from PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, May 1990

SAM STUFF

[The Sky Worms program crashes at 210:1 with "30 Integer out of range"]
[about a quarter of the way through displaying the BLITZ a$ ...   JimG]

Da-daaa!. Here it is - the first ever SAM Coupe program to appear in
Pitstop. An historic occasion indeed. The only slight snag is that I
haven't a clue what it does. Being an impoverished student means that
ownership of an actual SAM is something realised only in my dreams.
Thus I haven't actually been able to try the program out.

It looks good, though, as it should do coming from Richard Bagnall. It
appears to put on some kind of a graphical display, so type it in and
do whatever you have to do on a SAM to get it running. Once you've
done that, wait for the counter on the screen to reach zero before you
come to any conclusions.

And if you thought that was impressive then just take a gander at
this. Behold - the procedure to get all those non-compatible Speccy
games up and running on your SAM. Incredible but true. Apparently
Richard Webb wasn't too happy about only being able to run half his
collection on the new machine, so, being an enterprising sort of chap,
he set about solving the problem. And here's his solution.

All that's needed, he says, is a standard Speccy and a couple of blank tapes ...

1) Turn on the Spectrum and save its ROM to tape by typing
   SAVE "SPECCYROM" CODE 0,16384
2) Load the Emulator program into the SAM and press the ESC key when
   prompted to "Play Spectrum tape now".
3) Load the Spectrum ROM into the SAM by typing
   LOAD "SPECCYROM" CODE 65536
4) Add the following lines to the Basic Loader program -
     55 LOAD "SPECCYROM" CODE 65536
    135 SAVE "SPECCYROM" CODE 65536,16384
   (To speed up loading, add DEVICE T35: to the start of line 100.)
5) Find the blank tape to save the final version of the Emulator program
   onto and do so by typing RUN 100. (Do not rewind the tape when finished.)
6) Turn on the Spectrum again and type in the following Basic program -
     10 RANDOMIZE USR 0
7) Save the program to the tape after the new version of the Emulator
   program by typing
   SAVE "ROMRUM" LINE 10.
8) Reset the SAM and load the new version of the Emulator from the start
   of the tape by pressing F7.

You should should now possess a standard Spectrum wrapped up in an
endearing Coupe case. 48K Speccy games can be loaded by typing LOAD ""
(J, Sym P, Sym P in case you've forgotten already), and you should
find that about 95% of them work. The ones that don't are probably a
bit crap anyway. Brilliant or what?

Of course, it may not be within your capabilities to surpass the
brilliance of Richard's humble offering (although who knows?) but if
you've got a SAM and you've come up with a juicy little program then
do drop me a line. Perhaps by then I'll have wangled one for myself.
(Fat chance. Ed)


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from PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, August 1992

SAM EMBROIDERY
by Andrew Heard

Next up is a ... wait for it - SAM Coupe program. Hurrah! But better
still, it's ... wait for it - Spectrum compatible. Double hurrah! The
program was written with the SAM in mind, and as such the output
effect is infinitely better on the Coupe than on the Spec, but then,
the Coupe doesn't have attribute squares the size of small continents
to worry about. The program is printed in SAM format, so if you're a
Spec owner simply perform the following changes ...

* Delete lines 20, 40 and 110.
* Enter line 50 as INK RND*7
* Replace the PALETTE command in line 55 with CLS
* Enter line 110 as RUN and the program will go about its pattern-type
  business quite happily.

It may strike you that this is the first SAM program we've had while
I've been in charge; hopefully things will change as Alan Miles has
got wind (oo-er) of my appointment here. He may well be alerting the
SAM population to the general amazingness of Pitstop and YS as a whole
even as we speak, and for my part I will be more than happy to print
any SAM programs that are sent my way. (Provided they're not the
computer equivalent of a steaming pile of pease pudding, of course!)
After all, many people say that the SAM is the natural successor of
the Speccy. But then some people will say anything.


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PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, March 1993

Craig grinning and a sign from Mr Bignose. It's just another day
on the starting grid ...

Well, I've been sitting here at the controls of Pitstop for a whole
year now (although it may not seem like it), so let's just reflect for
a moment on what we've achieved. We've had graphics editors,
alternative fonts, error trappers, game editors, screen effects, base
converters ... The list is endless - or is it? The one thing we
haven't yet had, as several thousand owners of the most powerful 8-bit
computer on Earth will testify, is a decent load of useful programs
for the SAM Coupe. Well, let's remedy that. Je vous presente ... the
Pitstop SAM Special! (Apologies for the dodgy Francais - I never could
get the hang of reflexive verbs.)

