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What is a micro-computer?

1. NB wa f Pa fa 22 MEE aa BD B 1 p T gt a4 a onec CO 1 4117 ITI SEA OOO 5 EO a ZE ERU SN Bui aas eal Bn at am 1 1 s 2 es 7 a 41 410 1 1 1 CC tai m andi e 5 4 6 Commodore Computing SECTORPRINT oe UTILITY PROGRAM TO PRIHT COHTEMTS OF A DISE SECTOR IH AHD ASCII USEFUL CHECKING DHTH STORED CORRECTLY f DIMAS 2643 FRIHT HARDCORY Y OR GETR IFAF THEH 1125 T THE 1 4 2 4 OFEHIS 5 147 7 21 IHFUT DEIVE IMPUT TRACK oo IMFUT SECTOR FFEIHT NN PRINT IS U1 CHs DT S GOSUE1438 15 FORI 1 STEPS 84 Cid 02 03 CSS a 3 2
2. COL 1 LNE 24 0 2 FORA 1 T030 AW LOG gt PRINT SHRRNING RS PRINT SWARNING AS 30116 NEXT PRINT SWARNING LEFTSCMES SP 310 W 30118 GETAS 1 36126 COL 1 LNE 24 0 30122 PRINTSP 38124 RETURN READY 29988 NEDE CDK 29902 REM XSUBROUTINE TO DRAW A BORDER 29904 REM XHRROUND THE SCREEN 29906 REM 29968 PRINT R H FORI 1TO25 R H W NEXT 29910 B FORI 1TO40 B B WN NEXT 29912 FORI 1T026 PRINT Y TRBC28 DDLEFTSCBS 2 1 NEXT 29914 PRINT 7 FORI 1TO21 PRINT W SPCC382 W NEXT PRINT 9916 5 29918 FORI 6TO19 PRINT SPCC gt W 29920 RETURN READY 186 SP REM 1081 REM XEXRMPLE OF SUBROUTINE CALL 1882 REM XTO DRAW BORDER WITH SCREEN 1893 REM HERDING 1869 REM 12818 2 1626 P EXRMPLE 1838 GOSUR 8 1848 PRINT EXT 1058 END 2660 REM 3666 REM 4000 REM REM 6886 REM 29966 aaea 29982 REM SUBROUTINE TO DRAW BORDER 29904 REM WARROUND THE SCREEN WITH A 29986 REM REVERSE FIELD PAGE HEADING 29988 REM MTRANSFERED AS P 29916 REM 29912 A LENCP R1 C48 FD 2 29914 RIS LEFT cSP R1 29916 PRINT 29918 PRINTR1 PRINT SS lt lt 29922 0 232858 033619516 648
3. 36 Commodore Computing WERE To SWITH on yg Wl S is seeing a light If it is the first square on the menu is blanked and reprinted rapidly four times The input from the pen is monitored If the pen stays on constantly it cannot be over this square and the next one is flashed If however the pen also turns on and off four times as a particular menu square flashes then it is over this square and this is the selected choice Circuit The circuit is shown in diag 1 It is intended that the pen be operated via a PIA or VIA port such as that on the 6522 One data line PAO is con figured as an input and reads the output from the pen circuit Two other lines PA1 and PA2 are us ed as outputs to run the pen chip 5V is main tained on PA2 to supply the chip itself The cur rent used is minute and the port is quite capable of supplying it direct PA1 is used to reset the latch circuit It works in the following way The chip is turned on by poking the port with a 4 PA2 becomes 5V Next the chip latch is set by pok ing the port address with 6 PA1 also becomes 45V Now if the pen detects light the latch will flip Offi s Terr CHIP 15 4 5 boil Cavan Gare and PAO will become 1 The latch will stay this position until the port is poked with 4 when PA1 will become O and reset the latch The lat ching mechanism is required to pr
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5. 7 1 PRINT Bre BETIS 1 112 1 nt 1 TRACK 3 1 1 1 gt AU AU4 1 00701 328 AF AF 1 PRINT 15 E F D DT 05 1448 IFEHZBTHEHI3z B FEIHT FEIHT FEIHT DISE TRACK SECTOR one can block off allocated sec tors Alternatively one may simply wish to find out how much free space is left on a disk SECTORPRINT is the second of the two pro grams and is designed to print a table of data stored in a specified block The data is displayed both in ASCII and hexadecimal form Using this program one can see how data is stored on disk and also discover the source of disk errors BLOCKMAP UTILITY PROGRAM 1 AT WHICH FEM AAA AE REM IISHELE STOF KEYS FEIHMT HHEDCOF Y OR IFFTHEHUFEH1 4 FRIHT amp 1 PEIHTSI USED FREE 2 2 1 1 SD ADSTHEMAS G TO13zH 1 2 STOF TRE AUH GAS 1 2 1 AUE 1 781 AU i EF EF AF i HESTIT 1 FFIHT FEIHT FFEIHT 4 P3 BELOCKZ USED FREE 5 BF 1418 37 81 Pot 1428 CLUZE1 CLO SEI3 1438 134 EHD 1449 1
6. Type this in exactly as shown being very careful about the number of spaces especially line 110 mixtures of Basic and Machine Code have a habit of going wrong if you interfere with them You ll note from line 130 that a disk drive is vital for this program A printer isn t although you can select printer output if required in line 190 The two machine code routines lines 170 and 200 respectively control the cross referencing part of the program and the output part Save the Basic program under the name Cross Ref B and then onto the machine code 2 wa menn Cn o 2 63 3 V Fn mam am nam m Se eee De SDD DY zm mum m m ur DTD 3 3 B 5 or 2 O D mum T mam tot m GE GE AE GE OE 58 Commodore Computing mm 1246 1456 2818 2619 348 4558 Enter the monitor with SYS 1024 type M 0553 0603 RETURN and then type in the values shown in the first block of numbers When you ve finished with that type M O60B O6BB RETURN and again type in the values in the se cond block of numbers This is bringing up one screenful at a time to make it ea
7. 181 29924 0 32886 0336865 6 46 POKEX 181 29926 PRINT SES 29928 RETURN READY REM 188 5 5 1666 1881 REM EXAMPLE OF SUBROUTINE CALL 1602 REM TO DISPLAY FORMATTED NUMBERS 1803 1818 INFUT INFUT 5 NUMBERS ASCII 882 883 1444 ASSO 1828 PRINT PRINT PRINT 1838 12 1048 FORG 1T05 1050 8 1666 0 1676 1886 1696 END 2000 3000 4008 REM 5000 REM 6000 REM 27000 22562 REMXSUBROUTINE TO ROUND NUMBERS 27884 TWO DECIMAL PLACES AND 27886 REMMFAD WITH SPACES TO RIGHT 27088 REMXJUSTIFY COLUMNS NUMBER INPUT 27818 REMMAND OUTPUT AS FS OUTPUT 27812 _ CHARACTERS 27814 REP FENEK i OI ake ak ale ao 27816 8 R2 27018 AN VAL P 27626 REM 27022 REM ROUND TO 2 27624 REM 27626 Al CINT lt AN AND 27028 A1 SGNCALMINTCABS AL 1G0 5 7108 27838 REM 27632 REM 27834 27836 AS STRSCALD 27838 IFA1 lt 81 THENAS 6 27040 1 2 4 7852 27042 IFLEN RS 24THENRS LEFT CR 4 27844 IFLEN R DCATHENR n g 27046 REM 27848 REM 5 27656 REM 27852 A FIGHTSCAS 3 27854 2 CAND 8 27056 P RIGHTSCSPS A F 27858 RETURN READY DISPLAYSRC FAGE 0881 LINE
8. Chromasonic Electronics 48 Junction Road Archway London N19 01 263 9493 9495 Maplin Electronic Supplies Ltd 0 Box 3 Raleigh Essex 0702 552911 954155 Gemini Electronics 50 Newton Street off Piccadilly Manchester 236 3083 Gamer 24 Gloucester Road Brighton Dixons Queensmere Slough 23211 Channel One 174 High Street Hornchurch Essex 75613 and Golden Cross Parade Rochford Essex 540455 Twill Star Computer 17 Regina Road Southall Data 44 Shroton Street London NW1 Graham amp Son 51 Gortin Road Omagh Ireland Ram Electronics 88 Fleet Road Fleet Hants 5858 Eccleston Electronics Legge Lane Birmingham The Computer Centre 14 Hemmels Laindon Essex 0268 416155 15 Moorfields Liverpool Seedle 47 Woodlands Road Ansdell Lytham St Annes Cambridge Computer Centre 1 Emmanuel Street Cambridge Karlinda amp Co Elliott Road Selly Oak Birmingham The Sharp Computer Shop Melville Street Lincoln Milequip 7A Hare Lane Gloucester 411010 North West Business Machines Curate Street Great Harwood Lancs Instep Footwear 23 King Street Great Yarmouth J A D 21 Market Avenue Plymouth 669462 W amp 20 ACCESSORIES STACK 40 80 VICKIT 1 programming aids 25 00 os var for VIC 20 Doubles your VIC 20 display on TV VICKIT 2 best of 1
9. aa ee 12 ze HE BE 327741 E 44 am 4 45 40 EM LL AB un QE dan 4 8 Commodore Computing Computace Ltd announce brand new graph plotting programme SUPERGRAPH which is now available for 8000 series Pets with 8050 disk drive and produces hard copy high resolution graphs on the CBM 4022 and 4022P printers Features include file handling system for graph storage and retrieval multiple background formats including log or any user definable X and Y scale transform Graph size is fully variable to 80 columns 480 pixels wide and virtually unlimited height 8 000 pixels Plots up to 1024 data points and multiple functions on the same axes Scales are automatically inserted if required and there are comprehensive alphanumeric labelling and editing facilties throughout Suppied on copyable WIOTH RATIO npD po diskette 145 00 VAT J VAT He Ban T Send for brochure to Or telephone Also available Curve Fit powerful linear Comptace Ltd 01 942 9001 and non linear regression to least squares 3 fit spline fit plus high resolution printer PO Box 50D New Malden Surrey KT3 38D plot BUSICALC COSTS 39 If your Commodore computer has at least 32K of memory disks and you re prepare
10. the PUPI gives you all the above t features together with an operating system in EPROM which interacts with Basic s variables giving extremely simple operation Inputs and outputs are 10V and relays are rated at 10VA Logic inputs can be used for Only 195 00 microswitch sensing etc HIGH SPEED A D CONVERTER THE PUSSI Nee aT 4 ANALOGUE INPUTS 12 BIT f 4 50 MICROSECOND CONVERSION p STOP AND START TRIGGERS e DATA ACQUISITION SOFTWARE Using an operating system in EPROM the PUSSI provides a high speed A D Converter with 4 T tJ multiplexed inputs which is under control of either software or remote start stop triggers A D Conversion can be carried out from Basic or Machine Code with up to 1500 readings Only 195 00 entered directly into memory at a software determined rate CIL MICROSYSTEMS LTD DECOY RD WORTHING SUSSEX BN14 8ND TELEX 87515 WISCO G ATTMIC TEL 0903 210474 MICROSYSTEMS LTD Write phone or to obtain further information circle number Commodore Computing 6 1 Landsoft eased to announce that PAYROLL is now available for the CBM PET This new program of new features althou ne LIZI FVAT h embodying a great number easy to operate as Gur very popular Payrod 7 Pius une 27 many ways easier Yes it will assist with the dreaded SSP 2 May we that you insist on seeing this elegant emon
11. 1 EDT 1817 SETS nim am mU d ren mia zi wm mi f T phat T cA ah t Egi an d EA on T h mich cu pr ma jJ Cn HK 03 j mm mum m 1 I J n em TR iy AR CO Cm pone 4 ca WT Cam oc 2p min Cu o qu C Dee 1 E 1 5 BA AE H EE Fi BEES sine dl ce 11 24 4 43 47 BT us rius HB B oe 8H BS B3v FAHD ec SS 411 44 me 40 Ae bll B Nw EAT d BE c ak H He 1189 43 4E 43 54 n az di 44 AB 46 om d P m He we Be quede 42 44 53 DES NE i d AM Law o AM AB an LEY 13 pu d qm sa gq Sse a TANA 4F 54 co T
12. 6 15 13 i456 FEAT Commodore Computing 4 5 BASIC PROGRAMMING mmmmmmm Sample printout from BLOCKMAP I 4 4 cn qi J ERO Un A n qi tit ua m 2 yee Lc mn P 5 p a a p c ra od KA Fo Pale fe 7 A 1 2 0 pana EEEE 4 EEEE EEEE E Ed 0 9 9 OE UE Ser SW CES 9 9 9 9 EEEE EEEE EEE EE EE EE E E a 7 Fata Pb eM T e ag i Po nom c mr ma CR e Ca I 6 CR 02 RI m Oh M mA M au
13. 2 BASIC PROGRAMMING 7iny Aid For Vic 20 4 9 duo c Ex DISC UTILITIES EU SCREEN DATA 7 22 MACHINE CODE PROGRAMMING Jim Butterfield devises cross reference LOL 21 17 Editor Nick Hampshire tel 01 636 6351 Technical Editor Pete Gerrard Production Editor It can be confidently expected that 1983 will see a considerable increase in the world wide market for micro computer systems With the expansion of the family of micro computer systems of fered by Commodore from three to eight in the near future the Ron Scott company is poised to increase its current 12 per cent of the world Programmer market Richard Franklin Before Christmas Commodore announced the sale of the Staff Writer millionth Vic 20 colour computer Since the American company Martin Bush Advertising Manager Peter Chandler tel 01 636 6408 Typesetting by Centrepoint Typesetters Ltd London Printed by Spottiswood amp Ballantyne Essex England Commodore Computing International is published 12 times a year by Nick Hampshire Publications It is not in any way connected with Commodore Business Machines U K Ltd you would like to contribute articles or programs please send them to Commodore Computing International 167 169 Great Portland Street London W1 Tel 01 636 6354 launched the machine last year US sales have reached an estimated 80
14. B Bio Medical Application One interesting area of physiological research concerns the investigation of the response of muscle tissue to applied electrical stimuli and more particularly the way in which the pattern of such response is altered when that tissue is suf fused with low concentrations of different chemical compounds or drugs In this way it is possible not only to study the effectiveness of a particular family of compounds but also to study the underlying physiological and biochemical mechanisms involved An earlier approach involved the generation of a pulse train of a particular repetition rate and dura tion by running a machine code program on a microprocessor system and quasi simultaneously monitoring signals coming back from the tissue by sampling a fast A D with the Micro computer with oscillator same microprocessor and same machine code program The machine code development for such a combined task is time consuming and the result is inflexible To enable the processor to keep up with all the necessary inputs and outputs as well 34 Commodore Computing 1666 5 Interface bus Power supply Microcomputer n generator Digita plotter The complete circuit as keeping within the time constraints during run ning meant that it was necessary to use a fast processor i e 4MHz Z80A or 2 MHz 68809 Now with the 3D waveform genera
15. NOTE If you are working on the unexpanded VIC you will need to follow the alternate instructions in parentheses The cursor will be flashing next to a period character Type the entry starting at the cur rent cursor position MO58005CO RETURN M118011CO Several lines should appear on the screen much like the memory dump which accompanies this article A four digit quantity called an ad dress leads off a line and either eight or five col umns of two digit values appear alongside Look at the tables of values in the article They show eight rows of these addresses Note that the first block has the address 0580 which matches the first address just above The first row of the next table shows 5 which is the second or ending address just above Your mission is to type in the matching values from the article place of the two digit values you see on the screen Remember to hit RETURN at the end of each screen line or the changes won t be made Double check the values you ve typed It s not easy to find an error later on Look at the next block of values Type in the start end addresses to display MO5COO600 RETURN M11CO 1200 Type in the values required and go on with the rest of the blocks You will use addresses ranging from O5xx 06xx 07xx 08xx O9xx OAxx as shown in the tables The x characters stand for the other two digits of th
16. 0 85312 585 6 paper 5 95 Published by Ellis Horwood Ltd Chichester THE VIC FOR CHILDREN by A D J Noble The VIC 20 computer from Commodore is aimed at the younger user perhaps working with their parents to explore what compuling is all about Now that microcomputers are finding their way into schools parents should also find that this book with a VIC 20 will also provide valuable out of school education After all a class of 30 with one computer gives little chance for hands on usage but this book can solve the problem everything from switching on the VIC 20 through simple BASIC programming to exciting games and puzzles Dec 82 approx 140pp 0 905104 02 0 5 95 Published by Sigma Technical Press WILEY COMPUTER BOOK MONTH FEBRUARY 1983 A wide range of Computer Books and Software on display at leading Bookshops and selected Computer Stores throughout the UK Checklist of titles available from Wiley Marketed by John Wiley amp Sons Ltd Baffins Lane Chichester Sussex PO19 1UD England Commodore Computing 2 5 BEGINNERS GUIDE Universal String Thing Jim Butterfield This is not a complete String Thing just the IN section Quite simply the program is an INPUT utility that lifts some of the restraints im posed by the BASIC INPUT command It works on all versions of BASIC except 1 0 for PETs and CBMs If there s enough demand a VIC Str ing Thing will be releas
17. 1 1 JF Yu a 1 EE STREC 1888 1 32 FORG AaTor IFAC 1 lt 1 3THEHAFE 1 1 1 IFAS 1 12 32 6 30E CAG T 2 4 15 45 IFA i H 4 7 2 IFFTHEHFEIHTS1 SCHEER CHRECAL SS HEXTG PFRIHT IFFTHEHFKIHT amp 1 HESTI BIRI 1 1 YES HI GETAS IFH THEH1878 CLOSES CLOSE1S EHD GETA IFA THEH1 FFIHT Z 15 1 2 gt 1588 FEAD Commodore Computing 4 7 BASIC PROGRAMMING 1 Sample printout from SECTORPRINT r TI C C f ama sus qe SEMBIPS at EA pin T kA pi tl co uoo rm fare Ta c kA
18. PRICE 244 62 ANTIGLARE SCREENS FOR PET 40 Column 17 95 80 Column 19 95 ALL PRICES PLUS VAT VDU VIEW THRU ACCESS a DAMS BUSINESS COMPUTERS LTD Gores Road Kirkby Industrial Estate Kirkby Liverpool L33 Telephone 051 548 7111 20 lines OR VIC 20 With free 3K RAM pack or Super Cartridge Game ONLY 7 3 83 a VAT COMPUTING January 1983 international CONTENTS T NEW PRODUCTS The latest in hard and software TO TEM EDUCATIONAL REPORT APL and the SuperPet 12 oc MICROS IN BUSINESS The merits of the Commodore 64 16 INTRODUCTION TO MICROS First of a six part series PAU Ille SOFTWARE REVIEW The Micro Simplex a system designed for countants 2 HARDWARE REVIEW package that allows two Pets to communicate CL NEWS Programs for learning 20 PE senos es EE BOOK REVIEW CBM Professional Computer Guide 20 o ooo a0 S conn rot s BEGINNERS GUIDE 4A utility called the String Thing SOT 1 2 codigo icu PROGRAMMING TIPS Finding industrial uses for the micro computer onde Ie xix ete INTERFACING Attaching a light pen to the Pet SB TNT PA SOUND amp VISION Musica Vics and graphical Pets
19. Ti READY Commodore Computing 5 1 BASIC PROGRAMMING mm BEES BECA 1 AS BEES Fa ar ak 2 GE 4 BEDS 23 GEER Sees FES AS Bi 5 SH A2 E2 31 5 ui EE ia Al 25 29 HH SA 41 EG 5 BE 5 E 84 je zz Ba CE ac z 43 28 AS ar 5 B Hz a 3 F E4 HE ec H 8 Bi AS 8 SA BAS 13 Sc na as 2 SI 28 5 Al EE Al a3 EE Hz is AS Ba 2 25 Be 2 AS 1 27 m Fa E AA 3 AS 14 3F Bc zB anis SF an 28 a4 BHS 48 ge 4 BA BIZA 66 Fe 28 He 43 2 HUES c 9 8038 a e p wc mee ld i Pa Es 28 BF BOSH 1 a 5 4 HDA DAG 2 42 BIEG 2 3 2 4 pa Ca S Mo E p T c en
20. although pesonally think the original Strathclyde Basic is good enough This won t teach you all about the features specific to the 64 such as colour sound and high resolution graphics but it will teach you all about Basic Programming However sooner or later you re going to want to know all about the tricks possible with this wonder toy so perhaps a machine specific book is desirable have yet to see such a book other than the manual that comes with it and the aforemention ed Introduction to Basic but wouldn t be surpris qos The Ultimate Word Processor A Commodore enthusiast wanted a word processor that was simple fast and easy to use He wanted to handle up to 20 000 characters of text to use a wide screen format of up to 240 characters with full window scrolling in all directions and be able to use the screen while printinc He wanted a word processor at a reasonable price The enthusiast Simon Tranmer couldn t find one so he wrote S seht Superscript does everything he wanted and much more It provides a complete document preparation and storage system making optimum use of memory and disk space It gives full access to all the letter quality printer features such as boldface and ribbon colour change In short it provides all of the advantages of a dedicated professional word processor is easy to instal because there s nothing to instal Just load the SuperScript disk
21. but would assume that the authors know where their readers interests lie Area Guide to Commodore Equipment Title CBM Professional Computer Guide Authors Adam Osborne Jim Strasma and Ellen Strasma Publishers McGraw Hill Book Company UK Ltd Address Shoppenhangers Lane Maidenhead Berkshire Price 10 95 PAMPER YOUR _ PET WITH i no programming experience necessary Write your data base applications in minutes instead of days Dynatech Microsoftware introduce to PET owners the CODEWRITER a superb program generator for the 8000 series Pet with 8050 disk drive unit Screen layout data entry validation screen display of user defined error messages screen calculations searching by any field all are child s play to Codewriter Disk 1 Codewriter Disk 2 provides printed reports and menu generators A selection of the applications of Codewriter already in use are listed below Data entry storage and retrieval of a personnel records b product information c rental records d customer data Stock control systems Letter word information Hotel reservations systems Fixed assets and depreciation schedules Projects records and control systems Mailing and labelling systems Turnkey training courses are always available at various Centres throughout the U K or take a holiday course the charming island of Guernsey For full details on courses and inform ation on Codewr
22. All of these commands can be used in either direct or program mode and in addition to these we have five error condition detectors which bet ween them manage three printed error messages and a break in whatever is happening at the time Only one incompatibility with existing Pet Basic If one of these new commands is to follow an IF THEN statement the command must be preceeded by a colon E G IF ST 1 THEN ITEST A full handshaking sequence is employed on data transfer and the error risk is exceedingly small The manual takes you through everything in sufficient detail for you to understand quite easily what s happening and it is soon apparent that Petween is rather more powerful than you might at first have thought Timing sequences are ex plored so that data can be sent when you want it to and more importantly when the Pets want it to rather than just being passed as and when it comes in for instance Conclusion An easy to use system that should find a home in many small establishments laboratories where one Pet is virtually devoted to one task but the data gathered from that task needs to be pro cessed at the same time Area Pet to Pet Communications Company D M A Address 3 Sandfield Road Arnold Nottingham NGS 60A Tel No 0602 267007 Contact Alan Mills NEWS Programs for learning Ivan Berg Associates have released details of their new educational software produced in conju
