💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › magazines › ZNET › 0023.txt captured on 2022-06-12 at 15:29:08.
View Raw
More Information
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
___________________________________
ZMAGAZINE NOVEMBER
___________________________________
NOVEMBER 11, 1986 ISSUE 2.6
___________________________________
PUBLISHER:
EDITOR IN CHIEF: RON KOVACS
___________________________________
COORDINATOR: LARRY MIHALIK
PUBLISHING ASSISTANT: KEN KIRCHNER
___________________________________
Xx Editor Column
Welcome to Zmag!!
This week we cover a number of new Atari ST releases, New Basic Column
debuts, News and Ken White replies with a commentary in Antic/Analog Blues
Part 3.
In the very near future, Our new Editor will be here performing the tasks
required. Alan Kloza of the Surf City BBS will be assisting me with
Editorial duties. Issue 2.4 of Zmag was not issued out to all BBS systems.
This issue pertains to Assembly Language Programming which is 433 sectors
long and is a corrolation of all the columns about the subject that were in
past issues of Zmag. If you are interested in getting a copy, you can call
the Syndicate BBS at (201) 968-8148 or the Atari Connection BBS at
(315)622-1952. The next Special Edition of Zmag will be issue number 3.0
which will be devoted entirely to the Zmag BBS systems. It will have all
of the Systems Logon info and Title Menus.
___________________________________
Xx ATARI OWNERS TOLD OF SUSPECTED
FAULTY HARD DRIVES
Supra Corp. has notified owners of Supra 30MB Hard Drives manufactured by
NEC that the drives may develop encoding problems. In a message sent to
users of the Atari Developers Forum on CompuServe, Supra said that some
disk drives manufactured between August 15 and October 15, 1986, have been
known to fail after extended use.
Encoding problems can lead to scrambling of the disk directory and
subsequent loss of data.
To determine if your Supra 30MB drive was manufactured during the suspected
problem period, check the identification plate on the bottom of the drive.
The manufacturing date shown is in the format of MDDYY or MMDDYY. Users
who suspect a problem with their drive should contact:
Supra Tech Support (503)967-9081.
___________________________________
Xx Product Releases
BACKUP! by Dave Clemans
When a hard-drive crashes, there isn't any noise. No smoke, no fire, no
broken glass or twisted metal. Physically, everything remains pretty much
intact. But datawise... 20 megabytes of amnesia? Well, you just start
over. From scratch. And hope it never happens again...
Backups, what about backups? How often do you make backups of a quarter
billion bytes of computer memory? And even so, are they accurate and up-
to-date? Would you stake a month's lost labor on it? Or even a week's?
Probably not.
And now you don't need to. MichTron's new Backup utility is for those of us
who like things quick and simple.
Backup duplicates the contents of your hard-drive to floppy disks,
minimizing the risk of loss. It also lets you restore the floppy backups
back to the hard-drive after an accident, reducing any actual loss to an
absolute minimum.
But much more than that, Backup's specialized routines are very fast, and
the program orchestrates the entire backup procedure for you, minimizing
time and effort as well.
There's no longer any reason not to make backups. Especially when it's
this easy.
Backup uses GEM pull-down menus to make things even more convenient. You
can select numerous options and run different types of backups and restores
with a click of the mouse.
-Intelligent- routines give you the option of making full backups of the
entire hard-drive, backups of only newly created or modified files, or
backups simply by date. You might even decide to make an -image- backup,
transferring logical sectors to counterpart floppies, saving even more
time.
Whatever method you need, the support is waiting for you in Backup!
There's even a detailed Help menu available in the program.
Backup is available from MichTron for $39.95 and runs on any Atari ST with
a hard-drive. MichTron, a growing company in Pontiac, Michigan, is
currently the largest producer of software for the Atari ST.
- *Pinball Factory** by Kary McFadden The video game comes full circle in
this glorious tribute to the original! Classic pinball springs to life
with fresh new angles that only the computer can offer.
In addition to playing a great game of pinball, you can enjoy hours of
creative pleasure as you design, build, and edit your own screens!
Change the board - Imagine the perfect pinball machine. Choose from a
multitude of bumpers, tabs, and other devices, and place them anywhere you
like to get the action just right. Then using a powerful graphic drawing
system, put in the walls and solid barriers.
You can even illustrate your playing board with pictures, arrows, or
whatever you like--the ball will pass right over them! The versatility and
the possibilities are endless!
Of course, Pinball Factory comes complete with a sample screen, ready to
play and enjoy. Change the logo - Add flair to a screen you've just
designed, or set the mood for one in the works. The built-in drawing
system has the power of a full- fledged art program!
Commands include Draw, Line, Ray, Frame, Round frame, Box, Round box,
Circle, Disk, Detail to magnify small areas, Fill, Bigtype and Smalltype
for adding text, and Airbrush and Shadow for special effects.