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REFLECTO-SCROLL
by David Hooper

David is the star of the show this month with two programs making
jolly good use of the Coupe. The first is ... aargh ... a scroller,
but hey, this is the first SAM one I've printed, so cool it. Although
slightly lacking in the versatility department, Reflecto Scroll makes
up for it in the "ease of use" area. The most taxing thing you have to
do is think of a message, and from then on it's just the mindless
tedium of typing the thing out, which normally requires very little
thought on your part anyway. (Hence "mindless". Ed)

Type out the Reflecto BASIC program first, and SAVE it (running it at
this stage will cause a crash and you'll lose the lot). Reset, then
type out the Decimal Loader, and save it in case you've entered the
code incorrectly. You can then run the Decimal Loader (presented in
accordance with our less-hex policy), which will create a block of
code and save it off for you. This code is then used in conjunction
with the Reflecto BASIC program. Incidentally, if you're using a tape
recorder instead of a drive (snig snig), two pieces of advice: one -
save the code straight after the BASIC as once the code has been
properly saved you won't need the Decimal Loader again; and two - get
a disk drive.

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DISSOLVE
by A Collier

Screen effects time, courtesy of A from Bolton. You can use this
routine to clear either a section of the screen or the whole screen in
an aesthetically pleasing and generally dissolvey kind of way. It's
been designed for use in modes 3 and 4, but you can use it in modes 1
and 2 if you're brave (it just doesn't look so good, and you have to
do the entire screen). Just enter the Decimal Loader you see before
you, and use it to generate a block of code. This time you have to
specify an address at which to plant the code, as the routine is
relocatable - just make sure that it stays below RAMTOP (try PRINT
RAMTOP), and that it doesn't overwrite any vital stuff (like SAM DOS
for instance). Once you've done this, you can just type CALL address
to dissolve the entire screen to PEN 0. In modes 3 and 4 you can use
parameters as follows to dissolve a portion of the screen: CALL
address,x,y,width,height. To dissolve to another colour (in modes 3
and 4) use a fifth parameter; to dissolve the whole screen to another
colour you still have to include the other four parameters, though:
CALL address,0,191,256,192,colour.

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MANIPULATOR
by David Hooper

Back to David for this program which can be used to modify your
current font. There are nine different operations which you can put
your font through. These are italic, bold, Vbold, reflect, flip,
reverse, subscript, superscript and funtalic. Basically, just type in
the BASIC program, type INIT and then you can process your font to
your heart's content by entering the name of the PROCedure you want to
use (you don't need to RUN this one). When you find a font you like,
you can save it with SAVE "filename" CODE 20880,1096. David suggests
saving the original Coupe font first, as once you've manipulated it,
you'll have to reset the machine before you can get it back.

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THINGIES AND WOSSNAMES

SAM as a Personal Computer ...
of the IBM compatible type, that is. I've had several queries about
Ian Spencer's SAM to PC converter that we use to bring Pitstop to you
lovely people. don't have the actual address of Mr S (he's somewhere
in Germany) but you can get more info from SAM Supplement at 37 Parker
St, Bloxwich, Walsall WS3 2LE. But! I feel it's only fair to point out
there's something similar lurking in Shareware Land, so it might be
worth checking around before spending twenty-five quid on the
commercial program.

Flamingo-up
Well, it would appear that Nigel Grange's lovely Scroll-a-Load has
gone and done a Tune Maker on us - in other words half of it went
missing, due, I am told, to a dodgy PC link. Fret not though, I'll be
printing the missing bit in next month's Pitstop. Really and truly.


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from PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, August 1993

SAM TRIANGLES
by Ben Hockley

Ben lives in a place in Wales, the name of which is 10
letters long and hasn't got a single vowel in it. Not that
I've got anything against the Welsh, of course (he says
hurriedly) - I just thought I'd mention it. Ahem. Anyway,
the program. It's, er, very nice, it's from Wales, and it
lets you draw filled triangles of any shape and size. The
only condition is that you have to own one of those blue and
white breeze blocks they call the SAM Coupe. I'll assume at
this stage that you own said machine, and proceed to tell
you how to use the routine. Well, firstly, you'll need the
procedures init_tri and triangle in their entirety, and
these can be put anywhere in your program. You'll also need
lines 30 to 60 in order to set up the routine. These have to
be run before the triangle procedure is called. Lines 70 to
100 just show you very simply what the routine does; Ben
admits to this bit being &quot;slightly naff&quot;, but confidently
predicts that in the right hands, some very impressive 3D
graphic animation demos could be produced. We shall see.

To tweak the routine to your personal liking, make sure
you've called init_tri, then simply type triangle x1, y1,
x2, y2, x3, y3 where the x's and y's are the co-ordinates of
each of the three triangle points. Simplicity itself,
n'est-ce pas? Finally Ben asks me to plug his new game
called Pacbert, release imminent (consider it done) and asks
if we want to see his other SAM routines - Yes! (A very
resounding Yes! at that.)
