUCTS 16Kb RAM CARD FORTH CARD 280 SOFTWARE CARD (inc Manual) 80a COLUMN CARD EPROM WRITER/BLOWER CARD DISK CONTROLLER CARD PAL COLOUR CARD INTEGER BASIC CARD PARALLEL PRINTER CARD & CABLE RS232 CARD (ine Manual) SLIM-LINE DISK DRIVE JOYSTICK 128Kb RAM CARD (:nc Manual) NICS PRINTER CABLE PRINTERS AND MONITORS PHILIPS V7502 12" GREEN MONITOR ‘SMITH CORONA PRINTERS: FASTEXT 80 80col ,80cps D100 D200 D300 JUKI 6 cPA8O 80col , 120cps 80col, 160cps,NLQ 136col, 160cps,NLQ 100 20cps,Daisywheel printer 80col ,80cps ALL above prices exclude P&P & VAT TO ORDES: 40.00 30,00 37.00 40.00 35.00 35.00 30.00 45.00 45.00 125.00 15.00 125.00 13.00 79.00 170.00 229.00 375.00 535.00 340.00 189.00 Please telephone order particulars to 01 629 3603 or 021 233 2286; or visit our premises at 58 Jermyn St,London SWI. We are also main dealers for the ERICSSON PC and ALPHA MICRO and can offer these products at competitive prices. FIRST FLOOK, 58 JERMYN ST., LONUON SWLY 6LX, TEL. 01 629 3603 ALSO AT:PRINCE GROUP, LOMBARD HOUSE,CREAT CASTLE ST, BIRMINCIAM WOLFCROWN :- TEL:021 233 2286 Page 10 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 fipple> BBG File Transfer By Andrew Jackson In recent issues of Hardcore there have been several references to file transfer Programs between the Apple Il and the BBC microcomputers. The original reference was an article by N. Kelly ("The Apple speaks to the BBC", Hardcore, October 1983) in which he described a method for transfering text files between the two machines using a serial link. At the time I did not have a BBC so | merely read the article and forgot about it! The next reference to file transfer was a plea by Dr Baron (Letters, Hardcore, June 1984). Dr Baron was attempting to implement N. Kelly's routines without success and wrote to Hardcore for help. I had recently bought a BBC and was contemplating the same sort of file transfer program (all those valuable files in Apple DOS format!). | wrote to Hardcore, as did many others (Letters, Hardcore, August 1984), and rashly offered to write a program. This article describes the implementation of the file transfer programs which are now up and running. Hopefully the file transfer system will be available through BASUG as Special Release Software soon. The programs are too long to be listed here (there are four programs, all of which are several pages long). A useful reference for much of what I describe is the article on Modem-Xmodem protocols in the July 1984 cdition of Personal Computer World (pp 170-171). I decided that I wanted to send any file back and forth on the serial link - 1 felt that it would be useful to be able to transfer machine code back and forth since I had a powerful assembler on my Apple. This ruled out an extension of N. Kelly's routines which were only suitable for text. There were points that had to be given consideration when designing the programs: how to synchronise the two machines, error detection, error recovery, and transfer rate. Synchronisation between the two machines is important because otherwise one machine might be sending a file and the other might only start to receive half way through. Error detection and tecovery are perhaps the most important since I actually wanted a copy of the file, not gibberish. Transfer rate is important because many Apple owners have the standard serial card which only works at 300 baud and so I did not want to transfer lots of useless information between the two computers. Implementation In my program files are sent across the serial link in a blocked format, which allows errors to be detected faster than an unblocked format, is less prone to glitches on the serial line, and allows for easier synchronisation between the two machines. The blocks consist of 256 data bytes, which is the length of one sector on Apple and BBC discs. The blocking means that the received file is always a multiple of 256 bytes long; this is not normally a problem since the machines run under different operating systems and a certain amount of post processing is inevitable. Each block transmitted/received has the following format: <SOH> Header synchronisation byte <Block number low> Block n of the file <Block number high> <Data 0> ‘ 256 bytes of data <Data 255> <CRC high> CRC on block number and data <CRC low> Every block sent across the serial link has the same form, the last being no different to the first. The block number starts at 0 (zero) and is incremented for each 256 bytes read from disc, hence files upto 2424 bytes long can be sent! A Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) is used for checking the integrity of the block rather than a simple checksum because it does detects errors better. The CRC is calculated using the algorithm which the BBC uses for its Tape Filing System (no point in reinventing the wheel!). February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 11 The transfer operation is easiest to understand if the transmit and receive Programs are considered separately. The teccive program is effectively the Teverse of the transmit program although there are some tricky points. Both are written in machine code for speed and so that accurate timing loops can be maintained. The transmitter prompts for the name of the file to be transferred and attempts to open it for reading. If this fails the program aborts with an appropriate message. The transmitter assumes that the receiver is already listening to it and sends out the first block of the file. It then waits for some form of acknowledgement from the receive program. There are tour possible types of acknowledgement: accepted, not_accepted, invalid_response, and no_response. da If the transmitter receives an ‘accepted’ byte from the receiver the block was received correctly and the next block (if any) may be sent. All the next three response types are errors and, if received cause the transmitter to send the same block again, up to ten times before giving up. If 'not_accepted’ was received the receiver found some form of error in the data block, the error may be due to a byte being missed or a corrupted data byte in the block. 'Invalid_response' occurs when the byte received does not match either of the two Previous cases. ‘No response’ occurs if no byte was received after waiting for 10 seconds. If the end of file has not been reached the next block is read from disc, the block number incremented, and the block send process repeats. If the last block of the file has just been read the transmitter sends out an EOT byte which indicates that the last block was transmitted. The transmitter waits for an acknowledgement of this EOT byte. In a similar way to block send the transmitter attempts to send EOT upto 10 times before giving up and reporting an error. The operation of the receiver can be thought of as the reverse operation to that of the transmitter though with a few added precautions. Having opened a file for writing, the receiver enters a loop in which it is looking for either a SOH, indicating start of a block, or an EOT which indicates that the last block of the file has been received. This means that null length files may be received (for whatever purpose!). If there was no transmitter on the serial link then it is possible that the receiver could hang indefinitely waiting for a byte to be received from the serial link. This is prevented by allowing the receive character routine to wait only a limited amount of time before returning. When the receiver is looking for a SOH or an EOT it waits upto 10 seconds/try before quitting, however, when it is reading in a data block it switches to a timeout period of second. One second is adequate because once receiving a block the two machines should be in synchronisation. Comments The method of transfer seems quite reliable in the tests that I have given it and I have yet to get a fatal transmission error (except deliberately). I have even managed to fool an ordinary Apple Serial Card into running at 4800 baud (from software) so I don't have to wait long for the files to transfer. The programs have allowed me to transfer a whole collection of files which I had accumulated on my Apple to the BBC. Transferring these files has saved me an enormous amount of time retyping programs and data, and I now wonder how I did without them! The use of the programs is not restricted to Apple<->BBC transfers (because of the transfer format): BBC<->BBC, and Apple<->Apple transfers are possible. | have not had a chance to try them out with a modem but there is why they should not work (Noisy AT lines permitting!). 