Atari User Magazine Vol 1 Issue 04 by Paul Rixon

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HOW to get started with the friendliest language of them all

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The only way to make full use of ATARI USER is to become one. And the easiest way to do that is with ‘; ATARI Personal Computer Packs. ‘1 There isn’t a better way to get into computers. ‘x There isn ta more comprehensrve starter pack. " ATARI could give you a 64 Ram memory, casOnly sette ‘soundthrough’ capabilities, a maximum of 256 colours on the screen at one time and 4 ‘sound’ voices.

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Packi:

8OOXL;1050DiskDrive;

DemonstrationSoftware.Eggs.SSTENhgfngfostrgggjggj

A AMRI BUUXL PEHSU

AIARI

USER,

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A choice of a 1050 Disk Drive or a 1010 Cassette Programmer

Recorder and additional software. No one else could offer you all this power at these prices. And, as everything comes together, you can make the most of the unbeatable ATARI 800XL straight away. Without doubt, ATARI Personal Computer Packs are the easiest way to get into computers. The only difficulty is deciding which one. Now read on.

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KovinEdwards Pete Bibby Technicaifditor Andre Willey Prodoction Editor? Peter Glover LayoutDesign’: Heather Shoidrick Newseditar: Mike Cowley AdvertisementManagenJohn Riding AdvertisingSales: John Snowdon EditorinChief: Peter Bramold ;

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061-456 8835

Adezét‘ilstratien: “king: 3211223238 '

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Subscriptions:

TelecomGold: 79:MAGOOl Tegex; 265871 MONREF G Quoting Ref. 791MAGOOT Prestel Mailbox: 614568383

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Fahlished by: Database Pub?cations Ltd. Europe; Mom, 68 Chester Road, new GrbtreQSmkport SK7 snv. f 4.“ rates for Submit 112~i8?§l§$p?8¢me:

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No. 4 August 1985

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Three ways in which you DOS 2.5 upgrade

wise

more.

?'?

is a winner, Frankie The Atari 8QOXL goes to Atariland, the 260 ST and lots

Upgrade Offer

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jMenagingEdit‘ox Derek Meakin FQ?w'eSfdf'tafs: Cliff McKnight

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Mike Bibby continues his series for '

tyro programmers. This month he’s in varying variab Ies and p uttin g inputs. '

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The long-awaited Psychedelia arrives under a different name there’s plenty for arcade addict and the. adventure fans Will need a towel and an antidote to Vogon poetry,

A ”a, V313 The inside story on the much talked 5208T. Can it really about be 88.9009 as it seems? Read Andre Willey s article and judge for yourself. ,

£409— Rest

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"Atari

User", welcomes program tistings and articles for pob?cation. Materiel sheuid be typed or computer—printed, and preferably doable—spaced. Program listings should be accompanied by cassette tape or disc. Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope, otherwise the return of material cannot be guaranteed. Contributions accepted for publication by Database Publications Ltd will be on an all-rights basis. 0 1985 Database Pubticatiens Ltd. No material may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. While every care is taken, the publishers cannot be held legally responsible for any errors in articles, listings or advertisements. “Atari User" is an independent publication and Atari Corp Ltd are not responsible for any of the articles in this (UK) ”We 0’ f‘” m” ”the ”MO” ex‘ms‘ed jNews trade distribution: Ettropress Safes, eedt?stribetion Limited, 11 Brighton Road, Crawley. West Sossex RR? 0 GAP. Tel: 029327053. .

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ATARI USER August 7985

G rap hlcs t'inues h''5 W' th ser'esj 7 the first of a look at modes 3, 5 and the map to recelve his m.0des expert attention. D ave

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Here's another chance to join the pioneering network that offers you 9 9° |

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Utility

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|f your programs need a little protec— tion, these routines from André Willey should provide it.

Displa y Lists

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Mike Rowe continues his series with demonstrations of how to customise a display list.

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Tablet

Microscope

The length of this program belies its power. Type itin and see the pattern it produces.

There's more to the Touch Tablet than just drawing. Ken Ward gets you started writing software for it.

Logo Hardware

you've

a mind to turn turtle-[Derek can recommend Ataris OW”

Bad?“Of

Mike Cook takes a first bite at the 68000 microprocessor,the chip at the heart of the ST range.

the language.

versron

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you think life is just of cherries row

you'll

want

play

Clive Palmer's fruit machine simulation.

A" -,

Game Assume the role of freedom fighter in Raider 1997, a futuristic text adven— ture by David Nevin.

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Mike Bibby continues his series with look at some logical operators.

Adventuring

Brillig looks at English as she

is spoken adventure game, there's the solution to the Quasimodo puzzle and a new puzzle in WhiCh you play the part Of the computer. in

I er Assemb re you If

frustrated

Mailbag

Write to us with your suggestions or questions.

thoughts

Order F arm

machine

cbolde Egghzmvncgddrilgfsig 223251382012 rescue.

Binders for your back issues disc doublers, dust covers for your micro and a free T—shirt for all new subscribers.

______________ August 7985 ATARI USER

SOF I WARE EXP HESS

EUROPES LEADING ‘ATARI’

MAlL ORDER SPECIALISTS

INTERNATIONAL

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HOTUNE

021

so» ATARI's 800XL has carried off the prestigious Home Microcomputer of 1985 title in this British year's Microcomputing Awards.

than 1,000 nominations. Organised by Personal Com— puter World, the Sunday Times and Thames Television, the awards “seek to define technological excellence and value for money for the consumer". While pointing out that What Micro? sponsored the award but did notjudge it, Matt Nicholson did confide to Atari User the reason his magazine nominated the 800XL for the honour in the first place. “The reason we selected the Atari was mainly because of its £130 price tag”,he said.“ltwas just very good value.

“WefeeltheSOOXLisagood computer,

with

decent

amount of memory, very good graphics and a good range of software that is no longer so expensive. “That's why we even rate it above a Spectrum". But the fina| word was |eft to an obviously delighted Rob Harding. “We believe the machine is an unbeatable combination of performance and value for and obviously the money award judges fully support our —

view".

5 '

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‘

f “ ‘g

beat off the challenge from the Amstrad CPC464 and Sinclair's Spectrum+ in the final to get the nod from the

Recognised as the “Oscars" of the computer industry, the event this year attracted more

,¢.@%

Rob Harding, Atari UK's sales and marketing boss, is seen right receiving the trophy from Matt Nicholson, editor of What Micro-7, the magazine which sponsors the award. The presentation took place at a Hollywood style award ceremony hosted by Sir Alastair Burnett in the Park Lane Hotel,

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ATARI is poised to launch an all-out bid to capture a major share of the education market. Effective immediately, it is offering

all educational

Iishments discount

estabper cent

22 bit hardware

packs and software, and 25 per cent on peripherals. Spearheading the drive to knock the BBC Micro Off its perch in Britain's schools and colleges are two bundled offers containing the 800XL—winner of the Home Microcomputer Award for 1985. Atari Logo System1contains

the 64k 800XL, Atari 1010 program data recorder, LCSI Atari Logo cartridge, Introduction to Programming through Turtle Graphics, Atari Logo reference manual, Atari Logo

quick reference guide, Atari Basic (built in). Invitation to Programming 1, tutorial software, sound and graphics demonstration software, Pole Position racing simulator, plus all leads and power transformers.

The special educational price £128.86 compared to the recommended regular retail price Of £165.20. Atari Logo System 2 contains the 800XL, 1050 disc drive, LCSI Atari Logo cartridge, Introduction to Programming through Turtle Graphics, Atari Logo reference manual, Atari Logo quick reference guide, built in Atari Basic, disc is

operating system software, Home Filing Manager database software, sound and graphics demonstration disc, The Pay Off

adventure game, and all leads and power transformers. Special education price is £210.25 compared to RRP of

£269.55. Atari is also offering edu— cationalists the 130XE for £115.30, the 800XL for £88.17, 1050 disc drive plus DOS software for £130.43, 1010 program recorder for £22.82, 1029 dot matrix printer for £130.43, 1027 letter quality printer for £163.04, Atari graphics touch tablet plus software for £32.60, and Atari LCSI Logo and manual for £40.69. Atari's Jon Dean said: “We are in the process of finalising our distribution outlets that will serve users of Atari equipment in education.0rders will be pro— cessed

directly from Atari UK". August 7985 ATAR/ USER

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A tr at for

and free software

FOR the first time ever free telesoftvvare for downloading to Atari computers has been intro-

duced by Viveax

258

Prestel.

Atari owners with Viewterm copy the software using the buiIt-in downloader in the Miracle Technology package. can

The program demonstrates some of the capabilities of 8 ATARI USER August 7985

ls/and Records' James Bradley, Tony Pope, manager of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Ocean Software director David Ward

...wrthacheaper model

Download,"

< a

15.5

IT 8 BARGAIN TIME

«was,»

says it is developing a cheaper version of the ST—the ZSQST. And it could be available here in the autumn. The operating system With 256k Of memory Will contain an impressive amount Of software 0" board 9" ROM! a spokesman told User. Atari No has for price yet-been set the machine, Wh'Ch Will be released in the UK at the same time that comes the h 0_U'f lh US; There IS that It a_DOSS'bI|ItY C°U|d 0“ d'SPlaY at the he PCV_V Show in bUt thlS September, has h0f been confirmed.

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ATARI

Atari’s versatile GTIA chip—the television interface chip that converts digital information received from the Antic chip for

YOUNG Atari users who have difficUny in making up their minds on whetherto spend their

screen display. The software ls 5|m|lar to demonstration programs seen

games or pop music haveatreat in store.

game program, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, comes with a free audio—cassette an containing unreleased, live recording of Relax. But before all the kids go the rushing off to the shops Atari version will not be available until late summer. The game has been produced in a joint publishing venture between the group, its recor— ding company Island Records, creative producers ZTl' and Ocean. Says Ocean’s David Ward: ”Datatune is a new idea players load the game from the program cassette, and then insert the audio-cassette. ”A voice over will describe how to play the game on side one, and on the flip side players can hear some inspirational

ShODS-

computer

Wr|tten

by Jerry Wh'te: the uses Ba5|c and mach—_ and “m5 0” the Ate”

program me 00d? 800 series and 13OXE-

pocket money

computer

Ocean Software's

latest

—

Walt for It THE fully-integrated spread— sheet/database/word processor package Infinity expected from US developer Matrix Software will not now appear, says Atari. The package was planned as a much cheaper version of the top-selling 1—2-3 for the ST range. However, Atari is promising

thata“verysimilar”productwill soon

available “a praco package with the same facilities at a similar price, under £100", according to a spokesman. be

tically identical

—

music in the form of one of the band's hit recordings”. Frankie Goes to Hollywood is mended selling price of £9.95 for the Atari version, which is the usual price for Ocean's longer—running arcade adven— ture game programs. It will contain more than 124 screens. The game's scenario is writ— ten around the Frankie philosophy, and the possibility of

escape

from

mundane

existence into the delights ofthe Pleasuredome. To gain entrance, the player must grow from a shadowy Frankie figure into a complete 100 per cent person by earning pleasure units. These are achieved by travelling from a prosaic everyday house, through ordinary livingrooms and kitchens into com— plex maze situations, and by solving complex puzzles which require both strategy and skill.

“

ATARI has denied that it is pulling back from games software production, despite drastically slimming down its programming staff and licensing an increasing number of its titles to independent producers_ The latest game to followthis route is The Pay Off, which was originally produced to promote

Atari

disc drives. Now its authors, Bignose Software, have gained the rights to produce a cassette version. But this doesn't mean Atari

DOS 2 5 II

Atar I has lost interest

‘

S?VS

AMQU R14 Allli ll (ll‘l‘l‘li ”3 WW

Games go on 4

rade

in the games

market. Far from it, says sales boss Rob Harding "We see a big future for our 8—bit machines like the 800XL'and13oxe.

’

—

“We

“

, 11:90“ ve 9“ a disc drive and cunently using DOS 3. then you should think very seriously about switching to 2.5 as soon as you can get your hands on a copy”-

planning further and developments for this range and will be bringing in our own games and small business software. “In addition we will be are

improvements

encouraging

THAT’Swhat our technical editor Andre Willey wrote in last month’s Atari User, when he gave an enthusiastic review ofAtari’s new operating

independent

software

system.

houses to design programs for these machines".

D05 25 offers many advantagesover DOS 3, which was issued with the Atari 1050 enhanced density disc drives particularly ease and convenience of use and compatibility with Atari DOS 2.0. It also includes several utilities, including a Diskfix, a DOS 3 to 2.5 file converter and a Ramdisk for use with the 130XE. The DOS 2.5 disc also features a “Mini Manual”, explaining in detail how to use the new DOS. This can be read or printed using the Atariwriter word processor. Alternatively, for people without Atariwriter, thh a? additional‘program has”beenIncluded displays the MmrManual. from Basic, ”the, on the screen or a suitable printer. Atari User is happy to be able to offerlthe new D05 2-5 to readers in one Of three W399: . Send us a blank disc, together with a retum postage stamp and the coupon below giving your name and address. Make sure that the disc is adequatelypacked. There is no charge for this —

—_____.__

300 new programs for the Atari ST range could be

AS many as

unveiled at the POW Show next month. Development systems have already been delivered to more than 100 UK software houses and most of them are working on more than one program, says

Atari. This means there are almost certain to be at least 200 and possibly as many as 300 ST software items ready for sale or

H in prototype form at the big autumn show. Atari expects one—third to be serious business applications, one—third productivity including utilities, and one-third recre—

ational

including graphics,

design, music and games. "We are making sure the ST SO?W?fe comes "Qt 0n'Y in a wide range but covers all aspects of a variety of appliAtari's Rob Harding cations", said.

service, but it is limited to one disc per coupon.

Order our Disk Doubler (details on Page 60) and we will send you in addition a brand new disc containing DOS,2.5 completely free of

charge. Please

use the order form on Page 61.

Send £1.50 and we will supply you with a new disc containing DOS 2.5. The price includes post, packing and VAT. Please use the order form 0

Reason Wh AMERICAN program writers' interest in Atari computers is so high that 400 software developers attended Jack Tramiel's recent address to the Software

real reason for his going back into the computer business. "I was in Japan", he said, “and everyone was talking to was smiling.

Publishers Association. The SPA's executive director, Ken Wasch, described Atari's new machines as ”the event of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas".

“They were thinking that now Jack's out of computers it's

descrlbed Tramlel his acthltles Since he left Com

I l I

modore and the evolution of his concepts of a new generation of affordable technology, He let the audience in on the

time to go into the US". Wasch said: “Jack Tramiel's enthusiasm was contagious. A broad range of software developers want the machines to succeed.

"If

Atari fulfils Jack's promises think these software i

publishers would be crazy not to take the bait".

on Page 61. .

FREE VOUCHER FOR ATAR! I

N ame

DOS 2'5 I

Add ress

l —-———~—

I l

——

I ——

SEND TO: Atari User, D05 25 Offer, E uroPa H ouse, 68 Ch R d SK 5(?Y’ Hazel Grove, StOCkportates

I I

Please allow 28daysfordeliuery.

_._

__________.._.______.l August 7985 ATARI USER

léthO?lG 09,130! may clean up

Spielberg epic goes nudist

AMERICAN pub|isher Datasoft's latest releases include five titles forthe Atari XL to be distributed here by US Gold. Foremost is an action/ strategy game based on Steven Spielberg's latest blockbuster film "The Goonies" featuring

eight maze-type

of with

screens

increasing difficulty

pirate's treasure as the goal. It will cost £9.95 on cassette and £14.95forthe disc version. Another all—action game is based on the legendary charac—

terZorrowhose adventurestake him through

Prices

15 screens,

{9,95 for cassette and £1495 for disc.

Datasoft has also acquired the licences for Pole Position i| and Elevator Action, two of the most popular arcade games in recent years_ Prices £995 for cassette and for disc, £141.95. IS a seven Reality Alternate series Of fantasy part rlolejplay— ing games, and The City is the

increasingly confronting

Atari users who log onto bulletin boards. All over the UK, systems operators are being forced to devote more and more of their time to erasing electronic The obscenity problem has been one that to date has baffled the industry. However according to the latest issue of

—

hand.

It takes a look at a new Naughty Words Editor Which is currently being evaluated

* * * SOFTWARE for the Atari ST series will include utilities from Rising Star Industries according to reports from Ca|ifomja_ The firm is understood to have signed an agreement with Atari for its Valdocs range of software to be distributed with the ST. First reieases are expected to be Valdraw and Valpaint. t t * raise an additional by the summer of

1986 in order to finance its corporate expansion plan. The corporation also intends to go public some time this summer. 70 ATAR/ USER

August 7985

—

give offence", he says. “However once it becomes anatomical then eyebrows would understandably be

way

raised.

"So you decide to err on the side of caution and classify ‘tit' as a word that might possibly offend. W

Te/eL/nk it has been present— ing more than a few problems. First of all the systems operator needs to have the vocabulary ofa drunken sailor. The second, and possiblythe major pitfall is that certain Obscenities can Crop up quite harmlessly Within words. One of the worries that faces Tim Clarkson is what to do with the species most cherished by birdwatchers, the tit. "Used in the ornithological context, the word could in no

con— all is that ever messages taining Wlth word title' SUdway into the denly find their ,, abeyance ?le In order-to counteract this, the MicroLink arbiter of good of taste has created a text'file and not Ind|VIdua| phrases -

RECENT US court battle between Atari and Commodore

over

alleged theft of trade

secrets has ended with both sides claiming victory. Four engineers who had followed Jack Tramiel from Commodore to Atari were .

32 hlt mlcro on way ATARI has confirmed it is working on a 32 bit CAD-CAM computer for release later this a VAX—type, mini— year —

ATARI is to $150 million

—

It s vlctor all round

"Later the messages are checked over by the sysop to see whether it's safe for them to be released”. That's the theory behind It, but in practice according to

abeyance file.

Te/eLink—asisterpublication of Atari User help may be at

Dungeog -

phrases", he is quoted, “50 when these turn up in any message the whole ofthe textis pulled out and put in an

graffiti.

311522???$5532“?th yThe Arena The Palace The Wilderness Revel— ation and Destiny. Game play is controlled by a combination of keyboard and Joystick and it Will be available on disc only for £19.95

by MicroLink, the recently— launched nationwide service for micro users. The man in charge of the project is 39-year—old Tim Clarkson. He explained to Te/eLink just how the Naughty Words Editor should work. “You initially create atext file or glossary of naughty words or

NAUGHTY words of a type that would make even a sergeant major blush are

powered micro whose selling price has yet to be set. Reports originating in the US said Atari is aiming to put mini power into a micro selling ”at around the $5,000 mark, at which it will go like hot cakes”.

that they took company secrets with of charges

acquitted

them. The judge said Commodore had failed to prove that the men took any specific plans of the new 28000 disc drive with them, but ordered the engineers to return to Commodore “cer— tain papers which happened to be in their pockets when they

—

words.