You can change any of the Atari ST's 16 palette colors, giving you complete
control and -artistic expression- as you sort through and select from over
500 different shades.
Change the rules - Alter gravity, bounce, and scoring, and change the
bumper strength and tab bonuses. You can even change the speed of the game
and the number of balls for each of four players to -handicap- a multi-
player game! Test and edit your screen until everything is perfect. You can
Save and Load your favorite creations to disk.Multi-ball action - Special
-capture- devices let you have up to three balls in play at once! That's
enough fun, excitement, and challenge for the most avid pinball fan!Simple
to use - All commands and menus are mouse controlled for easy use. Even
the drawing commands are as easy as point and click!Complete realism -
Crisp, colorful graphics and fast, smooth action give this machine-language
arcade game a realistic, responsive feel you'll hardly believe! Special
-tilt- controls even let you -bump- the machine!Pinball Factory is
available from MichTron for $39.95 and runs on any Atari ST computer with
color monitor or television hookup.
___________________________________
Xx THE DENTIST IS IN
Want the scoop on cavities, plaque, tartar and root canal work? Once again,
your modem rides to the rescue.Two dentists/teachers in Winston- Salem,
N.C., have opened a computer bulletin board system to dispense free
information. Dentistry On-Line was opened a month ago by Roger Horton of
the Wake Forest University medical school, and Houck Medford, of the Bowman
Gray School of Medicine.So far, says The Associated Press, the two have
notified only health professionals about the free service, and they
received 10 to 12 calls a day. Now they're advertising the board to the
general public.In addition, they hope to receive funding from area
hospitals to expand the board into a multi-user system.The BBS can be
reached with a modem call to 919/748-2168.
___________________________________
Xx JUSTICE DEPT. FINES VIRGINIA
COMPUTER FIRM $5.1 MILLION
C3 Inc., which was fined $5.1 million earlier this week for overcharging
the Army on a computer contract, has hired the New York investment banking
firm Kidder Peabody Co. to examine a possible sale or restructuring of the
Reston, Va.-based company, reports The Washington Post.C3 -- which stands
for -computers, communications and control- -- entered a guilty plea to
criminal charges on Monday, finally releasing it from the threat of
prolonged litigation. This move, although preceded by several years of
fighting the charges, will make it a more attractive candidate for
acquisition.In addition to the hefty fine, C3's chairman, John G.
Ballenger, and director, John D. Vazzana, who are the firm's largest
stockholders, were forced by the Department of Justice to step down and
play no role in the company for the next two years.Financial analysts
interviewed by The Post, said the two may be looking to sell their interest
in C3, which has been plagued by low earnings and sales the last few
years.The 16-year-old company enjoyed booming growth in the 1970s and early
1980s by supplying computer systems and software to government agencies. In
1982 it was briefly suspended from military business when it was charged
with overcharging on a contract to supply minicomputers for the Army
Material Development and Readiness Command.According to The Post, C3 has
been under continuous criminal investigation ever since, making it
difficult for the company to expand and causing a severe decline in
growth.C3 maintained its innocence for years, and on Monday pleaded guilty
to 200 counts of making false statements in connection with the Army
contract. The multi-million dollar fine was levied to cover the alleged
overcharges.The Army agreed not to suspend C3 from further military work as
long as Ballenger and Vazzana resigned. The settlement caused a surge in
the company's stock, apparently due to speculation about a sale, notes The
Post.
___________________________________
Xx NEW PRODUCT
Abacus Software has released new software for the 1040ST.ST PaintPro is a
graphics program that uses up to three windows and allows free form
sketching, lines, circles, ellipses, boxes, and more.ST TextPro is a
professional word processor that features multicolumn output, automatic
indexing, fast text input and scrolling.ST FilePro is a simple yet
versatile data management package that allows easy file design and input of
data through screen templates.
Each of these programs retail for $49.95
For more information, contact:
Abacus Software 2201 Kalamazoo S.E. Grand Rapids, MI 49507 or call: 616-
241-5510
Midisoft Corporation is now shipping METATRAK, a multitrack MIDI sequencer
for Atari ST computers. METATRAK features real-time and step-time
recording, three modes of quantization, and cut/paste editing between
tracks.
MIDI system real-time commands (STOP, START, and CONTINUE) and MIDI song
pointer commands are utilized to provide full synchronization with external
MIDI devices such as drum machines and other sequencers.
The suggested retail price of METATRAK is $99.00.
For additional information please contact:
Midisoft Corporation Box 1000 Bellevue, WA 98009 (206) 827-0750
___________________________________
Xx Basic Review
Power & Ease BASIC XL/BASIC XE
by Tom Smith First Atari Computer Club of Spokane
Atari BASIC may come with Atari computers, but it is not the BASIC that you
should be using. BASIC XL and BASIC XE are the BASIC languages that
everyone should be using. This is a bold statement, but let us take a look
at these superior BASICs from OSS.