23. Computing 1366 1328 1348 1968 1388 4 2658 26668 2128 2138 2148 2138 2226 2230 2258 2268 2278 298 2318 2346 2388 2458 2438 2560 2568 2616 2636 2 1 355 ere 2738 2748 2730 3098 3128 3150 3178 3188 3228 fum 2066 21648 798 21 2138 1834 2250 788 788 310 2360 2438 2950 218 298 1200 4670 15 3 5 Hd No 2148 2258 eno eun am I 2218 2648 736 1230 2738 2910 3478 2388 3056 2505 2240 2594 3138 1968 3408 3448 2888 31850 3218 3148 3 2018 3300 3528 di be m t 2 1 gt Iz I1 I Ji de J3 T4 K Ef Ke K1 4220 iON iN ds T ie mc mmm A 1878 22358 Fe Cn fa mom C mam m oc 4 3458 550 2818 3166 35920 311 qe D mec mem E Commodore Computing 57 MACHINE CODE PROGRAMMING mem m m mime 5 1 a 1 1 D 9 ta EX pou un m J FJ lt
24. Computotech Ltd is a widely ex perienced systems analyst and designer Since 1978 he has been developing training systems for the Manpower Services Commission and working as a consultant Commodore Computing 1 9 SOFTWARE REVIEW Micro Simplex The traditional image of accountants poring over ancient manuscripts in lofty garrets aided only by a quill and the light from a flickering candle is already far removed from reality Their image takes a further step into the future with the ad vent of Micro Simplex a total accountancy package linked up to a cash register The idea behind the package came from the Simplex D book much used and much hated by over 200 000 retailers The book has been in ex istence for some 50 years now and is a total record of all sale transactions accounts and so on It is also extremely difficult to keep up to date and moreover keep accurate as well It is a complex book and its life was made even more complex by the invention of Value Added Tax A book that by sheer tradition could not possibly change even for the vagaries of a government that wanted to introduce something like VAT Consequently everything became con siderably more complex with the addition of a new book to keep VAT records With nine different VAT schemes to keep track of with balance sheets to fill in at the end of every period and with much duplication of material between the books necessary but unfor tunate
25. Introduction Since the early days of the PET various enhancements for BASIC have been available Toolkit and Power are two commercial examples Bill Seiler then of Commodore produced the first public domain version called BASIC Aid Many updates corrections and improvements have been made over the past couple of years The PET CBM program has ballooned to a 4K package for almost every flavour of equipment configuration As has been customary in the Commodore community Mr Jim Butterfield developed a ver sion of the BASIC Aid He called this TINY Aid2 or TINY Aid4 For Basic 4 0 This offered the six most useful commands from the full fledged program Following is my modification of that work designed to provide VIC users with the same benefits After using this for a while think you will find the added commands nearly indispensable Features VIC Tiny Aid is a machine language program which consumes about 1200 bytes of your RAM memory After you have loaded the program type RUN and hit RETURN The program repacks itself into high memory The appropriate pointers are set so that BASIC will not clobber it VIC Tiny Aid is now alive Once activated five commands become at tached to BASIC They will function only in direct mode i e don t include them in a program 1 NUMBER 1000 5 NUMBER 100 10 Renumbers a BASIC program with a given star ting line number and given increment between line numbers The maxim
26. PET User 8 bit data bus 2 Location 59459 is the data direction register Poked with 254 it sets all bits to outputs ex cept the first PAO which we are using as the input from the pen 3 Locations 32768 33767 are the screen memory map 40x24 1000 squares on PET 40 column 33123 is the first of our menu blobs Each succeeding option blob in the menu is directly below the one above and 2 lines down hence the 80 in line 40140 this can be changed as required Other points The pen will work well on any monitor or external TV attached to the computer operating it The circuit shown is easily adapted to other in puts and with appropriate detectors can be made to switch on a sound input temperature change etc Inputs are shown which switch either on a O or 1 The author is prepared to copy a demonstration program which includes full setting up method flow charts and instructions for those less understanding of computers onto your disk 3040 or cassette PET format or alternatively a full printer listing any for funds to ACC Please enclose return postage David Annal 142 Windermere Road London 5 16 Commodore Computing 3 7 SOUND AND Musical Vics Whilst browsing around through a number of pro grams we came across this simple demonstra tion of the musical abilities of the Vic and thought you might be interested It will work on any Vic just type it in and
27. amp 3 29 00 your VIC 20 display VICKIT 3 the super graphics ROM 25 00 plus VAT Now you really can think about Word Processing on your VIC 20 extra commands to make Hi Res Graphics so much easier Move your VI into the class of the BIG Micro s or any STACK product with Expansion Connector o 99 99 S the donkey work you plus VAT Graphics made easy Programming short cuts 6 Easy editing Corrections become simple Stack Storeboard PANAS roduce game a cassette which worth involves the use of the LIGHT PEN andto memory expansion 344 the best entry will go a CBM64 Closing date 15th February 1983 unit Power up your VIC 20 toa MASSIVE 32k lt 0 only 49 a 00 plus for and expandable to SK 27k on the same board NS Commodore Business Machines 700 sERIES 4000 Series Pet Range Coming Soon 8000 Series Pet Range 9000 Series Pet Range CBM 700 Series 500 Series 256 5 256K 896K at 995 WGA 64 CBM MAK with full range of peripherals and software EPSON PRINTERS A anacex 510 at 349 00 E aues ee at 1045 00 0 at 389 00 Bor at 1150 00 d eot at 369 00 9583950 at 1150 00 Wp ais gal ke uices at 409 00 9620 at
28. but excluding VAT ONE HYDRA BOARD IS NEEDED FOR EACH COMPUTER CONNECTED TO THE NETWORK PLEASE SEND A STAMPED AND SELF ADDRESSED ENVELOPE FOR A PHOTO REDUCED HYDRA MANUAL IJJ IMPORTS LTD 1 Cardigan Road Marlborough Wilts England Telephone 0672 52818 Telex 23152 MONREF Commodore Computing 3 5 Simple Light Although written for the Commodore PET the method used here will work for any computer which has a memory mapped screen and a parallel port General Principle Our method is simplicity itself works in BASIC requires only one external IC and needs no addi tional power supply It can be easily adjusted to suit ambient light conditions The plug into the computer costs more than the pen As you might expect with a simple arrangement there are limitations Most commercial pens will pick up the position of the light pen anywhere on the screen by timing how long it takes the scanning dot of the CRT to reach it Drawing on the screen is possible The pen described here will not do this but it will work in that most common situation where the user is asked to select from a number of choices printed on the screen Other uses will no doubt occur to readers The pen works as follows Reversed squares or graphic blobs of light are allocated on the screen which correspond to the replies from a menu of possibilities The pen is peeked to ascertain if it 1444471
29. had its design finalised the other hand the UK version of the CBM 64 is available expect to receive the machine soon If anybody wants 64 might be able to ar range more if given early warning INTRODUCING SEQUOS SEQUOS is a new disk management system written entirely in 6502 machine code SEQUOS was designed to simplify programme writing For example opening and closing of files is eliminated its all done automatically The principle feature of SEQUOS is its ability for high speed file scanning SEQUOS adds 10 new easy to use DISK commands to BASIC for writing updating reading and scanning files SEQUOS can read and write strings up to 255 characters long and provides automatic wrap round from one disk to another SEQUOS scans complete disks with AND OR NOT capability 4 Will search for numbers gt lt lt gt gt lt etc by itself 2 50 VAT Up to 20 specified criteria per search 2 Any portion of a word sentence or number can be identified Disk based SEQUOS BASIC 4 215 00 VAT shipped complete with 25 page manual SEQUOS has many other fantastic features and demonstration programmes please specify Uses include CMB Disk Printer Library citation indexes Medical record keeping etc SCIENTIFIC SEQUOS will store and retrieve DITIAL ata all bytes O thru 255 accepted AND INTRODUCING PETWEEN PETWEEN is ROM based PE
30. soldering or track cutting required supplied complete with fast GRAPHIX software in ROM and full fitting amp operating instructions 149 00 SUPER ROM SELECTOR A high quality printed circuit board giving 64K of utility ROM space software selectable Allows 16x 4K ROMs EPROMs to reside in the expansion area of your PET One POKE enables any two ROMs at a time Suitable for bank switched software 75 00 PET UPGRADES WHILE U WAIT service Dynamic ram pets only Memory expansion 40 column 12 VDU only to 80 column conversion 40 80 column 40 80 column switchable two machines Full keyboard functions i e TAB ESC REPEAT SCROLL up down define WINDOW lowercase graphics mode and DELETE from to cursor All available in direct or program mode REPAIRS AND SERVICING Fast and efficient repairs to all Commodore Business Machines at reasonable prices WHILE U WAIT service whenever possible Please add VAT to the prices shown at the current rate Telephone Mick Bignell for more details at MICROSERVE 7 Clydesdale Close Borehamwood Herts WD6 250 Tel 01 953 8385 SIMPLY WRITE the kind of word processor you didn t think you could afford Some 300 programs have fewer facilities Tape or disk any printer any 40 or 80 column PET Needs 16K Tape 40 disk 45 SIMPLY FILE Records System DBMS Selects by any key Prints alphabetical lists mailing labels colum nar re
31. the whole system had become just a little unwieldy and cried out to be computerised Since just about every retailer uses a cash register of some kind and it is that cash register which should be providing all the information for the Simplex book it was logical to produce a link from a cash register to a Pet as part of our com puterised system As one of the most popular and indeed most intelligent of cash registers is the Nortrond System 81 this was the model chosen by the company who now go under the name of Catlands Information Services although their package will work with a whole herd of dif ferent models The Story Begins The road to success started with just one sale albeit of a fairly large system word processing accountancy and so on The program which is now suitably amended the heart of Micro Simplex cost about 1 000 to install then Four months later in October 1981 Vynes the publishers of the Simplex book were con tacted and gave total support to the idea of pro 20 Commodore Computing ducing a complete package bearing the Simplex logo Obviously as the name was so well known using it would give the system a very good market entry point and Vyners were more than happy to do this With Commodore recognising the significance of a previously untapped but potentially enor mous market Micro Simplex was launched with an initial publicity brochure run of around 100 000 With a complete backu
32. use of interrupts SWIND 150 Saves the contents of the screen in a compressed format KILL 20 Takesout SOFTCHIP commands TRACE 110 Displays the last six iine numbers at the top right screen LINES 50 Calculates the number of lines In a program VAR 390 Outputs the names of al variables referred to a program LWIND 170 Loads a screen display from a compressed format file WINDOW 30 Setstop bottom left right for 8032 screen window Pokes two memory locatlons in hi lo 6502 order HERE S HOW TO ORDER BORDER 100 Draws a border around the edge of the screen 1 Choose around 3700 CLOCK 250 Continually displays the time at a given screen position bytes worth the number of GRAPH 120 Gives access to the box drawing characters 8032 bytes is beside the name ON 50 Branches to program line corresponding to key pressed PROTECT 90 Allows regain of control after system crash 2 Write your selections in STATS 120 Outputs the number of statements in the current program order of preference this is important as our numb ers of bytes are only appr oximate ANG 140 Calculates the average of the elements in a numeric array 3 State which of these BLANK 40 Testsastring returns true if the string is blank computers have DEC 80 Gives the decimal equivalent of a hexadecimal number New Roms Basic 4 Fat 40 FACT 60 Provides the factorial function or 80 column and also GAMMA 90 Provides the gamma func
33. 0 0 50 00 a0 00 00 84 Ob 84 97 0608 18 65 2d 85 2d 98 65 0898 01 fe 00 40 01 60 22 0258 60 a5 35 85 63 a5 36 85 06e0 85 2e a0 00 00 7a 91 0880 40 ec 23 40 e8 a4 Ob 0360 62 4c 8e a5 63 18 65 2 0668 24 c8 40 9 7b 25 08a8 bl 24 a4 97 91 24 20 01 0268 33 85 63 a5 62 65 34 85 2060 a5 2e c5 25 0 20 33 0860 fe 00 dO 01 60 a5 24 0 0270 62 20 ca ff 00 dO fb 60 0618 a5 22 23 18 69 02 0868 02 25 24 4c 24 fe 0a78 a0 00 00 7a 40 02 0700 85 2d 90 01 e8 86 2e 20 08c0 00 a0 00 00 84 a5 84 Of 0a80 7b bl 7a 60 89 8a 8d a7 0708 59 c6 4c 67 e4 20 7c c5 0828 20 cd dd a9 20 a4 a5 29 0288 43 48 41 4e 47 c5 44 45 0710 20 73 00 00 85 8b a2 00 08d0 7f 20 d2 ff c9 22 0 06 90 4c 45 54 c5 46 49 4e c4 20718 00 86 49 20 8c fd 00 a5 08d8 a5 Of 49 ff 85 Of c8 bl 0398 4b 49 4c cc 4e 55 4d 42 0720 a5 c9 00 00 00 07 a2 02 08e0 5f 19 10 ec c9 ff fO 0 45 42 00 00 a5 fc 00 41 0728 86 49 20 fd 00 20 73 08e8 e8 24 Of 30 e4 84 a5 20 0aa8 fc 00 a5 fc 00 c6 fb 00 0730 00 00 f0 03 20 fd ce 20 1080 7c fe 00 c8 bl ae 30 6 0200 98 fe 00 ac fb 00 aa 0738 b2 fd 00 a5 5f a6 60 85 08f8 20 d2 ff dO f6 20 d7 0368 aa aa aa aa aa 4 4 Commodore Computing BASIC PROGRAMMING Disk utilities The two programs in this section are designed to give users of the PET information about how data is being stored on disk they are of m
34. 0 column Pet software much of this given the Pet emulator program will run quite happily on the new machine Commodore 64 Enough has been written about the 64 already without me giving you a mini review of it again so l Il assume from now on that you know more less what the machine is all about At three hundred pounds some users may con sider it to be too expensive for a first buy but considering the fact that it will almost certainly be an invaluable asset to any business the idea of getting one initially for home use is perhaps not so outlandish after all Already we have an extremely good and sophisticated word processing package available and if the 64 ends up being used for nothing more than this the original outlay will have been justified Equally you can be assured that many more business packages will be appearing on the market and with the very impressive specifica tions of the 64 that software looks like being of a very high quality So we know it will be all right for later use what about the present Getting Started Having taken the plunge and brought the new machine home once you ve removed everyone else from watching yet another re run of Star Wars on the video you re about to launch yourself into the world of home computing Obviously you have to start somewhere and possibly the best place would be with Com modore s Introduction to Basic Part 1 which has been specially re written for the 64
35. 0 000 The sales figure for Europe is close on 200 000 with the United Kingdom accounting for half the total The development of a wide range of software including games and educational programmes is certainly paying dividends With Commodore expanding we are looking forward to increas ing the readership of this magazine The February issue of Com modore Computing will therefore be on sale at newsagents across the country To assist this expansion there have been some changes in the magazine s staff The editor is now Nick Hampshire and Pete Gerrard is technical editor In addition there are three new members of staff Ron Scott is production editor Richard Franklin is staff programmer and Martin Bush staff writer We hope that all our readers will approve of the improvements we will be making to the magazine in the coming months Commodore Computing 3 COMMODORE April May Forth for the Pet and Vic The Manager reviewed Butterfield Additional I O Interface Search Procedures Alpha Sorts July Comal Petspeed reviewed Butterfield More modems and stepper motors Pet Talker Another Vic voice Quarter square plotting Fourier Analysis part two machine language auto location September Microcomputers in Business Microfacts 82 reviewed Cursor Handling Routines Instrument Synthesis 8O32 control characters Linking Pets uo to a teletype Getting fo grips with Machine Cod
36. 1 1 will continue to work towards the APL goal of encouraging a very casual user relationship with the computer Discussion of Function PRINT Note See next month for program listings APL programs always start with line zero which defines the syntax of the function along with any local variables that it will create Their names separated by semi colons list the tem porary work variables that will no longer be need ed when execution terminates Having them here tells APL to throw them out for you Any variables created by the executing function but not listed in this way remain available for possible later use PRINT expects a right argument of X which is the data we want printed X can be a variable name it can be the character representation of numbers or it can be JCR FN as discussed above In fact APL even lets us string together more complicated arguments to functions Remember the problem of line numbers not appearing in the of a function To fix this the NUMBER function above can be used as in this statement PRINT NUMBER _ CR FN In this case is just another function which does its job before PRINT The right argu ment in the header permits this type of syntax Line one of an APL function is often reserved for a brief statement of what the function does or how This is strictly a matter of style suggest you get into the habit
37. 1250 00 MASTOUETS 4 at 499 00 WPHINDO i cogeret at 1950 00 CONSUMABLES A full range of Verbatim diskettes paper printer ribbons etc available P O A Trade enquiries welcome Quantity terms available COMING SOON New training premises for courses for the beginner and the expert All prices exclude VAT
38. 4 RETURN CHANGE ABC XYZ 6000 CHANGE DS D1 5000 Using the same syntax as FIND you may change any string to any other string in a BASIC program This command is very powerful and was not part of the early versions of Basic Aid or Toolkit As before you may indicate a line range As the changes are made the revised lines are displayed on the screen Watch out for the difference between BASIC keywords and strings of text within quotes You may use the quote characters to differentiate as with FIND 5 KILL RETURN This command disables VIC Tiny Aid and its associated commands A syntax error will be the result if any of the above commands are now tried Since the routine is safe from interference from BASIC you may leave it active for as long as your machine stays on It is possible that VIC Tiny Aid RETURN RETURN lt commodore COMPUTER BRING TO YOU NOW ON CASSETTE AND DISK GAMES OF THRILLS amp SKILL FOR ALL THE FAMILY NEW PROGRAMS Best of Arcade brings together the three most popular Petpack games Invaders Cosmic Jailbreak and Cosmiads These old favourites have been updated to run on 80 column machines also MPD 121 BEST OF ARCADE 22 50 DISK PACK Best of Treasure Trove gives you twenty of the best games from the Treasure Trove series including four arcade type games Night Drive Car Race Breakout and Money Table There are simulation games brain tea
39. 5 25 SA GE 1458 65 25 38 we 14358 Fa 4C CH d 1466 ee 28 14 DB 1465 14 4 EM Bo z 2 o n Co te Te n po c ce Coe P c P iE TO CT OO a x cnp m 1 iS CH CR ET 7 S co co 4 co co co 1 CO TH Er em m c2 c cO CO To CR CR C C co co zi m mm camo I uu 7 BOE XN exem Ji c2 cd I C00 0 LR CO Aer an em CTS IT C S m c 5 Ama p Di x T comm m i a bet CT m vc e 1 mu us m I mae ce TE Pa ch D Pa m f CO co un ed Pa Toe eB a AL CF id 14 AS 14 14 439 28 se Cs 28 1408 C9 HE c8 BI 1410 14 31 28 Ce H3 B 1415 SF 14 AS 34 28 S amp 14EBH 22 FF FF 34 EH 23 2 5 A 14E8 14 14 1588 rm ah ah gt 5 um oum m c m coca m tul E CC e Lan nm mua oa pO IG m Cam T ca cma qu dim T T occ Tr cir fecal etd T ca o ra pe MEI Te oua omg Tom mamma Tm c
40. 771 The video age For those of you who don t know anything about the micro world but would dearly like to System Two are producing a series of educational documentary television programmes available on cassette featuring micros Not specifically Pet but of interest to educa tionalists generally the programs aim to be un biased and present the practical and theoretical facts about microcomputers which should enable you to understand the theory and prin ciples involved Each film lasts an hour but for some obscure reason could be money each film will also con tain some advertising The press release doesn t make it quite clear whether it is the films or the advertisements that will not only appeal to students but also those people who enjoy computers as a hobby but rest assured that one or the other of them will Area Understanding Microcomputers Company System Two Limited Address No 3 Woking Business Park Albert Drive Woking Surrey GU21 5 Tel No 04862 27676 Contact Luke Thornton Now the VIC 20 and 64 communicate with PET peripherals VIC and 64 users Would you like to be able to access any of these peripherals from your computer megabyte disks Commodore 4040 drive 1 megabyte disks Commodore 8050 drive 10 megabyte disks Commodore 9090 hard disk Printers including a wide range of inexpensive IEEE and RS232 matrix and quality printers Now you are no longer limited b
