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EDITORIAL
The first thing that you have probably noticed, is that you are
reading this issue earlier than we promised. This is because
over the past few weeks I have received quite a lot of programs,
hints, tips etc, and when I put it all together, I found that
there was a complete issue finished. I have, therefore, decided
that in future the mag will be issued on a "When it's finished,
distribute it" basis. There will never be more than 2 months
between issues, but they may come more frequently than that. It
seems a shame to hold onto a finished issue, just to keep the
dates right. For anyone who has booked 6 issues in advance, this
will of course make no difference because you will still get the
6 issues that you have paid for. The people who buy each issue
as it is ready will be informed by letter when there is an issue
ready. I hope that this decision meets with your approval.
I am personally very pleased with the growth of the Sam. It is
still not in the C64, Spectrum, ST, Amiga league, but I believe
that I am a little more confident about it's future than I was 6
months ago. At the All Formats show on the 4th Nov, Alan Miles
and Bruce Gordon seemed very pleased with the sales of the
machine, and I know that all the other companies that are
working with the Sam, are quietly confident.
Now down to business:
The first thing that I really must point out, is how to get a
second drive running. Many of you have purchased second drives,
but on fitting, find that they do not respond. The answer is
actually in the disc book instructions, but is not very
prominent. What you have to do is LOAD up your DOS as normal,
and then type:- POKE DVAR 2,208
Now resave your DOS onto the disc with:-
SAVE"samdos" CODE 229385,10000
or
SAVE"samdos" CODE 491529,10000
The first is for 256k machines, the second for 512k. This has to
be done to all your DOS discs to tell the machine that there is
a second drive connected. A number of panic stricken people have
contacted us about this, so I though I would put it prominently
in the editorial.
The next point that I would like to raise is about screen
location. Those of you who have not got 512k yet will probably
not know that the screen is located in a different place in a
512k machine.(No that doesn't mean that you have to put your
monitor the other side of the room).
In any programs that load a screen or need a screen location
it would be helpful to me if you use the line:-
LET SC=((IN 252 BAND 31)+1)*16384
This gives the variable SC the location of the start of the
screen display, no matter what the memory is, and saves me the
job of converting your programs to run on either machine.
Right!! that's enough from me, I'll let you get on and read the
rest of the mag.
________________________________________________________________
To Dave Tonks (EDITOR)
FROM;- W.P.Edwards
60 Hassocks Road
Streatham,
London SW16 5EZ
Dear Team,
Joining the "Sam Supplement" was one of the best
things that I have done since getting the Sam Coupe. Its
interesting and various articles have, (and still do), keep me
coming back for more.I look forward to future issues.
I do have a problem,though...
I have a 256k Sam with an internal drive, plus an SDI
interface and external drive with a Seikosha GP-700A colour dot
matrix printer,and Phillips CM 8833 colour monitor. I'm having
problems getting SD Softwares SPECMAKER to work on my set-up.
The original program refuses to load "FREESOFT&" and "OUTSAMP&"
, coming up with a 'File not found' error.
The "rdutil%" program is accepted but once ROM V.4 is chosen and
the SINCLAIR/SPENCER copyright notice is up, then I find I can't
CAT, LOAD"" etc. All I get is a question mark (?) after pressing
RETURN. I've tried various recorders and discs and gone through
the manual umpteen times to see if I'm doing anything wrong. Can
you help? (I have ROM/DOS version 2, and use the speccyrom from
my 128k+ speccy in 48k mode).
Also does anyone out there own the same printer as I do?
I'm having trouble getting the ink ribbon cassette and the inker
set, (my black inker has run out), any ideas? Lastly did anyone
get issue 99 (29 Sept '90) of New Computer Express? Turn to p12
and there in black and white is a letter from our own Brian
Mumford. And I totally agree with what he said (how dare NCE
drop the Sam Coupe spot). But more importantly (sorry Brian),if
you turn to page 4 you will see a picture of me (well, the back
of my head!) in the white T-shirt, (sorry to hear about the
demise of the Plus 3).
Well I'm signing off now. Keep up the good work lads,
see you next issue.
________________________________________________________________
FROM:- DENNIS HUGHES
Dear sir
First may I congratulate you on the first SAM SDC Supplement.
Excellent stuff.
Maybe you or a reader can help me with a problem I've been
having with my Tandy DMP 105 Printer. I have used it for some
years with my 48K Spectrum using a Wafadrive parallel interface.