1 am grateful to Peter Baron for ‘beta-testing’ the programs for me and for his comments on them. ED. Until Special Release can evaluate the programs, Andy Jackson will answer queries about the saftware sent c/o Hardcore. Page 12 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 **JAZZ+* Provides Powerful Tools by Ron Anastasia (This article first appeared in Club Mac News Dec 1984 *) If the Mac is Apple's sling against the corporate invincibility of IBM,then Jazz may just be the smooth stone to strike the telling blow in the Goliath's most vulnerable spot - the arcane complexity of IBM-PC/MS-DOS software, Jazz is Lotus Development Corporation's new integrated software package scheduled for release in late March, 1985. (It was shown at the Which Computer Show in Birmingham in January.) Other than demos given to the press and viewers at Apple's booth, Lotus kept Jazz low-keyed at Comdex, the American National computer vendor convention held at Las Vegas last November. Fortunately, Club Mac was able to secure a more extensive look, when Lotus product marketing manager Fric Bedell gave a one hour preview of this remarkable new software package to a group of Club Mac staff. Jazz_is five packages in one. At first glance, Jazz seems to be yet another entry into the PC world's integrated software sweepstakes. Like Lotus' Symphony and Ashton Tate's Framework, it includes five fully integrated modules: word processor, spreadsheet, database, business graphics and communications. Multiple windowing shows several functions at the same time, and sharing information among the modes is fast and simple. The release version of Jazz will include utilities to convert 1-2-3, Symphony, and Multiplan files from other computers to the Macintosh. Not like current programs, The problem with integrated packages written for the IBM-PC and its clones is their complexity. They take a long time to learn and they are difficult to use in their fully integrated modes. Symphony's context - dependent command structure has by now become notorious, and Framework's outline metaphor forces many users into a contrived mode of working. Although both these packages can be powerful tools for the so-called power user, they often induce frustration and anguish for those who simply want to produce a report. We are "interrupt - driven" The breakthrough Lotus has acheived with Jazz is radical ease of use. Not mearly a reworked 1-2-3 or Symphony ported over to the Macintosh, Jazz is an entirely new product which the Macintosh team at Lotus (now about 75 members, including programmers, writers, field researchers, package designers etc.) has been working on for more than a year. Lotus has studied the working patterns of "knowledge workers," which includes most office personnel, and found many report-orientated, "“interrupt-driven" tasks; that is, the need to generate memos, articles, reports, proposals etc., is constantly interrupted by other tasks which demand our attention. To address this problem, Lotus designed Jazz with a word processor as its basic function and integrated spreadsheet, graphing, database, and tele- communications modes to share information among documents or send via telephone lines to other computers. Hot new idea Jazz includes an innovative feature called Hotview to deal with interruptions and changes. This allows users to open "dynamic windows" - instant pipelines to other modes of the program. The example shown by Bedell was a graph created for a letter or report, the graph is automatically generated from information in the Jazz database, and February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 13 quickly inserted into the lerter. Switching among modes is much faster than switching among applications such as MacWrite to Multiplan. But in addition to this, a significant benefit is the speed and transparency with which a subsequent change to the database then shows up as a redrawn graph in the letter, without any action on the part of the user. This simple and speedy integration is at the heart of the new Lotus product. It will automatically update information in all affected documents. The combination of Hotview and multiple windows - each time a new one is created, its title shows up in a pull-down menu - enable the user to move quickly and easily among several tasks, following normal working styles, A nice feature for moving among modes comes when opening the mini-Finder ("Open...") to select a document. First an icon for one of the six modes is selected (forms generation is considered another mode), then the documents which operate within that mode are presented for opening. Jazz's combination of power and ease of use is built on the strengths of the 512k Macintosh. It takes full advantage of mouse and icon technology, including undo typing capabilities and has well designed graphic scaling and orientation features. Lotus claims that, true to Macintosh ideals, a person familiar with the Mac will be able to immediately start using Jazz. Two serious omissions Jazz has apparently not sacrificed power to achieve its ease of use. For example, its worksheet mode maintains nearly all the same functionality as that of Symphony, with more power than even the legendary Lotus 1-2-3. Jazz appears to include all 1-2-3's date, time, financial, statistical, mathematical, logical and special functions. As far as 1 could see, the only important worksheet features ommited from Jazz are macro programming capability and built-in language like 1-2-3's /X commands. Lotus cites the difficulty of creating a "Macish" spatial analog for the syntax of macros and programming as their reason for omission, and maintains these features are of importance to limited numbers of users. Bedell did not exclude the possibility of future upgrades to include these abilities however. There are two particularly useful Jazz enhancements to 1-2-3's worksheet mode. First Jazz provides the full syntax of each formula from a pull-down menu. For each example, one may select the formula "IF(condition,true,false)" and use the cursor to enter cell locations into the formula. Second, Jazz displays range names for selected cells in the control panel beside the cell location, a marked benefit over 1-2-3's simple listing of range names without location references. These two features alone could save hours of work building complex programs. Keyboard mouse equivalents Jazz's other modes appear to be similarly powerful. Its full function word Processor has search and replace forward and backward, mail merging from database intormation, and integrated communications to allow simple use of data received. Jazz provides keyboard eqivalents for commonly used mouse functions, so a speed typist's hands need not leave the keyboard. although cursor control, as in Microsoft's Word, is not currently implemented. A_glance at the rest - The Jazz database mode provides easy data entry, editing, and query, with fast sorting on up to three fields and mixing of ascending and descending sorts. It works with the word processing mode for mail merging and labels, and with communications for data capture and analysis. It can validate data entry and allows wildcard parameters, compound search criteria, multiple databases, time and date formats, and statistical functions. - A forms generator creates custom data entry, query, sort, and output report forms. - Jazz's graphics mode includes the six major graph types: pie charts and line, scatter, bar, area, and percent graphs. Seamless integration allows fast graphing of data from worksheet, database, or communications modes and merging within single or multiple documents. You can display multiple graphs on-screen Page 14 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 simultaneously and control origins, titles, fill patterns, axis labels, legends, scale dimensions, page size and graph size. ~ The communications mode provides for full-featured asynchronous DEC VT-52 and VT-100, plus TTY terminal emulations. It can communicate data directly between documents and will convert transferred 1-2-3, Symphony, and SYLK files for use with Jazz. On-screen controls let you suspend communications for data analysis. The demo baud rate menu went up to 56,700 baud. Asked if that meant Jazz would support AT&T's new ultra high speed telecommunications convention, which would be widely available next year, Bedell replied, "We plan to support all standard communication conventions. Beyond that, fam afraid we can't comment." When challenged that Apple will never break IBM's grip on the Fortune 500, Apple founder Steve Jobs has been countering, "Apple's target market is the Fortune five million." Nevertheless, if Jazz still looks as good in March as it did during the preview, it could be the Program to finally award corporate legitimacy on Apple Computer. * Club Mac is an American club, needless to say, devoted to the Macintosh. They publish a magazine every month and run a Bulletin Board (Timeshared on a Maintrame from what we gather) Membership is $35.00 in the US of A, $60.00 abroad but this does include airmail of the Magazine. The new member disk contains 3 comms programs (MacTep is one). Details trom Club Mac, 735 Walnut, Boulder CO 80302 PIII III III II IK IIIS ISS SSS SS SS AIA ASAT The following is a list of Sys! ftware for the Macintosh:- This list was produced by Apple Computer Inc, (USA) who make no warranties for the products listed other than their own. Its said to be accurate as of November S, 1984. Company Product ‘Ship. Date Phone Absoft. MacFortran™ November 313-549-7111 Apple Computer Assembler/ December 408-996-1010 Macintosh Pascal Now Macintosh Basic December Borland International TurboPascal™ Spring 85 408-438-6400 Consulaire Corporation C Compiler Now 415-851-3849 Creative Solutions: Macforth™ Now 301-984-0262 Expertelligence Expertogo™ November 805-969-7874 ExperLisp™ January 8S Hippo C™ Now 408-730-2601 com ‘Now 817-589-2000 Neon™ (Forth/Smelitalk) 1st 08S 312-822-0624 MacASM™ (Assembler) Now 818-991-6540 Manx Software Systems Aztec C 68K ™* Now 201-780-4004 Mark Williams Company C Compiler 1st QBS 312-472-6659 Megamax. Inc. € Compiler Now 214-987-4931 Micro Focus, Inc. Cobol 1st 08S ANS-856-4161 Microsoft Basic 2.0 December 206-826-8060 Modula Corporation Hodula-2 Now 800-545-4842 Pterodacty! Basic Compiler Now 415-485-0714 ‘Softech Microsystems P-System Now 619-451-1230 Pascal Now Fortran Now Assembler Now ‘Softworks, Limited C Compiler Now 312-975-4030 True Basic, Inc. True