The Editorial The Editorial Hello again. Three Boobs Oh dear! Yes, the gremlins have been at it again, or rather I have been guilty of not checking things thoroughly enough. ON ADFS VERSIONS OF 8BS-60, 3 problems have come to light. One is quite serious. If you used the ID stamper program on the ADFS version, the menu will have been corrupted. If this is the case, I have put a program 'RESC' on this disc that will undo the damage and even leave the menu with your ID in it. Jonathan Harston has fixed the program. The debugged program is now on 8BS 60 (placed there on 20/01/98) and will be on issue 62. Sorry, no room for it on this issue. The second problem is less serious, the program 'STOP' on the ADFS version of 8BS 60 issue contains a non-standard command in line 110, *DRIVE 0. Just remove it and things should be ok. Thirdly, I forgot to put the following info for Sprow's PRNFILE program onto early editions of 8BS 60: MANUAL FOR PRNFILE (6502 machine code) This file describes the program PRNFILE which redirects printer output to a chosen disk file.It is only suitable for use on the 8 bit range of BBC micros. This method is better than *SPOOL as only data intended for the printer is trapped, and not all programs allow command line access. The manual and software is (C)1997 SPROW INSTRUCTIONS- At the command prompt,type *RUN PRNFILE The program will then appear to not have done anything. This is because the printer type has not been setup yet and no filename has been specified. To do so type *LINE then type *FX5,3 This tells the program to use as the destination, and *FX5, 3 tells the OS to use a custom printer driver, not the default one. TO CLOSE THE FILE- Either 1)Select a different printer type (eg.*FX5,1 for parallel printer) or 2)Type *LINE with no parameters (ie.just *LINE) EXIT MESSAGES- "Cannot open file" - for some reason the OS couldn't allocate a file handle KNOWN PROBLEMS/FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS- No known problems HISTORY- V1.00 First release to 8 Bit software disk user group The 8-Bit Software Hall of Shame The 8-Bit Software Hall of Shame Yes! The time has finally arrived to name and shame a couple of people that have let us down. These people have not only effectively stolen from 8BS, but have also wasted my valuable time as I have had to chase them up. Case 1 Are you seated comfortably? Then I shall begin. Our first story starts on 17/05/97 when I sent Acornsoft Hits Volume 1 to E2K, John Smith of 145 Charles Street Selby YO8 0YG. This game was for review, E2K had previously reviewed two other games for us. According to the agreement, I supplied E2K with a brand new copy of the game (sent to me by Steve Hanson of Superior Software). Within the month I expected to receive a review of the game to be published in the 8BS magazine. On 10/11/97, 6 months later, I wrote a letter to E2K enclosing return postage, a stamped addressed envelope asking what had happened to the review. I received no reply and wrote again on 30/11/97. I received no reply and wrote again on 10/12/97 saying that Superior Software was now owed the price of the game, just #6. I am not happy with this situation because: 1. It wasted my time chasing E2K up. 2. Steve Hanson of Superior Software has been brilliant with 8BS, donating many things. He is sending the games for review in good faith. I feel sure that he does not want to have to chase people up for a measly #6. 3. I feel let down. Several 8BS members including myself put in many unpaid hours to keep 8BS going. Then this person happily skims off some of the fruits of our labours and cannot be bothered to put in an hour of effort for it. Nuff said. Story Number 2 Removed at the last minute! The gentleman in question coughed up the 40 quid when he received the transcript of this article through the post! Conclusions I have better things to do than waste my time chasing up problems such as this. As you all know, I have a job of work to do and a family to look after as well as this club to run. I do enjoy all three. Unfortunately, occurrences such as these occasionally make me wonder if it is worth running 8BS. It is not the first time that I have had to chase people up. If fact I expect to now and again come across people that make promises they cannot or do not intend to keep. Please remember though, if you are thinking of trying to pull the wool over my eyes, you are not! All you are doing is letting yourself and many other BBC enthusiasts down TBI Just lookee at this little lot! A bumper bundle of fantastic new additions to the 8BS pool: TBI-119 Bubble Bobble Game 1D 17 Files 104K A game by P.Gillett. Turn the monsters into fruit and eat them! TBI-120 Alligata Games 2D 52 Files 227K These games were commercial, Steve Hanson of Superior Software has given 8BS permission to make these games available. Crown Jewels Text Adventure. Hell Hole. Bug Blaster. Neandethal Man. Blagger. Son of Blagger. Video's Revenge. Starship Discovery (Master Only). Guardian. Dam Busters. Tarzan. Diamond Mine (Master needs to use Convert from the Welcome disc). Uncle Claude. Garden Game. Presently the only info with these games is that which the games themselves contain. TBI-121 Alligata Games 2D 25 Files 116K BBC ONLY. These games were commercial. Steve Hanson of Superior Software has given 8BS permission to circulate them. Eagle Empire. Roboman. Web Runner. Night World. Qbix. Monaco. 