40p [VERY WEEK- No 104 • MAR 23 1985

HACKER

THE PRACTICAL GUIDE TO COMMUNICATIONS

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STORY

CONTINUES

HOWTO TURN YOUR SOFTWARE INTO HARD CASH

Turning a great idea into a profitable idea isn’t easy

It needs skill, patience and sheer hard work. But to be really profitable, it also needs the backing of a large, respected company

At British Telecom we are always looking for games and educational programs to extend the range of Firebird software.

If we like your idea we’ll send you a cheque straightaway as an advance on royalties.

Then we’ll package your program, advertise it and distribute it with the care and attention you’d expect from one of Britain’s biggest companies.

So if you’d like to turn your software into hard cash, simply send your program, on cassette or disk, to...

ir!Gl

SOFTWARE

FIREBIRD SOFTWARE. WELLINGTON HOUSE. UPPER ST MARTIN S LANE. LONDON WC2H 9DL Firebird and the Firebird logo are trademarks ot British Tetecommonications pic.

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Hackers, once simply computer I |^P enthusiasts, are now tarred V

with the brush of illegality.

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legitimate form. This week we COdMWKlTWn |

offer the first of two extracts

from The Hacker's Handbook, . | A _

which will give you some idea of L

what you can do with do with

your micro, a modem and a

telephone.

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Setting up and usingspritesonyourCommodoreWcanbeachore in Basic. We take the pain away with an easy-to-use machine code program.

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I Dragon back with a Flex of muscles

QL MICRODRIVES

Get to the heart of Microdriving with the first section of PCAT s two-part explanation of how to get the most from QL storage.

HARDWARE

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From the father of portable computing comes a new business machine. How does it compare in a fast-moving sector of the computing market?

PERIPHERALS

Fast, mass-storage disk systems for the Spectrum are coming up faster than spring flowers. Check out the latest, the Discovery from Opus.

The Dragon is back in the UK — but it has left its Mettoy toytown image far behind. The new exclusive distributor in the UK, Compusense, is promoting the Dragon 64 with disk drives as an entry level Flex or OS9 machine.

Since the collapse of Dragon Data last year the Dragon range has been re-bom in Spain through a company called Eurohard. Largely owned by the Spanish Government, Eurohard has put Dragon machines back into production and plans new systems. But the original Dragon, the 32, has been pronounced dead, and the image of the Dragons returning to the UK is going to change wholesale.

■We’ll try to support the 32 as far as we can,' said Tadeus Opyrchal, director of Com¬ pusense. But he stressed that the 32 has almost no future as far as developments from the manufacturer are concerned, and that the Dragon name will come to stand for a quite different type of system.

'We will aim for semi-profes¬ sional users with the 64 and disk drives,' he said. 'One of the areas where the 6809 processor is particularly strong is in technical and scientific use — a 64 with drives will do the same job as a much larger machine.'

Compusense is a software house specialising in the Flex

operating system, a kind of cut-down Unix for 8-bit micros. Its Dragon package, a 64 with disks, (JS9, and accounts soft¬ ware. will cost between £600 and £700. Compusense aims to offer this with Flex as well.

'In the long term, we’re here to keep Eurohard’s and Dra¬ gon’s presence in the UK,’ said Opyrchal. That could mean that when new systems start to roll ofT the Spanish company’s production line there will be a natural route for them to the UK. A revamped 64, the D200, is due to be shown at the forthcoming 6809 show, and later in the year a 128K machine should follow.

Eurohard, which bought the rights to the Dragon systems (issue 74) last autumn, also has a networking system operating in Spain. It even holds an MSX licence, but Opyrchal sees no future in bringing a Spanish MSX machine to the UK.

'We're taking things as they come,’ he said. 'We see the Dragon as a low-cost entry level Flex machine.'

Compusense isn't committed to sell Dragons in quantity, but Opyrchal waxes evangelical on the subject of the system. He also claims to have ground concessions out of Eurohard on prices. saying that the machines' prices on the conti¬ nent are about twice as high as the price tags he’ll attach.

SOFTWARE

Graphics at your fingertips with a new, creative package for the Model B micro.