Basic™ April 8S. 603-643-3882 Volition, inc. Modula-2 November 619-270-6600 February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 15 ‘SIG Mac Notes by Peter Trinder We intend to have « reguler column of notes in every issue, so if you have anything of interest please Tet us have it so that you can share your discovery with others. Multipfan Users may have been initially frustrated because sll the disks that | have seen have been ‘supplied with U.S Keyboard System files, and because the disks have a warranty sticker over the sliding metal cover of the disk it is not possible to alter the disk without breaking the seal, ond dealers ore understandably reluctant todo this’ The easiest way to alter the Multiplan disk is to startup with your System Disk then, assuming a single drive, eject it and insert the Multiplan disk, find the System File icon then drag the System file icon on the System Disk over to the Multiplan disk and follow the prompts. With two drives Just have one disk on each drive and you won't have the disk swapping problem. However if this is too much for you ask your dealer for the disk to be Localised. A program called the Localiser is now available at dealers ang is on MacSiG No.8. This program allows you to customise your System Files to local keyboord, time and date ond monetary format. So you can alter most US disks to suit your UK keyboord. You will still have a Trash Con because this is in the Finder not the System file To have 8 Wastebasket on your Multiplan disk you should replace the Finder that Microsoft provide with one off your System disk from Apple This applies equally to other software. 1 mentioned that most disks can be altered One exception is Transylvenia. | have hed some correspondence with Penguin and they did not appear to cottoned on to the fact that there were two different keyboards for the Moc and were most grateful to have the advice and layouts of the UK keyboard They sent me @ letter last week (20th December) telling me that they have fixed this problem and were sending me on altered disk If you want to see more of your Multiplan use 3 smaller font. By running the Font Mover you can teke ‘out the Seattle 10 and 20 fonts and the program will use Geneva 9 (make sure you still have Geneva 16 for Hi-quality printing). On SIG Mar: 8 is a program called MenuEdit which allows you to modify the pulldown menus of any progrem. | like to be able to insert rulers in my Mecwrite from the Keyboard so added 9% (Command) R to allow this. | elso added 38 (Command) Q to Hide/Show Rulers. This program seems practically debugged, which cannot be said for some of the other Utilities ‘round at present. MS Basic - Some of you have told me that you are having trouble running the programs on the club disks. First you must possess Microsoft Basic - Basug is not licensed to distribute it. Secondly the Basic interpreter must be on the disk with the program, Here there is @ Problem, there is not enough room on the disks as they come, so you will have to move the programs onto another disk. Actually what | said above isn't strictly correct. You can run a program on another disk. For example lets us imagine we have in the Internal drive a disk called Besic and in the external drive 8 disk called MyDISK, On MyDISK is @ program called Clock. To RUN Clock you double click on the MS Basic icon, when it has loaded, type RUN MyDISK:CLOCK (Don't forget the Colon) In other words you specify the device name ‘then the program, The Pascal ‘ee shows here. If you just want to look at the listing then type LOAD instead of RUN, \f you have been used to Applesoft then MS Basic is a bit picky about spaces. So you have to be careful. | found this @ bit of @ pain until | got used to it. | have noticed that one or two folk still have Finder 1.0 on their System Disks, get onto your dealers and get them to give you the free update of the System MocPaint and Mocwrite. It wos issued in July/August. You should have Finder 1.19, Macpaint 1.3 and Meewrite 2.20, Dealers should oll have 6 copy of “The Macintosh Buyers Guide™ which lists more than 200 products, peripherals ond add-ons. It proves thot there is no lock of software for the Mac. In fact | know of several good programs that aren't even in it. So! recommend at least 8 look at this publication. A new UK program is MacPlot. This allows 0 Serial Plotter to be driven by the Mac. The following Plotters are supported:- Apple, Calcomp 81, HP 7470A, HP ?47SA, Grephtec _ (Watonobe) MP1000-01, Epson HI-80 and the Penman The program to support Graphtec FP S301 and Houston Renge will be “available soon”. Music Fans look out for Music Works from Hayden at about $79. You can write @ four part work with separate Instruments. | have seen a prerelease (0.37 version) which is terrific ond understond the final version is even better. MocHints: If you are entering Fonts into MacPaint and are ‘annoyed because the fonts you have just entered are ‘when you select 8 different font try pressing Enter key before selecting your new font. Hoppy Mousing....... Page 16 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 GPRS Maditnet 8 RAGIN As| write this on the 29th of December 1984, it is ‘almost the end of the Mac’s first year. | still await my Rem upgrade kit but have been using e Fat Mec at work. In the US public domain have some excellent Mec programs and one that | think will be of considerable interest to all S12k Mec owners is called RamDisk. Apperently there ere several versions in public domain, and maybe by the time you read this there will be commercial versions available but | hope to have o ‘version on the next SIGMac disk. My RomDisk is un-nemed so | cannot even thenk the ‘euthor. The kernal is a very smell program (about 2k) which resides in the System fle es 8 driver. ‘The application includes var tous dialog boxes to allow: you to set-up different bootup configurations. Remdisk eutometicelly partitions the 512k rem into two perts, @ work area and a disk ares. If the driver is in the System ‘ond you have not selected eny options the Moc will show 6 ‘second disk icon on the desktop called “Remdisk”. By moving the application end system folders on to the Remdisk then everything on the disk is in memory end does not need to access the internal or external drives. except to load or save files to date disks. The improved speed of all applications working in this environment is truly impressive, The version | sm using, the initial setup time is ‘sdout 40 seconds but the operational ease thereafter is truly worth it. (1 am talking here of literally copying Application and system folder to the empty Remdisk after bootup, but to save this operation everytime It Is Possible to set it up so that these are loaded on bootup sutomatically.) Seconds required ‘Action S12 Mac 512k Mac w/Ramdisk Single drive Single drive Sat-up RamDisk ° “0 Stort MacWrite 19 s Save Writs file to disk — 15* 7 ‘Start MacPaint 20 ? Select Paint File fm disk 22** 5 Guit to Desktop 6 7 * Required one disk swan ** Required several disk swaps There is an additional benefit - you don't really need en external disk drive so this makes the difference in cost between @ 128k ond 12k Mec much smaller. But note that the maximum size of the RamDisk is 320k and to work most applications need at least 40k to work well. | think you will find this 4 reslly valuable addition to ‘the power already available, APPLE GAMES EXCHANGE Arcade Games can become STALE Adventure Games are great until SOLVED wad Ga Gf Now you Arcade & as £3.50 per exchange. can Send a list of the exchange, details to:- exchange your Adventure Games from as little together with a S.A.E., boring old want to for full games you APPLE GAMES EXCHANGE rP.o- DIss BOX 21 NORFOLK IP22 SDOQ February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 17 P.L.E. Escape Tables By Maurice Long and David Steward. Neil Konzen's program Program line editor (PLE) is one of the most useful Applesoft ies available on the market and no serious programmer should be without a copy of either PLE, or its successor GPLE. One of the most useful but perhaps underutilised facilities is the Escape Function and it's associated macro table. The PLE manual describes the Escape functions as "User-definable multi-character commands that are executed with only two key strokes." For example, DOS commands, such as CATALOG,D1 may be entered by allocating the command to esc |, using the supplied ESC CREATE.FP program. However once the Escape table has been created the only way it can be displayed is by using the program ESC CREATE.FP which only provides an on-screen printout. This leaves one without a copy for future reference, thereby restricting the use of the table. Employing more than one table becomes very confusing and the solution is to provide a hard copy for easy reference. The Escape table is stored as part of the PLE.FP program which is loaded and executed when the PLE disk is booted. According to the PLE manual it is loaded just below DOS, at 40192 and occupies the preceding 1536 bytes. The Escape table Is stored in the 333 bytes immediately below DOS, from 39858 to 40191. This means that in order to print the table out one has to examine the data stored in these locations and convert it to printable codes. Many macros use control characters, e.g. those to indicate the left and right cursor movements, upper and lower case letters, and these must be catered for in the printout. To do this, one first has to calculate the beginning of DOS, using the formula given in the PLE manual, this allows the program to be used on either 32k or 48k machines. The start of the table is then fixed at 334 bytes below this value. Then examine each of the locations starting from the beginning of the table until the end of table pointer, which is a zero, (the ASCII code for a null character) is encountered. The character codes used by PLE are ¢- 141 a return contained within a macro. 