41. 91 7a 05e0 85 33 a5 38 85 34 6c 37 0720 c9 02 90 40 c9 4b 0 0960 20 ca ff 00 a5 62 91 7a 05e8 00 aa aa aa aa aa aa aa 0728 a5 a7 10 02 8b 18 65 0968 20 b ff 00 fO e2 20 ca 0510 aa aa aa aa aa aa aa aa 0750 Ob 85 97 bO 05 20 24 fe 0970 ff 00 20 ca ff 00 20 ca 05 8 aa aa aa aa aa aa aa 07b8 00 03 20 Oc fe 00 a5 0978 ff 00 c9 22 dO Ob 20 0600 df ad fe ff 00 85 37 ad 0720 97 38 5 34 a8 c8 a5 34 0980 ff 00 10 c5 c9 22 dO 17 0608 ff ff 00 85 38 a9 4c 85 0768 10 Of 85 8c 33 bd 00 0958 10 ee aa 0 bc 10 e9 a2 0610 7c ad d9 fb 00 85 7d ad 0700 00 02 91 7a e8 c8 8 0990 04 dd 04 ff 00 05 ca 0618 da fb 00 85 7e 4c 8f fc 20748 40 f5 18 a5 2d 65 a7 85 0998 40 8 10 dd a5 85 0 0620 00 10 03 4c 08 cf c9 0760 2d a5 65 8b 85 a5 0920 a5 7b 85 20 73 00 00 0628 85 7c a9 85 7d a9 0 0768 7b 85 5f 86 60 09a8 bO 43 20 6b c9 20 51 ff 0630 85 7e 60 db fb 00 85 8b 0710 43 a5 44 20 3d fe 00 20 0900 00 a5 85 7b a5 85 0638 86 97 ba bd 01 01 c9 07f8 el ff 00 00 85 a4 0998 a0 00 00 a2 00 00 bd 20640 10 10 40 02 a4 8c 97 0800 97 4c 2 fc 00 a4 7a c8 09c0 00 00 01 c9 30 90 11 48 0648 a5 8b c9 50 03 4c 80 0808 94 31 a9 00 00 95 32 9 09c8 20 73 00 00 90 03 20 82 0650 00 00 60 bd 02 01 c9 c4 0810 00 00 02 15 8b 0 0900 ff 00 68 a0 00 00 91 7a 2 0658 40 ed a5 8b 10 02
42. C gt e a COMPUTING January 1983 4 00 International USA 60 BUSINESS TRAINING COURSE MICRO SIMPLEX REVIEWED CROSS REFERENCE INTERFACING LIGHT PEN VIC ts of F sets of Fabulous pe en LIGHT PEN PROGRAMMERS TOOLKIT Gives extra commands Auto Number Help Delete Change DAMS PRICE Trace Step LightPen Break etc and ONLY MACHINE CODE MONITOR Gives Save Memory Display 17 35 Similar to TIM on PET B VAT Examine the VICS ROM Needs DAMS RAM ROM board or similar 19 95 2 19 95 VICMON RAM N ROM THE ULTIMATE BOARD PROGRAMING AID m In Hires area Mz Also space for Full machine code VICAID and package with VICMON Assembler Dissassembler programming aids Fill Re locate Identify Exchange Compare Printing Dissassembler etc etc Needs DAMS RAM ROM board or similar 2 m 9 205 19 95 m VAT Includes Cover BUY THE RAM N ROM BOARD WITH VICAID AND VICMON WITH MACHINE CODE MANUAL WORTH 5 00 FROM MOS TECHNOLOGY FOR ONLY 67 85 VAT AND GET AFREE VIC LIGHT PEN WORTH 17 35 VIC REFERENCE GUIDE R R P 14 95 DAMS PRICE 14 50 VIC STARTER KIT VIC 20 C2N Cassette Deck 10 Blank Cassettes User Manual Vic Programmers Reference Guide 1 Joystick Worth 238 30 ONLY e 214 00 VAT VAT INCL
43. Computer Systems Address The Old Signal Box Hensington Road Woddstock Oxford Tel No 0993 812700 Easy to assemble More software aimed at improving the existing Pet comes from Comsoft in Birmingham Called eXtensions to eXisting eXecutive good grief it is a package of Assembler modules pro viding users and programmers with a string of important benefits on floppy and hard disk systems Many features are detailed an Indexed Sequen tial Access Method restructured and enhanced Input Output more comprehensive and easily maintained overlays and much more Area Disk Software Company Comsoft Associates Address 2c 2d Wake Green Road Mosely Birm ingham Tel No 021 449 9151 Contact Phil Nutt Programming aids Yet another Eprom Programmer has appeared this one at 79 from MED Ltd Also from them we have the Meddev P Development Package at 19 75 all to do with storing sequential ASCII records on disk or tape We hope to bring you more on these two in future months Area Programming Aids Company MED Ltd Address 640 Melton Road Thurmaston Leicester LE4 8BB Tel No 0533 704492 Commodore Computing 7 NEW PRODUCTS m forever blowing bubbles Computer Applied Technology Ltd have just an nounced a 128K Bubble Memory for the Apple II with promise of a similar goody for the Pet by the end of December Why mention the Apple one Because we have no other source of information a
44. February 7 and runs for 21 weeks It will include three weeks of instruction on the premises of a micro computer manufac turer on the Continent Area Computer Sales Training Company Polytechnic of North London Address Micro Sales Course c o The Community Computer Centre Polytechnic of N Lon don Holloway Road London N7 8DB Tel No 01 607 8349 Contact Peter Hofer Course Tutor 8 Commodore Computing A thumping good read Prentice Hall International send out almost as many catalogues as they produce books but all contain something of interest to the Commodore reader Their winter catalogue features many in teresting Pet and Vic books and also one for the machine that arguably started it all the Kim 1 This is by one of their regular contributors Lance A Leventhal and is called Microcomputer Ex perimentation with the Kim 1 It emphasises the practical side of things including a look at com munications peripherals and more On the Pet front we have quite a few publica tions mainly aimed at teaching you the art of pro gramming in Basic on your Pet or Vic and Com modore 64 for that matter One that deserves mention is Pet Games and Recreations by Len Lindsay and half the population of the western world which covers games from the simple to the extremely complex Area Books Company Prentice Hall International Address 66 Wood Lane End Hemel Hempstead Hertfordshire HP2 4RG Tel No 0442 58531 212
45. For a surprise hit Now add a melody over the top hit key 8 then 7 now play a melody or experiment fun ROBOT PANIC A fantastic high speed game on cartridge The SHARK ATTACK For unexpanded Vic20 You are in shark infested waters after being thrown overboard from a pirate ship Your only protection being an atomic net which you trail behind you trying to cover all the visible ocean and ensnare the sharks at the same time Beware of stopping or covering your tracks for too long if you do then the sharks will escape and come after you Watch for the ever increasing deadly somtimes the sharks will eat part or all of one real action shot of the game NEW NEW NEW SPACE ATTACK For the unexpanded Vic20 SPACE ATTACK is a game of skill You as the pilot of an intergalactic battleship have to fight your way through wave after wave of various alien spaceships MACHINE CODE ARCADE QUALITY GAME SPECIAL OFFER C4 COMPUTER CASSETTES 2 50 for 10 20 for 100 price is yet to be announced but around 16 Available post free from the above address only OUR GAMES ARE AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD HOME COMPUTER SHOPS INCLUDING Micro inside Currys at Birmingham 233 1105 Leeds 46601 Luton 425079 Nottingham 412455 Southampton 29676 inside Bridgers at Bristol 650501 New Malden 01 949 2091 and at Leicester 546224 London 01 387 9275 Manchester 834 0144
46. LOC CODE LINE 6001 6 6662 6 XSCREEN DISPLAY 6663 6 SUBROUTINES 0 6 6 58694 9605 6 ORATION ER 6665 6667 006 2868 6669 8 STARTL 54 6616 66 STARTH 55 9811 0 TEMP 1 56 0012 6 2 57 6613 452 8814 665 i 9815 6 8816 BEGIN 7R08 8817 8 6618 6619 6 HORIZONTAL LINE DRAW 6628 6621 DKRM HORIZONTAL LINE 8822 Ree LENGTH USING 8823 6 CHARACTER WITH ASCII 6624 NUMERIC VALUE IN TEMP 6825 6826 98 2 TYA 6627 8 1 48 6628 57 LDv 8629 4 AS 58 NEXTH LDA 3 6636 7886 91 54 STA 6631 88 DEY 6832 7AGS D F9 BNE NEXTH 8633 68 PLR 6634 AS TAY 6635 68 RTS 6836 0037 VERTICAL LINE DRAWING R6E VERTICAL LINE LENGTH 2 00408 2 6 1 6641 VALUE IN TEMPS 6842 8843 7AGE 98 0044 88 48 8045 4 57 LIY 8846 7 812 AZ LDX 98 6647 7814 AS 58 NEXTY LDA 6048 7116 81 54 STA STRRTL X gt 2818 21 7A JSR NEXTL 6656 2818 88 DEY 8851 18 6 BFL 68652 68 PLA 6653 7AIF TAY 6854 68 RTS 8655 1 Commodore Computing 3 9 BASIC PROGRAMMING Tiny Aid For VIC 20 David Hook Barrie Ont
47. NHFTER THAT EHTER F LL OMIHG PROGRAM 138 PRINT BY PASSING THE CURSOR OVER EACH LINE 135 188 CHET 1472 148 PRINT 118 FOR T 24 145 PRIHT 128 READ HERT 158 PRINT 138 READ 155 PRIHT 140 GET 148 ich PRIHT 158 PRINT 2 153 165 PRINT 8 MIA a 178 PRINT 707 TO CONTINUES TIT dl 175 1 1 1 90 128 REAL 50 Commodore Computing 1978 1475 zn 1388 FF Fl C4 SI 1388 EB 14 43 28 91 C4 AS 1388 CS EF A3 4C FF ES ZH 3H8 FF Fe 45 AD 14 ISAS Ad 31 C4 C9 5C Fe a 85 26 2 FF BB 05 FF 7 1385 85 88 AS a2 85 23 H9 A 13 85 SA H9 88 25 SB AD 13 1308 85 SC 1306 14 31 88 28 F E4 1 18 14 EE 4 i4 De 62 EE ES 13EM 14 12 AS 88 69 HE SS 58 1 SG 82 89 GL 14 ZH CH 4F 84 C9 2 1 41 29 CS 22 us 1488 B AA SA 40 14 18 ides ac EB 14 23 28 18418 43 32 87 14 SH CO 28 5 1415 BS 84 4 BE C9 48 1428 68 BB 84 B3 1428 De 43 Ce 4F 1438 26 91 14 31 88 Ce Ch 58 1438 B5 88 28 Co 1448 Fa CS 18 AS SA 69 144
48. PES DISKS These are simple cassettes identical to the ones used for music on radios and music centres By their very nature these are serial devices in that the information is recorded over the length of the tape and must be processed in the same way The entire tape must pass the read write mechanism every record must be read whether or not it is needed for processing it is not possible to access data randomly or quickly In practice they are very useful for holding programs and duplicates or back up copies of data files Using the analogy a gramophone record data is recorded not in one continuous groove but in discrete tracks from the outermost to the in nermost and within each track blocks of records It is possible therefore by numbering the tracks and the blocks to have an addressing System as with the locations in main memory and to know where each record is say the stock record of a given number the name and address of a par ticular customer etc As with main memory control over a file is maintained by a series of indexes in conjunction with the operating system It is this flexibility of what are called indexed files that enable data to be processed or retrieved sequentially or randomly As with gramaphone record it is possible to position the read write head at any point in the file without scann ing the remainder A range of disks is available from small pliab
49. REPEAT 50 Adds repeat key function DISP 140 Displays a prompting or warning message on a glven line REPLACE 490 Replace all occurrences of one character string with another READ 100 Reads data from disk without Input restrictions RESCUE 40 Recovers a program accidentally NEW ed DSEARCH 330 Searches disk relative file for a given string or pattern RESET 170 Resets double density polnt on the screen DUMP 170 Outputs the names and values of all current scalar varlables RESTORE 20 Restores DATA back to a given line number EDIT 70 Adds delete forwards function REVERSE 50 Reverses the field of the screen EXEC 140 Executes string as a BASIC command SCAN 190 Scans a string for the next occurrence of a given character FIND 200 Lists all In which a given character string appears SCOPY 340 Copies the screen to the printer GENIN 700 General foolproof Input routine with selected key disablement SCROLL 230 Scrolls screen contents up down left or right 9508 110 Performs GOSUB to a given labelled line SEARCH 270 Searches array for a given string or pattern GTO 90 Performs a GOTO as above SHRINK 180 Removes all unnecessary spaces and REM s from a program INPUT 40 Allows a program to continue despite a null entry belng input SORT 780 Sorts any one dimensional array and tags another array along INVERT 160 Turns a string back to front SWAP 440 Loads another program retaining variables 60 Restores normal system
50. RES kx 2 3 8 Commodore Computing B 15 0 20 28 Agaa Er r A T F FH JEBIB 7 HEAT Bis 4 4 PRLS TORS 4 aget F URM IT ZEH NHERT HERT F KES 2 POKESES E 1 FORMS 2 6 i3 HER HE zx pos 0188 HERT HEAT HEAT HEAT EXT RET M F RH ZIT IB MERXT MHERT abar SBE Graphical Pets Four short Basic programs for use in your own business and utility programs all to do with screen appearance As they are written in Basic they ll work on any machine 106 2 lt FEM DD N DE DE C eroi ESAMPLE OF SUBROUTINE REM DISFLRY WARNING MES amp THIS SUBROUTINE AL FEM THE CURSOR CONTROL SUEFOUTINE AT 2 FEM IOI I 7 OF WARNING MESSAGE 1830 38188 PRINT a END 3 REM det FEM REM REM 29200 fe E AOE OE KCD B D 29862 REM wCURSOR CONTROL SUBROLITINE 29804 D D KCD 0 1 0880 PRINT st IF COL 1 INTLEFTS COL COL 1 1 1 INTLEFT lt LNES LNE 1 gt 2 XWRRHING MESSAGE
51. T link up system PETWEEN was designed for data transfer between one PET and another Whole programmes or a string of variables can be sent in either direction Ideal for scientific use where one PET is busy collecting data for the other one to process and deal with printer and disk drives PRICE Manual by itself 1 00 VAT PETWEEN ROMset BASIC 4 cable and manual 95 00 VAT DIGITAL MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS LIMITED 906 Woodborough Road Mapperley Nottingham NG3 5 Telephone 0602 622686 THE HYDRA SYSTEM NETWORKING WITH CBM COMPUTERS This British designed and ruggedly built system allows the user to set up a Local Area Network LAN with up to 127 CBM computers connected by means of a simple 4 wired cable link Each computer has a small 14 x 10cm printed circuit board plugged into its memory expansion port and all LAN transactions are executed via these boards which are inter connected by the link cable The LAN may be connected by daisy chaining or in a radial configuration and it is immaterial whether a particular node is active switched on or even connected as far as the rest of the system is concerned The use of a single board type for 3032 4032 and 8032 computers simplifies installation and this is typical of the fail safe and virtually fool proof design philosophy THE HYDRA SYSTEM COMES COMPLETE WITH SOFTWARE MULTI USER DISK AND A 32 PAGE MANUAL 175 each 169 each including first class registered post
52. a File It S easy to write a file All we need to do is Open it which tells the computer to get everything ready to go Print the stuff and then Close it which tells the computer to wrap everything up Let s do it If you have cassette tape type OPEN 6 1 1 DATAFILE or if you have disk type 0 W and in either case your file number 6 is ready to go Now we can write a few things Let s try some numbers PRINT 3 PRINT 6 123 PRINT 6 3 45 6 2 8 Commodore Computing And a few names PRINT 6 HELLO PRINT 6 NAME IS FRED Finally we wrap up the file with CLOSE 6 A few notes Did you notice that after we open ed the file the coding was the same no matter whether we were going to tape or disk The OPEN statement sets everything up for us This can make things very easy Note that we use one print statement for one item Don t try punctuation PRINT 6 3 123 would not work right we will need that extra RETURN when we read back the data It s also in teresting to see that expressions are worked out before being printed so that 3 45 6 will placed on the file as value 810 Now for that sneaky Linefeed You don t really need to worry about this if you have 4 0 Basic or if you are using cassette tape but it s good prac tice Those PRINT statements wrote the infor mation we asked then a Return which we wanted then a Linefeed which we didn t want We can get rid o
53. aintenance company recommended by Commodore so if it comes to the worst be sure you go to the best For immediate action call Mills head office on Mills Associates Computer Maintenance Services 0600 4611 Alternatively use the coupon to obtain further information about the service that will best meet your needs D nS IEEE SS 1 I d like to know more about Full maintenance contract Fault repair contract General repairs and upgrades the following services tick as required _ Address _ Telephone MA CCO 1183 To The Commodore Information Centre 675 Ajax Avenue Slough Berks SL1 4BG Commodore Changing business for the better Commodore Computing 3 3 PROGRAMMING TIPS execution time of the interpretive BASIC and it thus becomes necessary to move to machine code to obtain the true speed advantage of the microprocessor If you are not familiar with machine code programming it is probably ad visable to use a compiler in order to increase ex ecution speed In the above illustration the PET may finally be programmed to grade the amplifier and produce a label via the printer indicating passed rejected or necessary rework details Obviously this type of test system is not limited to audio amplifiers but can easily be extended to telecomms equipment white goods or electrical electronic equipment of all sorts
54. an extremely robust stock control program or rather suite of pro grams and makes an admirable link for any pro gram requiring stock recordings Communications the communications used throughout the system have been developed by Cortex long regarded as experts in the field This is principally used when communicating from the register to the Pet but equipment other than a register can also be used with the software For instance various remote data entry ter minals be used the RDC MSI 55 for example is the latest wonder device that can be held in the hand and trundled around the store for entry of data With 4K of RAM on board this 300 00 pound unit can hold a fair amount of information which can be subsequently transferred to the Pet and handled from there Whether you use a hand held terminal or the tape storage of the Nortrond sooner or later you re going to have to get all that information in to the Pet and the Micro Simplex system allows this to be done overnight thus no time is lost dur ing the day it can be simply left alone all night to totally update everything and be ready for another days service the next morning Nor are you limited to just one register Larger stores with a number of different ones about the place would also be able to use the system as up to 20 cash registers can be linked up at the same time to the one Pet and all their information pooled at the end of the day or whenev
55. and Jim invited people to produce a machine code version Since no one did he s done it himself and now you can share the benefits To 1 12 THENGET 1 HF 1224 5 1 138 i z t OPEHd P PRINTH4 240 PRIHT 4 CLOSES READY CROSS REF CROSS REF CI 120 14 128 198 115 MS 138 168 138 24 138 CROSS REF ADVENTURE 318 1080 1138 4588 16568 2338 r 656 1788 1738 1910 iaa 54 Commodore Computing ANDY ECSCHRECLOGOTO120 1 1 S 3 4 OME 2 6 5 1238 prove the increase in speed we decided to do cross reference of the basic listing for Adventure an incredibly convoluted 12K or thereabouts of program Just to prove it that is reproduced at the end of the article in case you ve ever wanted to cheat at Adventure but didn t know where to begin That process took less than a minute and in deed took much longer to print out than it did to produce the results Let s take a look at the program itself starting with the Basic part followed by a cross reference of itself 11 FILE 1250 HI RESOLUTION GRAPHICS A high resolution graphics board that gives a 64 000 dot 320 x 200 resolu tion Versions available for any dynamic ram Pet BASIC 2 3 4 40 amp 80 columns No
56. and a future article will show how you can take great advantage of this feature Unlike BASIC APL lets you have numerous programs and sets of data available simultaneously mixing and matching them as in our PRINT NUMBER example This saves great deal of code because you can re use utilities rather than re coding them into every ap plication that needs them With such a mixture of functions that one line of documentation can protect against confusion over smilar names and help you or others find their way around Continued next month Commodore Computing 1 1 MICROS IN BUSINESS Are Small Micros of Any Use To the Businessman This is not just the superficial question it might at first sight appear to be No doubt many pundits would dismiss this with a derogatory NO but that is far from being the case use of a small microcomputer such as the Vic the Spectrum or whatever could indeed enhance many businesses but the question goes deeper than that Consider the businessman who wants to learn about computing but cannot justify the cost of buying say a complete 8000 series system out of his own budget with the possibility of it being of no use to him or his business in the long run Obviously he would have to aim his sights a little lower but at the same time remain aware of the fact that at some day in the future the system will have to be expanded up from its original humble beginnings Use in th
57. at it works and does the job required of it Your first program is not going to be a machine code tour de force but thirty or forty lines of Basic solving a particular problem will do just as well to begin with Then having got one problem solved you re then in a position to branch further out and perhaps feeling a little pleased with yourself as well Backup All the time though it is important to remember that you bought this originally as a home com puter and although it may be doing sterling work in the office it s vital that you keep up the train ing at home This is one of the beauties of a computer like the 64 It can do very important tasks at work either with programs like the ones we mentioned above that you ve written yourself or perhaps an off the shelf package for something that is originally a bit beyond your own programming talents but at the same time it is equally at home in your front room connected up to the television set The more you use the machine the more familiar you get with it the better it will be all round Your programming ability develops and better programs result from this Conclusion The point to always bear in mind is that the Com modore 64 or indeed whatever small micro you eventually end up acquiring is not the 1 It is a small computer that can be made fairly large with the aid of disk drives and printers don t think we really need worry about memory expan sion