REGULARS

Dragon flexes its muscles again, this page; Wren finds a new nest, page 2; Ace support battles against the odds, page3; Soflek sets artistic style for Spectrum owners, page 4.

flowcharts _ 5

Softaid holds on to the number one spot — how have the others

fared? _

fluthuLnidriss _ 5

More micro problems solved by our resident experts. _

Random Access 6

Get out your pens or printers and unburden yourself on our letters page. _

Microwaves 7

How to win friends, influence

people and earn money — share your hints and tips here.

Daagsia ~27

Sub-titled Bng this week, as our adventure page takes to the high seas.

Software Preview 37

Games on the way for all the main machines.

If you can’t try before you buy, take the next best thing — our regular software reviews.

Sales without the jumble on our bargain basement page.

Q Ml _ 44

Corny Acorn tales. Laughline result and dates for your diary.

Dragon — ringing the changes o« its rater* to the UK.

SMC puts mouse in Commodore wainscot

Mice-loving Commodore 64 us- On both the BBC and Com¬ ers need wait no longer. Wimps modore 64. the facilities include are here for their machines. different brush sizes, air brush, SMC supplies is producing a rubber banding, triangles, cir- mouse package, including a cles, boxes, fills, screen save, graphics system, a sprite and and screen dumps for most character designer, and inter- Centronics printers. Other face routines for your own packages include a sprite desig- programs. ner and a character definer,

The price is £59.95 and the both of which can be incorpo- system is also available for the rated in your own programs. BBC Micro in competition with SMC says that the mouse can the AMX. It should be in the be used instead of a joystick high street shops within three within most games, but since to four weeks. the system is digital (via the

For people with QLs and user port), an analogue sofl- Amstrads, the same system ware driver will be needed for should be ready in 3 months. the BBC Micro.

PCN MARCH 23 1986

Apple has fallen foul of the Acorn Syndrome — too many systems chasing too few buyers. It will close down its US and Cork factories for a week in the spring, and analysts predict that its sales will show a 35 per cent drop on last quarter's figures. Slow salesofthe Macin¬ tosh may be to blame, but Apple says that the Apple II line has been sluggish as well.

Tbs Kennedy Spec# Centre in

Florida will be the destination for the winners of a Microvitec competition The Cub maker is sponsoring the first priie of a five-day visit to the US, includ ing a space shuttle launch (weather permitting). Details from Microvitec on 0274- 390011

Cumene is branching out into software. The disk supplier has signed a deal with Microwave Systems of the US to distribute OS-9 '68000, the version of OS-9 for machines based on 68000

Gocessors. That means a possi- e new option for the Sinclair QL, among other machines.

Printer/plotters for £400 are on offer from educational software specialist Bizzel Computers (095389 592). The units have built-in parallel and RS 232C interfaces and are available with sample programs featured in the instruction booklet.

Egged on by the success of Chuckie Egg. A&F Software will release Chuckie Egg II with the sub-titleChoccy Egg in time for Easter. The game has more than 100 screens from which you have to pick up the ingredients of chocolate and components for toys. The Spec¬ trum version will be first out at £6.90, to be followed by Am- strad and Commodore 64 ver¬ sions.

Death Star Interceptor on the

Spectrum was launched last week by System 3 Software at £7.95. It’s so good it makes the Commodore version almost embarrassing,’ said a System 3 spokesman. Some would say the Commodore version already was.

Microsoft has cat its prices by 30 per cent for users in education. Products like Word. Multiplan, Basic and many others will cost roughly a third less to users in schools and colleges across the spectrum. Hardware in the shape of MacEnhancer (issue 103) is also included, as are books from Microsoft Press The race to get equipment into schools is hotting up. with hardware, software, peripher¬ als and book suppliers all in¬ volved.

Opus adopts Wren in Prism break-up

The break-up of the Prism group continued last week with the Wren portable micro drop¬ ping into the hands of Opus.

Opus, which launched the Discovery disk drive for the Spectrum last month, special¬ ises in peripherals for home micros. But the Wren isn't expected to be a cuckoo in its nest. 'We’re moving into busi¬ ness systems with the acquisi¬ tion of the Wren,’ said a spokesman.