“This removes part of the problem”, says Tim. “We can rule that tit is left in as long as it has ‘blue’ or ‘crested' in front of it but not ’big'." _

left". lawyer said

The defendants'

“extremely pleased"The judge had ”recognised that these four fellows did not steal they

were

any computer secrets 30d Com-

modore

not prove they

could

did. This was victory". Commodore

complete

disagreed.

Vice-president

Ben— Joseph edetti said: "The judge Clearly

ruled that they wrongfully appropriated was

our

property.

complete victory for

Commodore".

Q” / \_ g” i 9 up// \ M. .

\;.)

L“

,-/”MW

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5 «3.1 sec 6&5 “do (09 939190 \° 5° 9 35 5°

August 7985 ATARI USER

________________—

—

— WE saw last month haw to label strings with variables. This meant that if we were using a string several times in a program we

could

use a

variable instead of it.

For example:

A$=“AUSTRALIA"

most sophisticated program to date, and is well worth having a close look at. Incidentally, remember to enter NEW between programs. Perhaps the first thing to remark

’

Expand

our

your Of anWIedge

{9gf3mm15g 1

thhPan‘IVaf , M’KE‘Z BI’BZY .s =

is .“p°” that. °‘”.S"i“9 variab'es' instead of have

being smgle letters, grown into actual words. They've still QOt the $ at the end, though, to show

means that, from now on, instead of using "AUSTRALIA" in full in our programs, we can use A$.

pmNT

guide

thrcagh the MIOI'Q Jungle ‘

if;

,_-

will print out AUSTRALIAfor you. Of course we had to make room for the string by telling the Atari its maximum size with a DIM statement. The labels we used last month were all single letters of the alphabet followed by $.The dollar sign tells the computer that it is a string we are labelling such a variable is called a —

string variable. called a variable because the ”contents" of a variable (in technical terms, its value) can vary throughout It

“?pmg 2! an! ism 10

155th

taxman Program! 72 ATARI USER

August 7985

a program. Program should illustrate the point. As you will see when you RUN it, the value ofA$ varies as we reassign it during the program. A$ always takes the last value assigned to it. You may wonder why on earth you would want to use the same variable for different things, rather than label everything separately. As we shall see, it can be extremely useful. So far we have restricted ourstring variables to single letters of the alphabet followed by the $ sign, such I

A$, B$ and as, However there is no need for such a limit provided we follow them with String variables can be made up of several letters, even words. They must, however, be capitals. Program ll illustrates the point. It is —

55.

u m 2' m

Msi?’Jm?w?mmsm:

"III mum “ mk?hmith“ 5. im‘S?“ m SO

a min 05 5‘ truncate." “5 " ”I“

m...

5, “?nk-n, up m. “Sh.7. mm a "In "bear "guts 90 "I" rattan-am: “0 "ll" “unlit"! m5." i“ um “?n“ ‘

Program //

that they’re string variables, 0" labels. Also, notice that while our labels are in capitals, the strings themselves, inside the quotes, are a mixture of lower and upper case. You'll need some deft manipulation of the Caps key as you type it in. As you'll probably remember, the PRINT CHR$l125l of line 30 clears the screen. It is good programming practice to use words for variables, since we can make the label describe

what it

is labelling. Programs make more sense this way. Thus we use NAME$ to label “Mr. Smith", FACT$ to label “You owe me money”, and THREAT$for “Pay up or

else". This may seem long—winded, but it really does help to make your programs more readable, and hence easier to decipher. For example:

"NAME$

80 PRINT "Dear

really tells you what the line

far

doing,

than:

“A$

80 PRINT “Dear

Similarly: PRINT THREAT$ is more

meaningful than PRINT B$

The moral is, use words for variablesllabels) as much as ossible.

Actually, you

usepcapital

can

and numbers intermixed letters variable names. For example:

for

NAME1$

you now enter LIST, you'll see the Atari has actually included line 10 as with ERROR in front a program line of it. This habit of the Atari can be rather irritating, but don't forget, you can get rid of a line by simply typing its number and pressing Return. Although it's not likely to affect you at this stage, the Atari limits you to variable names. The good 120 news IS that they can each be up to 120 characters long. One advantage of using variables instead ofdirectly using strings is that we can easily alter the output of the program. In the case of Program ll, if we want another victim to be the recipient of our Ietter,just change line 40. For exam p Ie: —

M" E$ in 40hNAME$H= t en on a uses 0flit/146A;

F rom

the program will refer to Mr. Jones. it In this short doesn’t program m deal ofdifference, make a bu? great

22mg is: hagézed'rthf !’al\r/IgrerSOrrt]1?tsh'l'f

R2D2$

c3po$

NAME$' y ou wourlydbe in foraglot gf retyping. far we have talked about string _50 there IS another variables. However of variable called a numeric kind variable. Numeric variables are labels just as much as string variables are, only they label numbers in such a fashion that we can do sums with them. Try running Program Ill. Line 30 uses the numeric variable A to label the number 10. Notice that for a numeric variable we can simply use a letter of the alphabet without following it with the $ sign necessary for a string. Also since it isn't a string,the value we are giving the variable doesn't have to be in quotes. Hence line 30 is ,

valid string variables. a must start However With thgy. jetter not a digit and only capital letters are allowed. This means that: _

are all

1DAY$ 2MORROW$ aren’t valid. Also, spaces aren't allowed, so:

FIRST NAME$ is

illegal.

Variables shouldn't start with Basic keywords, as they confuse the Atari, so:

PRINTER$ is

definitely out. Try entering a program

line such

simply:

30 A—10 _

as. .

10 PRINTER$ = "EPSON" can you explain what happened? Steer clear of keywords in variable names. While we're at it, try entering:

Then LIST it

Line 40 prints out, notA, of course, but the value that A labels, which is

—

10 WRITER$

That's the useful thing about numeric variables you can do sums with them! Try running Program “I with the following versions of line 50: —

50 PRINT A+8 50 PRINT A/4 50 PRINT A‘A you've been following what We far you could be forgiven for thinking that string variables are for If

said so

“mum

W I

1“ ”I“ “9" 0“ mu mam-H “ “?u“ s. "m a

. .

f ,

Program /v -

numeric

vari—

xoéizrsand 23522213

Life is never that simple. You can, and often do, use string variables for labelling numbers the point is that you can't do sums with them. Try entering Program lV, which is based on Program “I, using the string A$ —

instead of the numeric A. Once you've entered it, try adding the following line: ,

50 "NWT 2 ’ As As you'll soon find out, the Atari rejects line 50 out of hand. This is because you are attempting to do a sum with the wrong type ofvariable— string instead of numeric. As with string variables, we do not have to (and should not) restrict ourselves to single—letter

for

labels

numeric variables. We can use words in a manner strictly analogous to string variables, save that we omit the final sign. And, of course, we don't put what we labelling in quotes, Since It isn t a satre rmg. Have a look at Program V. This is meant to be a cheery greeting for 35

________>

’

EPSON

awn?

30 nzu

Spot the deliberate mistake? Well, the Atari does and rejects the line EPSON should have been in quotes. If .

The most interesting part is line 50. Here we multiply the number that A labels by two, so that the line prints out 20.

4! mm

so m

2“

i: await”

1: me msuox n “Sr-mt" “can “ s: "I“

,. i

‘

g ;

, g

M, "salts; ~

~ ,

—

Program In

Program v August 1985 ATARI USER

—_——————Beginners when they RUN the program in the computer—the sort of thing often used in my classeS. However as it stands it's a bit restricted after all, only a small percentage of my students were called MIKE. What's really needed is some way for the Atari to find out the name of the person so that it can tailor the message to suit. Program VI fits the bill. The trick here is the use of the INPUT statement in line 50. In Program V, line 40 put the value MIKE into NAMES. In Program VI the variable isn't actually attached to a specific someone I

—

supplies that. The micro then waits for us to type our reply and send it by pressing Return. Whatever we have typed in then becomes the value of NAME$ even if we have lied! Line 70 then prints out the message after line 60 prints out a

blank

“a“ as:

on a"

a: “it

'f you I'ke' you give the bUt neglect to tell n a program label, what 't S labelling. Instead you type:

When the Atari reaches this line it

—

on the screen. You are then supposed to type in the answer followed by Return, which, as always, sends it to the computer, which then carries on with

the rest of the program. So when you run Program Vl line 40 asks: “WHAT IS YOUR NAME". Notice that we don’t needaquestion mark the INPUT statement of line —

“

;

ATARI USER August 7985

message

not too “user—friendly"

tailored to

thejargon

quotes

SECOND

“

;

you've typed them in!

h—‘__’

I variable

Finally, try altering Program Vlll so that it adds or subtracts pairs of numbers. We've covered an enormous amount of ground this month. suggest that you spend a good while going over the programs. If you are having problemsf re-reading the earlier articles will probably- help. Above all, remember it's a "hands—on"course—youcan't expect the examples to make sense until

incredibly boring! If you make a typing mistake before you press Return, you can erase it with Delete. Once you've pressed Return, though, you’re stuck

;

“gszm

Remember, when you run Program Vland itasksforyourname,you must type your reply then press Return. If you omit Return the Atari won't receive your answer and will continue waiting. This could be

help to make this clearer.

this clear.

—

The semi—colon at the end of line 40 "glues" the question mark, or prompt, as it is known, to the preceding “message”. Running the program with it omitted should make

multiplied by

a; ?x;

by FIRST labels. .Multiplied printed literally Since it is in quotes. The numeric variable SECOND is not in quotes it may have them on either side, but the quotes on the left are already paired with the quotes on far so they count. The the left, don't micro Will therefore print out the value of SECOND. “is" is printed literally, since it is in quotes. F/RST*SECOND isn't in quotes, so the sum is done and the answer printed out. Figure should

has it.

Figure l: Mixing variables and strings in PR/NT statements 74

";.5

line 40 is not strictly necessary, but it is only polite to tell people what kind of response you

—

Wu’s’ "hr“ mar";

A slightly more serious application of INPUT allows you to calculate the product of two numbers, as Program VIII demonstrates. Look carefully at line 70 and see if you can work out what's happening. FIRST isn't in quotes, and so the micro will print the number that

them

waits until you PUT IN, or INPUT, the value you want NAME$ to have by typing the value in. To put it another way, when the computer meets an INPUT statement followed by a variable, it asks you what you want the variable to be in fact, it actually puts a question mark

0111

have the themselves. Incidentally,

happens.

Program V///

expect to make. Otherwise they Will be met With Just a question mark

50 INPUT NAMES

I variable

are

what

nm'rnsn"

”a";

“um

and see

in M! “m 7. multiplied ”a is "stlSl’itSEMD

Program V//

FIRST

5‘:

and

70 PRINT

2. "I“ n "I“

rmnmg??

x. ”I“ 40 M! 5. "I" 5. "III

10 If!

line.

u now 2. nut cansqu) 30 mi m?un u mun "m! 15 m ms": 50 MT I‘ll-15 “ "I" 7. "1“ "cm W 555 "u "nuts

thananumber

The point of all this is that in Program VI, as opposed to Program V, the value of NAME$ IS not fixed initially, but is deCided during the program by the response to INPUT. This means that every student in the class can now run the program

10 kin

value

—

Program

with what you've typed. You can use INPUT with numeric variables as well as strings. Program VII demonstrates this. When you get the prompt, try typing in a word rather

quotes

;

FIRST” SECOND

L—__‘_l Calculate then print out

answer

Software

——

—

P S y C h e do I la by a ?y at h er

THE first couple of issues of Atari User carried an advert for Llamasoft’s Psychedelia. If you're one of the many people who’ve been eagerly waiting for Psychedelia to have appear on the Atari some bad news and some good news. is that The bad news isn't going to Psychedelia appear on the Atari. The good

name

—

Llamasoft's catalogue. what Jeff calls a light

lt’s syn—

thesiser, a software tOYW3 also nigh—on impossible to describe

If you

can imagine an etch—a-sketch connected to a

the manual at first.

glanced program was loading and then played for quite a while. thenkept dipping into the manual to discover a new variable and immediately try it out. The crowd that gathered around sounded like kids on bonfire night. Lots of "Oohh"s I

through while the

3 "

00d

' “st as

“79

news is

Let's get one thing clear from the start. Colourspace is not a game, unlike the rest Of

view ”We.“

that Jeff Minter was so pleased With the Atari version he’s called It something dif‘ ferent Colourspace.

EQIBZJFSME

ATAR'

and “Aahh"s, with a liberal sprinkling of “How does he do

play it back as an endless loop, or record the parameters and joystick/keyboard dynamics to tape and load them back in ata later date. Quite simply, Colourspace is magnificent. It’s Atari gra— phics at its best and no hippy should be without it. Niceone, Jeff really zarjaz.

that?" My daughters enjoyed it even more. It has all the compulsiveness of a kaleido— scope with all the fun of being able to tweak the controls. You can even record a i 5 of about sequence minute's worth in memory and

—

Cliff McKnight

multi-coloured special effects generator, you might be on the right lines.

You

"play"

it with

combination of the joystick and keyboard to produce incredible coloured displays. They can be whirlwind rainbows or cool waves flowit's UP tO VOUing endlessly —

Olft

Ihhe DOihtSA ta“ mac IAS' Jeff' eu ogyto 90W'h9 ines, all this is possible —.

because-thedisplaylistcantell

the AntIC Chip tO bUIId any number Of screens. According to the manual. the difference between Psychedelia and Colourspace is as pronounced as the dlfference between a Mini and a The idea for Colourspace grew out Of Jeff's interest in rock music and thelightshows that accom an rock concerts ofthe Pink Igoyd/Genesis type. A

very comprehensrve

manual accompanies the tape. It's written in the distinctive Minter style "imagine that —

the cursor is a telepathic metagoat"—but actually does describe all the many controls with which the parameters are set or manipulated. I must admit I didn't read

WHAT sort of probabi?ty factor would you give to the chances of a cult radio programme goin on to become a television series, an LP record,

several

books,

044,

$5533;

?g!

How MANY TMS HAS THIS HAPPENED YOU? /“/70 it

currently stage show—and being made into a movre? Highly improbable, right?

“a

».~.3

Well The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by

successful features in a

23’s {

4 i,

”f’ffr

Q1; ..

if?

,.a.

i ;""l

NOW% "

xé???t/F

“rm”

series now brillianttext adventure,written b Dou las Adams himself .

4a.

if};

l/iz if" /

The immensely

,0'

Doug|as Adams' has not on|y achieved all of that already, it

ahd proggrammedby those . masters of artifiCiaI intel— Iigence at Infocom. And believe me the result is magnificent. It has already gone straight to the top of the charts and has just picked up the W.H. Smith Game of the Year award, probably the first of many such awards. Hitchhiker looks set to be

A ME

vVSURE

ww?mf

”mam ,

mz‘??SAFE 5 var,

”” one of the all time greats.

Like all Infocom adventures, it is text only, has an immense vocabulary, an ama— zingly sophisticated input ana— lyser, screens and screens of fulsome prose, and,because of

4mm

the sheer size of the game. comes on disc only. Even if you've tasted the sweet pleasures ofan Infocom adventure before, l guarantee

' August 7985 ATARI USER

_____——_l

sc?nE ENEBGV

Dunaan a?

CFC) D

never have played one like this. When was the last time you suddenly found yourself trans— formed into another character partway through the game and found yourself talking to your— self, if you catch my drift? And that doesn't happen just once, either. You begin the game as Arthur Dent. Your immediate concern is how to stop the local council bulldozing down your house in order to make

you'll

for

way

a by—pass.

However that anxiety soon becomes a trifle insi nificant since the Earth itself sis about to be destroyed by a Vogon Constructor fleet to make way for a galactic by—pass. If you are familiar with the books, or radio series, etc, you'll find the opening sequen— ces

ringingafewbells.Butyou

can't rely on that knowledge for very long __ you are soon confronted with many situ— ations that are going to take more than a little lateral thinking to resolve.

Many of the characters from the series make an appearance. Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian and Eddie, the ever—cheerful shipboard computer. And, of

course, the galaxy just wouldn't be complete without Marvin the paranoid android. He’s still as miserable as ever and his behaviour will

surely make you

little

paranoid, too.

There's

also

host of

much—loved subsidiary characters, objects and incidents.

Remember

the

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal? He's still ravenous and danif you gerous but very stupid can't see him, he thinks he —

can't

see

you.

The awful Vogon captain with his even more awful poetry is here, and so is the Babel fish, the obtaining of which, incidentally, presents one of the most devious but deliciously amusing, multi— layered puzzles l have ever encountered. it's almost as if the game is 76 ATAR/ USER

August 7985

outthinking your every move. am not at liberty to reveal just what your ultimate goal in the game is, not that it would help you in the slightest ifldid. But there is one source of help available throughout the game and that's the guide

“5

E D

of)

woo-ea.”

(may:

}

i_:_:_:

0 (”311K

rti—m r?

"'~‘3‘1";“1'91'5'5555’ _

HEN EBREEN

if? C:,-.:-:-:-:)

or”)

-'f-i-:-:-_;{ziifi?iMME?fE??féf-f-t-:-:-:-.-

itself.

By typing CONSULT GUIDE ABOUT something, chances are you will glean some Useful, and certainly hilarious, information which may, or may not, assist you in your mission. And even when the guide cannot provide data on “the selected topic, you're still sure ofavariety ofwitty responses. If you really get stuck in the game, don't panic. You could do a lot worse than invest a further E7 in a copy of lnfocom's Invisiclue book _

concealed

hints

—

for the

game.

It is cunningly designed, entertainingly written and great fun in itself. It not only offers help where needed but provides lots of other sugges— tions to try out when you've finished the game, many of which might never have oc— curred to you. The book really does help you to get every last ounce of enjoyment out of the adventure. Only buy it when des— perate for help or when you've completed the game, as the temptation to consult the clues is overwhelming. The game comes with a comprehensive manual and includes your very own piece of fluff, pair of peril—sensitive glasses—totally black—and a microscopic space fleet. You must supply your own towel. Hitchhiker is zany, original, challenging and entirely and faithfully logical in its own crazy world of logic. The chances of you finding as funny or as superb a game as this between Earth and Magrathea are two to the power often million and rising,

don't bother waiting hitchhike to your nearest

—

dealer now.