13 a return at the end of a macro. 155 escape. <32 a control character at the end of a macro. >=160 upper case characters. >=128 lower case characters. <128 the last character in a macro. Three types of characters had to be printed, upper case, lower case and control characters, but with only upper and lower available oa the printer we had to convert lower case to upper case and print the control characters as lower case. This means that both lower case and control characters are printed in the same manner, however since Applesoft will only recognize lower case characters inside quotes in a print statement this practice should not cause too much confusion. PLE offers the facility to suppress the printing of a command on the screen, this may be used when requesting a CATALOG ctc. The PLE code for "do not display" is printed as a‘. Our most commonly used Escape table is printed as :- PLE ESCAPE TABLE START ADDRESS 39858 CONTROL CHARACTERS ARE DISPLAYED AS LOWER CASE. D --> _DS=CHRS(4): P 2s" I ese J esc K esc M esc L LOAD uwuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUU 'C 1 "HOME *CATALOGD I 2 "HOME "CATALOGD2 h hhhhhhh u wuuuuu ! a 5 € Bex R RUN vuuuguuuuuusuuuuuuuuy s SAVE uuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU *CALL-958 6 ==> INK6 Wo-> uuUUUUUUULUUUUULUUUBUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUL Uo ==> UNLOCKuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuUL "CALL-958 1 => LOCK yuuuuuuuuvuuuuuuuuUL "CALL-958 Page 18 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 ctrl U is move the cursor left. ctrl H is move the cursor right. The main use of this table is to simplify the CATALOG, SAVE etc. process. e.g. To lock a program which has already been saved to disk, type :- esc | to CATALOG the disk Position the cursor at the start of the CATALOG entry for the program using esc I esc ctrl 1 to lock the program. Being able to make a hard copy of the Escape Tables should enable you to make use of a number of tables designed for specific applications. The program is as follows :- 10 S = ( PEEK (978) - ( PEEK (978) > 127) * 256) * 256:S = S + 1024 * 64: SI = S$ - 334:NEU = 1 20 HOME : PRINT CHRS (4)"PRHI": PRINT TAB( 2);"PLE ESCAPE TABLE" 30 PRINT : PRINT "START ADDRESS "SI: PRINT ; PRINT "CONTROL CHARACTERS ARE DISPLAYED AS LOWER CASE.": PRINT 40 FOR C = SI TO Si + 334 50 Cl = PEEK (C): IF Cl = 0 THEI CHRS (12): PRINT CHRS (4) "PRO PRINT END 60 IF Cl = 141 THEN PRINT " GoTO 150 70 IF Cl = 13 THEN PRINT :NEU = I: GOTO 150 80 IF NEU = 1 THEN 160 90 IF Cl = 155 THEN PRINT “esc";: GOTO 150 100 IF Cl < 32 THEN Cl = CI + 96: PRINT CHR$ (C1l):NEU = 1: GOTO 150 110 IF Cl > = 160 THEN Cl = Cl - 128: PRINT CHR$ (C1);: GOTO 150 120 IF Cl > = 128 THEN Cl = Cl ~ 32: PRINT CHRS (C1);: GOTO 150 140 PRINT CHRS (C1):NEU = 1 150 NEXT ; PRINT : PRINT CHRS (4)"PREO" : END 160 NEU = 0: IF Cl > = 160 THEN PRINT CHRS (Cl - 128) TAB( 3)" --> "3: GOTO 150 170 PRINT CHR§ (C1 - 32) TAB( 3)" Line 10 calculates the starting point of the Escape Table for either a 32k or 48k system. Line 20 turas on the printer and prints the heading. Lines 40 to 150 contain the loop reading and converting each character. Line 50 reads the character, if the end of the rable has been reached it stops. Line 60 tests for an embedded return which is displayed as four spaces. Line 70 tests for the return at the end of a macro, Line 60 if NEU = 1 it is the first character of a new macro. Line 90 tests for the code for the escape key. Line 100 tests for control codes and prints them as lower case. Line 110 tests for upper case and prints the character. Line 120 cests for lower case and converts to upper case for printing. Line 140 prints the last character in the macro if it is not return. As with many of the programs that have appeared in Hardcore we hope that this one will stimulate others into seeking ways to improve it and to provide other utilici along the same lines. [Program Line Editor (PLE) is produced by Synergistic Software and GPLE is a Beagle Bros., product. Both available from Apple dealers. ] NEW STATISTICS PACKAGE : Sensible price £25 inc. Perforas 10 common tests/analyses. Very fast, nearest rivals have exotic orices! inc: Comprehensive data base/file editor with MISSING VALUES facilities, infinite VARIABLE TRANSFORMATIONS. 29 page MANUAL. Stats inc: 11 DESCRIPTIVE STATS, F-TEST, T-TEST, 1? TEST + CONTINGENCY TABLES, T-TEST, MANN-WHITNEY U-TEST, CORRELATION & REGRESSION with many related statistics. RANK CORRELATION, 2 CLUSTER ANALYSES. Fully integrated, aenu driven, Includes facilities for foreign data files too. (send disk & sae for free MANUAL) Scientific Software, ({iiiiiell (isttisggs, Ciara, Mereerirnataarae Nh, Une NHS February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 19 Beginners’ Pages By John Sharp. In the past, a number of beginners have written in, requesting help with binary files, so this month let us begin with a look at what possible files you might have on a disk. If you catalog a disk you will get something like this:- 002 HELLO 020 DRAGON MAZE 004 PROGRAM I 002 FILE | 003 TEXT FILE * 005 ANOTHER FILLE * Rae >> You may not get all these on one disk, and indeed you may not even have seen a T or R or even B on your disks. Leaving aside the first column of A,I,R,T,B for the moment, what does the rest mean. Well the * tells you if a file is locked. If it is locked, you cannot write to the disk with the same program name. That is you cannot wipe out your program on the disk by overwriting it. The number is the number of sectors the program takes up on the disk. As a rough guide each sector is 0.25K, The name to the right is just that, the name of the file. I say file because it is that rather than a program. It is only when entered correctly into the Apple that it becomes a program, if it indeed is. A file with a T in the first column, is not a program. It might be a TEXT file to EXEC or it might be as the prefix suggests a TEXT file. A TEXT FILE is a bunch of data ready to be read into a program, e.g. a set of records, such as a set of names and addresses. If you want to see what is in a TEXT file then type:- MON C,1,0 <RETURN> EXEC XXXXXXX <RETURN> where XXXXXXX is the name of the TEXT FILE you want to look at. As each bit of data is printed, since you are doing the equivalent of typing in directly trom the keyboard and pressing return, you will get SYNTAX ERROR, just as you would if you typed a command the APPLE docs not understand. You can slow down the screen printing by using CTRL-S. It tends to be a little noisy because of all the beeps and syntax errors, but can be a very useful tool. You could use the READ TEXT program on the master disk. The A and I program file names are fairly straightforward. They correspond to APPLESOFT and INTEGER program files respectively. Unless you are only running disks that boot and take over the machine, you will be familiar with both of them. The problem arises, however, with B (and R) files. B stands for BINARY FILES. R stands for RELOCATABLE FILES which are a special type of Binary file. You will see some on the DOS 3.3 TOOLKIT disk. They are produced from the APPLE ASSEMBLER on this same disk. So apart from a slight difference, they are basically the same type of file, a saving of a batch of machine code to disk. This can have various functions once it is in memory and this causes the problems for beginners. The first type of file it can be is a program, written in machine code to make it run faster. A prograin example is a FID, MUFFIN or MASTER CREATE (on DOS 3.3 MASTER), and UPDATE 3.2.1 (on the DOS 3.2 MASTER). In order to get these to run as programs, simply BRUN FID or whatever the program name is. Before going further, the number 034 or whatever is the number of sectors the file takes up on the disk. It only helps you (and the DOS) to keep track of how much of the disk you are using. This is dealt with in the DOS manual so I will not go into it here. For those members with tape only it will help to explain what these numbers mean in the software library lists. As a rough guide, four sectors equals IK of program. The next type of file is a Hi-Res Picture that has been saved. The length of memory taken up by a Hi-Res Picture is 34 sectors; so if you see :- B * 036 BASUG LOGO on a disk catalog, you can be fairly confident that it is a picture. There may be other binary files coincidentally 34 sectors long which are not pictures, but the name usually tells you they are not . Alternatively, there are now ways of compressing pictures, so a picture can be less than 34 sectors. You then need a special program to put them back on the Hi-Res pages correctly. If you try to BRUN a Hi-Res picture, anything could happen. Normally you will just halt in Monitor. Try a few and see. You will not do the Apple any harm, just confuse it. The third type of binary file is a set of Page 20 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 data used in a program. It is a little bit like a text file except that it is totally machine code and wouldn't mean anything except to the program that uses it. The best example is