PROGRAM PITSTOP
Your Sinclair, May 1992

CRAIG BROADBENT really is Mr Dedicated. He's been crawling about in
dark garages, just to make sure you lot get your monthly dose of
lists. What a chap! To prove it, here's the numbers ...

There was nearly no Pitstop this issue, thanks to my "not too bright
at the best of times" neighbourhood postman. Y'see, he delivered this
month's batch of programs to the dark recesses of my garage without
telling anyone. Night came and it was time to put the car in the
garage, it was dark (because it was night, y'see) and ... Well, you
can guess the rest! The post office, eh? At least it makes a change
from British Rail!

Sifting through the debris I found that fate had smiled on me after
all. Not only were the actual cassettes still intact, but there were a
couple of corkers that I had no trouble picking out for this month's
column.

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TUNE MAKER (128K only)
by A Sherwood

[Over half of the listing was missing from this issue. The rest was printed]
[in the July issue, with further corrections in the Oct&Dec'92 issues. Plus]
[the layout of the graphics for the keyboard display in the July issue was ]
[all messed up, so I had to sort out that as well. Even so, the program has]
[little error trapping, so it's easy to make it crash.                 JimG]

I know that I appealed for less 128K- exclusive programs so that
everybody could get the most out of Pitstop, but this one really was
the best of the bunch and I just had to print it. Unfortunately,
printing it meant testing it. And testing it meant spending an
extremely frustrating couple of hours in search of a +2 (cheers to
Rachel and family for coming to my aid). Thankfully my labour was not
in vain.

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a muso, then A's program will be a
godsend. Now, instead of having huge great chunks of your program used
up as PLAY commands, you can just load up A's imaginatively titled
TuneMaker. Simply compose a tune using the keyboard as a, erm,
keyboard and then save it off for use in your own programs. In this
way you can have 20 funky grooves, each containing up to 300
"messages".

Tune notes are messages, but there are also messages at the beginning
and throughout the tune representing octave changes, voice changes and
that kind of thing. It's similar to MIDI.

All these messages are saved in the one array, l$. You can then load
it back into your own program and be musically aware at your leisure.
Alternatively, if you prefer to have ginormous PLAY commands
throughout your program, TuneMaker will show you exactly what data to
type in in order to recreate your tune down to the last quaver.

There's good news on the typing-in front too - there's no machine code
to worry about, just good old BASIC. Hurrah! Simply type it in, not
forgetting to enter underlined As in graphics mode, and save using
SAVE "filename" LINE 1. If you use this save option you'll end up with
a copy of l$ on tape which contains the messages you then have to PLAY.

The controls are displayed on screen at all times. Worth checking out
are the piano/flute voice changes, and the program's ability to play
back tunes with bass or accompaniment parts. From what I've seen, the
backing tunes don't seem to be saved along with your creations. Mind
you, I haven't gone through all the fifteen zillion variables and I'm
sure all you 128 experts can find a way to derive the backing tracks
from the main track.

Oh, and don't store your tune 'til you're sure you've finished it.
Cos, from that point on, you can no longer edit it. As far as
compatibility goes, TuneMaker will run on any +2 or +2A, but I don't
see why it shouldn't run on a 128 or +3 either. Go on, give it a try!

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FRACTAL MANIFESTATIONS
by M.P. Carter

Challenging A for the "I'm not telling you my first name" award is
M.P., writer of the first fractal-type proggy we've had in Pitstop for
a fair old while. Again, it's entirely in BASIC and I'm not sure
whether it can, strictly speaking, be classified as "fractal". But it
does produce nice-looking pictures, so that's alright!

The lines are drawn from two points inwards and, as M.P. explains,
OVER is used to good effect by generating more patterns. It's nice to
see a bit of colour too. It may be short, but it's absolutely
gorgeous, so type it in and save with SAVE "filename" LINE 1. May your
fractals be manifested for the rest of your days!

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ATTRIB (Plus D disk)
by Chris Ridings

[There were several errors in the listing.
[Line 80 was:
[  80 PRINT " - ";w$(PEEK 50000)+1
[which is invalid syntax. It should be:
[  80 PRINT " - ";w$((PEEK 50000)+1)
[as file types start at zero, but subscripts start at one.
[Similarly line 110 should be:
[ 110 PRINT " - ";w$((PEEK 50256)+1)
[Line 90
[  90 FOR f=50257 TO 50265
[should be:
[  90 FOR f=50257 TO 50266
[as file names are 10 chars long.
[Finally, line 270
[ 270 SAVE @1,q,z,50000
[should be:
[ 270 SAVE @1,z,q,50000

Chris' program works with the PLUS D disk drive. When up and working,
it'll enable you to recover files or hide them from prying siblings.
Attrib catalogues both normal and hidden/erased files. Type in the
first letter of the filename and answer "y" when it shows your file,
and "n" if it doesn't. Get those files sorted!