Bob Chappell

R b

t sets

“ MUST admit that when I f'rSt Mr R°b°t my booted “im— mediate thought was H0 _

hum, levels, another ”ladders and power pills game Level presented no dif— than ficulty ‘other determining whichjumps were permiSSible and were fatal. Level 2 which wasnt much

W'th no obstacles, and found Level 14 remarkably but easy, there are plenty Of killer levels to keep you busy. I

SIOWIV'

harder:

though, things star— to getabittrickier. The ”St ted °f trouble came 0” Level s'gh are h°t 4V‘f'th the_bombs. They active “ht" You walk on them, whereupon they fizz forafew seconds and then explode. The problem is that you need to walk 0" them i" order to collect all the power pills.

it's a One—Way journey they’ve exploded there's

—

Once noth—

ing to walk on.This means that you've got to plan your route around the screen. Then come the trampolines to bounce you on your way, the transporter tokens WhtCh may jump you OUt Of the

microwave

oven

into the

central heating bOttef. ahd of course through all this the Alien?re is Sti" intent 0" your destruction. Although the game starts Off easy, you can select which level you start from. This means that you don’t need to work your way up through levels which you've already mastered. According to the manual only the first five levels are selectable. However in prac— tice you can select any of 22. Level 13 is a bonus round

you

mastered the

and think you levels .could deSign better, you can give it a

"Y‘ _

In addition to the game there is a DIY section called The R°b°t Factory that lets YOU create up to 26 Of your °Wh screens. These be _can saved to a separate disc. New screens are drawn by picking up pieces With the cursor and simply putting them where you want them.

It’s

very easy. YOU can your screen and keep

play—test

edltlng it Unt“ satis?ed. HthhQ the same elements to build with, my screen came OUt |00kih9 very much like the real game screens. Howeverl must admit l'm not very creative when itcomesto such matters. W

You

you’ve

flair for design

come probably

the elements.

combine

in. a more

creative way. Mr Robot is an American import from Datamost and is being distributed in this country by Zoomsoft. It is only available on disc at £14.95.

This may seem a bit expensive. However, when you consider the'game’s 22 levels andthefacilitiestobuild an extra 26 levels it's likely to last you for a bit longer than the average levels and ladders game. Dave Russell

IN today's male chauvinist world it makesachange tosee a game written by a woman or should I say a female person? —

Activision's River Raid written by Carol Shaw and is proof of the fact that have as much to women contribute to computing as

was

men.

The river of the title is divided into sections with a bridge at each end. Yourjob is to fly your plane up the river and destroy the bridges. You're constantly moving forward, or rather the screen is consta ntly scrolling downward, and there are various obstacles to your ships, helicopters progress and so forth. You’re also using up fuel,

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but fortunately the river is littered with fuel dumps. You need only fly over them to refuel and you can blow them up and earn points if you don’t need to top up. As you get past more and

smooth even at high speed, response to the joystick is good without being over—sensitive,an d the ‘colours are crisp and clear. Secondly there are options to start at bridges I, 5, 20 or 50. This means that once you've got the hang of the game you can leap straight in without having to go through the easy seetions. It's also a very fair game. If you destroy a bridge but get killed off before you fly past it you start your next life from

she

previous one. As an arcade fan I enjoyed River Raid. It's accessible enough at Iowerlevels to allow you to get accustomed to it, but, challenging enough at higher levels to hold your interest.

war

more bridges the obstacles get more frequent, the nasties get more aggressive and the fuel

dumps scarcer. Infact, as you’ll gatherfrom my description, there’s noth—

ing that you’d call innovative about River Raid. However, it does have several things to recommend it. Firstly the game is well implemented. Scrolling is

Pat Cookson

P'mmg f or N eva d a

I FIRST discovered Pac—Man in Las Vegas (What a name— dropper, EdJ. While all around me were pumping money into was one—armed bandits, supporting the local arcade machine leasing company. it’s an addiction that has

ale around the room for effect. I was pining for the Nevada desert after a few games.

stayedwithmethroughoutthe

Invaders, the game has become part of the micro

I’ve played the game on variety of machines and for more hours than care to admit and I still love it. Imagine my delight then, to geta review copyof US Gold's release of Pac—Man under licence from Datasoft. It's described as ”the official version of the arcade classic" and is about as close as you can come to the original without actually spraying light years. a

hope

of the game, you should buy this one. The tape will cost you £9.95 and the disc is £14.95. Either way it's a lot cheaper than going to Las Vegas.

Cliff McKnight

{MS

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been very happy in the monastery or convent for the last five years. Like Space

version

you've

industry folklore, so I shouldn't need to describe it. Suffice to say that in the unlikely event of your software collection not containing a

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ANDRE WI LLEY takes a long hard look at Atarl's new half megabyte superstar model 5208T and likes very much what he sees .

~ 1

MUST be a catch, mustn't there? A 512k machine with the M68000 running at 8mHz,a half megabyte 3.5 inch drive, mouse, GEM with 512 colours, Basic and Logo built in, high-res monitor, Gem—Paint and Gem—Write included and all for £750? Well, I’m happy to report that it meets and far surpasses all of my expectations Let’s first re—cap on the general information about the 5208T. It will be part ofa whole range ofcomputers—the new generation ofAtarimicros and it seems asfar ahead of its time now as the 400 and 800 were when they

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won't cover the technical details the ones used, but they include high—speed memory management, graphics and DMA management Atari custom design two chips serial output chips for the RS—232 and Midi ports, a separate micro processor to run the keyboard and the I

all

—

on—board clock.

Then there’s

Yamaha sound chip complete with three voices, ADSR, a controller for running up to two disc drives, and another for the hard disc interface. Plus six 32k ROM chips containing Gem, Basic, Logo, and so on, and 16 chips to provide the 512k RAM. 78 ATAR/ USER

August 7935

—

to most of you, but

may be new

they're basically very simple and useful.

Imagine a window as being a screen display just like the one you see on your Atari now. However you can have many windows on one display, and move and change them at will. To do this the mouse comes into play. The Atari mouse is a two-button —

affair which will copy any movement

54;

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The system ROM chips are not yet

complete—they should be ready this month, ready for the main release at the PCW show in September so the machine got my hands on booted Gem in from disc. Assuming that the full 192k was booted, the floppy disc drive seems quite fast. Normally Gem will greet you at power—up with its main Desktop window. The concept of "windows"

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The old range used the now long-in—the-tooth 8 bit 6502 chip, but the ST runs on the Motorola 6800C processor. It also runs at a little over four times the speed of the 6502, and has so many functions built in that go a little green with envy every time read the chip manual. Atari has thankfully used the full version of the 68000 with 16 bit address lines. The Sinclair QL, on the other hand, uses an 8 bit version of the chip guaranteed to slow programs down dramatically. Perhaps QL stands for Queer Logic? The main board is superbly designed, as we have come to expect from the new Atari team. The chip count has been kept down by packing many operations normally requiring a number of chips on to single, custom designed super

“5 ,

range of Atari machines are probably the most talked-about forthcoming items in the home computer world. The American magazines have been bubbling over with enthusiasm, and the expectations built up so far will be hard to match up to. After all, there

were

”if?"

new

’

THE

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you make with it on to the screen. To access a function you simply

pointthe mouse atthe relevant icon—

and computer jargon for picture press one of the buttons. Up pops a new window, containing all of your choices for that function. only touched the keyboard once during my session with the machine— and that was to test the feel of it. It is a similar type to that used on the ‘l30XE, which am quite keen on. In addition to the main qwerty segment, there is a cursor key section and a full numeric keypad. Incidentally, if your mouse breaks down you can use the cursor keys to control Gem,but normally the mouse makes the system so user—friendly that the claim that anyone could start —

use

immediately

unjustified. The great thing

not

that, unlike most

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monitor as standard.

user-friendly systems, Gem will not also hold back an experienced user. Gem itself handles everything that DOS does on your old machine—and a lot more, too. You can get a and directory in pictures, or text even sorted by name, type, size, 0" date created. This may be from any attached disc drive, and will be displayed in a window. If the window is not big enough, or it obscures something else you wanted to read, you can grab the corner with your mouse and drag it all to over the screen, change its size and scroll full screen. if necessary the information within the window in any direction. You can even open another window over the top of it and get the first one back intact whenever you —

—

want.

Iwas, however, most disappointed

The lowest display resolution is 320 x 200, which is the same as Graphics 8 with no text window on the current Atari range, but can display up to 16 colours. which Medium resolution, wouldn't look too good on a TV set as it uses an 80 column display, gives 620 x 200 with four colours. If you use the monochrome high—res monitor provided with the system you can use the maximum resolution of 620 x 400. This is slightly higher than that of the Macintosh, but only gives you two

that

Gem does not make toast, and the kitchen sink implementation was rather poor The icons try to show you what and you can define your each file is icons once own you get into -

—

programming. A file is dismayed as just that a file. You can put any number Of files into a “folder", and even put folders and filesintootherfolders.Thisis akin to sub—directoriesand path-following, but without the hassle this usually involves. lfyou want to cepy a filefrom one folder to another you can simply open directory windows for each folder. grab the file you want by pressing your mouse button while over it, drag it into the other window, and release the button. T0 COPY a ?le ONO another disc, —

colours. The machine will sense which type of monitor you have and adjust itself accordingly at power—up, although you can pull down a menu to change resolution at will and even save your configuration to disc for next time. The 512 colour palette can be selected from by using another pull down menu, and you just push the Red, Green and Blue sliders to the level you require. No more trying to remember complex SETCOLOR numbers.

Other pull—down functions include mini-terminal emulator for the RS-232 port, a calculator and notepad, disc set—up menus, and other system configuration details such as clock setting, mouse speed, a

——————) August 7985 ATARI USER

——————

THE ATARI and even an

52087 {51250 including high— res mo?iigrl half-Meg drive, mouse and bundled software:

alarm clock.

have not

had a chance to see Personal Basic on the STyet, but ifit's anything like Logo it should be great. Both Logo and Basic will be in ROM and still support all of the userI

friendly features of Gem. Logo, and Basic, I'm told, has three main windows, and will let you define others as you need them. You will program in the editor window, see your graphics in the graphics window (surprise, sur— prise...)and usethedialogwindowto receive communications from Logo. As before, Gem will allow you to move and change the windows as required. Set up and run a program in one window, and while it’s running and rushing its turtle all over the place good old Gem can multitask and you can pull the graphics window overthe whole screen all of this with no noticeable difference in speed of program execution. From what I've heard, DR's Personal Basic will allow the same sort of facilities. Just imagine, programs and graphics wherever you want them watch the listing while the program is running. It's like having two TVs going at the same time, each having the resolution of full-screen Graphics 8. When final versions of Basic and Logo are ready, we'll give them a full bench test. Gem is packed with useful facilities for the programmer, far too many to list here, but they include routines for mouse control, window management and disc control. Another useful facility is the Gem VDl —that's Virtual DeviceInterface— a way to generalise control of lots of different types of peripheral, so your program can send information to any of them in the same basic format, and Gem will deal with how each unit handles graphics, text, and $0 on. This VDI includes routines for handling different text fonts and sizes, graphics of any description including bar and pie charts, even in 3D, drawn automatically, circles, arcs, ellipses lines. polygonapattern—?lled —

—

ST RANGE

£750,

250511255”with built in 500k and software: drive, mouse 7

20 ATARI USER Augu317985

device indepen-

—

£500, _ FS354 (5mm 35 inch disc drive: £150 FS314(1’M)3.5 inch disc drive: fa Hard (“$5 10m—20m storage: ,

£400—f‘50‘0.

CD ROM compact disc givinga massiveSSOmbytes o‘fread_on/y storage 835369: £2 Software should range from about £59 to something' over £700, although I'm sure that there W?” be lots of games software at very much lower "

prices. ,

dent, the same set ofcommands used to generate the display on screen could be sent toa printer or plotter, in colour if your peripheral handles it. And if you don't want to bother with that, Gem has a screen dump facility anyway. Configurable to any printer type, of course. All of these facilities are easily accessible from assembly or high level languages, although don't know how Basic will interact with Gem. It may have commands for some of the above, but probably many of them will have to be accessed by some form of CALL or I

Screens can also

than one various effects more

be defined

logical plane for and colour combi-

nations.

Having dealt with how the machine interacts with the user, how does it fare in terms of other contacts with the real world? Well the back of the ST is crammed with almost every imagin— able connection you could want, bar one. From

left to right, we have the with adjacent power socket, power switch and reset button, two Midi ports IN and OUT for computer control of single or multiple syn— thesisers, the TV output and the monitor output, giving analog RGB, composite colour, high-res mono— chrome and audio, the printer port, a bidirectional Centronics connector, the RS—232 serialport,thefloppydisc port for up to two parallel drives, and finally the hard disc interface—which can supposedly transfer data at an astounding 1.3mbytes per second. —

—

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Because VDl

command. addition to these Gem—based features, the machine will support both vertical—blank and horizontalblank interrupts useful for syn— chronising programs to the screen display, and for critical timing requirements. Sprites are supported by means of the high speed memory management chips, rather than by separate hardware devices. USR In

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On the left side of the machine is a

ROM cartridge socket capable of taking an extra 128k of ROM. The right side features two joystick ports, one doubling as the mouse port. That's a lot of connections for any machine, and it's quite astounding to have that sort of versatility on a low price micro. The missing socket

Software houses, of course, do get such things as a C compiler, linker, 68000 assembler and an editor, plus a few thousand pages of documentation. It will take them quite a whilejust to wade through the paperwork, but at least there should be some software under development by new ,

anyway, there will be about 100 titles available by September for the POW

Show That may

be a little Optimistic, but the software houses are as assuming enthusiastic as they all seem to be, there should be a few completed programs, mostly business orientated, plus many others in various

of development. Now for the 64 million dollar question when can you buy one? The current position, and this may well have changed again before you even read this, is that the first batch of machines, most of which have now been dispatched, went to software houses at about £1,200 for a stages

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mentioned would be an expansion port for extra RAM. know that 512k seems a lot, but there's a rule within the computer industry which states that when writing any given program it will quickly expand to fill all available memory. This applies especially to databases and word processors. Hopefully some clever company will design a RAM pack to fit either the hard disc port or the ROM socket. Unfortunately at this stage it is not possible tofully reviewand testany of the applications software or Ian— guages. The development systems being shipped to software houses by Atari do not include Gem-Write or Gem—Paint or even Basic, but these will be available in the next few

__—__________“

5 ii???

knows?

development system. More machines were due to arrive in the UK at the end of July, these being available to major retailers and speciaIiSts, but in very limited quantities. You probably won't be able to actually BUY one Of these, bUt perhaps your local user group can get one,and you can at least haveagood IOOk for yourself. The main launch, by which time a good Stock Of machines Sh0u|d have arrived, will be at the POW Show in September, and retailers should get their stock at that time. But who

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Read next month's

instalment for

thrilling complete change of

plans...

that of you will be many like me, With bated breath to buy an ST, and from what I’ve seen of it, the competition had better watch I

‘know

waiting,

out, too. Who in their right mind would buy then spend a BBC B+ at £469 —

monitor

and

on a

.£150. £250 9” drive, when a machine With far better facilities and over 10 times the memory can be beUth for £100 less! And as for the Sinclair Quality Lapse, well

disc

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__________—_____ August 7985 ATARI USER

__—____—___—___________

I SO far in this series we've looked at the text modes obtained using Graphics 0, 1 and 2. This month we'll start in on the actual graphics modes, or map modes as

they're sometimes called. Modes 3, 5 and 7 can be conveniently taken together because they are all four—colour modes. They differ in the size of the smallest block, or pixel, that can be placed on the screen. That is, they offer different levels of resolution and therefore make different demands on memory

space.

The pixels in a Mode 3 screen are the same size as those of Mode 0. If you type:

GRAPHICS

most of your screen will go black and

you'llbe left with the familiar blue text window at the bottom. You now have 20 rows of 40 columns on which you can produce your display. Before we start trying to put anything up there, let’s get the colour registers sorted out in our minds.

PartFour

often think that the designers of the Atari and the writers of the Basic were kept apart in order to produce as many different numbering systems as l

possible. I’m not always this cynical it comes over me when try to remember all the different schemes —

for selecting a colour. and 2 hold the Registers 0, information for the foreground col— ours and register 4 holds the information for the background 1

colour.

ht g r e en a nd dark blue res pe ctivel y We can use the SETCOLOR command to alter these colours.With a clear Graphics 3 screen, try typing: Ii g

SETCOLOR 4’13'0 The black background should have been replaced by darkish green because you have changed register 4 to colour 13 with luminance of O. When we want to put something on the screen, the COLOR command selects which of the registers to take the colour information from. It's here where the numbering 22 ATARI USER August 7985

Of DA VE RUSSELL the Atari graphics modes

starts getting tied in knots, because COLOR O selects the background colour information in register 4. COLOR selects register 0, COLOR 2 selects register and COLOR 3 selects register 2. As you can see, for these three registers the COLOR number is one more than the register it selects. It's not difficult, but it could have been simpler. At this point suggest you press Res e t to g et b a ck to d e fault conditions and then type GRAPHICS 3 (or GR.3 to save a bit of typing). Now let's put something up there. 1

This should yield an orange square close to the text window. The COLOR selects the colour in 0 register (orange) and the PLOT 15,15 fills the pixel at screen position 15,15 with a block of this colour. Press Reset again and try entering Program I. When you Run it, two

fairly

s serles

things should

be demonstated. Firstly, the size of the orange block gets smaller as we move from Mode 3 through Mode 5 to Mode 7. In other words, Mode 7 has higher resolution than Modes 3 or 5. Secondly, the orange square 'moves' up towards the top left—hand

1. 2. 3. to 5.

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the mode changes. This

illustrates that screen position 0,0 is actually at the top corner. For many people it‘seems more natural to think of 0,0 as being the bottom left—hand corner. You'll have to remember this or your displays will have a nasty habit of appearing upside—down. If

you've

run

Program

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left

Mode

7 so press Reset and go

back to GRAPHICS 3. If you enter:

COLOR 1: PLOT 15,15 again you’ll once more have the orange square. Inspirational, isn’t it? In addition to the PLOT command, the other main command for producing displays in these modes is DRAWTO. As you might imagine,this command causesa line to be DRAWn from the last PLOTted position TO the specified position. DRAWTO 15,4 a If you enter vertical orange line should appear. Try DRAVVTO 20,4 to produce a horizon— tel line. If you now enter DRAWTO 30,15 you'll see how sloping lines are not very well in a |0W produced resolution mode like this, but it's —

often adequate. Program II shows how you can produce simple displays using this 1. “am“ 1 20 colon 1:91.01 ”Juneau 19.14 30 not 17,5:nmo 17.11=mum 14.14 “ PLOT 21'5=°‘nu‘0 21’1l=““m° 2,4,“ Magma," ,,

method. It's all inthe same colour, but if you add a line:

25 COLOR

you can change the colour used by lines

and

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of this. We can't say where each point Will be plotted until the random number generator has been used

? n-q W-?