58. cilities under pro gram control 1 Selection of waveforms which are stored in EPROM 2 Coarse frequency selection i e high range or low range 3 Fine frequency control with 12 bit resolution i e there are 4096 frequencies which the operator may select under program control 4 Amplitude control with 8 bit resolution allowing 256 amplitude levels to be selected from the micro computer microcomputer and stored waveform generator OUTPUT A R Ry Fig 3 AMPLIFIER CONFIGURED AS WIEN BRIDGE OSCILLATOR 31 Commodore Computing PROGRAMMING TIPS mam Application Areas Waveform or pulse generators are used in the testing and calibration of most electronic circuits be they digital or analogue Typical of such pieces of hardware are audio amplifiers servo amplifiers and medical recorders for electro cardiography and electro encephalography these all require input test signals of particular characteristics Modern fatigue testing machines which determine the lifetime to failure on critical aerospace or automobile mechanical com ponents may have a range of standard R 5 T4 Fig 4 TTL SCHMITT TRIGGER OSCILLATOR CONFIGURED 5 AN waveforms which can be applied to the test specimen Wave tanks or moving vibratory test tables similarly impose a pre selected pattern of acceleration force or stress Before implantation medical pacemakers must undergo a particularly rigorous a
59. creen it s easy to take the next step and input or output using other devices The printer is handy of course But the super power comes from devices you can both read and write That way information can be stored now and brought back in later You can store names addresses phone numbers and read them when you need them This gives you two advan tages first the information isn t lost when you turn the power off and second you have lots of storage space even if your computer memory is small INLAB 19 RACK MODULAR EUROCARD INTERFACE SYSTEM Flexible multi channel multi purpose Versatile interfaces all popular micros Powerful many plug in options 12 amp 14 bit A D convertors Transducer amplifiers and multiplexers 12 bit D A convertor Relays and opto isolated outputs Opto isolated BCD inputs Intelligent stepper motor controller Programmable gain amplifier Battery backed clock calendar Universal frequency event counter and now Function generator lt Design and Development T E 5 18 19 Warren Street London WIP 508 01 387 7388 Telex 8963742 IEEE 488 0 BEGINNERS GUIDE EE _ TE The Golden Rule You ll find it easy to remember the golden rule of input and output the information going out is almost exactly as you would see it on the screen So if you asked to print out a value of 16 7 the following chara
60. cters would be sent to the cassette printer or disk Space 1 6 7 Return That s almost exactly the same as would go to the screen we wouldn t see the Return on the screen but we d see its effect since a new line would be started The opposite side of the golden rule concerns input If the above value was written to a device and later we rewind and ask to INPUT from that device the program will receive exactly the same information as if we typed on the keys Space 1 6 7 and Return On the keyboard RETURN signals that we are finished and it means the same when the information comes from some other device Two special situations should be mentioned You might have noticed that if we say PRINT 167 an extra character is delivered to the screen behind the last digit 7 there s a dursor right You may not notice it since it doesn t print but it s there This extra character will not be sent to other devices That s good because we don t need it we save the space and no harm is done The other situation is another invisible character Many versions of Basic send one more character after RETURN Basic 4 0 does not nor mally send it but most other Basics send a special character called a Linefeed The Linefeed is a nice character for certain types of printers it may be needed to move the paper up ready for printing the next line But it S wasted in data storage and might even give us a little trouble More on this later Writing
61. d so on Simple that is if you know it all already but as Jim Butterfield has said what you think everyone else already knows doesn t always turn out to be what they do know Having found out where everything is and how to use it chapter two goes onto the actual opera tion of the computer starting off with program statements in immediate mode and then onto simple programs file handling etc A short section on screen editing leads us into programming the beast variables arrays boolean operators and much more are all given a thorough if at times brief going over This sec tion could really be applied to any computer being programmed not a criticism of the book but an introduction to the next and perhaps most impor tant chapter Making the Most of CBM Features One of the longest chapters in the book this tells us all about the peculiarities and idiosyn crasies of the Commodore family and is probably also one of the most useful chapters in the book as far as the novice is concerned Business Use Since this particular version of the book is aimed more at businessmen than home hobbyists we must therefore believe that the content follows this dictum To be fair it does and in this chapter 24 Commodore Computing in particular we have more business utilities ex plored than anything else sorts that kind of thing All these listings incidentally are reproduced direct from a CBM printer which does encourage con
62. d to spend nearly 200 on a spreadsheet program then you really ought to consider VISICALC It s a superb program If however you re not able to run VISICALC on your system or are not prepared to invest such a large sum of money you ought to take a look at BUSICALC It not only sounds familiar it looks much the same and has a similar range of facilities All you need is 16K of memory and a cassette unit or disk drive A printer will be useful but it isn t essential Whether you use your computer in an office or at home in industry or at university BUSICALC can make it an even more powerful tool It can handle jobs that would otherwise require a specially written program or hours and hours of tedious paperwork Just fill in the numbers that you know then tell BUSICALC how to work out the others by entering simple formulae BUSICALC can add or subtract multiply or divide calculate roots or powers and perform special functions like totalling or averaging rows and columns You can enter text on the sheet for column headings titles etc and specify the number of decimal places for each calculated value so with the help of a printer you can produce really smart reports BUSICALC sheets can be saved to disk or tape for subsequent reworking or access by other programs It all sounds so simple that you wonder why somebody didn t think of it before Actually they did we re just doing it for a quarter of th
63. de for all the Commodore family of machines as well as in depth articles news and reviews Why not buy now and see what you ve been missing Each back issue costs 1 00 including post and packing Just send your cheque or postal order to Back Issues Commodore Computing International 167 169 Great Portland Street London W4 or telephone 01 636 6354 4 Commodore Computing NEW PRODUCTS Micro vision system This is one of those ideas that makes you wonder why no one has ever done it before Technical problems perhaps but Digithurst in Royston have solved them all and now present a vision system for the Pet amongst other micros Coming in two versions Microsight 1 and 2 the first one s cheap and the second one is very fast the system uses a standard CCTV camera to capture images and an interface to process this and send it back to the micro as 8 bit digitised video The software package handles data transfer from the Micro Eye interface to the Pet and controls the camera It also looks after disk storage and retrieval as well as the display of im ages on a high resolution screen High resolution screen Well Digithurst have taken care of that by making available a high resolution board for 150 which gives you an image resolution of 128 x 128 No doubt so meone will produce a higher resolution to take ad vantage of the technology available think you can see the potential of the system Given a r
64. der it as piece of elec tro mechanical equipment capable of undertaking the processing of conventional business routine accounting stock control costing etc and capable of expanding into more sophisticated techniques simulation modelling etc and talk to each other In point of fact the basic characteristics the architecture as we call it has not changed since the first days of the computer in the mid What has happened is that the technology the hardware has become smaller and cheaper hence 16 Commodore Computing within the need of most people A micro computer is made up of four basic Elements 1 An Input Whereby processing instruc Facility tions the program and cur rent business transactions the data can be fed in 2 The Pro cessing Where the programs and data Unit are held during the actual pro cessing operation together with the associated control mechanisms 3 Backing These are the disks floppy Memory or Winchester and hard disks Backing and cassette tapes which hold Files the files of data eg Names and Addresses Accounts Stock Records etc which are the basis of the system 4 An Output Where the results of computa Facility tion are fed back to the user Let us now consider each of these components in turn in greater detail 1 Input Facilities This is a keyboard similar to a conventional typewriter in its layout having provision for t
65. disk loadable report formats 18 BUSINESS BASIC commands with 20 place arithmetic data compression automatic date control etc and on the CBM 8096 all the features of PM96 46K for programs 26K for variables as well as 17 BASIC UTILITY commands MASTER supports the CBM 8032 8096 8032 CP MAKER and 4040 8050 8250 floppy disks plus CBM 9060 9090 hard disks and is supplied with a User Reference Manual Quick Reference Guide Demo Disk and with a key for either cassette port Supplementary RUN TIME keys are available for multiple users and software houses 96 At last you can program the full capacity of the CBM 8096 with 53K for programs up to 15 simultaneously and 26K for variables maintained even while editing or loading and use 17 new Basic commands as well including all the TOOLKIT commands plus PRINT USING IF THEN ELSE STOP KEY disable HARDCOPY screen dump CALL FETCH PLOT 50 by 150 WINDOW and more PM96 comes with a User Reference Manual Quick Reference Guide Disk with demo programs and 011 Support Rom 15 the ultimate wordprocessor Wordpro compatible except for price with up to 20 000 characters of text and 240 characters screen format and no Roms or dongles to instal SuperScript has been adopted by Commodore for their new models and is now joined by SUPERSPELL a 30 000 word disk dictionary which easily verifies the largest Superscript or doc
66. e November An interview with Jim Butterfield More music high resolution plotting writing user friendly programs security chip storage Getting neater printouts Animation on the Pet plus a couple of hints from Butterfield COMPUTING BACK NUMBERS June Connecting a disk drive to an Old Rom Pet The 8010 modem revealed programmable characters on the Vic High Speed stepper motor for the Pet Load and Save explored Fourier Analysis Tinymon a machine code monitor for the Vic August Vic educational software Butterfield on compilers Glass Teletype machine code listing Dump Mote a multi linking Pet and or Vic system CB2 interface graphics drawing Sound Synthesis Input and Output from the User Port How to use a SYS call with parameters October DMS for the Pet old Rom DOS Support program Upgrade roms for old 8K Pets More on Instrument Synthesis Sorting dates Cursor positioning True assignments for Vic function keys An adaptation of Supermon powerful extension to monitor for the Vic December Three word processors compared computers in the optical industry a first look at machine code graphics and plotting routines full Commodore 64 memory maps auto loading of programs packed with program listings Every issue has much more than what we ve detailed above In each issue you ll find plenty of program listings in Basic and machine co
67. e Home think if the system is to be expanded up into a fully fledged office one we will have to discount the Vic from our reckoning Although it has long been promoted as a possible business machine cannot see how Commodore justify that With only 3 5K on board and a terribly limited screen an awful lot of money has to be spent before it can be brought up to the basic requirements of at least a 40 column screen preferably 80 and a lot more memory By the time you ve added on disk drives printers and so on the final cost has soared far beyond the original outlay Of course items like Interpod could be used here but before he s bought anything our businessman will have to have designed out his whole office structure This is not what we re here to consider Interpod is a good and useful product don t get me wrong but feel it will be bought by existing users who wish to save on the price of a few disk drives or who want an inexpensive IEEE to 85232 convertor or any of the other uses of it rather than the first time buyer If we re going to seriously consider any of the Commodore machines it will have to be the Com modore 64 This certainly has enough memory has 40 column screen and no doubt some enterprising company will bring out an 80 column convertor before long and already has an astonishing array of software to back it up Not 1 2 Commodore Computing least of this of course is all the original Basic 4
68. e address in the leftmost column If you are working on the unexpanded VIC the sequence of addresses is 11xx 12xx 13xx 14xx 15xx 16xx You will have to type these pairs of characters in place of the leading two shown just above With that task complete we are ready to preserve this work on tape So type S VICAID ML 01 0580 0AB6 RETURN 6 a S 4 6 AID ML 01 1180 16B6 RETURN Mount a blank tape and follow the instructions Save a second copy for safety Exit the ML monitor with RETURN VERIFY the program normally before going any further Now comes the easy part NEW then the BASIC listing Enter this exactly without in cluding any extra text Save this as AID BAS and VERIFY it Finally LOAD VIC AID ML and SAVE VIC AID REL on another blank tape Both the BASIC part and the machine language part have been SAVEd together Check Out We are going to check out the machine language using a checksum method Type in NEW before proceeding Now enter the following program 10 i20 3072 for unexpanded VIC 20 t O for j 1048 i to 2741 i t t peek j 40 next j 50 print t After a few seconds if the value 161705 ap pears you ve likely got it perfect Go to the next section If not there s at least one incorrect entry Change the two values in Line 20 using the table below Re RUN the program and co
69. e price BUSICALC is availabe now for 40 and 80 column PET CBM models and for the Commodore 64 At just 39 plus VAT 40 50 on disk it really is incredible value for money Please give details of your equipment when ordering WE ARE LOOKING FOR OVERSEAS DISTRIBUTORS FOR BUSICALC AND OTHER SOFTWARE FOR BOTH PET AND 64 PLEASE WRITE 08 TELEPHONE PETER CALVER ON 01 861 1166 LONDON Winchester House Canning Road Wealdstone Harrow Middlesex HA3 7SJ England Telephone 01 861 1166 Commodore Computing 4 9 BASIC PROGRAMMING Screen Data Peter Gabor The following program will work any Basic 4 0 machine and its function is to convert the entire screen contents into data statements Although the Basic demonstration program is essentially the same for both 4O and 80 column machines change line 180 in the 4O column version to read 180 SYS3200 the machine code parts are different Enter the Basic program first don t forget line 180 and if you like change the REM and in structions in lines 40 and 105 if you have a 40 column machine The values become 0888 and ODFO respectively Save that normally and then go onto the machine code part The first two blocks are for 80 column machines and the second four are for 4O col umns They ve been divided into screenfuls to make it easier to enter Enter the monitor with SYS4 then type START ADDRESS END AD DRESS followed by RETURN and just ty
70. e surface of the planet devastating the Martian cities destroying ammunition dumps gaining more time shooting down the ground to air missiles Areal action shot of the game MOONS OF JUPITER For expanded Vic20 3K 8K or 16K You are the Commander of a fleet of destroyers looking on from the safety of a mother ship you send in one destroyer at a time to blast a passage through the MOONS OF JUPITER Your destroyers have to dodge and blast the UFOs Watch out for the Gologs they can smash your destroyers but you cannot harm them A MACHINE CODE ARCADE QUALITY GAME MIND TWISTERS For unexpanded Vic20 Four games to stretch your brain Blackjack Decipher Four Thought and Teaser are our com puterised versions of very popular home games and will test your mental agility and skill for many a long hour ALL PROGRAMS ARE 9 99 SEA INVASION Unexpanded Vic20 Fight off the attacking sea creatures for as long as you can Shoot the whale for a surprise score watch out for the crabs starfish and octopuses Fh TISGUND CUNTHESIZER For the unexpanded Vic20 The Vic Multisound Synthesiser 15 very flexible and can be played in more ways than can ever be explained here to create music and special effects For example create any tune up to 255 notes after following appropriate instructions then press F1 or then key 9 and enjoy the added effect Now hit listen to the difference
71. eally high resolution text recognition becomes possible and if linked to a word pro cessor we ll be able to transcribe War and Peace to disk within seconds Prices are not cheap system 1 is 495 and system 2 is 1 900 but the advantages are enormous Area Micro Computer Vision System Company Digithurst Ltd Address Leaden Hill Orwell Royston Herts SG8 50H Tel No 0223 208926 Contact Peter Kruger Getting serious There is money to be made in accountancy after all Pegasus who ve been selling their accounts and stock control packages since the beginning of the year recently announced impressive sales figures for the first seven months of the year with a projected profit for the year of almost a quarter of a million On top of this they ve just brought out a payroll package as well so perhaps we ll see an even bigger profit Area Business Packages Company Pegasus Software Ltd Address Station Road Kettering Northants Tel No 0536 522822 Contact Johnnie Johnson Star gazing The Constellation is the latest in the growing bat tle for control of the local area network LAN market this one being from Keen Computers Claiming to have already sold over 1 000 systems the Constellation allows up to 64 micros of varying pedigrees to share data and programs printers and up to 72 megabyte of hard disk A considerable saving in an always cost conscious market Area Local Area Networks Company Ke
72. easing awareness of communications as a tool for the future Many packages exist for the Pet whether operating as a remote terminal chatting away to a giant mainframe talking to a number of other Pets via some local area network system or whatever What no one has done and this is quite surpris ing as it would seem to be a fairly common re quirement is a simple package to allow a couple of Pets to talk to each other For instance while one controls some complex laboratory equip ment the other can be garnering the information from that Pet while it is fully occupied and get on with the job of processing it all Although many LAN packages exist these are all aimed at rather large numbers of Pets in a large univesity laboratory or some other such place We re not decrying LANs here but most people seem to have ignored the somewhat smaller establishments who can only afford two Pets at the most These two Pets usually tend to be pretty hard pushed to do everything that s required of them so a package to let them share the load would be a welcome development Such a package now exists and has been pro duced by a company that is an offshoot of 3D Digital Design and Development long regarded as authorities in the interfacing world This new company is called D M A based in Nottingham and their product is called Petween Ease of installation Petween is a combination of a machine code pro gram sitting in EPROM in
73. ed that will probably work on the Commodore 64 when it arrives Logical file number 1 must be used in the DOPEN or OPEN statement Using the routine with any other file number will result in FILE NOT OPEN ERROR after the SYS call No buffer if required for the incoming data The characters are built directly into the space allocated for the string variable If the string resides in high RAM they will be delivered there If the string is declared in the program the characters will land right in text space The string used for input must be the first variable seen by BASIC Location 189 decimal is used to store the length of the input string Input stops only on Carriage Return and EO 1 which oc curs at the end of a file or relative records not ter minated by a CR Leading spaces commas col ons and quotation marks are all accepted The size of the string can be used to govern the amount of input For example removing lines 110 and 120 from the program below leaves a abcdefghijklmnopq with a length of 17 Subsequent calis Now strings longer than 17 can not be retrieved in whole Instead the first 17 characters are brought in and the remainder is received in subse quent calls If the string is exactly 17 long follow ed by a Carriage Return a subsequent input would be met by the CR and PEEK 189 would equal zero Be careful though In this case A will contain the previous input not null string Using this routine as o