'We’ve got ourselves into a good position in the BBC and Spectrum markets, and busi¬ ness there is going along quite nicely — we felt the Wren

wouldn’t overstretch us,’ he added. Opus is reported to have paid £200,000 for rights to the machine, but the company wouldn't confirm this beyond commenting that it was a good time to buy.

Users looking to Opus for continuing support will have to wait until the company decides how it will deal with the machine. 'We’re sitting down and discussing long and hard a plan for Wren Computers for 1985 and 1986,’ the spokesman said.

The Wren follows Prism's communications products into new ownership (issue 103). Launched originally as a 64K machine, it now forms a range with various memory optf

Prism Wren — finding a new home under the wing of Opus.

Byte Drive maker follows Oric under

Dragged down by the fall of Oric, ITL Kathmill has also folded.

ITL supplied the Byte Drive 500 disk system for the Oric micros. The unit appeared well before Oric itself could offer disks for its machines and it attracted several favourable reviews, but ITL was never able to free itself from dependency on Oric by adapting the Byte Drives for other systems.

Earlier this year ITL planned a notation on the Stock Ex¬ change but, due to lack of confidence by its brokers and Acorn’s problems, Oric’s col¬ lapse and Sinclair's on/off flota¬ tion, it fell through.

ITL is reputedly owed more than £100,000 by Oric Products and had trouble with its sup¬ pliers as a result of a severe cash-flow crisis Matters came to a head with a crash on February 20, 1985. There will be a creditors meeting on March 18 to appoint a liquidator and gi ve notification of some official back-up

Astrosyn, the holding com¬ pany of ITL, says that any users who have recently sent machines for repair and have not heard anything should be helped fairly soon . The back-up. if any, will be supplied by Roland Beaumont who is tak¬ ing over this side of affairs for the company. Details of this will not be available until the creditors meeting.

The demise of ITL appears to have been almost wholly caused by Oric going under. The Byte Drive 500 was ITL's only miyor product although it has had long existing plans for similar devices on the Spec¬ trum, BBC and Commodore 64.

Microsoft gives Mac colour hard copy

Colour on the Macintosh? Not this year, say Apple mandarins — but a small Kent company has beaten them to it.

Microspot of Maidstone (0622-858753) has released MacPIot for the Mac. You won’t see much colour on the screen but if you want hard copy brightened up a shade. MacPIot takes care of the plotter output.

The program is designed to work with MacDraw, Mac- Project, Chart and others, using a range of plotters on A3 or A4 paper When you load MacPIot you’re asked to assign pens on the plotter ( maximum 30 pens) to lines on the screen. The program will also shrink, en¬ large or rotate the artwork.

It costs £99 — contact Micros¬ pot for details or supplies.

MacPIot — a touch of colour.

Sinclair aims to make a mint with wafers

Sinclair intends to produce a 7Mb version of its Wafer Scale Integration silicon disk tissue 103) next year.

This year’s model will have only 0.5Mb of storage, and production will be contracted out to other manufacturers, but the projected 7Mb disk is to be built in a completely new £50 million factory

Sinclair has teamed up with Robb Wilmot. chairman of ICL, whose first job will be to raise the £50 million in the City. Sinclair has already made a £1 million investment in R&D. and holds a number of patents that will be crucial to the project.

So while Sinclair’s financial commitment is minimal, the project, should it succeed, could prove to be a goldmine for Sir Clive. The fact that a whole new plant is needed to build the second version of the disk tends to confirm speculation that the 0.5Mb version is relatively low tech. And as Sinclair is announcing the super chip pro¬ ject now, it can be assumed that WSI Mark One works to his satisfaction, and is on schedule for release later this year.

WITCH AT THE PALACE — Palace Software has put the finishing touches to Cauldron, its first production of the year .and the game should be in the shops in late April or early May. For the Commodore 64 and Spectrum, Audi cast £7.99.

PCS MARCH 23 1985

OMEFRONT

Aces low — but Boldfield plays on

The last remaining Jupiter Ace micros are on sale at the never-to-be-repeated price of £35 — and you'll get a 16K expansion, software and a year's guarantee thrown in.