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You can also change the mode

numberin line 10to either 5 or7 and see the effect ofincreasing resolution. Because Mode 3 has the same pixel size as Mode 0, the bottom right—hand corner of a Mode 3 screen position 39,19. If you try to PLOT 39,20 you won't see anything happen because the text window is effec— tively covering row 20. However, if you try to PLOT 40,19 you'll get an ERROR 141 telling you that the cursor is out of range. In bottom right—hand lVlode 5_the corner is posmon 79,39 and in Mode 7 it iS 159,79. But while Mode 3 needs only 434 bytes of memory, Mode 5 needs 174 bytes and Mode 7 needs 4190 bytes. As you can see, is

the extra resolution costs memory. You don't need to specify a particular screen point in the PLOT You 'can command. prowlde PLOT t e eva W'th an “ate', eXp_ress'9” t_° result Of WhICh WI” giVe the pOSItlon to be plotted. Program Ill gives a brief example

actual character like a letter or number. Being a map mode, pixels are either Iit (in a colour) or unlit (in the background colour). To demonstrate the effect, press Resm and enter GR'3 to get a clear MOde 3 screen- NOW thei POSITION 15,15:PRINT#6;“1" should seethe orange aware started from. Try substituting a 2 or a 3 for the and see the effect. There are times when it's easierto use the PRINT #6 than PLOT and DRAWTO. Program IV produces a YOU

6er at we

Chunky Mode 3 display using a combination Of the tWO methods. It's not brilliant programming bUtit might give YOU some ideas while you're hanging around waiting for the to deliver the next issue of postman

Atari User. _

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o A detailed DIY guide to Prestel’s Gallery Keeping BB obscenity in check 0 Plug your micro into the electricity meter 0 What you can expect from System X .

Full listing of 90 UK bulletin boards A tour of Knowledge Index, Part 11

What you’ll ?nd in the latest issue: 0

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technicalities to present the facts in vivid detail to help you Play YOUR individual part in the communications revolution that is going

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With MicroLink your micro becomes aterminal linked directly to the Telecom Gold mainframe computer, and able to tap its tremendous power and versatility. Right away you’ll be able to use giant number-crunching programs that can only run on a mainframe. You can set up your own computerised filing systems, store and update statistics and other information, cross-reference material between files, selectively extract the information you want, perform massive calculations and design reports to display information from any of the files and in any format you choose.

More than 96per cent of MicoLink subscribers can connect to our mainframe computer in London by making a local phone call. This is possible because they use British Telecom’s PSS system, which has access points all over Britain A local phone call is all you need, too, for access to the international Dialcom system through

The biggest bulletin board Of them a“ The number

of bulletin boards is growing rapidly. New ones are springing up in all parts of Britain and all over the world, with people of like minds chatting to each other on all manner of subjects. The only snag is that the vast majority are ‘ Wthh means l°t5 Of other single-user boards people are also trying to make contact and all too Often all you get is the engaged tone. But with the MicroLink bulletin board there is no limit to the number of people using it at the same time. And no limit to the number of categories that can be displayed on the board.

MicroLink.

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communicate directly to 96,000 telex subscribers in worldwide and even with the UK, limillion ships at sea Via the telex satellite network. Business people can now send and receive telexes after of?ce hours, from home or when in a telex travelling. You_can key during the-day and mStht M‘CTOLmk no‘ to transmit ‘t until after 8pm and save 10 per cent Off the COS“ —

The mailbox that is al“, ays open MicroLink is in operation 24 hours a day, every day. That means you can access your mailbox whenever y ou want and from wherever 9° u are 5

even a hotel bedroom home, of?ce, airport or golf club! No-one needs to know where you are when you send your message. —

The modern equivalent ofthe telegram is the telemessage. Send it before 10pm and delivery is guaranteed by first post the following day (except Sunday). The service was intended for people phoning their message to the operator. and it costs £3.50 for 50 words. But you can now use it via MicroLink for only £1.25 for up to 350 words!

Send and receive telex messages With MicroLink you can turn your micro intoa telex machine, and can send and receive telex messages of any length. You will be able to

_"__

‘

What does It a“ cost?' Considering allthe services you have on tap, MicroLink is remarkably inexpensive, You pay a once-only registration fee of £5, and then a standing charge of just £3 a month. On-line costs are 3.5p a minute (between 7pm and 8am) or 10.5p a minute during office hours. There is an additional 2p a minute PSS charge if you are calling from outside the 01- London call area. Charges for telex, tele-messages and storage of files are given on the next page. August 7985 ATARI USER

_____—________

Software over .

How much it costs

the telephone

MrcroLmk

use

__.___.______

Incoming telex: 50!) for each correctly addressed telex delivered to your mailbox. Obtaining a mailbox reference from the sender incurs a further charge of 50p. _

lnitial registration

fee: £5.

Standing charge: £3 per calendar month _

01'

part. 3-513 per minute or part cheap rate' 10 5p per minute or part—standard rate

Connect charge:

to the Service.

connection

Applicable for duration of Minimum 1 minute.

charge: Cheap rate '5 from 7pm to 8am, Monday to Friday. all _

55:5;y {Logggys‘ om gundtay7air1nd amo gillnal’ 5°31“? faelS Blind W p a

excluding public holidays.

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s Ahpplimlzile Of?folmatzon. ortco es fan mai 'es. enum ero fUCh units used ordstomlg?el

an average calculated by reference to _

Information Databases:

daily sample.

Various charges.

Any charges that may be applicable are shown to you before you obtain access to the dat?b?sa

It is not possible to deliver a telex without a mailbox reference. If a telex is received without a mailbox reference the sender will be advised of non-delivery and asked to provide a mailbox address. Each user validated for telex and using the facility will incur a charge of 6 storage units a month. Further storage charges could be incurred depending on the amount of telex storage and the use made of short cede and message ?le fac'ht'es'

Telemessages: £1.25 for up to 350 words. Radiopaging: No charge. .

International Mail:

For

—

the first and

Only applies to users outszde the 01- London call area.

Telex registration: £10,

telex: 5.513 per 100 characters (UK); llp per 100 (Europe); 16.5p per 100 (N. America); £1.15 per 400 (Rest ofworld);£2.75 per 400 (Ships at sea). Outgoing

characters

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Whilst Database Publications Ltd is the supplier of all the services to you, the commission and billing thereof will be handled by Telecom Gold as agents for Database Publications Ltd. Date of first payment to be on 15th of month following commencement. Please complete billing authorisation form A, B or C below:

L52521550zyaihégfnézg?gg?czgzrbm also wish to use Telex l authorise you to charge an additional £10 to my initial bill for validation, con?rm that

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intend to use the followingcomputer “7

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26 ATAR/ USER Augyst 7985

l/We authorise you until further notice in writing to charge to my/ our account with you on or immediately after 15th day of each month unspecified amounts which may be debited thereto at the instance of British Telecommunicationsplc TELECOM GOLD. Bills are issued 10 days before charge is applied to your account. —

Europa House 68 Chester Road Hazel Grove Stod‘po" SK7 SNY' Telecom Gold

mm m

—*

‘

SENDTO' MicroLinlt Publications Datal

‘

You must have three things in order to use MicroLink: a computer (it can be any make of micro hand-held device or even an electronic ’. prowded it has communications typewriter .. faCilities), a modem (it can be a Simple Prestel type usrng 1200/75 baud, or a more sophisticated one operating at 300/300 or 1200/1200 baud), and appropriate communications software.

Signature Date

m m £13313ij

Please indicate month of commencement

(

What you need to MicroLink access

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Allow 10 days for validation of mailbox

l/We hereby apply to 10m MicroLink (

Commencement of Service

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number of other countries there are many thousands of users with electronic mailboxes just like yours. You can contact them just as easily as you d 0 users m Britain the onl y difference is that the messages from your keyboard 9° speeding around the world via satellite.

uilre mont y.

MicroLink is part of the international Dialcom network. in the USA, Australia and a growing

, _

______________.____.

———_—————— ,

of charges relate to the transmission information by the Dialcom service to other Dialcom services outside the UK and the Isle of Man. Multiple copies to addresses on the same system hostincuronly one transmission charge. These

2,048

T a 1k to t h e wor ld by satelllte

If you have a BT Radiopager you can be paged automatically whenever a message is waiting in your mailbox.

characters

(1200/75 baud).

include games, utilities, educational and business programs, and will cover all the most POP‘llaf makes of micros.

Denmark; , 20p Germany . M' Li k PSS 2 30p to USA, Australia, Canada, Singapore, baud), Sgggcg-er palrlzrlBOl)‘ Fr’ng?témgffgaz Hong Kong and Israel. For additional 1024 ,

MicroLink is setting up a central store of software programs which you’ll be able to download directly into your micro. The range will

plc.

C. Please invoice the company/authority. if you select this option, which is ONLY AVAILABLE to government establishments and public ( /) El limited companies, you will be sent an authorisation form for completion which will require an of?cial order numb€r to accept unspeCified am0unt5.

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IT’S by far the fastest growing field in micro-computing.All over the world micros are talking to each other over the telephone line. As well as to the ever-increasing number of public and private databases, bulletin boards and even giant mainframe computers. We want all Atari User readers to share in the new technology that makes all this possible. So we’re offering a unique starter pack at an unbeatable price. It gives you everythingyou need to get in touch with the big wide world outside: 0 Modern 0 Software 0 Serial Interface The modem is the amazing Miracle Technology WSZOOO. One of the most powerful on the market, it provides all the facilities you require. Yet it’s simplicity itself to use. Just plug it into a standard British Telecom jack and you’re away! The package also features the superb Datari serial interface, which links the modern directly to the Atari’s peripheral port without the need for the 850 serial interface. The best hardware deserves the best

—

w W

'~'37£:;§§2:.¢;§:,

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software to drive it, and with the specially written Multi-Viewterm program the package complete. It supports all the standard baud rates 1200/75,75/ 1200, 1200/1200 and

—

300/300 full duplex Your Atari User package will allow you to talk directly to other computers, to send your own telex messages, to go tele-shopping even to download free software programs —

directly into your Atari. You will be able to join Micronet/Prestel, which will immediately open up to you a vast menu of 750,000 pages of information instant world news, sports, holidays, hotels, train and airline timetables, all regularly —

updated. And you can become one of a growing number of enthusiasts who are joining MicroLink, the giant database set up in

conjunction with Telecom Gold, which is described more fully in this issue. But first, send for the Miracle package and enter the fascinating, limitless world of —

communications!

Use the order fom

0“

Page 6,1, August 7985 ATAR/ USER

2.7

__—_______—____—_

’

ONE of the main problems with Basic, apart from its poor speed in comparison with machine code, is that once you've finished your masterpiece anyone can LIST it to the screen or printer and copy

still working correctly. When a boot cassette or DOS disc loads in it will set three locations in memory to tell Reset what to do to re-initialise the program just loaded. Location 9 will contain either a 1, for a disc program, or a 2 for cassette. If it contains 0 then no program was booted. The othertwolocations are used to tell the computer the address in memory of a small machine code routine to handle the job of checking the main booted program. These locations are different for cassette and disc, but we will use the cassette ones, 2 and 3, as they are simpler. So in order to trap System—Reset we must first POKE location 9 with 2 for cassette boot and locations 2 and 3 with the address of a machine code routine? What? You mean that some of you is

your ideas.

We’ve had a number of letters asking if there are any ways to from pressing prevent someone Break or System—Reset and LISTing the program, and luckily there are quite a few things you can do. Let’s take the points in order: Break is perhaps the easiest of all to protect from. It involves just two POKE instructions: POKE 16,64 POKE 53774,64 To switch the Break key back on

ou -

again, type:

‘

—

POKE 16,192 POKE 53774,192 Unfortunately the GRAPHICS command will return Break to its normal use, so you must re-POKE the values after each GRAPHICS statement in your program. A simple GOSUB to a subroutine is probably

—

aren't

machine—code

programmers?

Okay, let’s cheat.

Basic itself is really just one massive machine code program. Normally you never have to think of it as such, because it is designed in such a way that you never really notice how it works. If we could find a suitable section of Basic to ”borrow", we wouldn't

best. System—Reset is far harder to protect because it was designed as an all purpose "get—out" key in case your program goes wrong. As such it should function correctly regardless of whatever you have managed to type in. Luckily there is one way to ”capture” the Reset key. One of the functions of Reset is to check that DOS or any cassette loaded program

have to write

any machine

code

ourselves. The obvious routine to use would be RUN, so that the program would simply re-start if you pushed Reset. But that may not be what you wanted. You may want your program

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to go off and do something else rather than start from scratch. Fine, let's use the GOTO statement then, but how to tell the computer where to go to? Better still, let's use the TRAP command. If we can convince Basic that an

—

error has occurred Reset it will jump to a

Don’t, incidentally, forget to POKE as well. Program shows Break and Reset

9,2

protection in use. This method will disable DOS after Reset is pushed. If you are a disc user and you wish to re-enable DOS, type POKE 9,1 and push System—Reset. The system should then be returned

you

TRAP 50° the program would continue at line 500 after pressing System—Reset. 30 where inside Basic is the TRAP handling routine? _

to normal. There are some rather nice little things you can do to stop your .

’

built into the currect XE range of computers. The TRAP routine 0” Rev. A was located at 47424 ($3940), and on REVS- B and C at 47412‘ ($5934)must POKE locations 2 and _

—

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5“

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POKE 202.1 Put it as the first line of the program, and check that it is correct by LISTing it. Try listing it again after you've RUN the program. You'd better save the program

before running that fun.

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Program Ill is even more dramatic. This one won't allow any commands to be typed in after the routine has been run, hence the SAVE command °f ‘he ”m“ be '” the or youl””“.'"9 ve OSt 't orever. program This also means that you cant LOAD, or CLOAD, then RUN the program_ You must RUN C; or RUN .

program being LISTed if it has been loaded but not RUN. The firstis to scramble any variable names so that garbage is printed out instead. Program II will do this for

Thus YOU values. 3 Wlth the-correct For BaSlC Rev. A cartridge: POKE 2,64 POKE 3,185 ¥...“

to read.

D:Fi|ename. Ext. Again, wont go into technical d 9 tails ' b t this version will make .“ BaSIC fall to recognise any lines, elther program or command,that you subsequently type in. It effectively forgets where to store them. Drastic, but qmte effective. One last tip to play about with. Try this:

ReVlSlon B BaSlC bUllt Inor two new Unfortunately one bugs crept In to this one also, 50 ReVlSlon C was born. Available on cartridge for £9.95, this BaSlc is also .

Book", or both from Compute! Books, it works by putting a Return character instead of each variable name in the listing of the program, thus making it a little tricky

“Mapping the Atari",

Basic Source

Atari

9°?”

Wchr' version of Base have you got? lfyou have Basic Rev. A typing PRlNT PEEK(47424) '. WI“ give a result of 169. lf you have Basic RGV B OI“ c , typing PRINT PEEKl474-24) w'" “we a "w" °f 133’ but PRINT PEEKt47412l will print 169 Any otherresultsfromthese PEEKs and the Reset protec. M“ almost cer— tton routine tainly not work '

GOTO statement, and then deleted. to save an original Don't forget verSlon because even you won't be able to read or alter your program once it's been scrambled. Without going into too much technical detail, for which see "The

‘

milling“? if? éiiiée'iii’iid writ? great Inspiration A, B and CVersionAwasshippedincartridge form Wlth all UK Atarl 400 and 800 machines. There were a few very minor problems With it so the new 600XL and SOOXL machines had .

XL/XE

—

POKE 2 52 POKE 3'185 ’

which may, for instance, disable the if

range;

after pushing TRAPped line,

Break key again. For instance, have typed:

Revs. B and

For Basic

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August 7985 ATARI USER

Micro

Scope W vv

screen. ‘

MAN DALA is an elementary but very effective program that draws a pattern on the

‘

No. 4 Maaaaa

The program itself is very simple, with only 10 active lines. But the logic behind it isn’t trivial. Try working it out with pencil and paper and you'll soon see the pattern emerg—

‘

® I“

“s.“

ing. 10 REH HRHDOL“ 20 GROPHICS 0+16 \

1:PLOT 150.90 3:0 10 100 STEP IITtRID(0)*10*1

30 COLOR 40 FOR )

50 ORQHTO

150,190-8

60 DRRHTO

ISO—8,100

70 pnnuro

150,x 150fH,100

80 DRRHTO 90 NEXT K

100 110

FOR

DELOYZI

750llERT

DELAY

RON

10 A REM containing the program name. 20 Selects full—screen Graphics 8 mode. 30 Selects colour and plots the starting point. 40-90 These lines define a FOR... NEXT loop which draws the pattern. Each time round the loop four lines are drawn. The changing value of X changes the positions

30 ATARI USER August 7985

of the lines. The step size is chosen randomly within the range 1—10 so that

variations produced. 100 10

the pattern density

are

Delay to keep the display on the screen

enough to Start again. long

be seen.

THE 8 bit microprocessors have been around for over 10 years now. While there have been many improvements in hardware in that time the philosophy of processor design has served quite well. Now that it is possible to get even more circuitry on to a'chip, a new breed of 16 and 32 bit microproces— sors are emerging which have power that is not so “micro". Most manufacturers of the new generation of processors were in— volved with the earlier 8 bit ones, and

Processor" and is the approach taken by Motorola in designing the 68000

microprocessor. While the other approaches have been tried with some success measured in sales, it is rumoured that most programmers working on these other processors have a 68000 as a pinup fantasy on their office walls. The secret of this lies in the instruction set, the basic commands that all other commands must be made from. In a word, it is very “orthogonal",

is as sweet as a dream. Let's see exactly what the instruc— tions are which make it such a joy to

gramming use.

Of course justice to this

cannot hope to do a short article, but hope to be able to give you the flavour I

of what's available. Next month we will look at the addressing modes and finally at the hardware structure. Firstly, the way the memory is organised is in bytes. Each byte has an address,

but,

MIKE COOK looks at the new breed of misreprocessors whose power, he reveals, as anything but "micro’ it is interesting to see how they viewed their development. One approach is to keep things as similar as possible, This has the advantage of not requiring vastly new skills, but tends to “freeze in" allthe design errors and compromises that were made in the

that there is an instruction/ addressing mode combination to do

odds are

it.

will be worked out for you by a assembler—all you have to dois good specify the source and destination of the operation. While it is possible, and in most cases desirable, to program 8 bit processors in hex, looking up the code for each instruction, this would soon drive you up the wall with the 68000. This

past.

