80-Bus News

where the old chip had it’s pin 1. You now have a spare 2732, and no idea what to use it for. It’s a good job the new chip doesn’t do any harm when it is in the wrong socket. Apparently, one of the things the spare socket can do is this: you put a set of demo routines in it, connect the board to five volts and a monitor (no host computer, no 80-BUS, just a p.s.u. and a monitor!) and it sits there demonstrating itself! I was told this one by one of the designers, when I rang up to ask why the ROM didn’t work in the wrong socket. He told me lots more, most of which I have sadly forgotten, especially the bit about how to upgrade Pluto to double resolution without paying £50.00. I suspect you can do the double speed processor mod. for less, as well....

Anyway, back to the new ROM. It gives you the ability to draw dotted line, using an eight bit mask, as well as the solid lines already provided for. Circles and arcs of circles can be drawn, if you can work out what parameters to send, and it wants eight bytes of them! The circle routine is faster than any of the others I have seen, which is as it should be. The most interesting new facility is the pattern fill routine. Any shape can be “wallpapered” with any predefined pattern, and this makes pretty pictures of hosts of golden daffodils a snap to program!

Apparently, quite a few people are working on world shattering software for the Pluto, but as yet none of it seems to be appearing in the adverts. Can’t wait to buy some, in case you are reading this, world shatterers! Of course, if they want to send me a free copy of anything they want to be reviewed, they are welcome to do so, and will get the usual impartial.....

Apathy Rules OK!

I expect you remember reading my idea for a circulating disk full of juicy software, to replace the program library. I expect that quite a few of you thought ‘That’s not a bad idea, with a few changes we could.....” Well it is a shame that only three people out of however many disk users read this could be bothered to write in. This is apparently a large response, by standards of this apathetic group. I have written to the people who did summon up the energy to write, apologising on behalf of the rest of you. I am surprised that a machine so obviously intended for people with enthusiasm should have been bought by so many idle bodies. Apart from the five or six people who write this magazine, and the three who wrote to me, is there anyone out there alive? Because I can see no point in me doing all this if you are just going to sit there and fiddle with your appendages. This is supposed to be a user group, not a one way process where a few of us write, and you all take and never give. Where is your “Share and Enjoy”? Belgium, man, Belgium......

More Apathy, And Serve Us All Right

It must be a great comfort to the people who keep all their work to themselves to know that you are right never to send in an article, because they don’t pay you for months on end. And you are right not to write to the people running this magazine, because they never, but never, answer your letters of complaint. Assuming it gets printed, and it seems doubtful that the Mafia [Ed. – Watch it or we’ll senda de boys around!] I would allow open criticism of their methods, they now owe me the £10.00 a page for this article. So where has all the money gone? Must be the nice daisy wheel printer and Wordstar, I suppose.

Finally

I have found out how to make Adventure programs save to disk instead of tape, but as there are only three disk users who can write, there is no point printing it. Turlingdromes..................