a shape table which is a set of points and directions. If looked at other than a shape table by the program you are using, it is totally meaningless. A good programmer will put some indication such as MARTIANS.OBJ or MARTIAN.SHAPE to let you know it is used in another program. The DOS 3.3 TOOLKIT fonts for example are labelled BYTE.SET, ROMAN.SET etc, to make this clear. It is as important as putting REM statements in if you wish to let others know what is going on. On some of the software library disks there are binary programs with just a single letter or a pair of letters; these are fairly obviously used by another program, and the author has made them too short to make you think to run them; the name just doesn't mean anything. Another type of set of machine code might be data as for example in the copy program on the 3.3 Master disk. The copy programs look like this:- Le 009 cory * B 003 COPY.0BJO * A 009 CoPYA There are versions for you to use for copying disks if the BASIC you are using is INTEGER (the first one) or APPLESOFT (the last one, which has an A tagged on the end since two programs cannot have the same name on the same disk otherwise there would be confusion when it came to running them.) In between is a machine code set of data for the other programs (both of them) to use. If you list these programs you will see a line that has a print’BLOAD COPY.OBJ0"at line ... Why no DS$=CHRS(4), well there is an invisible CTRL-D. ' You could see this if you used something like The APPPLESOFT PROGRAMMERS ASSISTANT on the DOS 3.3 TOOLKIT, or the PROGRAM LINE EDITOR. The most confusing programs on the 3.3 Master it would seem are cataloged as:- * B 050 FPBASIC * B 050 INTBASTC They are in fact APPLESOFT (or Floating Point BASIC) and INTeger BASIC, respectively. If you have a language or RAM card, then these files will be loaded onto the language card and the card locked so that it appears to be an INTEGER CARD or APPLESOFT ROM CARD. If you have an APPLE Il PLUS, look at the HELLO program, by just loading it. LINE 210 has "BLOAD INTBASIC,ASD000". Again there is an invisible CTRL-D. The A$D000 means load it at position DOV in memory, which is on the language card. When a binary file is saved, It is necessary to tell DOS the start and ending locations of the program. This information is saved onto the disk. When you load the program back, it will be loaded into the same position, unless you tell it otherwise. The A$D000 in this BLOAD statement tells it not to load it where it was saved from. This is in fact in the middle of memory and it will load there if you just BLOAD INTBASIC. If you try to BRUN INTBASIC, then since it is not written to run in this location, but on the language card, it will cause you to think your machine has developed a fault. If there are any more problems, please write in and we will see what help we can give. Tip FAST EXPLOSIONS. By R. C. Lowe. As a fast and easy ‘explosion’ effect for the Apple IIs, to be included when your starship explodes, the wumpus gets you, the elf casts a spell on you, or in line with Bob Raike's “Why User Friendly 2" (Hardcore, October '84, p9, col 1) to go with the sound of a raspberry and the words:- “You've had it human, I just reformatted the data disk !" or simply as a warning when the nuclear reactor you are simulating (at least you hope that is is a simulation) starts to meltdown. February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 21 Try rapidly switching back and forth from the screen you are using now to the second GR screen while (optionally) buzzing the speaker, for example:- 10 HOME 20 PRINT "ONE":PRINT 30 FOR I = 1 TO 300:NEXT I 40 PRINT "TWO": PRINT 50 FOR I = | TO 400:NEXT I 60 PRINT "THREE": PRINT 70 FOR I = 1 TO 500;NEXT I 80 PRINT "BANG 90 FORT = 1 TO 5 100 POKE -16299,0 110 POKE ~16304,0 120 FOR J = 1 T0 4:X = PEEK (-16336):NEXT J 130 POKE -16300,0 140 POKE -16303,0 150 FOR J = | TO 4;X = PEEK (~16336):NEXT J 160 NEXT I Why spend time filling the screen with eye-catching junk when there is already such a sceen ready made ? If your program clears the second GR screen, then it is your own fault for writing weird programs. If you can't remember the location for the proper softswitch - quote Einstein, "Never remember anything you can look up in a book", and reach for the BASIC Programming Reference Manual, Appendix J. Local Groups Essex Group. Meets on the first Wednesday of the month at the Top Hotel, Epping and the third Wednesday of the month at Havering College of Technology, Hornchurch. Kent Group. ripatetic. AFEHL) or Check with Jim Panks Dougal Hendry ((istis Croydon Group. Check with Paul Vernon (till 9% ‘hFayl Harrogate Local Group. A new Harrogate Apple Users Group has just been formed. Meetings: 7.30 pm on the third Wednesday in each month. Place: The New Inn, Burnt Yates, Nr Harrogate. Contact: Peter Sutton, Hhaiagins (KER) ASRS Hants and Berks Group. The Macintosh will be present at the extraordinary meeting to be held on April 9th. Further details can be obtained from Fran. Normally, the group meets every second Monday in the month, from 7.30 to 9 pm., currently in the F.U.R.S. Building of Reading University. Note that the doors are locked, for security reasons, so any one arriving after 7.45 is likely to be locked out. The Group is looking for a new meetings venue, which could be a pub, so keep an eye on Update for info. February meetings will definitely be in the University, but those in March might be somewhere else, perhaps Emmer Green on the northern edge of Caversham. We need people willing to chat to the rest of us about some aspect of computing (not necessarily Apple orientated). To do this, you don't need to be an expert, but it is important to have some idea of the interests and general level of expertise of the members. So members, please offer suggestions for speakers and for subjects. Bob Mould organises meetings at the moment, but won't have time during the Spring and early summer because he is moving house. Therefore, a volunteer to do this work, for a few months only, is needed. All suggestions, please, to Fran at P.O. Box 174, Watibn (iit ERA), They will be sent on to Bob, but don't fret if there isn't an instant answer. The London Group is still going strong and mects in Room 97, County Hall, GLC, south side of Westminster Bridge. Car parking is available. Forthcoming Page 22 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 attractions include a Music talk by Roger Laming and meetings on spreadsheets, education software, wordprocessors and » The contact ‘phone number is ‘ti/ vit (evenings). See ‘Diary’ for New Graphics and Simulation SIG. For users of PASCAL and FORTRAN. Please contact Roger Moore on /iiifii (Wuniil) White, Radio Amateurs SIG. George Zitterstein invites radio amateurs, licensed or otherwise, to get in touch by letter, telephone or via the ether (call sign G8ITS, formerly G3KAT). His address is 208, Bunyan Court, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DH and the phone number is 01 638 5452. Irems for inclusion here should be sent either to Fran or to Peter Baron. If you are one person SIG, let us hear from you. Courses By Richard Beck. Apple Courses for 1985 The BASUG committee plans to provide a programme of courses for 1985. and I am currently deciding which items to include in that programme. Some courses have already been arranged, others are in an embryonic state where a topic has been decided, but further details have yet to be finalised. As a first step in making a list of possible courses I have found it useful to identify various areas of interest that exist within BASUG. This should cater for a wide range of interests and give most members the chance of attending a useful course. I have listed the categories below, and given some suggestions for possible courses in each category. 1, Programmers. This category caters for those members wishing to acquire new skills in software or hardware; such as how to write in a new language, or how to achieve better graphics. Possible courses are:- Machine language, Pascal, hardware fault finding. 2. Business Computing. This is not exclusively for those who use business software packages at work, but also for those members who are interested in business packages for personal use; such as databases for club membership, or spreadsheets for accounts. Possible courses are:- Databases, spreadsheets, use of integrated business packages. 3. Education. The most obvious courses in this area would be those in the use of Logo. I believe that other useful schemes could be run, but I need more information in this area. 4. Communication. Until recently this category would have been a small corner of Category 1, but now many members have their main interest in this area. Initially, the need is for practical, introductory courses; however there will be a need in the future for more advanced specialised courses. Possible subjects are:- Introduction to Communication, Software for Communication, Accessing large Information Databases. 