Another approach is to bolt on increasingly more powerful com— mands giving large raw processing power. This

means that you don’t have to worry about what commands you can perform with what registers on what memory locations. If you want to do an operation the

which

approach produces very

powerful processors that do well in bench mark tests but are rather difficult to bend to your particular application, In other words, a racing car rather like a dragster, unbeatable in acceler— ation but a swine on the corners! The final approach is to look at the code that was written on the 8 bit and analyse it for processors sequences.

Which means, find out what the programmer wants to do and then design a processor that will make it easier for him to do it. This produces

“Programmer's

different combinations of addressing mode and instructions that you have to There

are

many

“construct" a machine'code instruc— tion from the bit patterns which specify the source and destination locations. So, in practice it would take you at least 30 seconds to work out each

instruction. Obviously this soon mounts up and becomes totally unacceptable. But with an assembler, however, pro—

is 16 bits wide, the least address line is not brought

the data bus

significant out.

80 data is fetched two bytes at a time, known as a word. All of the internal registers are 32 bits long, which takes four byte addresses or two word locations to store them.

Consequently a 32 bit quantity is referred to as a "long word". So most instructions can be performed on a byte, a word or a long word.

To simplify matters, all word operations must be performed on even byte addresses. So, for example, if you want to store a word at address location 4, the most significant byte goes in location 4 and the least significant byte goes in location 5. This is what consider to be the right way round as we write the most I

significant part of a number first. But notice that this is the reverse of the way the 6502 handles numbers. Now let's look at what registers we

’ August 1985 ATAR/ USER

decrements a register and branches if the register has not yet reached zero. “me have

1:51am

IIIIIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIIIIIIII-IIII

32222:2?fo?rgé‘QEiz?ry '

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

There are the usual collection of logic operations including shifts. However, a single instruction can specify any number of shi-fts to left or .

02 '

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

03 04 05 ,

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-II

07 Word

Long worn

m '

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII III-IIIII-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-I IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII III-IIIIII-IIII-IIIIIII-II-IIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII III-IIIIIIII-III-I-II-IIIII-I... IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

PC SP

Figure l: The 68000 Registers

have in the 68000. These in Figure

are

shown

As you can see, there are quite a lot main types are the Data and Address registers and all of these are 32 bits long. In general, data registers can be very freely manipulated, and most instructions will operate on them. Address registers, on the other hand, are mainly used to determine what memory address to use. Address register 7 (A7) is used as the stack pointer, but any other

of them. The two

address

register can be so used. Allthe subroutine return addresses use the A7 register as their stack pointer, so you can have separate

data and return stacks. This is very useful when imple—

menting high—level languagessuch as Pascal and Forth. You may have noticed that register A7 appears to be two registers and so it is. The 68000 can run in two modes— supervisor and user modes. This means that your operating system can run in the supervisor mode and your application in the user mode. This makes trace operations easier as well as error handling. 32 ATARI USER August 7985

Each

mode

also

has a

The big plus of this class of instructions are the multiply and» divide instructions. When using the multiply instruction, only 16 bits of the registers can be used because the result of two 16 bit Operations is a_32 bityalueWh'Ch There are 3'59 '”S"“°“°”,s the operations to be S'gned or aHOY"

un3|gned. are Anome' Of mStrUCt'ons. Class. the Trap Instructions. These are like a Single instruction call-to—subroutine. When they are used, the program 9°35 to an address Stored i” a ?xed memory location, and these locations are known as the Trap vectors. They are very handy for communieating with the operating system in a standard way. H: an input and output is done through these traps, then programs written for one hardware configura—

A3 A4

“7 2‘ ?

all

right.

III-IIII-III.IIIII-II-I-II-I-Il-I

separate

status register.

There is also a program counter. In most microprocessorsthis is normally the largest register, but paradoxically here it is one of the smallest. Only the lower three bytes are broughtout,thusIimitingthememory to 24 mbytes. In future versions of the chip these extra locations might be brought out, but there is more than enough memory space for the time being. The most common instructions used in any program are loading and storing of registers. In the 68000 these have been simplified to a single MOVE command. The source and destination can be quite freely specified to give you exactly the effect you want. You can even move data between

memory locations without passing through any of the registers. There is even a “move multiple registers" instruction which allows any number of registers to be quickly saved or restored from memory. Regarding program structure, there are plenty of conditional branch instructions. There is also an instruction which

tion of the 68000 can easily be modified to run on another. This is very much the way the CP/M operating system works. These instructions also allow the expansion of the instruction set by providing an easy way to call Macro the Apple Macintosh commands makes extensive use of these. Perhaps the newest of instructions —

are the Link and

Unlink. These are

capable of implementing a frame pointer to allow an area of memory to be dynamically allocated and de— allocated. You can use them to store local

variables in procedures and to return values when the procedures are finished. This is vital when procedures are being called recursively. This feature makes the implemen—

tation of Pascal especially easy. With all these instructions at your command,thetaskofprogramming is made very much easier than on any 8 bit processor. 0 Next month

we wi/l see how these powerful instructions combine wit/7a multitude of addressmg modes to produce a very versatile instruction

set.

E if:

you're

one

——~_-_ l

E] ’ E] ‘

fortune

B i E

ere sa pro 9 ram on the fruit machtizzsi: . f ram CLIVE PALMER to Savc YOU m on_ey_ ' Fruiti Gambler is a fru'tI machine srmulatuon and com p I ete Wlth Hold and Nudge feat “res ' a special Gamble feature roe | ' lncor

Q E;

szzflzcvznsmnd

l .

U ’ E] ’ U

P_oratmg

Whlle you're

you'll

typing it

in ' think Of the m°“°Y

save. i

\1/

PROGRAM STRUCTURE GOTO initialise routine. Main program loop. Printa reel routine.

50-70 90-130 150-260

990 1010-1070 1090-1220 1 240—1 600

screen.

left in bank? 1. Decrement position in reels by 1. Increment position in reels by (used by WlN routine.) Turn all sound channels off.

1610-1 710

_._.-

i145

Draw screen display. lnitialise display list interrupt.

X(4) & Yl4)

POS(4)

H$(3) REEL(4,32)

WIN(1 1) CASH$(1 2) CASH PAY

determine if a

Winning amounts for a winning line. Used to

change cash into inverse screen. beforedisplaying on the How much you have. How much you won.

a "

-—

$3 a,

{Lu

?g 4

.\‘~/

_, ,

1. .

~‘=

$1 Q, Q "

\§“..l/ _-

f '

\C??? ,

\§,,,\\\\“'

(E jQ

HELD. data. Used to hold reel/fruit

f L

reel is

Pointer

‘51

7“

Contains all fruitsfor reels. Position of reels. in showing where we are reel. Used to

’

\/§\

MAJOR VARIABLES FRUIT$l64l

‘

Re—start/finish routine. Gamble routine.

2 -7 7.

Q5?--

“1

Hold reelroutine. set. Set up new character variables. main De?ne/initialise

2200—2310

‘

_‘

Start.

1730-1860 1880-2120 2140-2190

—

970 980

\\C’J

times.

Clear message How much is

‘

T1 280—390 Spin reels 1—3 routine. 410-660 Nudge Win Return, 680-900 Test for a win: No Gamble?. :Win

910-920 930-960

l§

“Q \ W§§£et§? r

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Auyust 7985 ATARI USER

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Tired of

typing?

Take advantage of our fingepsaving offer on page

51_

August 7985 ATARI USER

__—____—______

ONE of the first major problems unwary adventurer when he takes his first tentative steps in an alternative world is that although the game itself communicates his surroundings in perfect English, on entering his first command the machine seems incapable of understanto face the

ding it. Suppdse you find yourself “in

large room, with a door to the west. A book lies open on the table". This is a hypothetical example of how an

adventure may begin, and yet depending on the sentence analyser— or parser to the more technical the responses to instructions given by the player may seem totally incom— prehensible. Let’s assume we are dealing with an inquisitive novice adventurer. "Read the book", he types. "I don’t or understand”, says the screen something equally helpful such as “Eh...". Rule one, Mr Novice, is that most adventures will not understand full sentences, but work on the trusty verb/noun principle. Hence READ BOOK will produce the required response, while READ THE BOOK or anything more elaborate will get the computer's equivalent of a puzzled —

stare.

absorbed, Novice tries again. READ BOOK. "You don’t have it”. This is getting ridiculous thinks Novice, and hurls the cassette So lesson

one

case at the cat. Rule two, as Novice has just discovered, is that usually to do something with an object found in the game it has to be something you possess. Simply being in the same room isn't enough, even if, as in this case, it ought to be. Remembering all he has learnt so

far Novice tries again. GET BOOK. “OK. You have it". READ BOOK. At this point Novice will doubtless receive some vital information about his mission, or possibly a crude plug for another game, maybe a bad joke or perhaps a small clue. Anyway, it is at least a glimmer of progress, and the adventure can continue. Seeing as there is nothing more of interest for our intrepid hero, Novice decides to leave the room. Easier said than done. GO WEST. "I can't go in 35 ATARI USER August 1985

says that direction". WEST. “I can’t go in that direction". Novice reads the text again, which clearly states there is a door to the west. He isjust about to learn Rule 3.

Frequently games abbreviate

move—

Brllllg the list of nouns. Simple, huh? 80 now you can see why Novice had this first problem. The computer analysed his input as READ THE. A quick check through the list reveals no SUCh noun as TH E, and the

ment to the compass points, usually N,S,E and W, although occasionally also the NW, NE, SE and SW come into play. This does not necessarily mean that the game will recognise the full word. W, types Novice, and off he goes into another room, with exits

sends its message. some games such as The Will tell YOU Pay—Off, the message where you are going wrong "You

North and East. think by now that you get the general idea, so that we can leave Novice to stumble around and explore by himself for a while. The whole point is that to progress in adventures you need to try and understand exactly what the computer is doing to analyse your input. Once you understand that then

problem.

you begin to see how you can avoid spending half your adventure reading the same boring ”I don't understand”

computer In

—

can't READ

THE". However in many adventures the a

same error message is repeated time and time again With no clue as to the

it gets more complicated than that though. in a bid to save memory, and therefore add more to the game, the input analyser will tend to only recognise the first three or four letters of each word. This means that GET BRON— TOSAURUS is exactly the same as GET BRON.Soyou don'talways need to type OUt great long words to be

understood.

And now we start to see how these

complicated analysers work.

messages.

new

What the computer does is store each chunk of your input and compare it with a list of words that it is programmed to understand. In a simple verb/noun input analyser, the first chunk will be compared to a list of verbs, and if the computer has that verb the program will branch off to check the noun. In the example above, the com— puter checked through a list of verbs and found READ. After that it repeated the process with BOOK in

What they actually do is to ignore most of what you type, noting your action, what YOU are doing it to, and whether it involves some form of modifier, such as LOOK BEHlNDTHE DESK. To my mind therefore, the use of full sentence analysis merely allows the player to type in a more normal, real life instruction, with little or no effect on the likely response, but more

opportunity for a typing error. It does allow the player to input

—Adventuring

string of commands, to be actioned in sequence, which allows a player to move rapidly through sections of the game already completed and that must be a help. But aside from that, the temp— tation to type GET BOOK rather than PICK UP THE DUSTY RED BOOK FROM THE TOP SHELF, gets me every time. Now note from the letters page that at least one person is having a bit of with Lords ofTime from our trouble old friends Level 9.

Tie

/’-s\

——

B 93'er

Tie

Tie ""

——'

,«“s\

—

'—

,f‘~\ '

‘

—"“

Stage 2

‘—

Stage

Vestry

you have any completed

really asking for all

they get. One last piece of news.

‘Adams’ Questprobe | ’

Scott .

The

Fantastic Four was due outin July. I’II take a serious look at the series to date next month.

Stage 3

Stage 4

f’l

ie TTT“>T‘f-" ie

Tie

Belfry

\ [I] ‘v’f ,/’ \\\

’,....\

_..__

Stage 2

\/_~\_1__

\___f Tie

,,.\\' 2 2<.

:>,\/’

ELL

2}.

‘\

\\\

,v'

,"<

\\\

z’ \\

IN last month’s problem we left you with some bell ropes to sort out after Quasimodo had left them in a tangle. The solution is as follows— and you would be well advised to make a map: 1. In the belfry, number the ropes 1—7.

2. Tie 2-3, 4—5, and 6-7. 3. Go down to the vestry, number the ropes 1—7, then pull any rope. If another rope goes up mark the pairs Al—A2, 81—82 and so on. If nothing happens, that rope must be number 1, identify it with an X. 4. Tie X—A1, A2—Bl, and BZ—Cl.

Stage 3

9.2_.__A2__,32

’,/

~_——->~—:—

T'e

Stage 5

$4391?1

‘\

\\\\ \

I):\

Vestry

\\\

\\ 1

Tie '

i2 i3 i4 |5 I6 z/i7

’,_z\

'..._.\

__.

last that the interpreter they month use gives out the occaSional glitch. So

error message

Ix,

,-\\

have decided to begin a "Glitch of the Month" competition, with an Atari User T shirt as the prize. Send your favourite glitch to Atari User, together with your size, and every month I'II announce a winner. This month, as the contest has only just started, the winner is me, and as we havejust looked briefly at Lords of Time, try typing in “Get All" and then try to puzzle out what you would need an Allosaurus for. Sorry boys it may seem like victimisation but anyone who uses "Arfle barfle gloop" as an

in maps send you —. them could help save someone s sanity. Just in case the problem in Lords

unravelllng that tan la in the elfr

adventure

—-

A map would be of assistance as

of Time is getting started, don't forget that a clock sometimes stops and needs a helping hand. Also Level 9 use a slightly different interpretation of IN than most of us. It won't tell you what you are carrying, but may move you in mysterious ways. Speaking of Level 9, mentioned

—-

collect from each zone. Without further details of where you get stuck I'm afraid Brillig's help can only be guesswork, so if you do have a problem please give me an idea of what you have already

——,i——-.[ ]\——J— -_J\-]‘~—-—:]— ,’ \\ \\ ‘F—’ .

No surprises there, as this is another huge game set across nine time zones, with a vital artefact to

well. And

7 ,

’

,’/

Stage 4

“6

5. Return to the belfry and pull rope 1. The rope that moves down is A1 so you can mark that and A2 (you tied them together in step 2). 5_ Pull A2 to identify BI and 32 and so on.

7' Go down, at

program the

says

7 ropes

Yf’h'Ch_

pomt the

OuaSimod'o 7 bells

to the

ties

8. Pull the ropes in the orderthat will ring them 1—7. Our particular solution was 2,5,4,1,6,7,3 but yours could be different due to the

random element. August 7985 ATARI USER

—————————Adventuring AN essential

element, indeed almost definition, of an adventure is that the player moves around, picking up and dropping objects until the game

have to do is take the role of the in other computer for a change words obey the instruction on the cards beginning with card which

solved and the program stops. If you think you have a few good ideas but don't know how to start, you could try writing a program to solve the following problem. You are as usual, alone in a system of caves/rooms that stretch into the distance to the East and the West. You are carrying a hod of bricks and five cards on which is written the

says:

rlc

—

an —

so ve

2 3 4

—

All the caves

1ST ON MERSEYSIDE FGR ATARI

JJ‘V

130

New AmeAaseu

”gs/45,5 Ito 85

RVIcEER

ilsov‘« ,_

alga -’

151

1 “s

-/// _/

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s“?

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s, .)6,.

GAMESI EDUCAT'ON & PROGRAMMING AIDS

§_§—§§ E 55 55:55 5555 E

‘s

3M“

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“N srsw

, ‘

Tania/Iisiny

spits

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“I?

If» M

m Machine Code “" “7,33 Listings Topical Tips Realistic Reviews

J's-1&5?!

“‘

511.325"???

“5&0

‘

subscription now. Or send £1-30p (which includes P&P) to see what the magazine offers.

forasample copy,

Dan’tdelaydaiitodayii THE

051-630 6933

38 ATAR/ USER August 7985

T's

TU'W'a’S

‘ '

swift-Mi

4;wwm.

Send a cheque/PO. for 24-00, made payable to the UK Atari Computer Owners Club’, for your four issues

25555? 555;

71,8EAVIEWROADWALLASEY

§§§JM§ ?u“ ya

Games

MAGAZINEIN BRITAIN? ”if“

cum"

0 SEE IT & TRY IT BEFOREYOU BUY IT .

program to solve it.

HA VE you GOT you” copy OF THE BEST CLUB

lGaIvanIsIng

s m

o LATE NIGHT OPENING MON-SAT UNTIL 6PM

to write

aw"

E,1

STOP 54 are empty and all you

—

cover with:

“My“

couple of hints you should have to go further than 10 to the West. Nevertheless, don't try solving the problem with real bricks, there are a lot of moves involved and you probably will need A

never caves

GET,W,3 GET,E,S GET,E,2

BOOKS& ACCESSORIES ‘

If you follow the instructions correctly you will eventually reach the STOP on card 5. The questions are: a) How many bricks wiIIyou drop,and b) How many E/W moves will you

Filled from 00W" to

0 SOFTWARE FROM ALL THE BEST SUPPLIERS, 0 ER THE COUNTER

and obey card 3.

Notempty

DROP,E,2 DROP,E,3 DROP,W,1 DROP,W,3

IF this cave is EmptyTHEN Dropa brick, go East, and obey card 2, alternatively Get the brick, go West

make?

following: Card Empty

3&5

—

-m-

U.K. ATARI COMPUTER OWNERS CLUB, ’P-0- BOX 3! RaV|9|9hs EssexIndependent User Group

‘

———————-

—

ROLAND

WADDILOVE

takes some of the to“ out of machme code programmmg With his RAW assembler l AS you probably know, a machine code program consists ofa series of binary numbers in the range 0 to 255, although we normallyuse hexadecimal or decimal as it's easier to follow. Even so, programs are very difficult to read. For example, what does $A5 should $D4 mean? Very little imagine, unless you know all the opcodes off by heart. Assembly language is much easier to digest. A mnemonic is used to represent each machine code instruc—

tion.

the codes above can

For example, be

you

represented by: LDA $04 _

’

which is much more meaningful. It's not perfect but it’s a big improve— ment. _

ibDYZebttlr' better. What an assembler does is to convert these assembly language mnemonics into machine code for you, taking all the hard work and tedium out of it. There’s no need to look up the opcodes at all. is even

listings are easier to and much easier to debug if work first time and they

Assembly

follow ~

listing can be saved along with RAW and the machine code run using the USR function. Listing I shows an example of what is possible with RAW and demonstrates some of its functions. It's a short program to convert any upper lower case.

case letters in a string to To use it, enter:

X=USR(1616 ' ADR(A$) ' LEN(A$)) where A$ is the string to be converted after assembling the routine. The assembly listing is entered as a series of data statements. Multiple statement lines are possible by with separating the statements commas and comments can be included by placing them in REM statements.