74. elephone 01 546 7256 For ovar the counter sales see your Commodore Dealer Ref Calco Software LAKESIDE HOUSE KINGSTON HILL SURREY KT2 701 TEL 01 546 7256 NOBODY DOES BETTER At DATATECH we only stock the best That means high quality products which are reliable and easy to use Our current range includes EPSON TYPE 3 PRINTERS Save 60 80 VAT when you choose your printer from Epson s superb new series Full range of interfaces cables and sundries available VERBATIM MINI DISKS The world s most popular mini disks at bargain prices We also stock head cleaning kits and storage boxes PETSPEED BASIC COMPILER Produces optimised code that executes up to 40 times faster Highly recommended Commodore Computing excellent execution speed made Petspeed my personal favourite MicroComputer Printout POWER PROGRAMMING UTILITY By well known experts Brad Templeton and Jim Butterfield Gives a dramatic improvement in the ease of programming BASIC VISICALC ELECTRONIC WORKSHEET The world s best selling software package Invaluable aid for both business and home use We have the new improved version that works on both 8032 and 8096 CODEWRITER PROGRAM GENERATOR Easy to use Program Generator enables you to write applications in a fraction of the time it used to take Designed by a Commodore user Very smart and comes
75. ematics 2 Similar to Mathematics 1 with ICS data and more con cerned with traditional mathematics this program covers arithmetic equations progressions functions calculus and trigonometry Physics Prepared in collaboration with Hodder and Stoughton The program covers charges and circuits electricity and magnetism electronics and nucleonics waves and sound light matter forces and motion Chemistry This program covers basic techniques the periodic table structure binding and energy Redox reactions acids bases and salts reactions and their rates analysis and organic chemistry With the exception of biology for which many of the questions are in a sequential order all the programs have an automatic randomising feature the questions are never presented to the student in the same order thus discouraging students from learning parrot fashion The student can choose three kinds of tests He can work against the clock setting his own time limit he can work through the test with the answers checked and the correct answers given to every question or he can work through the test with all his results presented at the end of the test At the end of each test the screen displays the full results of each test and the bar chart displayed at the end of the program shows areas in need of further revision Brains of the year For his proposal to make micro computers more widely available to the mentally and physically hand
76. emporarily weakened by this loss of sustenance and will turn blue During this time you can hit them with your truck and they will limp harmlessly back to their hideout in the city centre Almost there The council cannot afford to lose too many trucks so you are restricted to three If you lose them then it s the end of your shift During each shift a bit of bonus rubbish will appear for a while near the centre of the screen If you manage to pick it up you will get bonus points depending on what shift level you are on If you manage to clear all the litter and trashcans you will be allowed to start another shift and you can carry on until you run out of trucks Remember the hygiene of the city is in your hands So now you know what have to put up with truth justice and the American way of hygiene Area Vic Games Company Audiogenic Ltd Address PO Box 80 Reading Berks Tel No 01 468 7045 Contact Jeremy Biggs Educational releases Chalksoft are a new company in the educational software market Formed by a group of teachers and programmers which makes a pleasant change from teachers attempting to be program mers or programmers attempting to be teachers their software is aimed principally at the 5 11 primary school and 9 13 middle school range Various programs have come out to coincide with the launch of the company with the promise of at least one or two new ones each month All the Vic ones require
77. en Computers Tel No 01 236 0026 7 Contact Max Hotopf More Super soft and hardware One of if not the first add on chip for the Pet was the Toolkit often impersonated in recent years This added a number of commands to the existing Pet Basic and became very successful in terms of sales Supersoft have long had a reputation for being suppliers of chips for one purpose or another and they have just taken over from Zynar Limited as UK distributors of the original Toolkit Versions of the Toolkit are available for all the Pet range of micros and costs start at just 29 00 pounds plus VAT Just by lifting up the lid of your Pet and plugging in this one chip you ll find your programming abilities significantly enhanced Area Enhancing Basic Company Supersoft Address Winchester House Canning Road Harrow Middlesex Tel No 01 861 1166 Processing package Just a quick mention for another Supersoft pro duct their well known Microscript word process ing package A couple of bits of news one is that it now makes full use of the 96K available on the 8096 allowing you to hold three work spaces of about 15 pages of A4 text in each Secondly the latest version has implemented proportional spacing for those printers that can accommodate it And finally their expansion module for Microscript Maths Pack is reportedly doing well Described as the first in a range of Microscript add ons designed to meet the needs of partic
78. er is convenient The Heart of the System Rather like Manchester United depending on Bryan Robson so all of this depends on the pro gram running on your Pet What they ve tried to do with this software is duplicate the Simplex D book as much as possi ble Screen layouts try wherever possible to ap pear the same as the written layout in the book Thus by running a simple demonstration program that comes with the package the retailer can see a that he s dealing with something very familiar and b it s an awful lot easier than the system he s used to The system like the book runs on a 13 week history schedule thus everything is COMPLETE LY updated after every 3rd month just as it has to be with the book Fortunately the program does this for you rather than have you poring over the books into the small hours for day after day In order to perhaps convince the retailer that this microcomputer lark isn t really as com plicated as he first thought the program is truly user friendly Very easy to use single key entry The CBM 80392 can be linked up to the Micro Simplex package a wherever possible and very visual Plenty of screen prompts exist to guide you through but unlike other packages where screen prompts after you ve got used to everything become a hindrance these merely serve to make life easier throughout the lifetime of the package To complete the introduction the program uses terms that the
79. erfield and basic aid by print bill seiler print Milsample commands print ichange print 4 print 200 print delete 130 625 print number 100 5 vic aid Sys 43 peek 44 256 383 Commodore Computing 4 3 PROGRAMMING AID 0580 a5 2d 85 22 a5 2e 85 23 0740 86 7b 20 47 ca 00 Ob 0900 38 60 a0 9d 84 ae a0 cO 0588 a5 37 85 24 a5 38 85 25 0748 98 18 65 85 7a 90 0908 84 af 38 9 7f aa a0 00 0590 a0 00 a5 22 dO 02 23 0750 02 7b 20 ca ff 00 0 0910 00 10 ee ae dO 02 0598 22 bl 22 dO a5 22 0758 05 20 dc fd 00 bO 03 4c 0918 af bl ae 1016 30 fi 1 0520 40 02 23 22 bl 22 0760 8f fc 00 84 55 55 a4 0920 20 6b c9 a5 14 85 35 a5 0528 10 21 85 26 a5 22 dO 02 0768 55 a6 31 a5 32 85 8b bl 0928 15 85 36 20 fd ce 20 6b 0500 23 22 bl 22 18 65 0770 10 48 dd 00 00 02 40 0930 9 a5 14 85 33 ab 15 85 05b8 24 aa a5 26 65 25 48 a5 0778 ed e8 c8 8b 00 f1 88 0938 34 20 20 ca ff 00 0560 37 40 02 38 37 8 0780 84 Ob 84 97 a5 49 0 5b 0940 20 ca ff 00 dO 21 20 ac 0568 91 37 8 48 a5 37 40 02 0788 20 10 fd 00 a5 34 38 5 0948 ff 00 20 ca ff 00 20 ca 0540 38 37 68 91 37 18 0790 32 85 a7 28 c8 10 ca 0950 ff 00 40 03 4c 8f fc 00 0548 90 c9 df 00 ed a5 7 0798 7a 00 f9 18 98 65 7 0958 20 ca ff 00 a5 63
80. ette and yout becomes a world quality word processor Superscript runs on the CBM 2001 3016 3032 4016 4052 8052 and 8096 computers on the CBM 2040 3040 4040 8250 and 8050 disk drives all Commodore printers and on a wide range of letter quality printers 5 does everything Commodore wanted which is why they are adopting it for all of their forthcoming models And finally ihe magic ingredient a 30 000 word disk dictionary with automatic spelling checker that will verify the largest SuperScript or Wordpro document in under two minutes and you can easily modify the dictionary or add your own words rient and 5 just two of our fine 4 PET products please phone or write for our data sheets on the other products listed below SUPERSCRIPT The Ultimate CBM Worprocessor SUPERSPELL Disk Olctionary Spelling Checker MASTER Program Development System MASTER Additional run time keys PM96 96K Memory Management Basic Enhancement VIC SCREEN Screen management Dos Support etc KRAM Keyed Disk Access state which disk 0 for Basic IV state which Pet DISK 0 PRO Adds Basic IV etc to Basic II SPACEMAKER 4 Rom adaptor not for 8096 VISICALC 32K 96K RAP 180 00 less 35 00 ORDERING INFORMATION Add 15 VAT to quoted prices Order post telephone or Prastel using cheque ACCESS or BARCLAY card For same day service t
81. event the in definite movements of the pen from retriggering the circuit Sensitivity can be adjusted by means of the preset control Mechanical The pen proper is an old opaque ball point It must have an internal diameter which will allow the light detector transistor to slide right to its end The photo transistor looks like a transparent LED and is the same size as the larger variety 0 2 The lead can be held with a small grommet or Araldite mount my 1C and pot on a small piece of Vero in the line itself Program The flow chart of the program is shown in diag 2 This should be easy to follow when read in con junction with the above description Note that a delay has to be introduced even in the BASIC program to allow the screen persistence to fade There is therefore no point in trying to convert it to machine code as the time taken for the screen to fade out will be the same and the program will run no faster Anyway the time taken to scan 6 possible answers is quite short and acceptable Variables used are UP User port address OP Option number being tested max 6 on our menu PN Position on screen of first option blob see below DL Delay loop DT Number of times the pen has followed correctly L1 1 if light is detected by pen O otherwise For those not familiar with the PET the follow ing notes should aid adaptation to your machine 1 Memory location 59471 is the
82. f the unwanted Linefeed by writing the Return ourselves it codes at CHR 1 3 So we might more correctly write PRINT 26 HELLO CHR 13 and don t forget both semicolons Reading it Back This is just as easy except that we need to write these statements as a program INPUT and IN PUT won t work as direct statements typed on the screen So we code 100 OPEN 4 0 0 DATAFILE or for disk 100 OPEN 4 8 3 DATAFILE And continue with 110 INPUT 4 A 120 PRINT A 130 IF ST 0 GOTO 110 140 CLOSE 4 What s ST doing That s the Status word If it s zero we are reading our file normally If it s non zero there is something going on usually we are at the end of the file ST will equal 64 in this case Your data should come back very nicely just as you wrote it Conclusion It s not hard to write and read files We ll pick up a few fine points next time around Does your PET need new chip You need a SOFTCHIP Write professional quality software Save money and perhaps earn some YOU NEED SOFTCHIP As sold to Universities Industry and Professional Software Houses Our routines cut development time by half increase normal disk capacity by a factor of three the list goes on and on Harness our machine code from your Basic programs using simple Basic commands like APPROXIMATE MEMORY USAGE Merges a program from ta
83. fact SILICON OFFICE can be considered as a product offering three packages in one with communications complementing the data base and word processor If you already own a Commodore 8032 this can be quickly upgraded to the latest technology micro computer add SILICON OFFICE and you will have a total and cost effective solution to your software needs for years to come and all of this for just over 1000 For more details contact your Commodore dealer or complete the coupon below NE EEE Eee ee gt 28 PLEASE SEND ME MORE DETAILS ON SILICON OFFICE Name Position Company Address Telephone Send to Bristol Software Factory Kingsons House Grove Avenue Queen Square Bristol BS1 40 Telephone 0272 277135 MACHINE CODE PROGRAMMING 60 SES GOSEE j2F3 Ip mum IE BE B3F3 28 E Commodore Computing Save all this under the name Cross Ref M for machine code and then finally SAVE the whole masterpiece in the normal way In other words type SAVE O CROSS REF 8 if you happen to be using drive zero on a disk drive whose device number is 8 When this is completed type in the following short piece of code in direct mode and hit RETURN A 0 FORI 1363T02579 A PEEK I NEX T PRINTA If the value you see on your screen is 94336 all is well and good and the program will work correctly If the value is anything other t
84. fidence in their ability to work The longest chapter in the book is devoted to CBM peripherals starting off with the cassette deck not of much use to the average businessman would have thought but nonetheless valuable information if you want to start using CBM kit in a humble way Disk drives and their uses get the most exten sive coverage with many programs covering file handling sequential random storing string and numeric data Printers round off this section before moving onto a short look at other peripherals including modems and voice response units The chapter called Inside and Beyond Basic tends to refer you to other publications rather than try and do everything itself no bad thing really suppose if you acknowledge your peers in this way Still it is a reasonable and concise in troduction to how basic does what it does After that the book is rounded off by a sum mary of all the basic keywords and error messages you re ever likely to encounter followed by the fairly detailed memory maps and finally a list of other information resources Summary A most useful and accurate guide to the use of Commodore equipment At 512 pages it is pretty good value for its cover price of 10 95 and for the businessman wanting to know more than how to press shift and run stop it is probably the best buy around at the moment It will not take you into the murky depths of machine code programming in any great detail
85. han 94336 there are two possibilities If the program jumps into the monitor type X to exit and check very carefully the Basic part of the program If the machine hangs up totally we have problems and we ll have to check the machine code To make life easier for you the machine code was earlier divided up into seven blocks We ll make use of this to try and pin down our error in typing it in Take our little program mentioned above 0 FORI X to A PEEK I NEXT PRINTA where X and Y are the start and end addresses The following table shows the values of X and Y for each of the seven blocks and also the value of that should appear If your total is different we ve found the block with the mistake Enter the monitor re check your code re save the machine code part and we should now have a working copy of Cross Ref Block 9 X Y A 1 1363 1546 4199 2 1547 1730 1619 3 1731 1914 5935 4 1915 2098 22606 5 2099 2282 23640 6 2283 2466 24413 7 2467 2579 11924 We think you ll find that the speed and usefulness of this program far outweighs the effort involved in typing it in As ever we are indebted to Jim Butterfield A NOTICE TO ALL PET LOVERS INTRODUCE YOUR PETS TO OURS AND SOLVE YOUR INTERFACE PROBLEMS ANALOGUE DIGITAL I O THE PUPI 4 ANALOGUE INPUTS 12811 2 ANALOGUE OUTPUTS 12 BIT 4 RELAY OUTPUTS 4LOGIC INPUTS gt ON When connected to the PET User
86. he letters A Z the numerals 0 9 and function keys In practice more function keys are required than in the case of a typewriter and a duplicate set of numeric keys in a cluster or key pad is often provided to speed up the input of numeric data It is by the depression of these data and func tion keys that the operator communicates with the processing unit 2 The Central Processing Unit CPU This is the nerve centre of the computer which has three functions i The This is the part of the CPU Memory which holds software and often call data to be processed ed Main or internal Memory ii Arithmetic This is where the calculations and Logic addition subtraction Unit multiplication and division are performed In addition it con tains the decision or logic mechanism for example to compare items for equality greater or less than iii Control This is where the operating Unit system maintains control of the location of data during processing The CPU is made up of a number of electronic devices in early days these were valves which in the course of time were replaced by transistors printed circuits and latterly silicon technology Whatever the form the device is capable of holding a pulse of energy ie being on off This means that we must use a form of notation to the base 2 or binary to hold information to replace the deanery or decimal notation which uses a base of 10 The binary
87. icapped 14 year old Derek Reynolds from Newcastle upon T yne has won the accolade of 1982 Young Computer Brain of the Year At a ceremony at the headquarters of The British Com puter Society in London received Commodore com puter equipment valued at 2 000 and a special trophy from The Sunday Times Magazine presented by Peter Hall Chairman of the Council of The British Computer Society Derek wrote a program to enable handicapped people to teach themselves with a micro computer I noticed that some children had difficulty recognising the odd man out in a group of shapes or letters This gave me two ideas which combined The first was an educa tional computer program The second a keyboard with only two large keys so the program could be used easi ly even by the handicapped The Young Computer Brain of the Year competition is an annual event run by The Sunday Times Magazine and Commodore Computers From this year s 328 entries 19 were chosen to share 12 000 of computer prizes The competition is aimed at encouraging young peo ple to think of original ways of using a computer to benefit society Derek Reynolds was the winner in the 13 15 age group Twelve year old Rachael Gooberman from Oldham won first prize in the 1 3 category for her entry on how computer aided design could be used to improve police Identikit methods Lionel Tun in the 16 18 age group won first prize for suggesting ways of u
88. in 6 different versions to suit every requirement Write now for FREE LEAFLETS our SPECIAL PRICES Please sfate your system and the products you are interested in DATATECH LTD CC 3 BRAMHALL CLOSE TIMPERLEY ALTRINCHAM CHESHIRE WA15 7EB Commodore Computing 13 MICROS IN BUSINESS ed to see number of such on the market before long As far as the manual itself is concerned tread warily as it has a number of significant er rors in it Still it s probably all you ll have to go on to begin with so you ll have to make the most of it Nonetheless by skirting around the errors and reading whatever else comes along you will no doubt progress a fair way to being computer literate with the machine before too long It s round about this time having achieved a degree of literacy on the 64 that you ll want to consider taking your new found skills into the office and seeing more precisely what the machine is capable of First Steps in Business By virtue of having used the machine at home you ll be in a far better position than most businessmen who come into the world of com puting Generally most newcomers tend to buy off the shelf packages with the result that they run them and nothing else and never really get to grips with the computer proper This could be the mistake of many a business It is true in all walks of our increasingly commercial and material world that if you don t know
89. iter write or phone NOW Dealer enquiries welcome we are appointing them fast Codewriter Disk 1 125 Codewriter Disk 2 65 DYNATECH MICROSOFT WARE LTD SUMMERFIELD HOUSE VALE GUERNSEY CHANNEL ISLAND Tel 0481 47377 Tetex 4191130 THINK COMPUTERS THINK WILEY GETTING MORE FROM YOUR PET CBM Advanced Microcomputer Applications by E A Flinn A E Hill and R D Tomlinson all of University of Salford For a number years the authors have been running a series of highly successful and proven courses at Salford on the PET CBM computers for a wide spectrum of audiences This book is a distillation of the experiences gained on these courses It represents a wide and readable coverage that is easily understandable by anyone having any familiarity with the PET CBM Nov 82 198pp 0905104 23 4 7 50 Published by Sigma Technical Press MASTERING THE VIC 20 by A J Jones Department of Mathematics Royal Holloway College University of London E A Coley Senior Microcomputer Sales Engineer Dynaland Limited Reading and D G J Cole Microprocessor Applications Engineer Pro Bel Limited Reading machine specific introduction to microcomputers based the VIC 20 designed to supplement the booklet provided with the machine It offers a wealth of interesting programs which can be supplied separately on tape or disk or entered by the reader March 83 approx 208pp 0 85312 506 6 cloth 12 50