3D Space Raiders. TBI-122 Alligata Games Decathlon 1D 24 Files 77K This was a commercial game. Steve Hanson of Superior Software has given 8BS permission to circulate it. Decathlon runs on the BBC and also on the Master although for the Master, you may need to use 'Convert' from the Welcome disc to get it to run best. Presently the only info with these games is that which the games themselves contain. TBI-123 Alligata Educational 1D 4 Files 16K. This was commercial software. Steve Hanson of Superior Software has given 8BS permission to circulate it. Art, drawing program. Time, learn how to tell the time. TBI-124 Two Christmas Adventures 1D 28 Files 97K The Lost Slipper and Jingle Bells. These Adventures were commercial. Jack Foster who wrote them has given 8BS permission to circulate them. Primarily aimed at children, adults that enjoy adventures will find them interesting. Both are in mode 7 with graphics, some animated. TBI-125 The Mad Painter Adventure 1D 25 Files 117K This is another ex-commercial mode 7 adventure with graphics by Jack Foster. Primarily aimed at children, adults will also enjoy it. Text files are included on the disc which include the solution and follow up work. TBI-126 Tish The Spaceman Adventure 1D 12 Files 63K This is another ex-commercial mode 7 adventure from Jack Foster. Definately for Primary School children. It uses Speech and gives practice in the digraph 'SH'. Lots of large graphics and simple to play. HELP! does anyone have the following games from Alligata that will run from DFS: Lunar Rescue, Shuffle or Quiz Quest. Steve Hanson gave me these but I had no luck with them. All expenses paid for anyone sending the goods! Aargh! Please take note of a response that I have given to a message in the 'Wanted' article. The response is tacked on to the end of the message which was sent in all innocence, but I thought it illustrated a point quite well. TBI-00 (and a bit of gobbledeygook) The DFS version of TBI-00 (the 8BS Catalogue/Info disc) now takes up three sides of a disc. As only two sides of a DFS disc can be used by a BBC, this means that the DFS version of TBI-00 requires TWO discs in future. ADFS users still only need one disc for TBI-00 as ADFS sees all 3 sides of the disc as one continuous disc. ADFS is clever as it can see nearly 4 sides of a disc as one. Unlike some people that, under certain circumstances, see only one thing as two. Deadline Please remember to get your submissions to me early, this means well before the deadline. Anything arriving after the deadline will definitely not get onto the next issue. I can guarantee this! Future 8BS Issues I have already started on 8BS 63, yes, 63 which is the issue after next. There is a nice amount of software 'in hand' and planned for future issues. I have a huge number of technical articles put on one side, so if there is anything that any of you want in particular, let me know and I will see what I can do. The Internet Remember that, as an 8BS member, you have an email address. Your email address is: ***@8bs.karoo.co.uk where the *** is your user ID (2J3 for instance). Send the text of your email to me and I will Email it. Any responses will be delivered to you via the 8BS messaging system. The BBC Mailing List could be a useful 'thing' to ask your questions of, there are many people around the world that receive messages posted to this list. http://www.karoo.net/8bs The 8BS website is something that you can all be proud of now. It contains lots of information about 8BS and BBCs. I now have access to 4 megabytes of space on the karoo server, and virtually unlimited space on a total of 3 other sites where folks have been good enough to offer 8BS space, this means that expansion is no problem, and with the way hypertext works, links to other servers will be seamless. There are links to other BBC sites on the internet and some animated graphics, pictures of rotating BBCs and Masters. You can find the 8BS catalogue and download TBI-00 plus some of the older 8BS issues. You can also download BBC emulators for use on a PC. There is a page for members. If you want to submit a web page relevant to the BBC computer, do so and I will put it onto the 8BS website. We get around 10 visitors a day, this is not a high number, but better than none! The website attracts new members that don't even have BBCs. They read the 8BS magazine on their PC BBC Emulators. The latest 8BS advert is always on the site and most sales made from 8BS are now made through this advert on the website. There is no doubt that the site pays its way and keeps the club ticking over. EBTEL Unfortunately, despite my optimism over the last couple of years, this project has run out of momentum with no results. A lack of time and/or technical knowledge by the persons given the task of making this unique system finally got the better of me and the project. A number of other ideas had been postulated, none of which met the spirit of what was intended. I have now, with no little sadness, dropped the idea to avoid further disappointment. Lawrie Hallam Lawrie has disposed of his BBC setup (to 8BS, cheers Lawrie). He says bye to all those that he associated with through 8BS. Me As most of you must know, I am an Ambulance Paramedic, recently back on the road after a secondment that had me playing with computers for a year or so. See you next time then!