But that won’t be the end of the Ace if Boldfield Computing, the Battersea Dogs Home of the micro busi ness, has anythi ng to do with it. Boldfield took the Ace under its wing when Jupi¬ ter Cantab folded ( issue 50) and it has been the rallying point for support ever since

In its 1985 catalogue it ofTers games, utilities and business* software: 16K and 48K RAM packs; peripherals including an add-on keyboard, a ZX adaptor kit, and a sound box; and interfaces.

This is only half the story — the rest of the catalogue is given over to Boldfield'8 other pro¬ ducts, business micros from Kaypro and Sperry. But the Ace isn't a poor relation at Boldfield — the company has opened a special Bhowroom devoted to it.

The last stocks will probably last two months, Boldfield’s Peter Downham said. 'We’ve got full service capability and stocks that will last for years — we'll continue as long as the interest is there,’ he promised.

He estimates that there are around 10,000 Aces in the UK. 'We have the facilities to make more but it's unlikely that we would. At the prices we're charging we’d barely cover component costs,' he said.

British micro makers mobilise against IBM

There’s a David and Goliath confrontation looming in the UK micro business as the Brit¬ ish Micro Manufacturers Group (BMMG) takes on IBM.

‘In a year or two’s time, in the absence of co-operation in our industry, we could end up with IBM writing the rule book,' said BMMG director general David

Broad. The style of business] systems available could be de¬ termined by the giant US- based multinational, with disastrous effects not only on independent UK micro makers but also on the choice on offer to users.

The BMMG is asking for Government funding to the tune of about £250,000 to de¬ velop a local area network standard (for different types of equipment to be connected) independent of the commercial influence of IBM.

The Group might find an ally in Digital Research, which is trying to undermine IBM’s domination of personal comput¬ ing with its plans for Concur¬ rent DOS-286. This operating system (issue 96) aims to open up the business by making IBM applications software available to any system based on the 80286.

Broad commented: 'There is a growing realisation that inde¬ pendent manufacturers have to co-operate, and users are also increasingly well aware of the issues. We're willing to embark on discussions with anyone.'

Any interconnection stan¬ dard would have to take notice of the International Standards Organisation's work on net¬ works in general, known as Open Systems Interconnection. This has support around the world from governments and procurement agencies.

ACT sets its sights across the channel

UK micro makers are winning unlikely footholds abroad while the UK scene struggles out of the doldrums.

ACT has emerged as a strong candidate for a large education deal in France, and Memotech has caught the eye of micro fanciers in the Soviet Union. ACT, still hopeful of persuad¬ ing the BBC that it needs at least one UK micro to put its name to, is a front-runner in France for a contract that looked certain to go to a native French manufacturer.

1

Hacking — a threat or a red herring?

Once upon a time, when the world was a simpler, more innocent place, a hacker was someone who played golf badly The threat to society was li¬ mited to low-flying golf balls going out of bounds near the main road

Now, according to some, the fabric of western civilisation lies in jeopardy. A small num¬ ber of computer users armed with some software, a little black box called a modem, and enough ingenuity may bring about the collapse of financial, commercial and government institutions.

Sadly, these prophets of doom are a little short of evidence. The bulk of computer crime is straightforward fraud and embezzlement. Hacking doesn't enter the picture. The documented cases of hacking are less damaging: the break-in of Prince Philip’s Prestel mail¬ box, a bunch of New York school kids who tried to order a case of Pepsi without paying, and the American group who went joy-riding through the computers of various US uni¬ versities and NASA.

Of course, the doomsayers point out, the potential for damage is immense, which raises three interesting possibi¬ lities. First, hacking is a very limited pastime and those in¬ dulging in it are such good chaps they’re not hurting any¬ one. Second, hacking is wide¬ spread and extremely damag¬ ing but the victims aren't tell¬ ing anyone they've been got at.

The third, and most likely

Ebility, is that hacking is ed but causes some serious damage while the victims pre¬ tend it didn't.

And there's the rub. If anyone hopes for the hacking threat — both real and potential — to be taken seriously , those who have been hacked will have to come clean; and act.

It may be commercially damaging to admit publically to a breach of security but the alternative is continued uncer¬

tainty about the scale of the problem. The Pepsi incident is a great deal more serious than is obvious at first. A company named Canada Cement LaFarge had one fifth of its data wiped by the hackers blunder¬ ing through the files. The search for the culprits and re-enteri ng the data fl nal ly cost more than $250,000. The hack¬ ers were found but not prose¬ cuted.