90. l under the control of the Operating System logical 1 0 is movement in memory by the user program This is a list of instructions which is in a language the computer understands which will perform the re quired operations on the data ii Program The User Program Operating System This is a program just like the one above but its purpose is to do the housekeeping re quired for smooth operation For example it maintains con trol of data location inter faces between the operator and the user program gets data from or puts data to the backing files and many other jobs In practice various types of memory devices are available to day the most significant being 1 ROM Read only memory 2 RAM Read and Amendable Memory Is used for the data which are being process ed ie transaction and balance records and can be used as ROM 3 Programmable ROM 4 EPROM Erasible Programmable ROM The addresses of locations of memory are often held in a shorthand version of binary call ed Hexadecimal HEX using the base 16 This requires four binary bits per decimal digit using the letters A F to cover values 10 15 thus Binary Value 1111 0011 1001 0101 Value F 3 9 5 3 Backing Memory These are the files and programs on which the computer will operate As with earlier Mini or Mainframe computers two devices are available 1 8 Commodore Computing i ii TA
91. le floppy to large capacity Winchesters to hard disks approaching the capacity of larger machines This facility to store data on cassettes and tapes enables the user to have an infinite backing store for the various applications word of caution at this point Processing on computer is essentially one of updating files stock accounting payroll etc on an ad hoc or regular cyclic basis by current transaction data In planning a system always make sure to have back up of your important data files Things can go wrong As a general rule three generations of balance information should be retained to enable a reconstruction to take place 4 Output Facilities i Visual Display VDU This is a television screen on which results can be displayed It is also a mechanism by which the operating system or the user program can com municate with the user to ask for more data tell him he has made an illegal entry or given him some other instructions By its very nature the VDU is limited in the amount of data it can display and the time for which it can hold it It does however have the benefit of the capability both tabular and moving graphic display The use of the input keyboard coupled with the almost instant response of results on the VDU is referred to as interactive mode whether writing a program or processing data ii Printers By this means printed or ha
92. matter at least not in computers Pin 2 sends data from whatever device that pin is attached to regardless of its sex Count one more for equality The moral of all this is that pins 2 and 3 MUST be reversed in any connection between a SuperPET and a serial device that adheres to the industry standard for the RS 232C ports That is a generalization gleaned from experience but it seems even more sensible than my male female theory The possible conflict on pins 4 and 5 relates to a handshake procedure where the SuperPET confirms that the printer is ready for input Pins 6 and 8 are used to test that the printer is in fact there If your printer doesn t actually use these pins then it s time to play electrician Without removing any existing connections somewhere in either machine or in the cable joining them you must make a connection between pins 4 and 5 and or pins 6 8 and 20 These fool the SuperPET into thinking that the printer is sending all the right acknowledgements of its existence For details Waterloo has a technical letter with a bit more information So much for the hardware Now just plug it all up and watch APL fly back and forth between machines right Wrong The SuperPET has its own special ASCII representations which differ from the standard that most manufacturers adhere to This is more of a nuisance than a problem since Waterloo have provided some facility however meagre for converting this inte
93. minefield aga n to rearm Prove that we still rule the waves STAR FIGHT The Alien Invaders are coming again Control your taser cannon to blast their ships out of the sky and destroy their missiles and bombs Accuracy and quick reflexes are essential DEPTH CHARGE Your mission seek outeaind destroy the enemy submarines They are armed with mines which release to float up at must Control tha position o and fireyour depth char as many subs and p dito without re hit gt gt MANUFACTURED AND DISTRIBUTED AUDIOGENIC LTD AVAILABLE FROM GOOD DEALERS OR DIRECT FROM AUDIOGENIC 88 READING BERKS Tel 0734 586334 Commodore Computing 41 BASIC PROGRAMMING 111 may interfere with other programs that modify BASIC s internal CHRGOT routine The KILL command allows you to avoid this conflict Procedure The VIC contains no internal machine language monitor which is really the only practical way to enter this program So follow one of the three methods below to perform the task 1 Borrow an Upgrade 2 0 or Basic 4 0 PET CBM with its internal ML monitor This will be the easiest method to work with the program included 2 Use your VIC 20 but you must have a machine language monitor Jim Butterfield s TINYMON FOR VIC my adaption of SUPERMON FOR VIC VICMON cartridge from Commodore 3 The easy way Send 3 a blank cassette or 1540 2031 4040 diskette in a
94. mpare against the value in the third column Repeat the process for each row noting any that don t match Each row corresponds to two blocks from the last section You will have to re enter the ML monitor to re check those sec tions that differ Re SAVE the ML part print print kill S ce ARWNH DOOANDAAWN Block Value 1 Value 2 Checksum 1 2 1408 1535 15201 3 4 1536 1663 17221 5 6 1664 1791 15925 7 8 1792 1919 15117 9 10 1920 2047 15565 11 12 2048 2175 14141 13 14 2176 2303 15840 15 16 2304 2431 16276 17 18 2432 2559 15152 19 20 2560 2687 15194 21 2008 2741 6073 Operation The final acid test ReLOAD the program from tape and RUN it The screen will clear and a brief summary of the added commands will be displayed The cursor should return almost in stantly under the READY message If the cursor does not come back there is something still amiss All the values appearing in the article were produced from a working copy of the program Honest You still have option 3 from the Procedure section available If you do send a tape disk now include your non functioning version can then do a compare to see where the error s were This has been a massive exercise and mistakes can easily creep in Your comments are welcome print vic tiny print 4 adapted for vic by print david a hook print fll from tiny aid by print butt
95. nction with Commodore Computers and Hodder and Stoughton Revision Aids Geography History Test Your Child s Reading Arithmetic General knowledge This series is based on Hodder and Stoughton s Test Your Child s series Teach and Test 5 8 year olds Alphabet skills Vocabulary skills Arithmetic Arithmetic Rules of hundreds tens and units multiplication and division Ivan Berg s exam revision programs for secondary school students are already well established In all cases says Ivan Berg the data is prepared by teachers and textbook authors who specialise in the subjects covered Students completing the tests will have a clear indication of any weak areas which require further revision The software comes with extensive student notes prepared by the authors and designed for use alongside each program Other programs available are English language Material is supplied by International Correspondence School tutors The program follows the GCE CSE syllabus and covers composition comprehension spell ing and grammar Biology Covers the nature and variety of living organisms func tions of living organisms and the biology of the environment Mathematics 1 This begins with a general section covering different parts of the syllabus The student s knowledge of arithmetic algebra geometry and trigonometry is then tested and the program ends with two tests of short questions and longer problems Math
96. nd precise testing procedure involving the superimposition of sine square and sine pulses on their output electrode to simulate real physiological impulses The amplitude and pulse repetition rate of the impressed waveform together with its syn chonisation or phase delay from the inherent in ternal signals of the device under test can be crucial to the significance of the test procedure as a whole We will discuss two specific areas where a closed loop control system may be employed using the 3D waveform generator and a number of analogue to digital convertor channels to pro vide feedback about the system s response to the applied waveform A Computer Control of Audio Amplifier Test Bed Most audio amplifier manufacturers carry out a well defined set of routine tests in order to 2 Commodore Computing measure the amplifier s main characteristics e g Frequency Response 2h Power Efficiency Harmonic Distortion 4 Protection circuitry amp overload shutdown A microcomputer test bed may be based on the waveform generator to provide the test signal and an analog to digital convertor with multi channel multiplexer to provide signals back to the com puter about the response of the various com ponents of the system The analog to digital con vertor could have a 12 bit resolution and a short conversion time The test set up would be as in Fig 7 Since the waveform generator and the analog to digital co
97. nvertor are part of the same in terface system INLAB which is IEEE 488 com patible programming in Commodore BASIC is straightforward making much use of PRINT and GET Digital representation The program will select the appropriate wave form and set the frequency and output level of the waveform generator the multiplexer will then be addressed to select the channel of in terest and the A D convertor will supply the PET with a digital representation of the selected analog signal such as current voltage power etc The program may then plot the resultant response curve on the PET screen perhaps fitted with a HIRES board and if a permanent record is required the information may be sent to a digital plotter and or dot matrix printer The test data may be stored on diskettes for statistical analysis or quality control checks Since the PET can per form these operations at a fairly high speed it may prove desirable to have a single PET controlling several such test rigs especially if the device under test is slow in responding On the other hand some applications demand that the speed of the whole process is increased In such cir cumstances the limitation to speed is usual in the ie 7115 0 70 Fig 5 8032 4032 MASTER CRYSTAL OSCILLATOR It it came to the worst youll be glad you went to the best If your computer develops a fault chances are that it will happen just when you can lea
98. o Peter Velocci of Commodore Canada He took the time and showed the interest to set up the contacts that finally shed light on one more hidden secret of the SuperPet Documentation of the SuperPet s serial port has only been released in bits and pieces At this point I m still not convinced that enough pieces have come out to let the average user pull them all together even if he happens to have access to all the available literature I ll try to correct this here at least for any APL users in the audience Don t stop though if you are not an APL freak like me Much of this is not tied to any one language other parts may at least be a guiding milestone The first problem in using the serial port is to get some information about its pinouts the location and operation of each of the 25 electrical connections that make up this communications channel Some of this has recently become available but none that found was either explicit or complete Here is how the standard informa tion goes RS 232C has the following 25 pins in two columns 1 earth ground 14 sec transmitted data 2 transmitted data TXD 15 transmit clock 3 received data RXD 16 secondary received data 4 request to send RTS 17 receiver clock 5 clear to send CTS 18 unassigned 6 data set ready DSR 19 sec request to send 7 logic ground 20 data terminal ready 8 carrier detect DCD 21 signal quality detect 9 reserved 10 re
99. ost use when using direct access files BLOCKMAP prints a table of all the blocks on a disk track by track showing which blocks have been allocated for data storage by the system and which are free Free blocks can then be used for direct access modifying the subroutine gt FEM 5 ALLOW et t mim cag Am as REM FILES c T E J TL Fa er ma a m 144 E 5 2 pod 1 Pigs Pet 1 2 E 2 1 5 B 6 2 1 2 2 1 1 IFIIT Z4THEHRIGS 8 1 1 RF FORTIS Fa amp Da Jm CD HS Ga P e PRIHT 15 15 13 pa HET OS AUS F IGHTE 5 5 AUAU IGHT STER FEH AEAEE DI THE DISK REM ALLOCATED DATA OF PROGRAMS USEFUL IH CHECKING WHERE FEM HAS EEEH STORED WHEN USIHG B40 GETA IFA THEM ASE
100. ounter on the way from his first thoughts of putting a micro computer to work in a business situation to the hopefully suc cessful implementation of his system It is hoped to take away the mystique by explaining the ter minology and signpost a few of the check points along the way But first a word of caution mov ing into micro computing like mini and mainframe before it is like moving into the world of motor transport Who in his right mind would buy a car without learning to drive it properly and safely Business data processing is just the same whilst you can t actually kill or maim yourself lack of some basic knowledge of hardware systems technology can lead you to do damage to your business This series of articles is only intended to create an awareness the reader is advised first to have proper training in the techniques of defining and communicating his needs evaluating alternative proposals and changing over to a new computer based system Learning to program a micro in the hope that this will enable the first time user to design effective systems is a misconception It is like learning to maintain a car in the hope that you will then drive it properly The market is flooded with equipment and software for sale it is regret tably only too short of skilled people CAVEAT EMPTOR Smaller and cheaper It would be impossible to define with any preci sion what is or is not a micro computer Let us therefore consi
101. p of personnel training sales aids and more Micro Simplex is proving to be a success the package worthy of this The Package Itself For a total cost of 4 950 pounds you will get an 8032 8050 and 4022 printer the aforemention ed Nortrond cash register a communications package of which more later the actual Micro Simplex suite of programs and the Anagram Stock Control package which links into the whole thing Since most of you will know what 8032s 8050s and 40225 are let s move straight onto the cash register The Nortrond Cash Register as we ve said is an extremely intelligent register With spare ROM sockets on board and communications specialists Cortex are considering and may already have done so putting a comms package onto the spare ROM a programmable till and its own data storage with data checking it is a powerful beast Every transaction is recorded on cassette us ing mini cassettes with about 26K of storage This records stock numbers account numbers and so on and can be used for links with Silicon Office or whatever It can also be used for goods inwards and at a transfer rate of 9600 baud can rapidly transport all of this information to the Pet at the heart of it all This information is also used in the link to the Anagram Stock Control package This has been reviewed in enough other places for it not to war rant an independent review of its own here but suffice it to say that it s
102. pe in the values shown Don t forget to hit RETURN at the end of each line to actually enter the values Save it then with the machine language monitor and then finally save the entire thing in the normal way e g SAVE SCREENDATA if you happen to be using a cassette deck If things don t work properly check the machine code part of the listing carefuly as this is where errors are most likely to occur We haven t included a checksum program as there isn t that much code so you ll just have to go through it carefully byte by byte IM FEM 15 REM DEMO PROGRAM FOR TO REM DATA TRANSFORMATION REM SAVE CODE PROGRAM FEN MITH MEM 22 4 amp 8 REM z B8 SCEHIHTH 23 13982 1585 45 REM AFTER FER ga FEN ENTER AHD PRESS GB IF EDITING IS HEEE SERE Bo REM REM F 16 ra REH PAP UE ig lt 35 4 7 TO DATA DEMO TABC 73 188 PRINT SHAVE THE PROGRAM WITH THE 185 LOC 1328 TO 1308 118 ACTIVATE THE FROGRAM ENTER 27258887 115 FRIHT ZH T HECESSARY FOR DEMO PRODGRERMON EE UMN THE TRANSFER HITTING 125 FRIHT
103. pe or disk Into the current program NEW COMMANDS NOW AVAILABLE NEW FUNCTIONS which may be used in any expression ONLY 45 ALL INCLUSIVE FOR YOUR CHOICE OF 3700 BYTES 40 Provides automatic line numbering MON 10 the machine code monitor 60 Plays music of given duration and pitch MOVE 130 oves a block of memory to another position In RAM BLOAD 40 Loads a block of memory without affecting BASIC execution NUMIN 740 Foolproof Input routine for amp mounts of money BSAVE 120 Saves the memory area between two given addresses PCTRL 100 Set the device number and characteristics of the printer CALL 80 Enter a machine code subroutine with given amp Y reg PLOT 170 Plots a double density point on the screen CIF CEND 220 Four commands which provide facilities for structured BASIC _ 30 the last subroutine return address from tha stack ELIF ELSE largely eliminating the need for the GOTO command PRINT 130 Adds routine to automatically rlght justlfy amounts of money CURSOR 30 Places the cursor at position x y on the screen PRINT 280 Modifles all printer output as needed and adds TAB function DATIN 690 Foolproof Input routine for dates with full error detection PUSH 80 Pushesa return address onto the stack DELETE Deletes a given range of program lines RENU 930 Renumbers a program altering GOTO s THEN Ss etc DISABLE 50 Disables the run stop key without affecting the internal clock
104. per C v 8 Fig 2 8 6 PHASE SHIFT OSCILLATOR USING FET TRANSISTOR Crystal controlled oscillators are used in most computer systems including the Commodore range of machines to provide the microprocessor master clock Most processor clocks are in the range 1MHz to 8MHz The usual practice is to use a high frequency crystal oscillator followed by dividers to provide clock signals for use in dif ferent parts of the system sometimes with une qual mark space ratios Digital to analogue convertors may also be us ed to generate output waveforms Here the data is provided in digital form from a microprocessor and consequently both the output waveform and the output frequency is determined by the soft ware To provide sufficient flexibility and 0 means that a sophisticated machine code pro gram must be designed and furthermore the microprocessor ends up as dedicated to the task of waveform generation Specially microprogrammed single chip microcomputers are available for such tasks and voice synthesis chips and intelligent stepper motor controllers fall into this general category An approach similar to the D to A convertor technique has been employed by 3D Digital Design amp Development Ltd Their technique is based on stored waveforms in a read only memory ROM Since the price of memory chips is coming down all the time and their capacity is rapidly increasing this is a cheap yet powerful ro
105. ports of all or selected records Calculates bet ween fields Totals averages columns Works with Sim ply Write Fast easy robust and very very versatile Disk 65 GOTTA PET ADDA VIC High resolution graphics programmable characters colour and sound for your PET CBM system All this PLUS a complete extra com puter using your PET s disk drives printer etc Under 200 including VIC computer and our SIMPLY LINK PET VIC link system A WINDOW ON YOUR DISK Our Simply Recover disk file repair kit 4040 only at present will allow you to save crashed files append BASIC or m c subroutines change disk names and IDs devise protection systems etc Disk amp detailed instructions 17 ZYGIAN INVADERS Super second generation machine code invaders game Tape 6 disk 7 50 ASTEROID PATROL Classic game with sound effects 9 levels of play hyper space jump etc Tape 6 disk 7 50 ADD VAT TO PRICES PLEASE BUT ALL INCLUDE P amp P SEND FOR MORE DETAILS MORE ITEMS AND GET OUR FREE MICROMAIL PET VIC NEWS LETTER 8 5 computer 3022 Simple Software Ltd 15 Havelock Rd Brighton Sussex BN1 Tel 0273 504879 MICROSCRIPT more space than any other Commodore word processor See MicroScript at your Commodore dealer In desperation phone SUPERSOFT 01 861 1166 Commodore Computing 5 5 5 I 5 S m 3 gt 56 Commodore
106. pposed to can be especially helpful when disk space is at a premium It can handle strings up to 255 characters long and there s no need for Carriage Returns The String Thing was originally a utility writ ten by Bill MacLean of BMB Compuscience It in 2 6 Commodore Computing cluded string search string overlay and string in put functions For details on this program see The Transactor Volume 3 Issue 1 Copies are available from the Toronto PET Users Group 40 rem RR EE 50 string thing universal 60 rem jim butterfield 70 string used for input 80 rem must be first variable 90 rem tk 100 a z abcdefghijklmnopq 110 2335 35 35 35 25 5 120 28 lt 28 28 8 130 rem above sets string for maximum 255 200 data 160 2 177 42 153 184 0 200 192 6 210 data 208 246 162 1 32 198 255 220 data 32 228 255 201 13 240 11 164 189 145 230 data 187 200 132 189 196 186 208 238 76 204 255 250 for j 896 to 933 read x poke j x t t x nextj 260 ift 25767 then stop 400 dopen l some SEQ file 40 410 next sys same as input 1 a 420 sys 896 425 rem 1 size of input could be 0 430 1 peek 189 440 print left a l 450 if st 0 goto 420 460 dclose Filing It Once you have learned how to input from the keyboard and output to the s
