PROGRAM PITSTOP
May 1993

Now, co-starring with Sir Richard Swann, it's CRAIG BROADBENT
and his magical typing fingery things.

Eugapae! Eugapae! Eugapae! (That's Latin for "yippee", you know.) For
you join me here in the midst of rural Wiltshire once more, savouring
a long-awaited weekend break away from that fountain of knowledge (and
purveyor of extremely tricky practical assignments) they call Reading
University. And here with me this month are my very good pals from the
old alma mater, John and Jessica, who are helping me greatly (honest!)
with the laborious task of compiling Pitstop. Pass me that brown
envelope, John. (Sound of brown envelope being passed over.) Thanks,
that was of great help. Oh, and Jessica, could you switch on the
Speccy? (Sound of Speccy being switched on.) They're invaluable, they
really are.

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A FAST LOADER
by Richard Swann

Or (and I quote) "the next best thing to a disk drive". This program
was originally titled Rich-Load by its creator but that was a silly
name, so I was forced to exercise my extensive editorial powers. As
you will no doubt have noticed, your friend and mine Dicky is back
once more, and I'm beginning to wonder how he can manage to work on
his degree and churn out vast quantities of Speccy programs at the
same time. Oh hang on. He's doing Computer Science isn't he? That
would explain it.

Cutting sarcasm aside, this is a jolly good fast loader, and, credit
where credit's due, Dicky's done a marvellous job. To use the thing,
type in the BASIC (all code to be generated is contained within the
main BASIC program) and save it off with SAVE "filename" LINE 0. At
this stage, the program is completely untainted, ready and waiting to
be customised for your individual programs. Easily done. Just RUN it,
answer the searching and highly personal questions with which you will
be presented, and then save it off wherever it'll be of most use.

Just to give you some idea of what it can do, the options are
backwards or forwards loading, start and length of code to save/load,
speed of tone (the blue and red bit) and bytes (the yellow and blue
bit), and a choice of four predefined colour schemes. Once you've
customised the loader, you can only use it to load in code of a
particular length to a certain address, so make sure you keep the
"pure" copy on tape. When all's done and ready, enter RANDOMIZE USR
64900 to save your code (make sure the tape's running), and RANDOMIZE
USR 64914 to load it in again.

And finally, a quick hint for people who don't know the memory map
like the back of their hands - the default address and length given
are those needed for saving/loading a screen, so just use these to
achieve the same effect as SCREEN$.

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SORTER
by Alan Gibson

[The routine doesn't check for zero values, so I had to change the]
[demo slightly to avoid these.                                JimG]

Providing a short but much needed break from the omnipresent Swann is
Alan Gibson, with a short routine which simply sorts out a table of
values (each with an identity number) from highest to lowest. Erm ...
and that's about it. You can stick the routine anywhere in memory, but
it always reads from the same addresses. That is, 65000 to 65029 must
contain the values to be sorted, 65030 must hold the maximum possible
value, and 65040 onwards get used by the program so as to return the
identity numbers in order. Could be useful for writing a footy manager
game or something - Alan's demo is certainly this way orientated. See
what you think.

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SCREEN SAVER
by Richard Swann

Back (back! Back!) in full effect, Dicky's second contribution of the
month is none other than a screen saver utility as found on, quoth
Dicky, "posh computers". Just an interjection of mild interest at this
point - the equivalent of both Richard's programs this month can be
found already built into the ROM of that "posh computer", the SAM
Coupe, and it's good to see Dicky acknowledging the SAM's superiority
at last!

For those not in the know, such a prog is used to blank the screen out
after 'n' minutes, so as to save the TV's phosphor from sustaining a
permanent scar due to displaying a static image for too long. To
actually use the thing, you first need to work out after how many
frames you want the screen to blank out. The value can be anything up
to 65535, which works out at about twenty-two minutes, and just to
give you a rough working guide, one frame lasts one fiftieth of a
second. Using n as the number of frames, POKE 64847, n-INT(n/256)*256:
POKE 64848,INT(n/256): RANDOMIZE USR 64768 and you're away. Two words
of warning, though - firstly, don't use interrupts, and secondly,
leave all RAM above 64768 free for the routine to use.

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A NEW APPROACH
I've made a decision. Good, eh? The decision, basically, is that I want
to change the format of Pitstop ever so slightly, so that instead of
aimlessly printing any program that looks good, I get to print the programs
that you want to see. So what I want you to do is send in suggestions for
the types of programs you'd like to see appearing in Pitstop, and then
(hopefully) the skilled populace will set to work on your chosen topics.
Address your suggestions, as well as your programs of course, to Craig B
at Program Pitstop, YS, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, Avon BA1 2BW. And before
I go, I'd better just say that the mailbag is getting rather desolate, so
get writing and bask in the adulation of millions! Sort of.

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