5. Macintosh. I have no experience of this area at the moment, but I believe that a course on writing software to run on the Macintosh would be useful at a later date. Courses Now, With the above general thoughts in mind, the following 5 courses have heen arranged and full information may be obtained from the BASUG office, please February 1985 | HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 23 write or phone giving name, address and membership number.An application form will then be sent. Course 85A:~ Advanced Machine Code. Date:- 9th and 16th March. Venue:~ Watford. Cost:- £45. This 2 day course is a follow-up to our highly successful introductory course. Besides learning more advanced techniques, we will be tackling a small software project, the aim being to produce some useful software. The course is suitable for all those who have written some assembly language code and understand the principles of machine code. Course 85B:- Introduction to Pascal. ~ 27th April. Venue :~ Watford. Cos £25. This 1 day introduction to the elegant and widely used Pascal language will take beginners to the stage where they can use the Apple Pascal language system to write and debug programs. It is likely that this course will be followed by one which is more advanced, later in the year. Course 85C:- Introduction to Assembly language. Date:- 25th May. Venue :- Warford. Cost:- £25. This is a repeat of the course held in October and reported in December Hardcore. It enables the beginner to get started quickly in writing machine code programs. Course 85D:- Beginners Visicale. Date :~ 6th April. Bracknell. £30. This course has been run several times and is highly popular. Those attending quickly achieve a useful knowledge of Visicalc. An advanced course will follow a few weeks later. Course 85E:~ Advanced Visicalc. Date:- 4th May. Venue:~ Bracknell. Cost:~ £30. For those already familiar with Visicalc, this course allows you to widen your horizons and tackle more complex applications. As mentioned above, these courses have been arranged , so start booking now.Numbers are limited due to the large practical content of each course. Eyture Courses The following courses have been proposed but not yet finalised. Further details will be announced later. However, if you are interested, then phone BASUG office, or myself and details will be sent as soon as they are available. Introduction to Dba: Il. Introduction to Multiplan. Introduction ro Logo. 68000 Assembly Language. Communication Software. Introduction to Commun icat ions/Workshop. Further Ideas on Courses 1 would like to know if there are any courses that are not covered here, that members would like; so please contact me if you have any ideas, particularly if you have discussed them with other members. 1 would also like to know of any members who would be willing to leeture on specific courses, especially the business course. Suitable remuncration is paid for this work. I may be contacted after 6.30pm on the following number: (iii, Please contact me if you have any queries or if you have any suggestions for courses. Tip By George Zitterstein. If your daisywheel printer runs out of ribbon, and you haven't an immediate replacement, try using a sheet of carbon paper. This works on my Triumph-Addler 7020. DD Rosco PRINTERS BROTHER EP 22 epaa HRS HR 15 Keyboard for HR 15 HR 25 HR 35 CANON PW 1080 NLQ 80 Col PW 1156ANLQ 156 Col EPSON RX 80T RX SOFT RX 100FT MX 100 11 FX BOFT FX 100FT Dx 100 La 1500 JUKI 6100 MONITORS KAGA 12” hi-res (green) 12" hi-res (amber) 12° norm-res (PAL/RGB) 12” med-res (RGB) 12" hi-res (RGB) SANYO 12” norm-res (green) 12” hi-res (green) 14” norm-res (RGB) 14" med-res (RGB) 14° hi-res (RGB) NORMENDE 14” TV/RGB monitor EN Ns our PRICE £129 £219 £139 £399 £149 £695 £895, £299 £399 £189 £239 £399 £379 £359 £479 £419 £999 £359 £109 £109 £199 £289 £359 £69 109 £239 £349 £499 £169 t DISC DRIVES Apple drive £199 Apple Compatible (half height, direct drive) £149 eg ~~ _ H PERIPHERAL CARDS NB: Rosco printer cards are CP/M. Pascal & Applesoft compatible + full graphic dump, Printer Cantronic, £38 Printer + 16k buffer 89 Printer + 64k buffer £129 Printer Cable eile 80 column (Not Ile) £48 80 column Inc inverse video chip. (New version. Not ile) ..... 54 Expandable 80 column (Ile) £49 Extended 80 column (+64k) £89 64k upgrade kit « £49 Disc controller £38 PAL (+ modulator) £49 16k RAM £44 Eprom writer (upto 2764)... £54 P & P: Computer, printer, monitor, sheet feeder £8 + VAT. Other under add £3 + VAT, over £100 add £5 + VAT. All prices subject to 15% VAT. > Rosco Ltd 289 Birchfield Road, Birmingham B20 3DD. Tel: (021) 356 7402. Telex: 334303 TXKAGWMG “Apple isthe Toad Mark of Apple Computer Ine. RS232 (serial card) RGE for 8Ocolumn Z80CP/M AtoD (16 channels) Real time clock (battery backup) 1/0 interface (4 ports) ACCESSORIES 52 key Ascii (ujaper and lower case) Power supply AC cooling fan 40/80 column switch Inverse video chip (not req. for new 80 col or Ile 80 col) SOFTWARE Format xo MagiCaic., Multiplan vosssssese Sage Accounts + Payroll Merlin... Routine M. Microsoft Compilers. Copy I Plus. Sage Payroi £100 = encoded keyboard —\ £42 £55 £44 £69 £59 £49 £59 £59 . £29 12 £6 S February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 25 Book Reviews Title: The Secret of Arendarvon Castle, pbk., 110p. Hal Renko and Sam Edwards Publisher: Addison-Wesley Price: £5.95 By Jean Baron If you are persistent, a lover of adventure and have plenty of time to spare, then Arendarvon Castle is a must. It is intriguing from the word ‘go! because the formar is unusual. The book presents you, the adventurer, with a series of notes, clippings from newspapers and extracts from the castle guide book collected by a journalist who has mysteriously disappeared. Your task ig to study all this information in order to become familiar with the castle and its layout. You may even pick up a few hidden clues! Now you are almost ready to go forth and unravel the secret of Arendarvon Castle. However, you must first key in the adventure program which is printed at the back of the book. It is a long program so large pieces have been placed in encoded data lines to make it fit the computer's memory. In order to take the strain out of error-correcting the program contains a special error-detecting section. The authors advise that the game should be keyed in in daily chunks, each taking about 1.5 hours to complete. For the enthusiast they explain what each chunk is about and how to save it. Having patiently tapped away at your keyboard from Monday to Saturday, Sunday is the ‘big! day - a short BASIC program completes the game and now you really are ready to play. There are 22 commands at your fingertips enabling you to move from place to place in the castle, pausing to look around and examine objects as you come across them, There are people to meet, secret passages to be explored and spells to be collected. A good tip suggested by the authors is to elaborate on the simple map provided so that as the game unfolds you may detect hidden passages and rooms. Various fates await you and if you are both lucky and patient there are surprises in store. The commands have been chosen with care - 22 plus USE and four pseudo-commands. Once you have tried these, without success, then obviously what you want cannot be done. This saves on memory but does not limit the flexibility of play. The computer responds to your commands by giving you the latest situation, such as where you are. If you use the command LOOK then the response describes the exact location and its contents. In addition you can ask for your SCORE, during the game, which is based on how many rooms you have visited and how many important items you have collected. The maximum is 240. Any serious adventurer who has had to switch off the computer before the end of a game will value the SAVE feature, which enables you the save the situation as it stands, ready to LOAD when you wish to continue again. These last three commands are examples of pseudo-commands which do not affect the state of play. The main drawback to Arendarvon Castle is the lack of graphics (limitations imposed, to some extent by the computer itself), such as those used in ‘Lords of Midnight’ on the Spectrum with the aid of landscape programming techniques. However, it does allow the imagination to run riot and is obviously instructional as well as being entertaining. By the way, if you cannot stand the thought of seven days of sitting at the keyboard then help is at hand. The software is available on the magnetic medium at booksellers or direct from the publishers - as an optional extra, of course! Review: Handbook of Applesoft BASIC for the Apple If and Ile Authors: Roy Earl Myers and David I. Schneider Publisher: Brady Communications Company, Inc. A Prentice-Hall Company, Bowie, Maryland, MD 20715, USA. UK Distribution: Prentice-Hall International Inc., London. Price: £16.45 By George Zitterstein. If only | had received this book when I first started banging away at micro-computer keyboards, | might have been considerably farther along the road to programming proficiency by now. Page 26 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 It is all very well learning the routines and techniques but it is a different matter assimilating and memorizing all the commands, expressions, codes, reserved words and so on. All the manuals and handbooks I have previously encountered, required considerable page turning, index searching and frustration, when searching for that elusive expression which would enable me to complete that absolutely brilliant all-singing-all-dancing program. At last, here is an alphabetically sorted handbook of just about every direct and indirect command and statement for Applesoft BASIC and also DOS 3.3. The Handbook of Applesoft BASIC for the Apple Il and He opens with a short chapter of preliminary information, distinguishing between immediate and deferred execution, explaining multi-statement lines, numeric and string constants