It has always worked perfectly using Tasword 2. To make it work
on the Sam Coupe I bought Lerm Software's SAMTAPE2 which claims
to make Tasword2 compatible. The printer works perfectly using
Samscratch. However, when I use the converted Tasword2 the first
word on the line is printed at various places along the line.
For example: one two would be printed*
one
two
I asked Lerm Software for advice but, to put it very very
mildly, they were totally unhelpful.
Does anyone know the solution?
FROM:-W E Thomson
Woodhaven, Leiston Road
ALDEBURGH Suffolk
IP15 5PX
I have two points about SPECMAKER (reviewed in Issue 1): one
hint, one query; my version, by the way, came from SD SOFTWARE,
not directly from Ian Spencer.
COPY, on my Star LC-10II printer, produced a distorted picture,
very much stretched in the x-direction: these amendments to DATA
constants in a merged ROMMAKER produced one in which a circle is
a circle: (1)Line 1032, 2nd row (as displayed in MODE 4): change
..62,2, 71.. to ..62,1,71.., thus sending each pixel once to the
printer, not twice. (2)Line 1036, 3rd row: change
..27,51,22,27,42,1,0,2.. to ..27, 51,24,27,42,5,0,1.. thereby
altering printer control codes so as to give 24/216"
line-spacing and Graphics Mode 5, 256 dots per line, same
dot-spacing horizontally as vertically.
The query is about BetaBasic 3.0, run under SPECMAKER. MOVE 2 is
not recognised, so you can't get back to SAM; thus, although you
can SAVE to RAMDISK, you can't then transfer to a real disk. I
expect that, like CAT, there is a RANDOMIZE USR .. that can be
used instead, but what is the address? I've written to SD SOFT-
WARE, but no reply so far.
EDITOR'S NOTE:-
Is there anyone out there who knows of a CALL, to emulate "MOVE
2" on SPECMAKER? If so, Mr. Thomson would like to hear from
you.
________________________________________________________________
FROM:Marc Broster
11 Church Road
Saxilby
Lincs. LN1 2HH MEMBER No.93
Hello, fellow SAM-freaks! I read that the SAM SUPPLEMENT
was a bit short of letters, so I thought I better do my part and
write in. (Gosh, this SAM-SCRATCH wordprocessor quite qood,
isn't it! ("No! It's pathetic!", lots of TAS-WORD II owning
Sam-users)) Anyway, I'm 13 years old, and have owned a 48K
Spectrum + for about 5 years. About 10 months ago I got
extremely miffed with my Spectrum when, after I just started
saving an extremly large type-in from Your-Sinclair, I nudged
the power cable leading into my Speccy and the ©#$%&@ thing
crashed! In a fit of rage I picked up the Spectrum and flung it
out of the room (Making sure it landed in a chair, I might want
to sell it later), and bought myself a new, sparkling SAM-COUPE
to take its place (Useful tip, to keep your SAM in a sparkling,
dust-free condition, buy a box of J-Cloths and use one as a
dustcover for SAM), and, as they say, I've never looked back.
The prog I've sent in "Yellowsub", uses GET and PUT to create a
3-level scrolling landscape. It's very slow, using basic and a
shadow-screen, but it should be quite easy to convert to mash
(Machine-code). I think I will do a full screen demo using the
same idea, but in mahine code. "Yellowsub" makes good use of
masks, and you can see how they are formed along the bottom.
N.B. The masks were created using FLASH, and are loaded in the
screen. The program has two speeds, one with shadow screens, and
one without, the shadow screens cut down the flicker, but slows
the program down.
Just before I finish, 2 tips for FLASH:-
1) If you try to LOAD a SCREEN$ into Flash, part of the code is
over-written, and the program will crash when using FILL, for
instance. After changing the Yellow-sub screen in BASIC, I
discovered this problem, and after several hours (and I'm not
joking!) of frantic Key-prodding (For I hadn't a back-up of the
screen) I discovered that the screen could be loaded by using
the INSERT routine in the BLOCK menu, after selecting WHOLE
BLOCK, (But the colours will have to be re-defined). Phew! 2) If
you want to look at a different part of the screen you can use
the arrows on the "Screen Disply bar", but you can also point
your cursor on the bar and press "N". If you experiment you will
see what I mean?
________________________________________________________________
David Hall 77,Newton Road,Stowmarket,Suffolk.IP14 5AE.
First, I would like to congratulate Dave Tonks and all Sam
Supplement team members for the excellent job done on producing
the mag. Issue one was good, issue two brilliant, WELL DONE ALL.