107. rd copy results be ob tained These vary in type and hence quality of the final pro duct dot matrix printers pro ducing graphics draft quality text whilst daisy wheel or thermal printers enable high resolution letter quality printing in a variety of type faces or fonts to be produced Types of report are a Internal usually produc ed on plain listing paper b External letters or the normal business forms In either case care should be taken in the layout of Commodore CBM 8096 micro computer reports in many cases these are the main ambassadors of your system To review the scope of this article a Micro Computer is an electronic device comprising Input Via a keyboard Main Memory Which holds user grams operating systems and data which is being process ed 3 Backing Files The ledgers names and ad dresses stock balances which are held on tapes and disks externally to the com puter When processing takes place the file media is placed in the reading writing mechanism to be called into memory as required To the screen or the printer of the results of processing 4 Output Next month What is a system All businessmen and their staff use them daily without thinking about them Thisarticle is intended to direct their thinking about systems and their implications in a micro computer environment Robert Moscrop Director of
108. retailer will know and be familiar with in his everyday work unpaid bills are refer red to as unpaid bills for example and this princi ple applies throughout the running of the program All transactions are instantly updated on entry so that at no time do you have to worry about having missed an entry or incorrect entry of some data You can see immediately whether or not you ve made a mistake Conclusion From the first pressing of shift and run stop the package is robust and easy to use The initial menu which decides whether you re going into Micro Simplex itself the communications side entering data processing or running the Anagram Stock control sets the package up and from then on in it is very difficult if not impossible to make any mistakes on data entry or processing The whole system as we ve said earlier can be left on overnight to completely read in all the data stored on cassette from the cash register Thus you can arrive bright and fresh the next day to find all the arithmetical work done for you A far cry from earlier days Area Retail Accountancy Company Catlands Information Service Address 8 Charlotte Street West Macclesfield Cheshire 8K11 6EF Tel No 0625 615375 Contact Mike Dawson Lee McGaw Commodore Computing 2 1 HARDWARE REVIEW Petween As Information Techology Year draws to a close and aren t you sorry you missed it one of the better things to come out of it was an incr
109. rnal representation into external representation that devices like ASCII printers can use Conveniently these are provid ed as the system functions XR and The former converts SuperPET jargon into something that the rest of the world can unders tand while the latter turns incoming code into the SuperPET s talk This difference doesn t seem to affect other Waterloo languages perhaps because they use the standard typewriter character set unlike the special characters used by APL Waterloo may also have found a less cumbersome way of handl ing the conversion in the other languages and are moving slowly in this direction in release 1 1 of APL Note though that in release 1 0 these con versions do not work on matrices This is the im provement that release 1 1 will bring For now we must convert our text line by line Note that said text Waterloo didn t provide for sending anything other than characters out the serial port at least in APL Numbers and func tion listings don t qualify Both must first be con verted to character representations of themselves This again is quite contrary to the basic philosophy of AP which was to let users be users and oblivious of computer technicalities Fortunately these are no difficult task Thorn is the APL operator that converts numbers in to their character representation 5 5 25 gives a printable 5 by 5 matrix of all the n
110. run it and follow the instructions as they appear on the screen HE REM EXCHAHGE 28 REM HET 3t PORES 3 26 242 INT mide EFFECTS RIHT S MYSTERY HOISE 1 COMPLTER MAMTA Be RIHT ER 2 LIZ 2 BONE B 4 ALARM H NS 5 LAS SER FIRE 228 amp Sik Zoo PRIHT ES S SILLY 3 260 PRIHT RR 2 RADON HOI SES era FR WHICH OME 35 THEM SSE 1 FORI SITU T aus mo dna DBT AAS 3e gna a Ce J US CR Us QUIS EAD E toe ON OO p A 1 BL AED IFA THEHSS I OHAIGUSUE SSS 466 418 426 4 ie DEEE 224 RA co hh of m X 2 ea Ba FURL S FORL 11018 3 ME La LU 4 45 45 coe Cun o Jg O3 CD I 00 3 a rm rn ra dm D o O E m 5 mi gt NEXT POKES m a m in in f m 2 P kKESeSre6 B8 FD OR N INT ENIC Dorian 1 HER B PRINT POR ESSE 7S ET PO
111. s ing computers to treat depression Vic 20 makes it to a million Commodore Business Machines UK Ltd have an nounced the millionth Vic 20 colour computer sale Since Commodore launched the machine in America last year sales have topped 800 000 over there half that number selling in the last quarter of 1982 alone Sales in Europe by Christmas were expected to ex ceed 200 000 with the United Kingdom accounting for over half this total Commodore Computing 2 3 BOOK REVIEW CBM Professional Computer Guide Every publication of this nature which now comes out has got to compete with Ray West s Programming the PET CBM to some extent What West s book didn t cover and the only way that others will succeed is the beginner s aspect that is l ve got the machine what do do with it now Everything else he touched on was more or less 10096 correct Consequently Osborne s book is now be decked with memory maps explanations of Basic keywords and so on in an attempt to cover all the hard core material that he previously didn t go in to in such great detail However it is as a learning instruction book that it is of most value An Overview We start off with an introduction to CBM com puters and their peripherals all good stuff designed to give you a thorough grounding in the basics of the machines How you connect them all up simple things like operation of the cursor control keys tours of the keyboard an
112. s of the input device The final point to note is that the control must be maintained of the data in memory This is ac complished by each location being identified by an address in the same way as we have our home address or telephone number mechanism by which we can be located What then are the contents of Memory during processing i Data This is either a Current transaction infor mation received the keyboard eg an order item from a customer a payment to a supplier an item of stock received or issued or an in struction to the computer or b A record from the back ing file which is to be process ed eg Customer Name and Address his record in the sales ledger the stock balance record for the item of stock etc The data area of memory is often considered as three functional divisions INPUT BUFFER Where data is read from the input device or backing file WORK AREA Where it is located during the actual pro cessing together with in termediate results OUTPUT BUFFER Where the results are put prior to being written to an output device During execution of the pro gram data is constantly mov ing between these three areas Backing Store Keyboard Input Buffer Commodore Computing 1 7 INTRODUCTION TO MICROS Work Area Output Buffer Printer VDU This whole matter of data movement is known as put Output I O The solid lines above denote Physica
113. s yet Why anyone should want 128K for 465 even if it is three times faster than the stan dard Apple disk drive is beyond me but at least you know the thing exists and is very reliable Area Bubble Memory Company Computer Applied Technology Ltd Address Scarborough House Scarborough Road Bridlington East Yorkshire YO16 5NS Tel No 0262 73036 Training courses thought we d seen the end of training courses for a while but now the Polytechnic of North Lon don has got in on the act and is promoting train ing courses for computer sales staff Claiming quite rightly that selling micro com puters is far more difficult than selling other elec tronic equipment the Poly boasts an impeccable pedigree for putting on this kind of course Names like Barry Miles Robin Bradbeer Adrian Woods et al are all fairly well known in the micro world you may remember the series of articles we featured by Barry in the old Commodore Club News days and all are more than capable of giv ing you a good insight into the uses and abuses of micro salesmanship Ideally you should already have some industrial or commercial experience but you do not have to be in employment to qualify for the course Being connected with the Manpower Services Commis sion all their usual rules apply and they ll give you a weekly training allowance and some con tribution towards expenses The pilot course with places fot up to 20 students starts on
114. scale can therefore be represented thus Positions 5 ce ae 1 Binary Values 2048 1024 512 256 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 The decimal values we wish to represent can be expressed in an off or on condition using the symbols O and 1 thus Decimal Values Binary Values 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 50 Each of the positions in the binary scale is known as a Binary Digit or BIT It is therefore possible to represent any decimal values in this way and perform arithmetic operations on them In practice however we want to hold various elements of data in memory thus these devices are linked together in a number of bits usually 8 or 16 hence 8 bit or 16 bit machines In earlier days the combination of bit arrangements was much more varied than this although the principle remains the same Each of the groups of bits referred to as a location in memory the size of memory hence the power of the computer be ing measured in 1000 s of K locations hence 32K 64K 128K etc memory is measured in set units of modules as quoted above Thus far only numeric information has been considered Where alphabetic data is to be catered for this is achieved by the machine hav ing its own code of binary equivalents for the let ters of the alphabet special symbols amp gt lt etc and for the function key
115. sers and more making this package the best value ever in games 122 BEST OF TREASURE 22 50 DISK PACK Assembler Tutorial is an extremely well thought out cassette based package which teaches Assembly Language programming Now for the first time you can sit at your computer and learn at your own speed with this self contained course combining lessons with hands on practice MP 124 ASSEMBLER TUTORIAL 0 Resident Assembler for all PETs With excellent documentation and exampl s MP119RAMP 22 50 Disk Packs available in either 8050 08 formatar ap prot Se x 123 PUB GAMES AED 1an Pu PUB GAMES This latest disk package brings you five totally new games never betore seen on a PET screen The programs wil all run on 80 column machines also DISASTEROIDS Your mission pilot your spaceship through the treacherous asteroid belt using your lasers to blast as many asteroids as possible The PET version of the famous arcade game STELLAR WARS Your spaceship is being pursued by the fighter ships of the evil Empire You must take control of the ship s laser cannon Get the fighters In your sights and blast away The future of the universe depends on your skill and accuracy WAR You are the captain of the British torpedo boat You must steer your ship through the minefield to destroy the four shore bases Unfortun ately you only have two torpedos at a time so you must get through the
116. served 11 unassigned 12 sec carrier detect 13 sec clear to send Normally only pins 1 8 and pin 20 are used Diablo and SuperPet use only these pins but may have conflict on pins 2 amp 3 or pins 4 amp 5 REF Byte May 1982 p 212 et al Commodore Mag Feb 82 p 58 Apr May 82 p 87 Diablo documentation p 2 10 Torpet April 1982 p 23 Computers and Programming Jul Aug 1981 p 32 22 ring detect 23 data rate select 24 transmit clock 25 unassigned 1 0 Commodore Computing The Transactor Volume 3 Issue 6 p 6 The pin allocations shown above reflect the in dustry standard which so far as have seen Commodore have adhered to As noted only pins 1 8 and pin 20 are used by the SuperPET Among other things this limits users to only one serial device at a time being attached to the machine If you dreamed of a plotter and printer one of them better be on the IEEE port The note on a possible conflict on pins 2 and 3 turned out to be a fact doubted this for a long time The connection inside the SuperPET is the female side of the RS 232 plug Without wishing to be sexist reasoned that the transmitted line on a male plug really ought to be the receiv ed line on a female plug After all none of the documentation referenced above said transmit ted to or transmitted from My guess seemed a logical compromise right Not so It turns out that male or female doesn t
117. sier to enter all the machine code part Continue type in START ADDRESS END AD DRESS as shown in the first and last row of each block until we get to the final one which is M 09A3 OA13 AE Tm D m mm BE 4 BE 8 1 GE QE GE BE BB GE GE IF YOU HAVE ONE OF THESE AND YOU WOULD LIKE THE PERFECTION OF A TAILORED SOLUTION dm THE ABILITY TO AUTOMATE YOUR BUSINESS ROUTINES THE WAY YOU WANT WITHOUT THE FEAR OF MAKING THE WRONG DECISION WITHOUT THE HIGH COST WITHOUT BEING A COMPUTER EXPERT IN WHAT CAN ONLY BE DESCRIBED AS A CONFUSING MARKET SILICON OFFICE DOES IT ALL Add muscle to your 8032 with a memory expansion board and SILICON OFFICE and give yourself some elbow room SILICON OFFICE is a leading software product for the Commodore 8096 that offers you the ability to create and control your application system s the way you want it The unique data base facility in SILICON OFFICE has easy to use routines to draw record cards on the screen insert and housekeep your file information and then combine and analyse data from several files to produce complex reports designed to your needs Simple but repetitive routines can be stored for subsequent execution powerful word processor is built in available at all times with the emphasis on ease of use for the average typist In
118. st afford the interruption and downtime So you ll want fastand effective action That s where Mills Associates comes in Millsare the only independent maintenance company recommended by Commodore to provide comprehensive engineering services throughout the United Kingdom Through Mills you have access to a range of preventative maintenance and fault repair services backed by a network of 10 engineering centres and over 15 years experience in computer engineering Full maintenance contract This is designed for users for whom a minimum of downtime is essential The service includes two routine maintenance visits each year and a call out service with 24 hour response and fix times Replacement loan units for standard equipment are available at no extra cost and the annual contract charge includes all replacement parts labour travelling and so on Fault repair contract If break neck speed is not essential then Mills low cost fault repair service is the answer This provides for call outs on a 72 hour response basis and as with the full maintenance contract all costs are included in the annual charge Similarly replacement loan equipment is available at no extra cost Ad hoc repairs and upgrades For occasional repairs and upgrades Mills offer a first class workshop service and will collect repair and deliver Commodore units anywhere within mainland Britain at fixed rates Remember Mills Associates are the only independent m
119. stamped self addressed mailer to me at 558 Steel Street BARRIE Ontario CANADA LAM 2E9 Be sure it s packaged securely Diskettes will be returned in DOS 2 0 format Only 2040 DOS 1 0 owners need take extra care The programs need to be copies to a DOS 1 0 formatted disk Don t SAVE or otherwise WRITE to the disk you get If you are using a VIC and have a 3K RAM or SUPEREXPANDER cartridge plug this in It will be somewhat easier to follow since programs are then PET compatible without further juggling However don t use the 8K or 16K expansion for this job If you are familiar with the operation of the ML monitor please skip ahead to the specifics below You are about to type in about 2500 characters worth of hexadecimal numbers In addition to the digits from zero to nine the alphabetic characters from A F represent numbers from ten to fiteeen These characters and three instruc tions will be all that are used to enter our pro gram You don t have to understand the process just type in the characters exactly It s not very exciting but don t be too intimidated by the fun ny display Enter the machine language monitor program TINYMON SUPERMON FOR VIC LOAD and RUN the program PET CBM Type RETURN VICMON Cartridge SYS 6 4096 or SYS SYS1024 and hit 42 Commodore Computing 10 4096 depending on the version you have then type RETURN
120. sters can also climb and displaying a rare intelligence actually try and trap you on a particular level All good clean fun it gets progressively difficult as you clear more and more levels However the press release to end all press releases must be their description of Trashman a games cartridge for 19 95 quote The garbage problem in the city has reached a crisis point The streets are full of litter and there are lots of trash cans waiting to be emptied Worst of all the flies are thriving in these condi tions and have grown to vast man eating propor tions Of course no san trashman will work under these dangerous conditions so the city council has invested in a fleet of remote controll ed robot trash trucks in the hope that if they can get rid of the garbage then the mutant flies will starve and the citizens will be able to walk the streets again without fear Good stuff eh You are in charge of steering the remote con trolled trash trucks round the city streets The screen display will give you a street map showing the position of your truck and the location of the six green trash cans The litter appears as dots in the street and you can also see the flies as they chase 6 Commodore Computing your truck If the flies catch your truck they will devour it Your duty is to clear the streets of litter and trash cans The flies will be after your truck but if you pick up a trash can they will be t
121. strated before you buy a payroll program rogram highly frustrating to buy another and become aware of the PAYROLL 2 excellence afterwards FROM YOUR COMMODORE DEALER or contact LandSoft 28 Sheen Lane KINGSLEY COMPUTERS LTD 132 Desborough Road HIGH WYCOMBE BUCKS HP11 2PU CBM BUSINESS SYSTEMS VIC HOME COMPUTERS COMPUTER ACCESSORIES AND SUPPLIES AGENTS FOR CBM APPROVED PRODUCTS COMMODORE SERVICE CENTRE 6 2 Commodore Computing London SW14 8LW Written to the Inland Revenu Specification for computer payrolle ADVERTISERS INDEX Audiogenic Bristol Software Calco Catlands CBS CE Computace D A M S Datatech Digital Design amp Development D M A Dynatech Greenwich Instruments I J J John Wiley Kingsley Computers Landsoft Microserve Mills Associates Oxford Computer Systems Romik Simple Software Stack Supersoft Whitby Computers Tel 01 878 7044 ROMA SOFTWARE 24 Church Street Slough 817 1PT Telephone Slough STD 0753 71535 A ROMIK PROMISE A MINIMUM OF ONE NEW GAME EVERY MONTH Britain s leading games software house are proud to announce our new range of exciting games and other software for Vic20 and ZX81 see panel Games for BBC Dragon Spectrum and Atari available soon ALL ACTION GAMES CARRY A FREE ENTRY TO NATIONWIDE COMPETITIONS WITH FANTASTIC PRIZES MARTIAN RAIDER For unexpanded Vic20 Skim as close as you dare to th
122. sue Oscillators and Function Generators The classical approach for generating various waveforms is based on a controlled amount of positive feedback signal Normally tuned circuits are used to select specific frequencies Figs 1 amp 2 show simple oscillators with tuned circuits and R C feedback networks Most active devices can be made to oscillate by the correct choice of feed back components Operational amplifiers lend themselves as the ideal devices to obtain oscillation at low frequen cy since they have both a positive input and a Fig 1 TUNED DRAIN TRANSISTOR OSCILLATOR 30 Commodore Computing negative input i e the non inverting and inverting inputs Fig 3 shows an operational amplifier con figured as an oscillator As in the case of tran sistor oscillators the feedback network characteristics will determine the frequency of oscillation The maximum frequency obtainable with an operation amplifier will depend on its slew rate normally quoted in Volts microsecond Pulse outputs Non linear integratea circuits such as digital gates whether TTL or MOS may be configured as oscillators to produce pulse outputs see Fig 4 The frequency can either be determined using an R C network or by crystal Crystal oscillators see Fig 5 are more stable than R C oscillators since both resistors and capacitors vary with temperature quite significantly whereas crystals typically vary by a few parts per million