and variables and other fundamentals. Thereafter, the commands and functions are given, effectively, a chapter each. Finally, there is a comprehensive section of appendices. Perhaps the Preface sums up much of what I would like to say about the book. "Books on BASIC are primarily of two types: reference manuals that provide a formal description of each BASIC statement and textbooks intended to be read from beginning to end. This book combines features of both." The treatment of the material is both concise and easy to read. There are examples demonstrating each expression, making the text simple to follow, without giving any impression that the authors are treating the reader as a complete tyro. Indeed, to make use of the Handbook, it is essential to have a grasp of the basics (no pun intended) putting together a workable Saran However, thoroughly working one's way through the 318 pages is an almost guaranteed way of discovering a more sophisticated and often shorter method for achieving an intended result. For the experienced programmer, it may seem obvious that such expressions as SPEED and WAIT can be employed as "delaying tactics"....but the less experienced, not having noticed these commands buried amid the jargon of more conventional books, would still be relying on loops. Certainly that would be the case for anyone depending on knowledge gained in writing programs for machines other than the Apples. That is merely one example showing, as much as anything, the advantage of the lay-out of the Handbook, which encourages pure browsing. The expressions are clearly displayed at the top of each page, making an index superfluous. There are, in all, 118 commands and functions listed and explained, from ABS to XDRAW, from the familiar IF and PRINT to the less used &, FP and SHLOAD. All are very comprehensively discussed, without any condescension but at the same time, without any implication of mystique ‘or complication. On top of all that, the ten appendices cover, amongst other things, the ASCII values, binary and hexadecimal representation of numbers, reserved words and PEEK, POKE and CALL locations. It hardly needs to be said that, for anyone wanting a handbook for quick reference for the right expression or command, for the newcomer to programming and for the programmer who gets tired of thumbing backwards and forwards through the conventional manuals, this is a boon. 1 for one, shall probably have to get a new copy eventually, because I am likely to wear it out through constant use ! Certainly this is the best buy I have come across for MY modest programming reference use. Title: Sound and Graphics, pbk. Authors: Jerry Abad and Valerie Abad Publishers: Datamost Price: £9.65 By Danielle R. Bernstein When I was first sent this book to review, I thought that what the Apple world did not need was another book on Basic. But then I read it, tried some of the programs and had my eleven year old run them and had second thoughts about my initial feelings. According to the preface, the authors run a computer camp in the United States and developed this book because they felt that there was no elementary material on gtaphics and sound for children. February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 27 The authors assume that the reader knows elementary Basic and quickly zoom through that in the first chapter. Instead the book concentrates on graphics and sound, starting with low-res graphics, proceeding to high-res and even shape tables. Each topic has an explanation, sample programs and challenge problems. I suspect that the questions are called challenge problems and not exercises to set the book off from. a school textbook. But there are even answers at the back of the book. The book is full of lovely and funny cartoons about a computer whiz and his cat that often take away from the subject rather than enhance it. As my boy explained it, "you look at the cartoons and think that it is going to be funny, but it is a very serious book". There is an attempt at demonstrating animation by alternating graphics pages one and two. The programs work all right, but there is too much taken on faith. Although the concept of PEEKs and POKEs is described (in a hurry, in my opinion), no explanation is given of the specitic PEEKs and POKEs used. One just has to do it. | believe that in many circumstances you must do something before you can understand it but I do wish that there had been a fuller explanation after the sample programs, if not before. 1 found this most annoying in exploring the sound part of the book. I was quite interested in that section since I was not familiar with creating sound in Basic beyond the primitive click. The first program on sound explains that you must POKE certain values to put the speaker routine. in memory. But the next program used a completely different set of values to POKE. There was no explanation of the difference and both worked. There are other annoying points. The authors do not show any program design. The programs spring full-blown on the page without any REM statements. In Certain programs, variables are not even initialized, they are just assumed to start out at zero; a very elementary mistake. Several sheets of graph paper are provided at the end, to photocopy. Anyone that can spend £9.65 on the book can afford a packet of graph paper. But the last chapter on shape tables makes it all worthwhile. It is the best, step-by-step elementary explanation on how to create and use shapes that I have seen. Although it is presumably aimed at children, many adults will profit from it. I suspect that the market for the book will be for children who will work unaided at home because they have surpassed their parents. If you want to learn techniques in graphics and sounds that you can adapt and are willing to take a lot on faith, this book will fit your needs. Title: Logo for Apple Computers. A Self-Teaching Guide. Authors: R. W. Haigh and L. E. Radford. Publisher: John Wiley and Sons. Price: £14.95 By Norah Arnold. Although the authors of this book state that they have assumed no previous computer experience on the part of the reader, | think it is safe to say that they have assumed that readers will be able to progress fairly rapidly in their knowledge of the Logo language. As it is mainly intended for adults working alone with an Apple, I suppose that the speed at which they progress from chapter to chapter is up to them, as long as their understanding does not fall by the wayside. The introductory chapters of this book are quite well done and give a thorough introduction to the newcomer to Logo. The differences between the Apple I+ keyboard and that of the Ile are covered. It is as well to remember that sometimes it is the small things that cause the most problems to beginners. The chapter which introduces the use of the editor actually gets quite complicated, mainly because the authors have tried to make their book appeal to as great a number of Apple owners as possible by covering both MIT Logo and Apple Logo in detail. The term ‘MIT Logo! refers to the Terrapin and Krell versions of Logo. Fach procedure which is given is printed in two forms if necessary, with the Apple Logo version being printed first and any changes for MIT Logo being documented by the side of, or below the original procedure. WILDCARD PLUS COPIES 64K PROGRAMS IN 12 SECONDS The new WILDCARD PLUS is the card that thinks for itself. One push of the button, one simple menu - with its own 6502 processor WILDCARD PLUS makes a perfect copy on any Apple, from a 48K J[ to an extended 128K //e. Automatically. Does for copy protection what Atilla the Hun did for social FEATURE: Mead WILDCARD PLUS OHardware copying £119 device...push button operation. OCopies 48K programs From your local dealer, in 8 seconds, 128K —_or direct from. programs in less than 25, Elite Software Company Creates autobooting, 93 Eastworth Road unprotected disks, Chertsey, Surrey OsSottware inROM, KT16 8DX always there...n0 Tel: 09328 67839 need to preboot. No language card = agg 15% VAT for required, works Gelivery in UK P & P equally well with or included without OUttilities include: <& compression software several backups may \ be stored on a single Ne disk, recover BASIC oe Q programs, disassemble & machine code soft- 2 ware, screen dumps, Dealer enquiries ete. welcome. Apple is a registered trademark of Apple Computers Inc. February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 29 Unlike some books where the authors leave any discussion of crror messages right to the very end, Haigh and Radford discuss them in Chapter 3. As Logo error messages are wordy but generally not very informative I was glad to see them being mentioned relatively near the beginning of the book. This chapter also stresses the modular nature of the Logo language. The modular nature of Logo enables the programmer to deal with small tasks which are easily understood; 'mind-sized bites! to use Papert’s own words. The way in which a large and complex program may be built from small, relatively simple procedures which may be debugged separately, is an essential part of any book which claims to be a thorough introduction to Logo. The section on obtaining hardcopy of programs and graphics images is as thorough as one could expect. It would be impossible to cover procedures tor all the printers on the market, and the authors have shown clearly how printer commands can be handled from Logo, it is up to the reader to consult his printer manual and build up printing procedures for himself. Variables, arithmetic operators and communication between procedures are dealt with in Chapter 4. Passing information between procedures and distinguishing between local and global variables can be tricky for newcomers to Logo, but this section is clearly and concisely done and would have been a great help to me when I first started to use Logo. The primitive OUTPUT in particular caused me some problems and | recall that it took me some time to discover some of the rules governing its use. These rules are clearly stated in this book. Recursive procedures which produce binary trees are a favourite with authors of Logo books, and they are covered in detail by Haigh and Radford. 