Whilst watching Dr. Andy Wright demonstrating the new master
DOS, (I've put in a pre-order), I noticed that Andy was using an
exclamation mark (!) to modify the DIR command. On
querying this, it was found that the mod. worked with the
existing SamDOS2. Normally, if Device is D1, to obtain a
directory of drive 2 one enters DIR 2 and gets a full directory,
if however, you only require a short directory then enter.......
DIR 2! this will give a short directory of the non current
device. The same syntax can be used with selective directory,
regardless of which device is current, i.e. DIR 1;"*.let"! This
will give a short directory of the selected files.
Also, this may be used in directing a DIR into a string i.e.
OPEN #4:RECORD TO A$:DIR #4;1!:RECORD STOP:CLOSE #4 or,
OPEN #4:RECORD TO A$:DIR #4;1"*.LETT"!:RECORD STOP:CLOSE #4
For those members who have not used this facility, both the
non selective and selective versions will give a full catalogue
by omitting the "!", just change the drive No. as required.
NOTE. this method does not recognise hidden files
(This facility is only a small part of what this syntax will
do in the new Master Dos.)
Any member wishing to, may contact me at the address at the
head of this letter. More power to the S.D.C. Supplement, and
best wishes to all.
________________________________________________________________
FROM:- Les Phillips,
The White House,
St. Catherine's Well, Tel; 0258 880394
Milton Abbas,
Blandford,
Dorset. DT11 OAS
Dear Dave,
The history of the SAM Coupe to date does not need to be
repeated here, it has been covered - albeit patchily -
elsewhere. Because of the scant regard for accuracy in most of
the accounts to date, there is much misapprehension in the minds
of most of the computer fraternity encountered at the various
computer shows. The demise of MGT is well known, the survival of
the Coupe with SamCo is NOT well known. The computer press sees
news only in disasters as a rule, and has already boobed badly
over several features of the Coupe.
Be that as it may, there is an ever increasing number of Coupe
owners for whom the greatest threat for the future is not posed
by ill-informed magazine journalists, but by the apparent
indifference of most of the software houses to the existence of
the Coupe. A notable exception is the case of Enigma, and Alan
Miles has recently been speaking of impending releases under
other labels. In fact, Alan Miles and Bruce Gordon are doing
much to change this depressing situation, but Coupe owners could
help by writing to the software houses and indicating the
existence of the increasing potential market for software for
the machine.
Spectrum software compatability is much better than it was
initially, but Spectrum games are alright on the Spectrum and
don't make use of the Coupe's more extensive capabilites. The
Coupe can do much better and deserves its own dedicated
software.
Come on, back up SamCo and make known the strength of the demand
for software. Appeal to the weakness of the software houses,
their pockets!
________________________________________________________________
FROM:- Brian Mumford
Since I wrote an article in the first issue,the membership has
grown to double its size. So I would like to take this
opportunity of saying welcome to the members who have joined
since that article. The club has exhibited at the last two ALL
FORMAT SHOWS, and has gained quite a few members as a result.
Also we had a very good review in COMPUTER SHOPPER and the
requests for membership are still comming in as a result. I am
also pleased to announce that after our last appearance at the
All Formats Show, we have been allowed, thanks to the good
offices of Alan Miles and Bruce Gordon, to have one of our
membership leaflets placed in each new Sam box that is shipped.
I was also able to have words with the technical editor of New
Computer Express, whom I met at the show, and put to him the
case for more coverage of the Sam ,he has promised to do this
providing I send any news or copies of the Newsletter to him
personally, he will endevour to get it published. If any of you
read the December issue of Sinclair User, the Sam surgeon
written by Robin Alway, what do you think of the comments he
made on the Sam software. When I spoke to Enigma at the show
they said that they wanted to lynch him, they said bad reviews
they can cope with, but not the self opiniated drivel that he
wrote. I also met John Wase he tells me that he is writing a
test column for MICRO MART and needs all our members to write to
Micro Mart when it is
published, giving your opion. If there is a big enough response
then they will give him a permanent spot,so get writing to Micro
Mart. Dave tells me he is getting lots of programs from the
membership which are first class, what we could do with are some
tips and help, also some letters telling us what you are doing
with your Sam. We will be at the next ALL FORMATS SHOW on
December 15th, and we hope to meet some of you there.
Dave, Les, and I wish you and your families a very happy Xmas
and a prosperous and Sam-filled New Year.
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