123. t Cer em pa n TD cO Cm co TI rm CT 00 BIEG mnl HUES AD 41 an AR Th ree I ec mui J one 5 2 Commodore Computing The Electronic Cash Book Micro Simplex makes Stock contol inked to cash Retailers Accounts e Uses Britain s No 1 business e and familiar layouts and Stock Control by AU produces simple mcs cen publishers of Simplex a Statements to customers lt commodore COMPUTER b Lists of unpaid bills c Simple profit and loss accounts The only one offering all retailers special V A T schemes 8 CHARLOTTE STREET WEST MACCLESFIELD CHESHIRE 5 11 TEL 0685 615000 Commodore Computing 5 3 MACHINE CODE PROGRAMMING Cross Reference Jim Butterfield Have you ever wanted a cross reference of a listing In other words you re happily debugging a program and want to know every occurrence of J but without a Basic Aid type program all you have is a listing covered in scrawl and ink Well this month we bring you the answer in this tidy bit of code from Jim Butterfield Don t worry about the 1980 date in line 110 of the basic listing it s as valid today as it s ever been The old CPUCN published a similar listing purely in Basic once but that program was dreadfully slow
124. the memory expansion pack but this is reasonable enough judging by the use of sound and colour in each game Suitable for use in the classroom or the home with prices ranging from 5 95 to 9 95 Chalksoft could find themselves doing quite well If all else fails they must be remembered as the company who coined the most ridiculous name for a game so far Punc Man Area Vic Educational Programs Company Chalksoft Address Lowmoor Cottage Tonedale Wellington Somerset Tel No 082 347 7177 Contact Brian Kerslake Program networks More news has been filtering through on network ing again We gave a brief mention last month for Hydra the LAN system being marketed by Dataview The latest information to come in describes a system called Hydra being marketed by a company called IJJ Ltd Are they the same Who knows This one comes in a small board which plugs in to the memory expansion port of each Pet must be at least 32K on board which would have thought cuts out a fair chunk of the available market and then the Pets are just daisy chained together by link cable They can be connected up in whatever configuration you like because as far as the whole system is concerned it doesn t mat ter whether any particular Pet is active switched on or even connected A multi user disk operating system MUD is provided on disk which allows any computer on the network to use disk drives and printers con nected to any o
125. the spare 9 socket a replacement ROM for the F socket and a simple cable that connects the two Pets together As the cable connects up the Pets via the User Port we still have control of the IEEE port Unfortunately this does not mean that both Pets can still access one disk drive only one Pet at a time can use either this or a printer So the procedure would be to load a program on Pet1 transfer it to Pet2 and let that one get on with its job and then load another program onto Pet1 The package being simple and straightforward is also easy to install Just remove the F ROM replace it with the new one put the 9 EPROM into place and plug the cable into the back of the two 22 Commodore Computing Pets Everything is then ready to go There are seven new commands available on both Pets All of these special commands are preceded by the symbol and consist of two commands to enable and disable the Pet as a listener one to kill Petween completely one to send a program from one Pet to the other one controlling passing of variables one to subse quently evaluate the variables and the seventh sets the top of the memory pointer in the Pet to give us an input buffer for the variables One would as usual like to see more com mands available DMA are currently working on some including a screen dump from one Pet to another a networking system sending text from one to another ready for printing and so on In operation
126. ther computer on the network without affecting that computer s operation Messages can also be passed from machine to machine without destroying programs in either of them A number of commands are added to Basic special LAN ones being prefixed by N to distinguish them from ordinary commands Thus we have NLIST NOPEN and so on Executive sites which are specified at switch on by a security code have a number of additional com mands of their own Price of one to five units is 175 each and for more than five 169 each One board is needed for each computer connected on the network Area Local Area Networks Company IJJ Ltd Address 7 Cardigan Road Marlborough Wiltshire Tel No 0672 54487 More communications Oxford Computer Systems those well known producers of PetSpeed have combined forces with the respected talents of Mark Clarke to produce a device called Interpod Interpod is a small box that essentially takes a computer e g the 64 in at one end and at the other allows it to speak to any IEEE instrument e g 10 megabyte disk drive or even any RS232 instrument thus doing away with IEEE to RS2232 interfaces you have to do is plug Interpod in at the serial port of your Vic or 64 and you are ready to communicate with any number of IEEE or RS232 devices No extra software is needed and at just 95 95 Oxford could well have another winner on their hands Area Communications Company Oxford
127. tion which socket you would like 5 90 Gives the hexadecimal equivalent of decimal number the chip to reside in we MAX 120 Returns the maximal element of an array will choose if you wish us MIN 120 Returns the minimal element of an array to NORM 160 Provides the normal distribution area function 4 Send order direct to us PAD 90 Pads a string with spaces at the address below giving QUMES 70 Assists high resolution plotting on QUME Sprint 5 printer a day time telephone num SHR 260 Gives the compressed form of a number for compact storage ber together with remitt SPC 30 Gives a string of spaces of given length ance for 45 00 incl VAT amp SUM 130 Returns the sum of elements of an array p p for each new chip WPEEK 40 Peeksatwo byte address We take orders over the XPD 220 Decompresses a number phone from government organisations Full and free details of current library of SOFTCHIP commands available WHITBY COMPUTERS LTD 8 Chubb Hill Road Whitby North Yorkshire Tel 0947 604966 or 604968 Commodore Computing 29 PROGRAMMING TIPS The Role of the Micro computer as an Intelligent Controller This article will show how a Commodore PET microcomputer can drive a very sophisticated waveform generator with wide applications in such fields as the mechanical testing of various components for the automobile industry and the medical investigation of the effects of drugs on muscle tis
128. tor and the ubiquitous PET we have the prospect of storing several of the pre designed stimulus pulse trains in EPROM and applying them to the muscle sam ple as we choose at any desired repetition rate or one shot and amplitude whilst having the whole of the PET processor free to run a machine code or compiled BASIC fast data acquisition monitoring program With A D convertors map ped onto the PET s memory bus sampling rates of tens of kilohertz are possible whilst outputting stimulus waveforms at frequencies up to several tens of kilohertz It is hoped that this article gives an impression of the power and scope of relatively simple and cheap microcomputers like the CBM PET when coupled with intelligently designed interface equipment Users welcome the 500 I hear that the first Commodore 500 has arrived in the UK says Stephen Rabagliati in the latest newsletter from the Independent Commodore Products User Group spies tell me that ti is no longer reserv ed word and that ti now returns the lapsed time in tenths of seconds Another feature of both the 500 and the sole 700 in the UK is that they both have only 24 display lines on their screens as opposed to the familiar 25 It makes you wonder what else CMB USA have seen fit to alter on the new range 720BX the super twin processor ver sion will not be working until next March at the earliest while the MAX Vic 10 has not
129. ular users it enables you to produce invoices statements quotations and anything else of that nature from within Microscript Commodore Computing 5 NEW PRODUCTS mE Trashman on the Vic Jeremy Biggs continues on his merry way by sup plying me and no doubt every other magazine editor in the world with the latest wadge of wallpaper describing new game releases for the Vic from Audiogenic In light of snooker s dominance of our TV screens lately it is surprising that no one has yet come up with a version for the Vic Can you im agine an alcohol swigging Alex Higgins or Terry Griffiths chain smoking in front of your very eyes in high resolution graphics Perhaps not One of our other popular games has however been given the Vic treatment Golf my knowledge of which is limited to the 19th hole weighs in at 7 99 pounds plus a 3K ram expan sion pack Suitable for one or two players it throws all the usual hazards at you like water bunkers rough and tries to ensure that each club approximately performs as in real life Not a bad implementation nice colour but can t see many business deals being concluded over it Describing their next one as featuring Bigger and Meaner monsters Bonzo puts the player in the role of a workman whose job it is to collect boxes from different levels of the screen These levels are connected up by ladders But you are not the only one who can climb up ladders The Bigger and Meaner mon
130. um increment is 255 All references after GOTO THEN GOSUB RUN are automatically corrected A display of these lines is presented on the screen as it works If a GOTO refers to a non existent line number then it is changed to 65535 This is an illegal line number and must be corrected before the BASIC program is used RETURN 40 Commodore Computing 2 DELETE 100 200 DELETE 1500 DELETE 5199 Deletes a range of lines from a BASIC program Uses the same syntax as the LIST command so any line range may be specified for removal DELETE with no range will perform like a NEW command so be careful 3 FIND PRINT FIND A 150 670 FIND PRINT 2000 Will locate any occurences of the characters bet ween the marks Almost any character may mark the start end of the string to be found so long as both are the same The first example will find all the PRINT instructions in the program If you are looking for a string of text which con tains a BASIC keyword you must use the quote characters as markers This will prevent the search string from being tokenized If a limited line range is desired use the same syntax as for LIST Note that a comma must separate the line range from the end marker lines containing the string are printed to the screen If a line has more than one of them each occurrence will cause a repetition of that line 4 CHANGE PRINT PRINT
131. umbers from 1 through 25 Functions the APL equivalent of user defined programs are converted by the statement 4 CR FN where FN represents the function s name which must be enclosed in single quotes This has a hidden problem though strips the function of its line numbers mak ing the printed listing very different from what users especially new users come to expect from their experience with listing functions on the screen Thus yet another step is forced on us by Waterloo re inserting line numbers in a way that mirrors what APL would normally give us The pro gram NUMBER is included below to meet this need Here then are our three functions PRINT is the main routine and fairly thorough notes on its operation follow the listings ASK is a utility function that is called by PRINT its purpose being to modify the way that user input ishandled at the screen and to interrupt program execution until that input is received This is used to permit changing paper if you are not using continuous forms An alternative statement allowing for automatic advance of continuous forms is provid ed in the discussion below NUMBER finally provides for function line numbering as described above Do note that the problems we are fixing here are not APL problems They are little inconsisten cies that Waterloo gave us in an otherwise very acceptable APL implementation Hopefully future releases beyond
132. ument in 80 seconds and user defined words can be added SUPERSCRIPT and SUPERSPELL suit most CBMs disks and printers and letter quality printers These are just three fine products from our CBM PET range Please telephone or write for our comprehensive data sheets MASTER Program Development System 300 MASTER Additional run time keys PM96 96K Memory Management Basic Enhancement SUPERSCRIPT The Ultimate CBM Worprocessor SUPERSPELL Disk Dictlonary Spelling Checker VIC SCREEN Screen management Dos Support etc KRAM Keyed Disk Access state which disk 0 Basic IV state which Pet 01 5 0 880 Adds Basic IV etc to Basic SPACEMAKER 4 Rom adaptor not for 8096 1516 6 32K 96K RRP 180 00 less 35 00 ORDERING INFORMATION Add 15 VAT ta quoted prices Order post telephone or Prestel using cheque ACCESS BARCLAY card For same day service telephone 01 546 7256 For over Ref 10 Calco LAKESIDE HOUSE KINGSTON HILL SURREY 2 701 TEL 01 546 7256 the counter sales see your Commodore Dealer Commodore Computing 15 INTRODUCTION TO MICROS 1 What is a micro computer Robert Moscrop This series of six articles is intended as a guided tour through Microland for the business user and assumes no previous knowledge of micro computer technology Each article will ex plore the ground of the various aspects of the pro blem which he will enc
133. ute to follow A 2716 EPROM can be used to store eight waveforms with eight bit resolution in both amplitude and time equivalent to drawing the waveform on a high resolution grid of 256 x 5 Frequency modulation may be achieved by sweeping the fine frequency control 6 Amplitude modulation may be achieved by sweeping the amplitude control under software In addition the following signals are available at the front panel Pme High frequency square wave Low frequency square wave Amplitude control signal External control for synchronisation with an ex ternal signal source or to trigger one shot opera tion X axis sweep signal a synchronised ramp out put which can act as a timebase for oscilloscope displays or chart recorders It is apparent from the discussion above that the combination of the stored waveform principle together with the Commodore PET provides a 256 pixels If higher resolution is needed a com bination of two or more 2716s may be used to provide up to 16 bit resolution The data output from the ROM s is applied to a digital to analog convertor and the ROM address lines are driven from the outputs of a digital counter chain The frequency of the counter clock determines the rate at which the stored waveform is sent out By appropriate circuitry the counter may stop remarkably flexible and convenient way of generating a variety of waveforms These waveforms may be generated mathematicall
134. with the 64 64K should keep us happy for a while It is a machine that is going to teach you a lot about programming and as we get ever more technically oriented this is going to be of great use It is a machine that is capable of doing many time consuming tasks in the office One that can function as a word processor a stock control machine and one that in addition will probably have a lot of control applications developed for it In short the 64 will find a use in the office and the home and a very valuable use at that By picking up on the micro revolution at home you ll be keeping ahead of the revolution in the office INSTANT ROM Instant Rom ROM EPROM EMULATORS contain CMOS RAM with inter nal battery backup When the power is switched off data is retained for up to 10 years In the PET a 4K INSTANT ROM can be fitted in the 9000 or A000 socket Machine code and Basic programs can be stored and are available at switch on INSTANT ROM saves time It can be used for long periods when the pro gram is finally bug free an EPROM can be programmed 4K INSTANT ROM ROM socket replacement 2K INSTANT ROM character generator replacement Adaptor 681 essential for PET users G ROM E G ROM E is a 4K EPROM which will Auto run at switch on any Basic or Machine Code program stored in INSTANT ROM Basic programs can be stored with a few quick key strokes No skill is needed Programs can now be run
135. without a tape or disk unit and can be changed without cost to the user Diagnostic aids are included G ROM E specify type of PET Postage 1 00 and VAT are extra Leaflets are available INSTANT ROM and PETCLOCK are COMMODORE APPROV ED PRODUCTS GREENWICH INSTRUMENTS LIMITED 22 BARDSLEY LANE GREENWICH LONDON 5 10 UK Tel 01 853 0868 Telex 896691 Attn GIL MIDLANDS COMMODORE PET SERVICE CENTRE Phone Anne on O21 772 8181 about our 1 WORKSHOP amp FIELD REPAIRS 2 BUSINESS SOFTWARE STATIONERY amp SUPPLIES CONSULTANTS COMPUTER BUSINESS SYSTEMS 75 Watery Lane Birmingham 89 4HW Telephone 021 772 8181 7 Lines MASTER gt MASTER is a totally new concept a complete package for program development Used by top professionals in the USA and Europe MASTER has everything you need to write your own software to the highest professional standards up to 85 new commands that work with CBM Basic IV and just command can replace whole paragraphs of Basic code That s why Master is a new concept in CBM Basic MASTER has 17 DISK HANDLING commands both keyed and sequential access masked retrieval batch operation existence tests etc 12 INPUT MANAGEMENT commands input output screen zones with alpha numeric and date formatting etc 8 SCREEN MANAGEMENT commands with screen pages loadable from disk memory 10 commands for REPORT MANAGEMENT with
136. y or derived from graphical templates The computer is the ideal tool for generating or reading the waveforms from a digitising tablet A simple EPROM programmer can then be used to store these waveforms in an EPROM Using this ap proach a library of various waveforms may be built up and then used at some stage to provide the test signals for whatever application is after one complete cycle or it may be made to keep counting repetitively over and over so the output waveform may be one shot or continuous Additionally it is possible to arrange for the counter clock frequency to be chosen as an in tegral sub multiple of a very high crystal controlled frequency thereby giving flexibility in output frequency as well as accuracy With this clever piece of circuitry interfaced to the PET the above mentioned options can be brought under software control Further the output level may be additionally varied using transconductance required More easily controlled One possible improvement on the design presently being considered is the possibility of us ing off board RAM instead of EPROM together with means of down loading the waveform data from the PET via the IEEE 488 bus thus making the generator even more easily controlled Fig 6 shows a sample of waveforms generated using the combination of Commodore PET amplifiers or electronic attenuators The approach employed by the 3D waveform generator offers the following fa
137. y the VIC or the 64 s serial bus Simply by attaching INTERPOD you can vastly increase the power of your VIC 20 and when used with the new 64 INTERPOD turns the computer into a really powerful system IEEE instruments such as volt meters plotters etc With INTERPOD the VIC and 64 become capable of running really professional quality software such as Word processing Accounting Instrument control and many more INTERPOD will work with any software No extra commands are required and INTERPOD does not affect your computer any way Using INTERPOD is as easy as this Simply plug INTERPOD into the serial port of your computer power up and you are ready to communicate with any number of parallel and serial IEEE devices and any RS232 printer INTERPOD costs 95 95 VAT INTERPOD Oxford Computer Systems Software Ltd The Old Signal Box Hensington Road Woodstock Oxford OX7 1JR Tel 0993 812700 EDUCATIONAL REPORT APL and the SuperPet Eike Kaiser Toronto Ont After working with computers for only four years the real surprise in this relationship is probably the infrequency rather than the frequency with which major problems arise won t claim that this is because almost all my work is in APL but it pro bably does contribute One such problem that l ve finally cleared up involved the use of the serial port RS 232C on my Super Pet It took a lot of help from a lot of people but my special thanks go t
138. your subject matter sooner rather than later you are going to come unstuck This truism have no greater weight anywhere than in the computer industry You ve got to know how the machine operates how it functions if you re going to get the best out of it By that don t mean that you re a machine language programmer capable of interfacing it to the coffee machine but you do at least have a fairly good idea of how it works and what its strengths and limitations are By being familiar with the machine at home you ll be able to take this one stage further into the office Initial Ideas At first you ll probably want to try and com puterise everything with the result that everything becomes that little bit more inefficient Bearing in mind that the 64 is not a multi megabyte machine but is instead a humble hum ble Remember the original 8K Pets 64K and that you will probably only have a cassette deck to begin with it would be best at first to concen trate on some simple administrative task that is perhaps taking a little bit longer to sort out than it should Using your new found programming skills it should be possible to take a simple operation like this work out a flow chart showing how you 14 Commodore Computing would tackle the problem and then go about writing the program It doesn t matter if at first your coding looks inefficient and the program runs a little slowly The important factor is th

What is a micro-computer?

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