80-Bus News

The first letter on the pile is from M. L. Trim, of Garswood, Ashton in Makerfield, Merseyside.

Dear Editor,

This is a program written for use with the Gemini G805 disk system. It was an exercise to help me understand data storage on disk and has proved quite useful in storing my customers’ addresses and phone numbers. However, other instructions could be inserted to suit the requirement, for example, a Christmas card list, general address list, etc.

Line 100 sets up the Nascom array size
lines 110 – 150 is an INKEYS routine

The program speaks for itself being a batch of small routines which can be located in line 840.

Your faithfully, M. L. Trim.

As Mr Trim’s listing was supplied as hard copy, I had to type it in and in the process I couldn’t resist the temptation to have a small go at it. I changed the input routines and the print routines into two subroutines. As this was written for a version of Basic I couldn’t identify, and therefore couldn’t get my hands on, I haven’t tried it. So I hope I haven’t mucked it about to the extent that it does not work.

Next off the pile comes a letter from R.A.C. Treen of Burgess Hill. Some time ago he wrote to me about networks for Nascom owners. This is something that could be interesting and Malcolm Alberry of Leighton Buzzard keeps muttering to me about an automatic disk based bulletin board using his Nascom and 8″ drives. I don’t know how far Malcolm has persued this, but such a scheme would be very practical for both disk based and non disk computers. The main trouble is modems for the ’phone lines. Two or three simple designs costing up to £30.00 have been published, but as far as I know no-one has looked into these. I wonder if anyone has played about with modems, and if so could they let us know. Mr. Treen is also interested in exchanging tapes, so if anyone is interested perhaps they could drop us a line and we will forward them to Mr. Treen. [Ed. – Perhaps Mr. Treen could communicate with Dr. Dark; see his pages for details.] Mr. Treen continues his letter with a thorough endorsement of the Level Nine Adventure program:

.... On a completely different subject, I purchased, from Level 9, a copy of the 32K Colossal Aventure recently. (I have a Nascom 2 under NAS-SYS 3 with 32K of user RAM.) My first impressions were that it was superb. The progam comes on a TDK D46 cassette (I have had ZERO TAPE ERRORS with this brand, YES, ZERO). The program is recorded at 1200 BAUD twice on side A and once at 300 BAUD on side B. The program loaded first time. With the program is an eight page A5 booklet. This contains the scenario for, and explicit and concise instructions on, playing the game. Included in the game is a stamped addressed envelope for you to request your free clue [a novel way of ensuring program registration – DH].

The game itself is the standard mainframe adventure with of course some modifications. The end game (which I have not yet reached) is supposed to contain 70 rooms instead of the usual 2. I have been playing the game for about 15 hours in all and my highest score is still only 165 out of a possible 1100. If you liked the mainframe adventure then you’ll like this. If you haven’t played Adventure, then I suggest you do. See the ads in the April – June 80BUS News, I consider it well worth the money.

P.S. Does anyone know how to open the clam ............

Yours sincerely, R.A.C. Treen

And, so on to Robert Wood of Cardiff who has sent two small and simple routines:

Dear Editor,

Readers might like to try the little routine listed below, which could be called ‘Nascom Advertising Display’. It is a neat display whereby a message travels across the screen, descending line by line until it reaches the bottom, then there is a flurry of multiple displays. The message then goes to the top line and the next message starts. It is useful as an eyecatcher and can be left running if line 120 is included as this will repeat the whole series of messages.