REVIEW OF NASPIC

by D.J. Plews

What is NASPIC ? – It is a 2K machine code utility program for the production of ‘pages’ of graphics for BASIC. The pages are produced with the help of NASPIC and then appended to the end of a current BASIC program. RUNning the program results in the ‘page’ being PRINTed.

What do you get ? – NASPIC on tape residing at 1000hex to 1800hex (it is fully relocatable so it’s EPROMable’) or 2K of EPROM (again which may be plugged in anywhere) and a four page ‘manual‘.

What are the commands ? – There are fourteen commands in all. Taking them in alphabetical order :–

C –

Character mode. The entire character set is displayed on line sixteen with a flashing non-destructive graphics cursor. This cursor may be used to scan along the 256 graphics characters by use of the keys <[> and <]> for left and right respectively. By using the normal cursor control keys the ‘drawing’ cursor may be positioned on the screen at the desired point and pressing the space bar will result in the chosen graphics character being printed there. By repeating this procedure it is possible to quickly build up a pretty picture of your own design. To return to normal mode i.e MOVE, press <ENTER>.

CS –

CLEAR SCREEN The screen may be cleared by <SHIFT/​BACK-SPACE>. To prevent accidential erasure of the screen a <Y/N> prompt request occurs. If <Y> then after the screen is cleared the cursor returns to HOME and MOVE mode is entered.

D –

DRAW mode. The flashing non-destructive ‘drawing’ cursor can be moved about the screen by using the normal cursor control keys. It will leave a white ‘line’ behind it. The resolution is 94 x 42. There is no wrap around over the edge of the screen.

E –

EDIT mode. The start address of a previously ‘compiled’ NASPIC page in the BASIC program is requested which is then transfered to the screen for editing. If there is no page or it is of incorrect format the transfer still occurs but with spectular and fortunately non-fatal results. The cursor is sent to HOME and MOVE mode entered.

H –

HOME. This moves the cursor to its home position i.e. bottom left hand corner of the screen. It also causes the program to enter MOVE mode and resets the LSP (last saved