The first part of an assembler instruction is always three letters. This must be followed by one space if there is a further part. The comma in indexed instructions should be replaced by a full stop otherwise RAW will get confused. Implied instructions are always one part. For example:

RTS All other instructions are two part. Like this:

—

tgzydggtt

RAW, the assembler presented here, will allow you to write assembly language programs. The assembly

m 555; 41:5“ 3. mm 41:50; a any in 50 Data as to ma sn t: ”mum 00 um su u 90 an m

10 um ‘20 mo

Listing

100 um mt 110 mm n!

12. Hrs m as mm Am no ran to. (tn J 150 nu in. ass tautnmmt 170 ms (a! 1m 1“ an us next

ASL LDA

' 190 200 210

Mm on use:

510 mm:

Mm men 22: an new 230 um m. In? mi an as mutual 2“ ER

‘

‘ '

August 7985 ATARI USER

__——___—____—

Notice the single space between the first and second part. Indexed instructions are also two part, such

The rules

but 0“ II t.In d RAW

LDA CMP

asset-n»

use rel humus: an IF rsumwr'

mu lg mum-mm 5015 ten (0 Atari user mo am an 5023 run "55:0 to 1 5m 7 mats“? mu 6m Assessm.....Pass “gPl‘??z? sou nesrm at» as son IF “umo'?l?” Tll?l Ethnic“ ‘

men “mums. ml IF asumzmc" sat sunnmsmtrzr 50” IF "55 will ME‘GSJN? “am!

mm!

Msm-ZSNKQSI.

54“

IE!“ pass

1m mt

mo nu

”LOWE!

("an “IE! ”inserts“

(on mm no. If Isa-a" n:- xzuumzmm 1512. IF mitts: (4 ma tSuEI(TSHD=“

mummmusnmasu uzss rm

“maxim

use If pass run was.“ 51“ 3:9 5200 1mm 64“ m ......., Ilex print I 550. If not nss m m 651.0 ?

1.000

----

Iznu—mntvunnnntwu):

nsu.J);|t$tI.n;=:Enu

6590 I!!!

-“-° “dressing me -If musk: 1m osmmsxuw' r'mznmm 5620 If 036.5)” TlEl “unnumzmtmu 6630 IF 055.5)?!" ms: “11,0:qu

“to

=2=T$=n$tsnm

5410 Put

85,1“? 05:1 21 "Era-arm tartzugsunn“ Lemm?zrdsuutu

5500 El.

40 ATARI USER August 7985

3:31 ma

5140 IF

an ml —--— Get cam 5.10 if tsu,n)"$" m 5m mun

tSum

IF “rm-1 Dznlzato

-1

mnasctrsu

.n:-im*zm

613.

00:2 "3”; 5100 that» as 5110 IF as ?at" mil 5“. smvxf “(Luz-?." tutu com emu. n 5090 5130 IF asu,nz'm* an was as“: com 5090 520! 5058! acumen! 7150:a5tt.43:~ w mt IF arm-x 1m mt mum 5220 If SHED—x m ”I: ”Livia 5230 $250

10 2 its!

fl!!!

-——----—-

me If “(mum-um"

decnmal,

RAMTOP

mu “(4.4 ):?l*:t$=a$ts,mu$)-n=n=z=um use If tStLEIM—I)=").F tn as“. 4)=“L“=IS=A$(G,LElu5)-3)alzzzm m. If autumn-l)" m “morrnszu?hmus-anam

the highest point

memory available to Basic, and 7

,D)-55)*Z(J) 5050 IF

up”

119/256)

(sum byte.x

Numbers can be either decimal or hexadecimal. Hex numbers are preceded by $. A label can be used instead of a number and it‘s possible to have a forward reference to a label as it's a two pass assembler. The first instruction must be ORG followed by a number. This tells RAW where to place the object code. The first 55 bytes of Page 6 in the

5000 RE! 5502

1616

The commas need to be replaced by full stops for RAW to understand them, so they become:

code address to the object $656 hex. for the object code can be Space reserved by moving RAMTOP down.

will set

($D4),Y CMP byte,X LDA

strlct 7

ORG $650

as:

are

memory are used by the assembler but the rest is free. So:

PEEK(106)'256

will tell you what it is currently set to. To reserve 1k of memory—four pages —

use:

POKE(106)'PEEK(106)_4 a GRAPHICScommand to relocate the display list and data. Please note however, that the first 800 bytes above RAMTOP may be corrupted by scrolling a text window, using CLEAR or clearing the screen

then enter

1 667. If osmuzw' m “maxim!" In A5“M):”J":T$:A$(5)=l:2:l£1?l out If “musical" mu 57“ 6682 rs:asts,r.ntm?zn?osm sun 5684 If “255 m asu.»:nl?:l=z:m Ill! use asuuxz?c?ummsrm 6700 If asunusnOwM! 6720 5m ts=n5(s,mms)—mmus em 6704 IF “256 m asumnwwmmzr all 5m AS“.4):"l"=l=3:REI’IIII

an. an. Ismsmzmm 5724 IF “256 we: ASN.0:"I:“=I=2=IET I!!! 6m

tsumwrnzllcxmermu

-——

‘

---

use “Tin-lt?'lm‘l 7m snzzusn1sss,mtah.mtusn 7m tantra“! 55“ 7305 If 1:sz mu magma 1m 731. If 1:1 ut- um " 7320 use. “in? l': 7m n: 1:3 ml “mimwzssnrn: a nut-zmvrzzwzlmnsm mm swam nmmzacosn nu IF “a.” Ow- m "rinses-s: a magnum 7350 IF 10255 m 334-2 7350 IF ”255 m mural! am 7m If a“ nu amuse 7m magmas“ 55“ '

75a mun

.. .

Assembler

———_—_

with:

CHR$(125) ‘

The last assembler instruction

set to

particular values in this way it must be done at the start of the

program. Bytes, words

and

must be END. Thls tells RAW to stop

assembling! Labels are defined by preceding them With a full stop. They can be up to four characters long and must be lower case letters. Numbers can be included in the name. Up to 255 labels can be defined. A label can be set to the current object code address or to any positive value, so:

.Ioop will

set loop to the current address. This can be done at any point in the

assembler listing. _

will set num to 123.

an!

---

Define label nzmu

strings

placed in the memory at the current address. Strings must be enclosed by single quotes.

——-—--—

assembly listing

DATA

“Mr-05W somem=xa=m MI REY!!!“ 65” RE! "------?it“ --“-““' “If! m 8510 IF “(M‘HW' 852. 153519595!!! 5“. "? 505“ 8530 If “?an?“ KE

P?'?tzl?m

”manhunt

”15 9.2. mo ma

”33 31“ nu

Z(I):I:Z(D=1i:lt2):255:l(3):4l? HS:“01234567MDEF" L$=" "Munoz" ":L5(2)=L$:L=0 asst»: 9090er 1:9 to uni»

nth zzz,134.2u,m.1n.uz,x pm 160.024)

number

find

used to

note the rules they’re strict. quite Apart from that you’ll find RAW to be friendly, functional and Please

—

extremely flex1ble. Happy assembling!

5mm...“ 92“ nsunmsunv'uusmtunu”St "?aunts... J‘YAISIMIIKSL. ......sus .......n mo nstmommzmmunoxs....u

numoxc....uvn.muu....mn.m uxF. ...? 522. nsrLEumuyzt-scmm........u

utmost....cwnoamsxx....msuu ..

um..." 923! ”(tsutmuu?mcwx.

. . .

”Hep

veem....1wxm1....mrcm

?SL‘..-."

’ch‘

“

munusuuz-umm........n rcmu:.-..mxmoma...

9240

man:mux=wuucm...........

Jnfbm

manumuy:wm.......... ..nnmo....sscxmn............wc

9140

mm..." use mammnnz?nuxzmnunun

“immuumnmmunmrtear

”emu. .. .ubmlm... .. . .. "News DEE..." use ?tmanuzucrmsscu........cr xemcrucc....mxsscmx.. “Will-“SW? Inch..."

mtteumunzustwsni........... .anemic»....smsncu..........”mi

9260

..Emsn....unim............m:

Inca..." 9500 [am um nu

Lm...." 917. ???lmf??f‘jlmunuun

1.010

03mm"

I'll.

If gnu.

..»mm....un»cum....mf

lSIf....“ use mantmmznwuem..........

“Minnsflmcmu...”“um J

Label or

vesucsmc....o£vx....txu....sr?rsnr

1“,1u,1x'3,213,1u.133.zu,

Mun“ 91“ i15(|.El(ll5)lD=“lVSJ?WL...n“...

vuss),zm

Label names,

fast string search. It’s mnemonics and labels.

nufnnu

855! NTE?HS?IIITm/Z“)“Wadi?“ lzssnuzlmz?osl? 650th? " "nk??? was“ 6500 856! ”RE PJWEH'NE P?.HTEI=P=P+2= ustm 8600 Fan 1:6 to LEIM) as“ me P,Ascm$u,n)w=ru am next I 0630 Items --*--—-— Mics m0 RE" “m“ sue mi nsus:J?snusunnsuou),

state—

9130

mxwznnlznm

0540 IF AS(4.4)="S" "El

digits.

Values of the labels

There 5 a short machine code subroutine which is simply a super

“Minna...........onnsw. “manual.........ounsu...." nzo usazumfnzummuu mmueumtom

secure

H 9X

title describing

104,133,215,1u,133,zu,152,l,150 m1 nu 3,177.214.m,zn,m,10.ut ,15,247,134.uz,159,0,133 9031 um zu.x.24,1ss,u4,us,4,1n, zu,155,215,105,c,133,215.232,2u

LStL?u,Luu):a$(z,J—n=I$=0$u

mStruction, MSSembler nemonies.

ments. It’s not very long and the program uses subroutines to find the address— ing mode, labels, opcodes and so on.

8270

A$ M$ H$

sPME

If m “Ell l$(L*4*1.LHu)=nsuL?lmsnzwuwzuunn?m

The program has been numbered starting at line 5000. This is to allow to 4999 to be used for the

6260

DEFB $40 DEFW 16384 , DEF$ ‘A ssem bl er

3210 IF M55 tin

Jzi 3130 F“ 1:2 1. 15m” 0on IF “mm-E“ THE! J=I 325. m" 1

ObleCt code addres 5-

BYT E BYTE1 Object code. BYTE 2

object code

labels are to be

VAR'ABLES

P can be

Each subroutine has a its function.

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Part II of MIKE ROWE’s your program dlsplays the

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42 ATARI USER August 7985

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Before you start to construct your problems to be considered. If you are modifying an existing list there are several

—

to glve

professlonal touch

A CUSTOM display list, mixing several modes on the same screen, can quickly and easily give your display a professional touch. There are two ways to create one. Firstly you can modify a standard display list created by the operating system after a Graphics call. Secondly you can create an entirely new list from scratch, or even have several display lists in memory at the

display list it is safest to use the graphics mode that takes up most memory in your final display list as a starting point for your modified list. Also try to avoid your screen memory crossing a 4k boundary—4k, 8k, 12k, and so on to 48k— as it will cause problems. If you muSt cross a border, say ifan 8k models used,then when the screen reaches the boun— dary you need to insert another load see last month's memory scan article in the display list to point to the start ofthe next 4k block of screen RAM. Differentgraphics modes take upa different amount of screen RAM per line. If the operating system expectsa line to take 40 bytes and in the modified Iista line takes only 20,then the data below this line will be shifted half way across the screen. There are two ways of avoiding problems with this. First you can use "dirty programming” and design your newlinesin groupsoflineswhich add to make the correct numberofbytes— see examples later. The other way is to avoid using the operating system for Drawto, Plot or

how

Print commands and poke directly to memory. If you are to use Basic commands such as Plot, Drawto or Print on the screen you may need to fool the 08 into thinking it is drawing on the correct screen. This is done by poking location 87 ($57) with the Basic graphics mode of the line involved. Second is the problem of Basic checking each command to check that it is in the range allowed by the graphics mode it thinks is in use. This can commonly lead to Basic thinking it is going to print off the screen and giving an error when you know full well that it is on the screen. This is solved by tampering with locations 88 and 89. These contain the location of the top left corner of screen memory and the OS uses these to calculate the legality of a screen command. The top corner can be calculated by PEEKl88)+PEEK(89)*256. lf screen

ues these locations are poked with the memory location of the start of the line to which you want to plot or print, then the start of this line becomes position 0,0 and therefore within legal range. Knowing the number of bytes taken up per line in each mode is therefore needed as it is for the second point above.

Bas'c m°de _

m°de

2 3 4

8 9 10

13 15 15 15 15

9 10 1

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20 20 40 40 40 40 40

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D'isplay List

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It works, but again it is dirty programming. The maximum number of scan lines allowed in a display list is usually 192, This display list is more than 192 scan lines |ong_ In reality Antic can cope with slig htly more lines th 3 n the theoretical maximum. have found that an extra 24 usually is stable, but more than this and the screen will roll. l

See last month's article for a table of the number of scan lines for each

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programming teChmque the number Of (Falwlate “59d and mak‘? 3”? be'f‘g that the total ls 192 or |eSS- Th's W'” usually involve mOVihg the end Of the display list and rewriting it as in Program lI. As can be seen, the end of the display list is indicated by a number 65 $41 The two numbers following this are the location of the start of the “St m the order.L°W Byte’ display High Byte. Therefore the first number can be found by PEEK(560) and the SGCOhd by PEEKl561), as these should be the same. The third way is to create your OWn list from scratch. This is how virtually all machine code programs get their displays and one of the reasons that they can be so Spectacular. If you avoid using the OS to draw to the screen then many Of the limitations of custom display lists also —

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DisplayList

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the hard 'work for you and. the programming becomes more dif?cu'tProgram ”I demonstrates both these points but to keep it short does not do justice to the capabilities of your Atari. As mentioned previous“, Graphics modes 124 5 are only directly available on the XL and XE Ataris However all the machines are t h 933 cape b| e 0 f d.'Sp

nouns:

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Many 90mm€r015=1I games in faCt use Graphics 12, Anne mode 4. The two most useful of these modes, 12 and 15, can be obtained using programs IV and V. Program Vl is just a little bit of |Unacy for light relief. This is a brief overview of custom display lists and gives some Idea of how the V can im p rove the a pp ear— ance Of a S'mp'e_scr?e”it to life you'can However to bring use Display List lnterupts to achieve numerous special effects. We will diSCuSS this next month. .

HICS

Program

getting

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ART ATARI (16k). Create graphic masterpieces with your Atari. Up to 80 different colours can be displayed at once. Pictures can be saved to tape. Demonstration

tape version £8 disc

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to a e t enu mumit tape as: Tal(lelt0 [gist0 Disc to Tape Disc aisle") II (I move! 0 f HI25 Contained on 3 double

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44 ATAR/ USER August 7985

014190 5635

(Sam—9pm)

For

friendly service.

Cheques and P.0.'s to: P.F. software, Dept AU, 14 Kirkstall Avenue, Littleborough, Lanes OL15 9JA.

KEN WARD puts you in touch with software do or a stylus to let your ?ngers the working —

—

ONE of the most enjoyable items you can get to use with your Atari the Touch Tablet. Using the cartridge you get with it makes drawing a joy. But it could be used for other purposes as well. The Touch Tablet can be used anywhere a joystick, paddle, light pen or mouse would be used, and it’s faster than most. You don't have to drag the cursor across the screen as with the joystick, paddle or mouse. You place your pen where you want it straight away. And the advantage over the light pen iS that YOU don’t have tO piCk anything up YOU iUSt use yourfinger is

Atari Artist

—

or the stylus.

The only problem is that at the moment not a iOt of software iS available for it- The only commercial program know Of that has a TOUCh Tablet option is The Music Construc— tion Set from Electronic Arts. Having tried it, can say that the program certainly is a IOt easier to use with the Touch Tablet than with a joystick. So it's up to us to supply our own programs until the software i

get around to it. OK, so where do we start? The tablet can be read by: houses

m, PADDLEH" vemca’ madmgs .

m 0re before

overcome

using

raw I n

an these

read—

ings.

0 They have to be related to screen positions we don't have a 228 by 228 pixel screen toworkwith.Also in converting the figures to relate to the screen we have to invert the vertical readings. If we are going to use a player/missile for the cursor, we have the added problem of coordinating P/M positions and screen position. 0 We have to deal with the cursor wobble common to all variable resistance input devices. The triggers on the tablet can be read at PTRIG(O) and or at STICK(O). The trigger on the plug—in —

characters on the screen. We could simply divide 228 by 40 which gives us a divisor of 5.7, which would work fine apart from one small it means that for the problem extreme left and right positions we would be right up against the frame of the tablet. The ideal area to work in is marked on the tablet, which is far enoughin to allow even the biggest finger to get to the edge. Remember, not everyone —

will want to use the stylus. So let's look at it in practice: 1. “?uxes

. z. gargantuan/5.334

it :::;;:::‘:."::f:*:::::’:

rs.";f.:pr:'rss.frfiztfaz'?fiz’riz

The readings given are between

228. The horizontal ones are from left, 1, to right, 228, and the vertical ones from bottom 1, to top 228. So we have two problems to and

srrcr<<o>. lf sncr<<o><15 then one of the triggers has been pressed. For example, let’s assume we are going to work in Graphics 0. The first thing to do is to relate the 228 reading from the tablet to the 40

’

so com 20

now

you try this out you'll see that we

have

additional problem

. August 7985 ATARI USER

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Using the touch tablet-as

keyboard

readings outside the screen range. But it’s only a minor one. We can overcome it With a series of lF X<0 IF Y<O IF Y>39 lF x>39 .