Until companies and govern¬ ments own up to breaches of security and act against the perpetrators, no action will be taken, thus allowing the real, threat to continue.

The danger does not lie in mischievous individuals break¬ ing into mailboxes or the in¬ cidental damage to files. The opportunities open to criminal and terrorist groups are exactly the same as those available to a 16-year-old with £200- worth of computer comma equipment.

It would be easy to deride those who worry about hacking. A former IBM security chief rated hacking as only 3 per cent of the total threat to computer installations, way behind oper¬ ator error, deliberate damage by employees and natural dis¬ aster

On the other hand, it would be easier still to call for a blanket ban on the individual ownership of the necessary equipment. This would, howev¬ er, hurt the innocent as compu¬ ter communication has many valid, interesting and eryoy- able uses (hence our 'hacking* feature this week)

Cars kill people but society has evolved rules, regulations and attitudes to cope with it. We will have to do the same with computer security.

No-one should doubt the abil¬ ity of any government to deal with the problems. The illegal use of citizens’ band radio — arguably of far less concern — was dealt with swiftly and effectively.

One solution may be a re¬ quirement for modem owners to obtain a licence for their equip¬ ment in the manner of cars, television and ham radios. This could have beneficial side effects if some of the money generated were diverted back into the pockets of the computer industry.

However, before we start considering bureaucratic in¬ volvement, we ought to estab¬ lish the scale of the problem. Hackers themselves are the least reliable source of informa¬ tion as they have a vested interest in either exaggerating or playing down their exploits.

It is the victims— ifthere are any — who must honestly answer the question: 'Have you been hacked lately?"

PCN MARCH 23 1966

ffioNITQR

IEW FROM JAPAN

Spectrums to acquire an artist's touch

"This is why Leonardo's late. It (Creative Sparks) saw this and it went away to re-write its

Even allowing for friendly rivalry and artistic 1 icence, Tim Langdell of Softek could have a point Softek's The Artist, due for release any time now, is an astonishing piece of work. The race to turn a humble Spectrum into a Macintosh clone could be over when The Artist reaches the shops, and at a humble £9.95 nobody will have to start an 'Our kids can’t wait’ cam¬ paign A la Apple.

The Artist is a design package along the lines of MacPaint, with plenty of scope to incorpo¬

rate and manipulate text. Langdell says that it was begun 18 months ago, before anyone involved had seen a Macintosh — but the result is very similar in many respects.

It is driven by menus at the foot of the screen rather than the pull-down type, and it uses a straightforward cursor rather than icons. But there is a Mac-type choice of brushes and patterns, and thecut-and-paste facility looks better than the Mac's.

You can design on a number of different scales, from the grid for character generation to the full screen with zoom and step-

Iiing functions. Text can be oca ted from any pixel point, and 64 columns are another option. The Fill function is startlingly fast.

Budget games emerge from Atlantis Gold

At the budget end of the soft¬ ware business there’s a kind of levelling going on, as the pioneers of pocket-money games raise their sights.

Atlantis (01-354 1437) is the latest to take the sticky backi ng off a new label, Atlantis Gold. This will go on to games that cost a princely £2.99. Like Mastertronic and Firebird, Atlantis now has two distinct ranges of games where the cheap and cheerful sub-£2 titles are supplemented by higher quality specimens at only slightly higher prices.

The first three Atlantis Gold titles are Velnor’s Lair for the 64. Self-Destruct for the 48K Spectrum, and the topical Nico¬ tine Nightmare — today (Wednesday) is national no smoking day — also for the Spectrum.

Back at the £1.99 level,

Atlantis also has El Dorado for the Spectrum, and Death Race and Super Break-out for the Vic 20.

This last title runs on the unexpanded Vic.

Atlantis Gold — cASHing in.

Toshiba turns to Sord-swallowing

What do micro manufacturers have in common with Save the Whale campaigners? Answer: the. Japanese are the bogeymen in both cases.

The age of Moby Dick is long since gone, and these days it’s the Americans who get particu- , larly agitated about Japanese whaling. We imagine there's a touch of envy or sour grapes about their attitude, but there’s more than spite involved when a federal judge orders the US Government to take economic sanctions against Japan on the issue, as happened in Washing¬ ton recently.