OSS was the original producers of Atari BASIC, and they did a fine job of
placing it in 8K. BASIC XL is the second generation of Atari BASIC and its
total size has been increased to 16K. This jump in size was not done at a
loss to the amount of memory available for programming. OSS uses a bank
selected cartridge, so that at any time only 8K of the cartridge shows
itself at a time. BASIC XE follows along the same lines, and is a further
enhancement to BASIC XL. BASIC XE uses the same 16K bank selected
cartridge, but on an XL/XE series computers it will load from disk an
additional 11K of extensions and place this under the Operating System.
This gives BASIC XE a total size of 27K with no loss of programming space.
BASIC XL/BASIC XE share most of the same basic features that I will be
discussing in this article, so I will just refer to BASIC XL for the rest
of the article. I will leave this one final note on BASIC XE. If you own a
XL/XE series computer (especially if you have or intend on getting a memory
upgrade) then BASIC XE is your definite choice (with 128K of memory BASIC
XE can give you 64K for program space and 32K for variables).
The one big thing I enjoy about BASIC XL is its ease of use. BASIC XL
makes a lot of tedious jobs associated with programming a snap. Have you
ever had a problem of remembering to go back to CAPS after typing in a
PRINT statement in lower case. Well, BASIC XL does not care what case your
in when entering programs, you can ever be in inverse video. This makes
program entry easy, and produces a easy to read listing. Also, Error
messages are not given in cryptic numbers, but are given as a number with a
word description of the malfunction. I should mention here that error
codes are the same in BASIC XL as in Atari BASIC (Atari BASIC programs are
100% compatible with BASIC XL). Two more features that make BASIC XL
friendly to use are Auto Line Numbering and program Renumbering. You can
also delete either single lines or a range of lines with the DEL command.
This is much cleaner and faster than typing a bunch of line numbers
followed by 'Carriage Returns'. When it comes time to debug your programs
two neat functions are the LVAR command and TRACE mode. LVAR produces a
listing of all the variables used by a program and also the line numbers
that they are used in. For those errors that you don't have a clue as to
their origins you have the ability to TRACE a programs execution. In TRACE
mode you run the program and the line number of the line about to be
executed is displayed on the screen surrounded by square brackets. This
continues until either; 1) an error occurs 2) the end of the program is
encountered 3) you stop execution with the 'Break' key.
You will be absolutely amazed at how these features can make your
programming a much more joyful experience over Atari BASIC. But wait,
there is one more thing that makes your life easier. Are you tired of
having to go to DOS for simple directory listing that gets erased anyway
when you go back to BASIC ? BASIC XL solves this problem by having its own
mini-DOS. You can get Directory listings, Protect & Unprotect files, Erase
files, and Rename files without leaving BASIC XL. Talk about convenience !
The features discussed so far are just things that make your life easier in
the immediate mode of BASIC XL. Now we can get into all the nifty new
commands that you can use in the program mode. All the commands and
structures of Atari BASIC are exactly the same in BASIC XL with the
addition of the commands listed below. For the sake of space I will list
the commands followed by only a short description (just enough to wet your
appetite).
FAST Usually the first statement of your program. Allows your programs to
run significantly faster than normal.
BGET/BPUT allows you to input/output a specified # of bytes from memory to
a given device.
DIM A$(4,40) string arrays
DPOKE/DPEEK Poke/Peek two bytes of data into/ out(of) memory (High/Low byte
order)
ELSE IF something THEN do this ELSE do this instead
INPUT -....-;A a statement can be printed before the computer waits for an
input.
MOVE move chunks of memory around at machine language speed
PRINT USING you can define the format of a printed line by setting up a
format string containing format commands and then supplying a list of the
variables that contain the info you wish displayed in the different fields.
RGET/RPUT allows you to input/output fixed length records made of any
combination of string and numeric data
TAB computer will TAB out a given number of spaces
WHILE/ENDWHILE While a given statement is true this loop will continue to
execute until it turns false
ERR can either return the # of the last error -OR- the line # where the
last error occurred
FIND searches a string for a given sub-string and if found returns the
location at which the sub-string starts.
HSTICK detects only horizontal movement of the joystick returning either
0,1,-1
VSTICK same as HSTICK but detects vertical movement only
PEN returns the values in the lightpen registers
LEFT$/RIGHT$/MID$ allows you to pull a given # of characters from either
the Left/ Right side of a string or from the Middle(MID).
HEX$ allows you to convert a decimal # in a four digit Hexadecimal number
(BASIC XL) allows you to use HEX #'s in your programs by placing a '