.. '

that was all there was to it we would all be churning out Touch Tablet programs. Try this one and you'll see the other problems: If

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The first is that you have to go slowly to draw a continuous line, and if you were flashing a cursor and for and/or key checking trigger presses it would be even slower. The second problem is the odd random pixel being drawn as you lift and lower to the stylus the pad. My solution is a vertical blank

to work them all outand store them in an array during the initialisation. The programs that follow demons— trate ways of using the Touch Tablet. Tablet Zero is a demo of usmg the Touch as a Tablet selection deVic'e. Tablet 8 is a Graphics 8 drawmg program. As you will see from this, BVen With the VB' routine It is painfully SlOW drawing a continuous line. Part of the problem is that the Graphics 8 screen has a hi her lution than the Touch Tailet iA?iLh means you have to Plot and Drawto. So now the ball is in your court. if you can improve on my ideas, send them in. And if you come up with a program using the Touch Tablet send that in too. As a final suggestion of a use for the Touch Tablet, hOW about an alternative one finger keyboard handler for handicapped people? It covers a smaller area than the keyboard, and all the multiple key inputs could be handled as a cumulative input. The for such a program screen could look like the one shown in ,

Fig/lireoun in 9 s, fouoi an ifmuggeavtgrargezdoJthfAeZS-LES r

store the result. The random pixels

problem

question of checking for a "stylus off" reading. This part l've handled in the To save process— basic programming. ing time

calculating the X—Y coordinates and checking those out of cursor range, I've added a routine 45 ATARI USER August 7985

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August 1985 ATAR/ USER

l ATARI

who buy Atari Logo are doubly fortunate. Not only have they acquired a program— ming language which is friendly to use and will help them to users

develop a good programming style, but also with it they have a

because the Logo comes on

Ius

version of Logo with some very special features. The Atari machines are really very good host computers for Logo. Firstly,

with some disc—based Logos running on what are really Basic computers. Secondly, the Atari's collision counter routine provides an exciting extension to Logo which allows interesting things to be done with the resident in the hardware sprites distinct from the as computer, program which are another feature of the machine. Thirdly, the Atari has four voices and is capable of producing musical effects. Though possession of a disc drive is an undoubted advantage, it is not essential. Your work can be saved _

called primitives. When you type one of these the system knows what to do.

There isavery simple syntax which indicates to the system how it is to treat words It encounters. any which If there IS no mark in front of the word it that is just the word itself it. to execute attempts It sees it as a command, either a primitive or a procedure. But more on procedures shortly. If the word is immediately preceded by a colon. “dotS” in it means that the value Logoese, assigned to that word is being called —

—

or eac

ROM

cartridge and, because of the way the machine is arranged, it really is a Logo machine. It doesn’t waste valuable memory space resetting vectors, as is done

m a assrgned one, you WI” get the FIBS HAS NO message saying the name Of the VALUE “f E'BS was word), which IS somewhat more helpful than NO SUCH VARIABLE IN 2050. Numbers are treated by Logo as being special forms of words. Lists are simply collections of words or other lists. They frequently form the values which get assigned to words. Lists are indicated, delimited, by the use ofsquare brackets, thus[THIS _

IS A LIST]If

you

MAKE

"GREET [HELLO,

ATARI TURTLE LOVERS.]

and

then

on to cassette.

To get the best from this Logo, though, it is highly desirable that you have a colour television or you may use a monitor with either the 600XL or 800XL. Atari Logo will run on the 400 and 600XL machines which have only 16k of RAM although this really does notleave much room to do

D E R E K RADBU R N IntrOduces you to a micro love affair

—

lot.

The whole point about Logo

that

it is intended to beatoolto think with.

Unlike some other programming languages, it does not try to force the human to accommodate to the machine, but attempts to create a highly—consistent world which is friendly to the human user. This is reflected in the Logo data types, words and lists, which really reflect the types of objects which human beings process. What are words? Well, in Logo words are pretty much the same as they are in the

human world, collections of

charac—

ters, terminated by a space. Spaces are significant in Logo, miss them out and the system will issue an error message. There are a group of words

which

the

Logo

system

48 ATARI USER August 7985

starts

for

that is, it attempts to evaluate. However, if there isa double quote in front of the word, such as "TOPS, then the system takes the word literally and does not do anything to it. So PRINT"TOPS would result in TOPS appearing on the screen. Let's expand this a little by attaching a value to TOPS. This can be done by using the MAKE primitive. In order to work, MAKE has to have two things. The first must be a name (quoted word) and the second may be another word or a list. l'Il deal with lists in a moment. Here's an example: MAKE “TOPS “SPOT. This has now assigned the word SPOT as a value to be called when you type PRINT :TOPS, so consequently SPOT appears on the screen.

with up

—

you should attempt to reference a word hasn't been

value when

follow it with PRINT :GREET you should be able to predict now what will appear. You may have noticed that all of the Logo here has appeared in upper case characters. This is because Logo is case—sensitive and does not recognise lower case letters. With the earlier Atari 400 and 800 machines it is very important to be aware of this, since the Caps Lower key is directly adjacent to the Return key. Accidentally pressing this key will result in lowercase letters, which will not be recognised by Logo. B y some rath e r u n h a ppy ergonomics it is necessary to press two keys together Shift and Caps/Lower to recover uppercase letters. This feature is particularly unhelpful to young Atari Logo users. Turtle graphics is one of the best known and copied features of Logo. —

—

——————————

ff.

«xi/fa“

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Jim (arr/ff

Indeed, it is an all too-common misconception that this is all that Logo is. I

hope by choosing to start with

words and lists have dispelled some of these mistaken notions. Essen— tially, turtle graphics is an example of the friendly human interface in Logo. We all have bodies, and through them we have a spatial awareness of body geometry. We know which way we are facing, and know our position. We do not use coordinates to guide l

our

movement

—

simply go

forwards or backwards and make turns which alter our heading at appr0priate times. Logo uses precisely these com— mands to control the position of the turtle. It may be a robotic device which runs around on the floor or it may be just a symbolic screen turtle. The Atari one actually does look like one, but most are only triangles. Whichever is used, both can record

their paths by putting down a pen, one of three per turtle. There are four turtles. Their shape can be redefined by the user. Thisis done by calling the EDSH command. This must be followed by the number of the shape to be edited (or created). Suppose you wish to create shape —you may have up to 15—then you would type EDSH 1. You would be rewarded by seeing an 8 column by 1

16 row grid.

Shape definition takes place by

moving around the grid using the combination of holding the Control key down and pressing the cursor arrow keys on the right of the keyboard. The space

bar acts

which, when

toggle

pressed, fills in empty cells, or clears filled cells, whichever is under the cursor. There is one point to bear in mind about these user defined shapes.

Unlike the original system turtle character they do not alter their orientation to reflect the heading which has been selected. Put simply, this means your planes could be seen flying backwards across the screen,

though

prefer

multi—coloured

flying

pigs.

Another special feature of Atari Logo are multiple turtle sprites. It is possible to have up to four turtles, which may have their original shape or be given one defined by the user. Any of these shapes may be given a velocity by using the SETSP command, which affects the currently active turtle. The speed may be between —200 and 200 (you can guess the effect of a negative input, can't you?). Do not view the world of the turtle as being separate from words and lists

—-

everything in

Logo is based on

these. For example, let's drawashape

0) Type: FD 30

RT 30 FD 30 LT 30 30. When you press Return, provided you remembered the FD

spaces,

the five commands should

execute.

Now try this: MAKE "WRIGGLE [FD 30 RT 30 FD 30 LT 30 FD 30]. Clear the screen by typing CS and pressing Return. (At this point I shall expect that you already know or have realised the need to press Return.) Now try: RUN :WRIGGLE. The RUN command in Logo needs to have list of executable items as its input. Logo has a nice loop structure, REPEAT, which needs two inputs. The first must be a numeric value which tells it how many times to loop. The second must be a list with executable items for it to do. Try this: REPEAT3 :WRIGGLE. Do you see the connection between RUN and REPEAT? Now that use of REPEAT was not too interesting was it? Try this: REPEAT 6 [RUN :WRIG— GLE RT 180 RUN :WRIGGLE RT 120]. Another way of achieving the same result is to type TO WRlGRAY. As soon as you typed this and pressed Return notice the change. Look at the prompt. Instead of the usual toplevel (interactive command level) prompt of ?, you will see a >. This signifies that you are in the defining mode and have begun to define a procedure. The computer no longer responds '

‘———’ August 7985 ATAR/ USER

Logo

————————

immediately to what you type, it storing it and will only execute

when you tell it to. You do this by typing the name which follows TO. You are on the way to defining a

procedure. The change which occurs

in the

computer's behaviour when the mode is first invoked often causes confusion to novices. There are only two ways in which you can

defining

leave this mode. The first is by typing on a line of its own,theword END,inwhich casethe procedure gets defined. The other is to abort the whole enterprise by .

With the Atari, this

does not

?HUL yp0L

10° 100

have

2213eo/tahsetf 23golf?i?tltai‘iif 5223.2 that! Should you press the Break key, definition proceeds no further. So, to continue, type: RRIBRAY

ng?gzgf'm

‘3' “19°“

“7

brings them all together. Experiment with them and have fun.

—_——_——__———_—_ This procedure a regular

This procedure draws

polygon of a given number of sides, of a size scaled by the number of sides:

{FD “SIZE / tSIDES) / tSTDESl]

(360

END

T0 HRIGGLE RT

=smss zsxze aSIDES

REPEAT

EN D

the Break key.

pressing

755

3"UL'P°L CS

SI LT 38

procedure draws

This

a predeter—

mined number of polygons rotated around an axis:

END

Notice now that we have a variable attached to WRlGGLE and also a procedure called WRIGGLE. The Logo system sees both as different _

objects. To alter

T0 HULTPOL lel'lES REPEAT

tTIHES

tSIDES =SIZE zSIDES tSIZE

PC.CHOOSE

SETPC PM

BB = Pa PN

RANDBH 127)

[PE.CH006E]

END

[POLYB

This one simply sets a

at 353 / =TIHESJ

position for

the turtle:

END

chooses a new pencolour, but checks to see that it is not the same as the background colour. Notice the IF test. lF is always followed by a list which gets RUN if the condition tested for is found to be true. Optionally a second list will get executed if the condition is false:

previously defined

procedure means entering the editor. This can be done by typing ED “WRIGRAY. lt is a full screen editor of the sort usually found with Logos. What you see on the screen is what you get. Movement around the screen is by the Ctrl and arrow key combination already described. After editing, you may leave and retain your amendments by typing Esc, or abandon the changed version, while still retaining the original unaltered version by typing Break. Logo is essentially an exploratory environment. Although Atari Logo is accompanied by extremely good documentation, the best way to become accomplished with it is to do it.

“Aids:giggingizzvahrsmfsx

“end”. Rather, have tried to hint at beginnings for your own learning and pleasure. 50 ATARI USER August 7985

T0 CHOOSEPOS PU

SE” “55

(RAMON

1")

”53

(RRNWH

1503

SETY PD

—

END

This rocedure c y cles throug h the three p (Eng '

PREITYPOL SCREENCOL

”AXE

PENCHQQSE

IF 9"

35795 5

2 [SETPN

(PM

[551914

ST F5 END

REPEAT 3 [PC.CHUOSE

mum m not

(1 +

RANDOM

FINISHP

be an

This procedure causes three poly» gonal patternsto bedrawn in random colours in random positions. 86 gives the value of the background colour, STshows turtle, FS givesafullscreen of graphics you should be able to deduce the rest. lt'simportant to note that this procedure leaves the system as it found it:

CHOOSEPOS

12)

we)

RANDGH

Peucnuasst

This procedure waits for a key to to indicate the user has be. pressed

?nished:

‘

w rm EN

"SCREENCUL

IF KEYP [STOP] [RECYCLE

END

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Wise "an

MIKE

BIBBY gives you the lowdown

IN previous articles we've seen that binary numbers can be added and subtracted just as our more familiar decimal numbers are. And, of course, we can multiply and divide them. There are, however, other ways of combining two binary numbers that are extremely useful in dealing with computers. They're also easy to use, so let’s have a look at them. Firstly, we'll see how we can NOT a binary number simple, one—bit numbers first. By the way, we're going to be dealing exclusively with binary numbers this month, so we can drop the % sign. The rules for doing a NOT are

—

If the bit is 1 than it becomes 0 If the bit is 0 then it becomes 1 If

into

you like, the NOT converts a its opposite. So NOT 1 = 0

bit

with

certainly true, NOT 0 If

we are to NOT

is 1_

binary number

consisting of several bits, we simply apply the rule for NOT to each bit individually. 80 NOT 101 10010 becomes 01001101 Some people think of this process as turning the number on its head, so it's sometimes called inverting. Others call it taking the complement of the number. NOT just works on a single binary number. However, there are other sums or operations that have a set of rules for combining two binary

numbers. For instance, we can AND two binary numbers. Let's look at the rules for ANDing a single bit with another bit.

When you think about it, there are four possible combinations of bits that we could AND—Owith 0,0with 1,

with O and with 1. We write that we are ANDing, say, 1

54 ATAR/ USER August 7985

as 0

AND

0 AND 0 0 AND 1 1 AND 0 1 AND 1

And NOT 0 = 1 Why do we use the word NOT? Well, mathematicians often use the number to mean true and Oto mean false_ So NOT means not true, which means false, which is 0. That is, NOT is 0. And, as not false is most

We can also OR two binary numbers. The rules for ORing a single bit with another bit are as follows.

The rules for ANDing are:

0 0 0

= =

(case (case (case (case

Again there

nations:

0 OR 0 0 OR 1 1 OR 0 1 OR 1

Notice that the only time the result "U9 '5 When the “N0 bits ANDed are both —true. This helps us to we use the word AND see why to the describe. operation.If you think of first bit as “this” the the bit as “that", what second and were domg when we're AN Ding is asking-whether “this and that” is true. "This and can only be true that'.’ both "this” is true AND "that" when is hence the use of AND to true describe the process: For example, conSider the state— ment_that it is dry and sunny. is true only if dry is true and ThIS. sunny is true— case d. If either of the two, or both are false c the whole cases a, b, statement is false, since it isn't both dry and sunny. We can AN D pairs of binary numbers of more than one bit just apply the rules of AN Ding to each bit indiViduaIly. For example: 1

‘

four

possible

combi—

are

(case (case (case (case

e) f)

—

AND 10010110 AND 10110011 gives 10010010

In this case you only get a false result, 0, when both bits are false. lf either-or both bits are true, 1, the result is true. it’s easy to see why we use OR to describe this. If one OR the other OR both is true the whole thing is

true.

Let’s use the meteorological analogy again. Consider the state— ment that it

is dry or sunny. This is onlyfalse when it is NOT dry and NOTsunny—casee—otherwise it is TRUE cases f, g, h. .To_sum up, with OR the whole is thing true ifeither or both the things —

being ORed is true. As we did with AND, we can OR pairs of numbers with more than one bit we just apply the rules of ORing to each bit individually. For example: —

100101 10 on 101100" gives 10110111 Q/n the next article we'll/00k atEOR

and the use of masks.

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mkmi’m August 7985 ATARI USER

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————————Mailbog /

BOUGHT

Atari 300)“

soon after they became available in the firm belief that the full hardware details would be available, as they were for the earlier Atari 800.

”El V'Na lNTn THE ,

—

before banking it out, to zero. NMlE'N ($D40E) 0n'Y SEt it back to $40 64 decimal when Y ou h a vs swntched the OS ROM back into place $D000—$D7FF can never

running wag/tisdqt‘hisaggjre/rgigleizz set

following '

0 How to enable the shadow RAM. Your article on the XE indicates that the technique used is not as easy for the XL. . The details of the signals _

and the timing at the edge connectors. With this information avail— able, constructors could attach a variety of peripherals to the

XL series.

‘

Donald W. Sharp, Newcastle upon Tyne. _

0 The shadow RAM under the Operating System and Basic - that's $AOOO—$BFFF for Basicand $COOO—$CFFF& $D800-$FFFF for the OS — can be switched .

in and out by

changing bits 0 and location $D301, as shown .

in .

—

HAVE endeavoured to type the Frog Jump game ~in your June issue into my computer. —

this

keeps

coming up with Error on Line 340, 350 and 360. [haven’t typed any further, 80 do not knowifthere are any

other errors. I am wondering, therefore, if you could advise me of the correct lines for this game. Also, / have an Atari 800 with cassette, but am thinking

ofbuyingadisc drive.

used as

contain

information

Vital

‘to

Amm’

Buuetln boards THANKS for an excellent and much needed magazine for the Atari community. Your June issue on communications was especially interesting. saw

Can you tell me ifitis possible to record from the cassettes to disc?

the numbers for

bulletin boards and wondered whether you would include

Th 9 eaS|est way IS to save on to tape from one machine, 3 wap th e recor d enover, an d load it back on the .

’num a

24-hour .

auto answer _

_serwce. Saunders, V|a Prestel.

B nan

again.

other. Also, the jOYStICk ports be re—programmed for C?"

Micro

segritheaonngeeout there duelitriféz

COHHBCtIOI'I

't and WOUId care to has writedon; in. There two are V0 sockets on each m the Am” peripheral range, and you Simply plug the ”mt into the back Of second the first, and so on.

WOULD like to know whether two Ataris can be connected by an l/O cab/e (Program Recorder/Disc Drive

cord) and a program loaded from one to the other? Second/y, how do you connect several peripherals . which all use the //0 Interface to yourAtari ?— Craig Brady, . age 14, Bristol. RS. I typed in the Poke to suppress the clicking sound on my Atari 400 76k, and after trying four times, it still didn’t

The

Edge connectors lOWN anAta?'4oo andwould like to exp/0,9 its expansion and interfacing capabilities. Due to the distinct lack of an expansion orifice, I am finding it not at all easy.

—

‘"

l/O cable will not allow data to go from one machine to another. By rewiring “Data—In" to "Data-Out", changing the +5V line and

have used number one and not I capital letter i in strings like L1$. Most commercial games are fairly heavily protected, so you would probably not be able to move them to disc particularly if theyload in more than one seCtion' However, the time saved in loading possibly outweighs the cost of replacing your favourite games. You may also be able to recoversome of the money by selling the cassette versions to people who haven't yet got a disc drive.

the

work. 0 A standard

°°def5 "S‘ed

m issue from letters page Dawd Eckersley work OK’ bUt they are for the XL and XE r a nges on y. Th ey use 0f 5°”.“9 the new features not available on the old Atari ran g e S 0 r ry.

to d: f haul ties

/ have many games on the cassettes, but don’t want to buy a disc dffVe if it is impossible to break into the G. Newin, program Walton—in—Thames. Q There were no errors in the listing as printed, so you have aImOSt certainly made some typing mistakes. You don't say what the error number was, but we suspect it was an Error 5- |f this is the case, you should check Line 60 very carefully and make sure you have entered it as listed. For example, make sure you

very 90.0" was series of about usmg articles the the Parallel busln January to April Antic Magazme (VOL 3/9 to V0" 3/12)' “ started scratch, and from how to en?ied up showmg you “J" a” “3-232 and, PM“ interface “3 the bus connec— tor.

There

ever tried it, though.

07-638 2034. Its

the clock in/out lines, might work. Can't say we've

re-wiring

RAM, because they

after ° ey an 'a'” Chdet'SUCh

However,

the table With the article in the June issue ofAtari User. However, it can't be done from Basic, as the computer would instantly crash hence the warning not to try it with a POKE. Switching either Basic or the 05 must be done with a machine code program in control. To stop the OS

Jum

—

mine in future listings? The board is Atari based and orientated, cal/ed Cyber— 2 one, an d t h e b er Is

which would need me to access both the data and

—

address bus. Is there any get to these?

