PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, June 1990

After months of making do with a scrappy photo booth picture for
Pitstop, Jonathan Davies eventually consented to have a proper snap
taken. The result? Exactly the same!


Sub-zero temperatures, eh? I'm freezing at the moment. Have you ever
tried typing when your hands are all cold? It's weird. You know which
keys you want to press, but your fingers just seem to float all over
the place. It's a shame, really, as it was so nice and sunny today.
Perhaps I'd better close the window.

Right, so what have I got lined up for you this month? Well, ahem,
there's a teensy weensy little problem. Remember Variturbo from last
month? We promised you the second instalment this ish, right? Well,
er, due to "unforeseen circumstances" I'm afraid you're all going to
have to sit tight until next time. But all is not lost! Just take a
gander at this spanking double bill - first we've got Rick O'Neill
delivering another fab message scroller, Swiss Scroll; and then Gordon
Murray with his One-Line Flight Simulator. It may not be Bomber but
it's pretty wazzy all the same. Bravo!


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SWISS SCROLL
by Rick O'Neill

Actually, Rick O'Neill isn't from Switzerland, and neither is his
scroller. They both live in Scotland, and a good thing too.

You may remember Antony Purvis's message scroller from, oooh, way back
when. Well, this is the same sort of thing, only different. It's
similar in that it scrolls messages, and that the messages are really
big, being formed in the attribute file. The difference, though, is
that these messages are BIG. Yup, they fill up the whole screen. Also,
they're not interrupt driven so, while not being quite as versatile as
the first one, the program is a touch shorter and easier to use.

The "getting it in" routine is the same as usual - type in the Basic
and save it onto a tape. Then, using the Hex Loader, type in the Hex
and save that after the Basic. Run the program and you'll be given a
demo.

To make use of the routine in your own programs you'll need to type
what you want scrolled into a REM statement at the beginning of the
program. You can use all the usual characters and also colour control
codes (there were some quite fetching ones in the demo, but sadly they
didn't print out). The POKE SCRL+1,LINE and RANDOMIZE USR SCRL, where
SCRL is the start address of the routine and LINE is between 0 and 255
(the number of the REM line).


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ONE LINE FLIGHT SIMULATOR
by Gordon Murray

Flight sims, eh? They're the biz! There's Fighter Bomber and Chuck
Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator, to name just two - real reach-for-
the-skies (right) stuff. But wait, what's this? Could it be that a
home-grown effort is about to rewrite the rule books and lay down its
revolutionary new standards for all future flight sims to equal? Well,
no, actually. As you might expect, the title is wildly exaggerated.
But Gordon Murray's program ain't half bad, and as it's so short
you've got no excuse for not giving it a try. Go on, get on with it.


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PHEW!

Right, that's your lot - another Pitstop draws to a close, and it's
time to look forward to the next one. And what's it going to contain?
Haven't the foggiest - that's up to you. So get your Speccy warmed up,
diddle around with the keys and see what you can come up with. Oh, and
if you do manage something mildly interesting, then send it to me on a
tape - it makes life a lot easier at this end. The address to writ to
is Jonathan Davies, Program Pitstop, Your Sinclair, 30 Monmouth
Street, Bath BA1 2AP. There'll be prizes, of course.