1 thought that the diagrams displaying the sequence of actions as each procedural recursion is completed would serve to contuse some People. They were certainly not as clear as the equivalent diagrams in the manual for the Terrapin version of Logo. The most impressive part of this book is undoubtedly the three chapters covering the word and list-handling capabilities of Logo. Chapter 6 gives a thorough introduction to the commands involved in handling the basic data objects of Logo. Chapter 7 covers mathematical applications for lists and the authors develop a set of procedures that serve as list manipulating tools which could be moved from program to program without modification if required, as they do not produce any side-effects by interfering with variables clsewhere in the program. The concepts involved are explained clearly without the maths becoming complicated, Non-mathematical list applications are covered in Chapter 8 and the authors give a new slant to some of the well known Logo programs which generate random sentences and phrases. Isaac Newton's laws of motion are demonstrated by use of the turtle in Chapter 9. For those interested in the physics involved, a standard notation is used to describe the properties of the motion, but this does not interfere with ones enjoyment of the programs if getting to grips with Newtonian motion is not your scene. As a self-teaching guide, I would hesitate to recommend this book to a person who has no previous knowledge of computers whatsoever. Some beginners like to go at a much more leisurely pace than this book takes you and might get disheartened. On the other hand it would be an excellent guide for a person who has done some programming in other languages and wishes to get to grips with Logo. Title: Apple Logo. Authors: H. J. Bailey, K. M. Brautigam and T. H. Doran. Publisher: Brady Communications Co. Inc., A Prentice-Hall Company. Price: £14.50. By Norah Arnold. The authors of this book work in education in the United States of America. The text represents the essence of their joint experience in using Logo with both adults and children. They appear to believe in the philosophy of education advocated by Seymour Papert, the originator of Logo, and see the Logo Page 30 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group February 1985 language as providing an environment where the computer releases the creativity of the child and becomes a tool to facilitate learning. In view of this the authors have chosen to write solely about turtle-graphics and have ignored arithmetic operations and the list-processing capabilities of Logo. As one might expect, the authors have a very sound approach to the learning situation and | believe that the majority of people who set out to teach themselves turtle-graphics, having no previous experience, could work their way successfully through this book. Each new concept introduced is approached in a similar fashion by means of Turtle Trials, Talk, Truth, Tester and Teaser sections. The ‘trials’ section always presents ‘hands-on’ activities, requiring the reader to type in procedures, review the result on the screen, make small alterations to the procedure, review the result, etc. The ‘talk’ section provides narrative reinforcement of the concepts presented in the ‘trials! section, pinpointing common errors associated with the new concept, and underlining the most important teaching points. The ‘truth’ section often gives a procedure which demonstrates the correct application of the new concepts or commands. The reader is often asked to predict the result which will be drawn on the screen, something which | have often asked children learning Logo to do. As one might expect, in the ‘tester’ section the reader is asked to use the new skills he has learnt by writing a small procedure to achieve a given objective. Extended activities are suggested in the ‘teaser’ section, usually taking the form of additional refinements to procedures already given, eg. adding colour or a title to a drawing. If 1 was a parent starting a youngster off using turtle-graphics, | would be happy to use this book as a springboard. There are little ‘rurtie’ illustrations scattered throughout the text and plenty of drawings and pictures of the screen, but these have not been overdone as they have in some American books on Logo, where one has to search to find the text. It would be a book for beginning, however, and would soon need to be supplemented by the use of another, covering the arithmetic operators and list-handling capabilities of Logo. Most able children progress to using the arithmetic operators extremely quickly, but of course this depends entirely on the talents of the individual child. It is not a suitable book for a young child working entirely alone. Adults new to Logo, who wish to avoid mathematical complications and simply want to get a sound grasp of turtle-graphics, would find this volume an excellent starting point. It would certainly give a good foundation in the use of the Logo editor, in controlling colour, in the use of simple variables and an introduction to the concept of recursion. The version of Logo covered is Apple Logo, not Terrapin or Krell and the writers state that the procedures will suit a Logo owner using an Apple Il+ with 16K RAM expansion, an Apple Ile or a Franklin Ace 1000 computer system. To the best of my knowledge the Apple Ic is not mentioned, but | understand that there should be no special difficulties for Ile owners. For those who wish to approach Logo through the creative use of turtle-graphics, this book is a reasonably good buy, but don't forget that your fourteen pounds fifty pence is not buying you a complete introduction to Logo. You will need to cover the arithmetic operators and list-processing before you have Logo at your fingertips. Review: Business Basic for the Apple /// Author: Eddie Adamis Publishers: John Wiley & Sons Inc. UK Price: £14.40 By George Zitterstein. The Apple /// is hardly the average enthusiast's first choice as a home or hobby micro. It is intended as and is generally bought by and for a business user. Hence, most applications are satisfied by commercial software packages and few users require or wish to have anything to do with programming. It is probably for this reason that there are few books devoted to the writing of BASIC programs for the Apple ///. February 1985 HARDCORE - The Journal of the British Apple Systems User Group Page 31 In spite of having had little incentive to research other literature on the subject, | am prepared to propose that Eddie Adamis' book "Business BASIC for the Apple ///" must be one of the best. Its publicat is also very timely, as it appears that there is to be a resurgence of the Apple /// and a drive to sell it, complete with rodent and associated software, as a major Apple competitor in the business market. Jean-Louis Gassee, the President of Apple Computer France, in the Forword, sums up the attributes of both the author and the book in his opening paragraph: "Eddie Adamis has, in my view, fulfilled the dearest wishes of the founders of Apple: to open the world of personal computing to the nonspecialist." ...and 1, for one, agree emphatically. Starting with a background to numbers and their notation, Adamis goes into the fundamentals of variables, essential mathematics for most business applications and the associated functions, then expands into programming techniques and most of the useable facilities and functions which any business programmer, in BASIC, could wish for. In practice, it goes much turther than that. Although I have not tried everything, a few experiments make apparent that Apple Il / Ile users could benefit from this book. I am sure there will be exceptions but the syntax appears to pose few problems, whereas the ideas, concepts and presentation are welcome. Adamis joined the computing fraternity when well past the first flush of youth..at the age of fifty. Prior to that he was a musician, as a composer, arranger and for fourteen years, he was the French Director of United Artists Music and Records. His artistic inclination and talent become apparent on reading his book. It is extremely readable and well arranged, whilst holding nothing back in relevant, essential technicalities. To use the French vernacular, the author and h approach to the reader is "Sympathique". What more can one say? The only criticism concerns the printing, where several "literals" have come to light. On page 21, the literal could lead to some confusion; “A=10" should read "A-O"....Either that or [ didn't understand the bit that came before!....and I don't think I'm that thick! On page 71, "arithmetic" comes out as “aithmetic ssbut what the helll....you don't reject a book for such flaws in detail and in any case, surely