Oddly enough, the Japanese computer business is domin¬ ated by whales, and here it’s the minnows that need protection. Toshiba, trawling along in that accidentally predatory fashion that whales have when they open their mouths, swallowed Sord last week. It bought about 38 per cent of the company and it aims to go eventually to more than 50 per cent.

When you cut a whale up, different parts can be put to different purposes — a bit of scrimshaw jewellery here, a can of oil there, cosmetics, leather- treatment and even tasty morsels both here and there. So it is with Japan's computer giants — cut up Toshiba and you’ll find all sorts of products, and Toshiba is one of the less diversified of the computer giants

Sord’s problem was that it was completely undiversified and lacked the resources to support the operations that make the bigger companies virtually self-sufficient. They make their own chips, forexam- ple, and this capacity shields them from the ups and downs of the semiconductor manufac¬ turing industry. Sord obviously recognise this weakness in its own make-up because it plan¬ ned to build a chip-making facility from the proceeds of a public share issue last year. But the share issue had to be called off not once but twice, as the first signs of basic weakness began to show through the plaster.

Sord was founded in 1970 by Takayoshi Shiina. In a country famous for microelectronic

wizardry it broke a lot of new ground in the microcomputer business, and it also made a notable contribution to the case for the defence of Japan’s soft¬ ware producers. 'Very clever with hardware, but they can’t write software,’ people used to say about us. Sord came up with Pips, a kind of multi-purpose operating system and applica¬ tions developer intended for first-time users Unfortunate¬ ly, the rest of the world * using CP/M, and Pips left a little too much to the imagina¬ tion for many first-time users’ MM

The name of the product is an indication how Sord thought of itself. Surrounded by diverse corporations with computer op¬ erations that ran alongside ceramics, musical keyboards, industrial machinery and the rest, Sord specialised in person¬ al computers — it saw itself as the Japanese Apple.

In fact, its approach to com¬ puting was probably more structured than Apple’s. It has machines in the 8, 16 and 16/32-bit areas. It has lap- helds, stand-alone desktops, and multi-terminal systems. Pipe runs across the range.

Lake Apple, it grew very quickly; its best year was 1980- 1981, when its sales doubled. In late 1983 it claimed to be the fastest growing company in Japan. From there, there’s only one road to take — downhill.

Even Apple has joined the crowd ganging up against it. Sord relied on the personal computer business for about 85 per cent of its income, but the competition from IBM, NEC, Fqjitsu, Sanyo, and latterly Apple through the agency of Canon proved increasingly stiff.

Shares issued privately fell in an Acom-like spiral, to the point where buyers couldn't be found at any price. There were rumours of difficulties last year, and earlier this year m rumours linked Sord with Sanyo as a possible buyer.

The deal with Toshiba i describd as 'a comprehensive tie-up to include cooperation on technology, marketing and manufacturing’. Takayoshi Shiina will stay as chief execu¬ tive. and Sord will be able to use Toshiba's marketing and dis¬ tribution network. Its existing products will be sold and sup¬ ported under the new regime

Toshiba, for its part, expects the tie-up with Sord to be the model for a new type Japanese company.

A new type of company, or perhaps just an even larger whale; and one that the Amer¬ icans may have to scrape the rust of T their harpoons to deal with some time soon Stems %

PCN MARCH 23 1985

Spot-th e-difference puzzle in Flexitext

In issue 102 you published a Spectrum procram called Flex-

disappointed as I find it impossible to distinguish between the number 1

Other members of my chib hare

know which is which?

J McNeill.

Strathclyde.

A The variable name T only #^occurs in lines such as LET I = number, with the exception of line 9060 where it crops up in the statement . . j=4)+v*l).

Would-be contributors of programs should note that use of lower case L and the letter O should be avoided because of confusion with the numbersone and mbo

Transatlantic voltage converter?

Ql am an American currently residing in Britain. I am thinking or purchasing a portable computer while I am over here. Unfortunately, the one I hare my eye on does not hare a 1 10V option and only runs on 240V. b there any way that I could modify my machine so that I can use it in the US? H not, I also hare a voltage converter that allows me to use American products in Britain; would it be possible to modify this in any way so that I could use it in the US?