—

wayl

can

lhave noticed some edge connectors on the400’sboard could you explain these? Also could you tell me ifthe Atari 2100 is directly compatible with the Atari disc drive, without the expansion in te rfa c e ? _ E d m u n d _

McConne“ Leicesteh . Information on circuit

lay—

out connections and so on is in the “Technical Reference

Notes for the 400/800~ by Atari at £11 It

published

_—‘_—_’ August 1985 ATARI USER

NAal

should

be available from specialist shops, or mail order from Software Express, Silica Shop, and others. The edge connectors you mention are extensions of the left in the processor bus machine as engineer test points, but it's up to you what you want to do with them. Don't forget that if you open

’

bleep

_0n

every third ?ne

scree"

YOU

went down. / to the ShUP .went where-l

[gotitfrom t seemed anz’theacheiljedit’.’ t at t e eep was on all Of the BOOXLS'

what

please, [1/3353 "tell {779 that bleep domg

device?

kind at safety Neil McCulloch,

some —

Denny, Stirlingshire.

We're not

mean

what you but suspect that you're sure

referring to the beep which warns that you are about to exceed the allowable length of program line. if so, it's certainly meant to happen.

people who have only got 76k and will stay with 76k could you please ask your advertisers to show how much memory the product needs? I know that the 600XL is ”going out” but don't rub salt in the wounds. Also regarding the monthly disc spare a thought for those with no disc drive and put the offer on cassette as well-K. Fallas, Middleton,

Manchester. -

D Olng It t h e

hard way CONGRATULAT/ONSon your magazine. / have a 600XL which / 170“th in January and until Atari User was issued / had learned practically nothing. The‘articles by Dave RUSS~ ell, Mike Bibby, PeteBibbyand others are so easy to follow thatl'm amazed by what/ can do already. /

have the books Atari

Memory

grams by Linda M. Schreiber and Making the Most of Your

check

Atari

HAVE a 600XL. Being only 76k memory, many advertise~ ments for games and utilities don’t help me at all. If I want to order anything/ first have to write or telephone the company

selling the

to see how much memory it takes up. / am saving up for the 48k

product

58 ATARI USER August 7985

on.

Also, is it possible to get a modem which costs less than —

forgotten for the moment‘how to write J). Nowl can convert numbers into binary. Now about the listings. 1 tried four times to write (if that's the termlA/phabet Train into my computer, which took me about three hours each time. / could never get it to work, so I tore it up in disgust. / did manage to get Frog Jump to work, but not very well but that could be because of my joystick. Submarine works fine, bUt not Etcha Sketch nor Attack —

Squash. /

did have

program

recorder at one time bUt COU/d

nevergetit torecordanyofthe

listings so I got rid of it. NOW all / have is my computer and joystick, so I have to type in the listings so it would be every time great if/ COU/d get them to work every time. Any tips please? —-Colm —

Keegan, Holyhead.

Our main suggestion is that you buy another recorder or save up for a disc drive. It will save you hours of typing time which you can use to debug your programs.

by Paul Bunn, and

although I learned a little bit from these / wasn’t learning enough. / could never figure out what data was until / read Dave Russell's second article on graphics mode. Now I can write small programs using data. / hadn't got a clue what binary was until Mike Bibby’s article on the subject. (I've

Defender score COULD you tell me if there is Atari user group in Bristol? Also, having seen that high score on Drop Zone, I would like to see whetheranyone can beat my top score on Defender. I managed to reach over3 an

Fragapane,

0 The address of the East Bristol user group is 0/0 2 Channons Hill, Industrial Estate, Fishponds, Bristol. The Maplin modem costs but you'll need around £50 an 850 module as well. This applies to all the cheaper modems as far as we know. .

expansion, but for all the

Programming with 55 Pro-

——

Bedminster, Bristol.

there?

million and gave up with over 60 lives although it took me about 2% hours. Let’s have more articles and programs on the more—com— p/icated side of the Atari computer—machine language techniques, hardware, and 80

£700?

Atari User Europa House 68 Chester Road Hazel Grove Stockport s|(7 SNY

—

WHEN/gotmleOOXILlfound a the

there was

Mailbag Editor

—

Why the bleeplng?

‘

machine, you will

invalidate your guarantee. All Atari peripherals disc drives, printers, cassette re— will corders, and so on connect to any Atari computer directly, via the 13—pin socket on the side. However if you only have a 16k machine, you would only have about 8k left for proafter DOS loads gramming into memory.

Ma'|bag

WE welcome letters from readers about your experiences using the Atari micros, about tips you would like to pass on to other users and about what you would like to see in future issues. The address to write to is:

—

your

anhtened

0“ YOUR news item about A tan-"g in the night" ‘seemedquite appropriate can—

going “bump

my800XL'SpenC-hant for ”locking-up" when I play the ScottAdams’Ghost Town

Swen-"y

adventure. I wonder if other readers have found that their machines take fright in this manner? J_

Hugill, Leicester. .

Checkmg errors WISH to comment on Les Bostock's request that some form of typing check program be included in yourmagazine. I run a computer club for 5 to 73—year-olds and when/ see good programs in maga— zines I ask the children if they would like to type them in. They do, and enjoy it. When all those lines have been typed in and they then try to run it, you can-imagine how disappointed they are when it shows errors at line so and so. It is then left to me to try to debug the programs. This takes up much—needed time I

when

could

doing

something else for the club. So yes / do so agree with

Mailbag Les that an error—checking program would be of great assistance. It's a shame that al/Atari support magazines could not use the same error—checking

programs, something like Typo II, which / think is the best, in trying to assist their readers.

May

good

that you have a B. magazine. —

Spooner,

Fishguard,

Pembs.

CONGRATULAT/ONS brilliant magazine. —

[HA VE/USt bought Issue 2 Of your great magazine and am pleased to say that it is even _

than Issue 7' better / f/nd Bit Wise very USBfUh hUt hOW about an article or three 0" assembly/machine 000??? AS fOI’ the argument over a check—sum routine, my views 0" Whif-‘h (We YOU depend dE‘C/de to as the M70 offer, for and so on are tables Ant/c A better type qurte confusing. ls the one used by 'C:ompute. You argued good to

that/ts .,

but ’f you are ’_”‘ experienced you might find this very dif?cult and having a

glng,

check-sum

would reduce the frustration of typing in listings, Also, if you do want to de-bug you have not got to use the Check-sum if you don't want to.

’

many

big

American magazines use typo tables it must be of some use to American users, and if the typo tables are not really used you can always drop them ata later date, Another article that would be welcome is an explanation and programs showing the use of p/ayer/missi/es and redefin— ing the character set as this is ignored in my 800 manual and l have not discovered any books explaining them simply.

N. Buckle, Crayford, Kent. 0 It's interesting that you don’t like Antic's check—sum —

methods many people have suggested we use the same method as Antic. —

800

for

radio—based programs. l have been able to send radio teletype and Morse in both transmit/receive and also

have

very 900d Morse

Unfortunate/y, whenever / software suppliers about programs for radio all i get is: communications, ”Atari? That's a games mach— ine we don't keep anything like that". As this type of software is readily available for such

Q We reprinted Attack Squash as it appears in the Atari Book of Games. You're right that line 720 doesn't exist, but the author obviously altered the program so that it never gets to line 830. Hence you must have made a typing error somewhere along the “he. There is a user group in

Tunbridge Wells and the

contact is Mr T. Chamberlain, 29 Albany Hill, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN2 3RX.

approach

check—sums

Finally,

my Atari

—

training program.

COHflISIng

/ am a radio amateur and have been using or trying to

/ -

—

use I say

G. Gouveia, problems? Orpington, Kent.

A tarl s on the a|r

SWItCh—on

machines as BBC, Spectrum,

Commodore,

sequence lHAVEanAtari600XL andmy dad has a Tandy TBS-80

otherlmachines do notseem to

have? Coy/d it be lack of

support?

Anyway, if you know anybody who can help, oranybody who wants help, or anybody with who is just interested radio—type

programs then can

.. ,,., new —J.M.A. Sheppard, Bristol. '

T yplng error /'M a beginner with the Atari and so your magazine has taught me a great deal. But unfortunately, with quite a few games which / have typed in, when / Run it always produces an error. [always check the listing so it isn’t a typing error. I typed in Attack Squash and it produces error at line 830. /t said goto 720 which doesn’t even exist. Could you please help me to understand my computer, and explain to me the error in Attack Squash. Also, could you please tell me whether there are any groups around the Orpington area, where I could go to talk to other people with the same

also damage the computer?

—

Peter Goulden, Helston, Cornwall. 0 As far as we know switch— “19 a micro on WithOUt connecting it to a TV can't do any damage. Possibly what your Dad's manuals are Tangy Is t at you turn on sugge'stizg a t e TV, disc drives peripherals etc before YOU turn on the micro. This will stop a possible mains “spike"from something like the TV Oil-Off SWitCh damaging your computer. For the same reason, you should turn the micro off first. Plugging or removing cartrid— 9 GS With th 3 com puter switched on could cause da mag e a nd sh o u Id be avoided. It's a bit like surgery without anaesthetic possible, but not recommended! —

colour computer. in one of the Tandy manuals it says that switching

Amstrad, to name but a few, what has Atari got that these

time With the "BIN/Sift" switched OffIt says in one of the Atari manuals that inserting or removing a cartridge with the computer switched on can damage the cartridge. Can it

‘—

Dragon,

micros, as / have a friend With Atari 800XL which he leaves on for long periods of an

the computer

without

connecting it to the television can damage it. Why is this the case? Also, does it apply to Atari

Games

shorta

YOUR magazine is a most aid into com— puter programming. As for theAtari company, / am not full of its praise. On purchasing the Atari 800XL l was surprised that Atari did not supply at least one games tape to test the machine. And the manuals that came with the machine contained

helpful teaching

typing

errors.

The main problem con— cerned the computer, which would not load. But as an amateur, / had no idea what was the matter. / first decided that the tapes were at fault. / had these tested they were all right. —

So I

changed the Atari

tape recorder for an— other one. Still no luck. In the end/receiveda new computer but this would not load either. This time the Atari tape recorder was at fault. It is now 1070

—

being repaired. Throughout this whole epi— sode there was noAtari dealer to ask advice from. There is also the added

difficulty of finding Atari computer games. W00/W0fth5 Of Henley and

Wolverhampton have

dep—

leted their stock and inform me that they are no longer interested in stocking Atari games tapes. This also applies to all W.H. Smith shops. They only sell Atari books and Laskys do no better. On reflection, I would have done far better buying Com~ modore, or Spectrum, At least they sell their own products through their shop, with well trainedstaff, andnot through individual electrical outlets. H. Smith, Staf—

ford. 0 if software

is difficult to find, why not contact some of our advertisers?

August 7985 ATARI USER

, 4'th

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AUGUST: Assembler: Make machine code programming easier. Fruiti Gambler: Save money with this fruit machine simulation. Mandala: Complex patterns made easy. Protection: Routines toprotectyourprograms from prying eyes. Display List: Demonstration programs. Raider 1997: Futunstic text adventure. Touch Tablet:

. . '

. \

‘

.« __J'

A-‘i

M')'\" _‘-.

the mess of ropes in the belfry?

..‘\

W 5'

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programs.

JULY: Bomb Run: Flatten the deserted city and land safely. Disassembler. Find out what's going on deep inside y0ur Atari. Treasure Hunt: Use logical thinking to find the treasure» Password Generator: Keep generating passwords till you find one you like. Keyboard: Convert your micro into an organ. Quasimodo: Can you sort out

‘

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Then give your ?ngers a rest by sending for our monthly disc, containing all the programs from each issue of Atari User. See orderform opposite.

m {Mill

too

long programs

JUNE: Frog Jump: Guide the

frog across the road and river to his home in this version of the arcade classic.

1300XE Ram Power: Use the extra 64k of memory to good effect, or use the drawing routines to produce some pretty displays. Submarine: Scuttle the submarines and practise a little coordinate geometry at the same time. Etcha-Sketch: Draw pretty pictures with only a joystick. Random Numbers: Get random numbers from machine code. Filthy Fifteen: Can you keep the Filthy Fifteen happy in their cells? MAY: Alphabet

Train: The combination of colour, sound and animation makes this early learning game a winnerwith the children. Sounds Interesting: Drive your neighbours potty with these ready-made sounds. Hexer. Enter. display and run machine code programs with this hexadecimal loader. Attack Squash: A fast-action game to keep you on your toes. Reaction Timer: See how fast your reactions really are. Binary: Use this program to convert denary numbers to binary notation.

Double the capacity of your discs with this money-saving offer!

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60 ATARI USER August 7985

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7007

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Software Reviews, Power Functions, Treasure Hunt, Keyboard Sounds, Regular series Microscope, lnsights of tutorials: Bit Wise, Beginners and Graphics PLUS News and Mailbag. —

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Lots of easy-to-follow features on everything to do with Atari computing. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, you’ll always find something to delight and intrigue you. * In~depth independent evaluations of all the nav hardware add-ons now being developed to make your Atari much pow effui and much more versati 1 e more * Rewews Of all the V9“, educahonal am? late? games’ busmess programs now being produced for the Atan. ‘

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£595

Pro?le of Jack Tramiel, preview of the new machines, Attack Squash, Adventuring, Alphabet Train, Hexer utility, Software reviews, Sounds, the 6502, Microscope, Atari Insights regular series oftutorials: Bit Wise, Beginners and Graphics, PLUS News and Mailbag. June issue: ln‘depth analysis of the

7001

7002 7003

May 1985 June 1985 July 1985

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D El

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The Atari SZOST comes supplied with seven free software packages as llsted below: 1) TOS -Tramiel Operating System based on CPM 68K. 2) GEM Graphics Environment Manager by Digital Research (DR) giving a WIMP (Window. Icon. Mouse. Pull down menu) environment. 3) DR GEM Paint for creating graphics masterpieces 4) DR GEM Write for word processing. 5) Logo learning language to enable you to write your own programs easily using turtle graphics. 6) DR Personal Basic a powerful user friendly version of the Basic programming language. 7) 305 operating system giving you access to dozens of business applications packages already available on the market. in mind. the ST also features a host of different Designed with future expansion interfaces to the outside world and an impressive list of accessories is planned. Atari will soon be releasing a 1000K (1ME) ill/1 inch disk drive. and e ISMB hard disk storage system as well as a mass storage compact disk (CD) player capable of storing an entire 20 volume encyclopedia on one disk. A full range of inexpensive printers are dot matrix, daisywheel With its and thermal colour printers. planned including unbeatable graphics. speed and software at a price which is that of any far below comparable personal computer currently on the market. the ST is all set to do battle with the competition. To receive further details of the 57 from Silica Shop. just fill in the coupon below with your name and address details and post it to us.

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USER FRIENDLY GEM OPERATINGSYSTEM The power at the ST is harnessed and made user friendly by the new operating system 'GEM' from Digital Research. GEM stands for Graphics Environment Manager and allows a user friendly colour or B/W graphics interface which closely resembles that of the Macintosh This similarity extends to the use of moveable resileable windows. Icons to represent objects such as disks and disk drives. and the use oi pull down menus and a mouse. The advantage of all this is that the computer becomes for the Acorn, ACT. Atari. extremely easy to use. GEM has now been implemented IBM, lCL, and Olivetti. Software written for GEM on one computer should also run under GEM on another computer. This will enable the market to quickly produce a

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Under the new leadership of Jack Tremiel (lormer boss and founder of Commodore Atari Corporation Business Machines), have marked their entry into the world of business/personal computers with a machine which leaves the competition standing. Tramiel‘s slogan ‘Power Without the Price‘ has been implemented in the manufacture of the new 512K Atari szosr colour computer which offers the user amazingly high at an incredibly low price. Launched as e work-station. this new system performance seven software packages as well as the SZOST computer with 512K RAM, incorporates mouse controller. monitor (540x400), 95 key keyboard high resolution monochrome (with 18 key numeric keypad). MIDI interface, GEM and a 500K av, inch disk drive. all for the package price of only £651.30 (+VAT £749). Dubbed the "Mac beater' and the 'Jackintosh' (alter Auiri's Chief, Jack Tramiell. Ateri's new machine has been directly compared with the Apple Macintosh RRP £2595 (‘VAT = £2935) which offers similar features and capabilities but at a much higher price. Favourably reviewed by the UK's highly critical specialist computer press, the SZOST is likely to make a great impact in as a sophisticated this country alternative to an IBM PC, APRICOT or APPLE MACINTOSH. Unlike its overpriced competitors. the Atari 5ZOST can be linked up to a colour monitor to unleash a choice of up to 512 colours. The addition of colour brin 9 s out the lull potential of graphics packages such as GEM.

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SEND FOR FREE AIARI SI LI I ERAI URE ATARI

we have been successfully dedicatedto Atari ever since their products first appeared on the UK which we practice and to the user We can attribute our success largely to the Atari specialisation that when you buy a piece of Atari hardware at Silica you will be fully Rest assured back—up we prDVide. supported.Our mailings giving news of software releases and developmentswill keep you up to date with the Atari market and our technical support team and sales stafi are at the end of the telephone line to of bias. we aim to keep stocks deal with your problems and supply your every need. With our speCIalist We also stock a Wide range of all the available Atari hardware. software. peripherals and accessories. American Atari Atari dedicated books and through us. the owners on our list can subscribe to several as dedicated magazines. We can provide a lull service to all Atari owners and are now lirmly established Here are lust some of the things we can otter to our customers. the UK‘s NUMBEFI ONE Atari specialists. At Silica

Shop Ltd, Dept ATUSR

To: Silica

0335,

1-4 The

Mews,

Hatherley Road. stdcup, Kent,

DA14

4px

market.

it FREE POST is PACKING ON MAIL ORDERS * FREE NEXT DAY SECURICOR DELIVERY w INFORMATION MAILING SERVICE it TECHNICAL SUPPORT TEAM * HIGHLY COMPETITIVE PRICES t AFTER SALES SUPPORT SERVICE t REPAIR SERVICE ON ATARI PRODUCTS

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If you would Ilke to be registered on our malllng ”at as an Afar! computer owner, or as a person lnfereskd In buying an Atari machine, for us know. We wlll be pleasedto keepyou up to date with new Atari developmentsfree of charge. 80, return the coupon today and begin experiencing Alert service "ref I: second to none. a specialist

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AVAILABLE FROM W.H. SMITHS, BOOTS, WOOLWORTHS AND MOST COMPUTER RETAILERS OR FROM LLAMASOFT 49 MOUNT PLEASANT, TADLEY, HANTS (TEL. 07356 4478) SAE FOR CATALOGUE 81 NEWSLETTER 'THE NATURE OF THE BEAST!