D Netherton,

Umdon Wl.

A There are two options open i%lo you: the first is to contact the manufacturer of the machine and see if they can provide a power supply that has a voltage selector switch on it. Many portable computers already have this facility so you may be in luck.

It is also possible to buy a voltage converter that changes the US 1 1 OV into 240V. You say you already have one that allows you to run American equipment over here — pur¬ chasing a new one will be far easier than converting this, and you should be able to find a converter easily while you’re over here.

Once you have the correct voltage, you should have no problems running the machine in the US unless it uses a television for its display. Since the US TV standard and the British standard are very diffe¬

rent you would not be able to use the machine without making quite a few changes to the inside of it

School project may be left up a gumtree

QAs pari of my school technology course I am required to re¬

device of my own choice. The one I've chosen b the Koalapad and I need the address of the producers. Can you assist?

Kevin Robertson,

Luton, Beds.

A The Koalapad, although distributed in the UK by Audiogenic, is manufactured by Koala Technologies in Cali¬ fornia. You can write to them at 3100 Patrick Henry Drive, San¬ ta Clara, California, USA.

Don't be too disappointed if the material they send you isn't as helpful as you might wish. It’s unlikely that they'd give you a full technical specifica¬ tion of the product, although you might get lucky.

Which colour monitor for my 64?

Ql am going to buy a colour monitor for my Commodore 64. There are four model* available locally: Commodore 1701, Fidelity CM14, Microvitec 452 and Hantarex 900d. The difference in price b almost insignificant, so which will give me the best picture? Will I hare compatibility problems if I use a light pen on anything other than the 1701?

Joseph Gatt,

Zebbug, Malta.

Alt's difficult for us to answer this — and it ought to be easy for you to do so. Just goand have a look. We haven't seen the Hantarex, we’ve had a Fidelity monitor for some time and it works fine although we have found that it doesn't match the Commodore 1701 for picture quality.

Make sure the Microvitec is compatible with the 64 — most ( though not all ) Microvitecs use RGB input which the 64 doesn’t provide, but if it is compatible then we’d suggest you look closely at the Microvitec and the 1701.

Regarding light pens, you should have no trouble what¬ soever. although you’ll almost certainly have to fiddle with brightness and contrast con- trols for perfect results.

GAMES

PUBLISHER MACHINE

MICROS

These charts are compiled from both independent and multiple aourcee acroae the nation They reflect what's happening in high streets during the week up to March M The games chart is updated every week The prices quoted are fc the no- frills model and include VAT Information for the top-sellin culled from retailers and dealers throughout the cc month PCN Charts are compiled exclusively for ui contacted on 01-892 6596

for the top-selling micros u »untry and is updated ever is by RAM/C, who can be

PCN MARCH 23 1965

ANDOM ACCESS

Share your word* of praise or send us arocket about PCN. We want to hear your views and feelings on the articles we print — and those you feel we ought to. Write to fandom Access, Persons! Computer News, Evelyn House, 62 Oxford Street, London W1A 2HG. You could win £15 for the _ best letter of the week.

Artisoft points on disk drive review

I must put the record straight over a few of the points raised in your otherwise excellent re¬ view of our 1)1)1- 1 disk drive.

Details of CP/M.will be co¬ vered in a manual currently in preparation. We felt it best to provide a single source for all the definitive information, while covering the essential points in the user manual. This policy has been universally applauded as it applies to the CPC 464 User Instructions and Firmware Manual.

The 'unlikely event' of distri¬ butors making software avail¬ able on 3in Amstrad format has already happened. Since last year Timatic Systems of Fare- ham has offered its whole cata¬ logue of classic CP/M software; three specialist software houses offer their wares on the format and Artisoft itself has published around ten low-cost business applications, includ¬ ing the famous Quest (Padmede) accounts packages.

Although AMSDOS is fun¬ damentally a sequential filing system, (the serious user must surely turn to CP/M), the abil¬ ity to have both an output and an input fi le open at once means that a single data file can be updated even though it is big¬ ger than the available RAM, contrary to your statement in the review. This is, however, as you correctly point out, a trifle tedious.