Hints and tips

ROM compatibility

We begin this issue's Hints and Tips section with a collection of the responses to our request for details of ROMs which do and do not work with AMPLE.
Ted Kirk
The POINTER ROM for the Marconi RB2 Trackerball on the BBC Master has to be UNPLUGged before booting up the Music 5000 or 4000. This is with AMPLE in a lower priority socket than POINTER. I haven't tried it the other way round.
Richard Bettis
I have various ROMs installed in my machine, and have no trouble running AMPLE with:
Acorn BCPL
Acorn Logo
Acorn Pascal ADDCOM 1.30
Altra PROBE 4.02
AMX Super ROM 3.31
BASIC Extensions
Beebmon 1.00
Caretaker 1.03
Clares BROM 1.06
CMS Multi-BASIC
Computer Concepts Graphics ROM 2.09
DFS 1.20
Disc Doctor 1.0B
Exmon
Exmon II
Gremlin 1.00
ROM Manager
Skywave FORTH
Sleuth 1.05
System SPY 2.01
System ADE 2.01
Toolkit 1.23
Toolstar 1.77
View 3.0
ViewStore
Wordwise 1.10
Toolstar and the Beebug HelpROM did cause problems if *HELP was used, otherwise they were OK.
D.A.Computers EXTRAS crashed AMPLE.
G H Richardson
In Questions and Answers of AMPLINEX 005 I wrote that I had problems with *DRIVE and *ACCESS and you advised me to check my ROMs. This I did and found that the Printmaster ROM was the culprit. Since removing it I have had no problem. You can, therefore, add this to your list of incompatible ROMS. I should perhaps add that the Printmaster ROM was present when I had a BBC B and Music 500 and I don't recollect any problems then. I now have a Master 128 and Music 5000 and it could be that this combination is what has caused the problem.
Patrick Black
I've found that the Advanced ROM Manager (ARM) from ACP can sometimes cause problems. It contains a *KILL command to disable resident ROMs, and on my system, crashing out of AMPLE with CTRL-BREAK results in ARM KILLing off AMPLE. To be re-activated it needs a power-up reset, or *FX200,2 to be typed in.
Fortunately the *KILL command will work on ARM itself, so it can be switched out before starting an AMPLE session. The syntax is *KILL n, where n is the number of the ROM socket containing ARM. This command could be put near the start of the AMPLE !BOOT file. The problem can be overcome by leaving AMPLE 'legally' with a *BASIC command of course, but that's no good if the program's crashed!
Editor's note:
I can add the following ROMs to the list of those which work with AMPLE on a BBC Model B:
AMX Pagemaker 1.0
ATS 2.58 (as long as the Teletext adaptor is switched off)
Watford DFS 1.43
If you have experience of any ROMs which have not been mentioned above, or if you have more information on any that have been mentioned, please let us know. We will then publish a revised list in a future issue of AMPLINEX.

Spooling from AMPLE

Quentin Stafford-Fraser
I use the following short utility word to write out AMPLE word definitions to disc (from where they can be *EXECed back into another program).
"spl" [% Syntax: <word> <file> spl
$12 "SPOOL " $+ OSCLI
" TYPE *SPOOL " $+
]
Thus
"perc" "fred" spl
will spool the definition of the AMPLE word 'perc' to a file called 'fred'.
I have a BBC Master and I often change this utility to use the *SPOOLON rather than the *SPOOL command so as to send several definitions to one file.

Shadow RAM boards

Pete Christy
In AMPLINEX 003, B J Dawson asked for some information on Shadow RAM boards. I have used both the Watford and Aries boards and offer the following observations.
Initially, I had an early Watford board which would not work with AMPLE BCE, but mostly worked OK with AMPLE Nucleus. I upgraded to the latest ROM about a year ago, and it then worked fine with BCE and Studio 5000 Release 3.
When I got the Music 4000 keyboard pack, with Studio 5000-4 release 1, I found that the system disk would hang during booting unless I moved the Shadow RAM workspace to location &0A00 (the cassette/serial port buffer).
When I got Release 2 with the Staff printing facility, the Staff display got corrupted if I used location &0A00 as Shadow RAM workspace and I was unable to find any location that would allow the Staff printing to work. Without the Shadow RAM there was insufficient memory for the Staff editor to be of any use.
I consulted Chris Jordan of Hybrid Technology who recommended the Aries Shadow RAM board. At first I was suspected this was a sales pitch, as he had designed it! However, in desperation I bought one and it works a treat. No problems at all with any release of Studio 5000 or 5000-4.
The Aries board is much better organised than the Watford, compatibility is excellent with all soft and firmware, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. A slight irritation is that the only compatible ROM board is the Aries one - you can't use Aries Shadow RAM and an ATPL board for instance.
On the other hand, with the Aries Shadow RAM board, and the ROM board with Sideways RAM in it, you have an extremely powerful system with lots of very useful utilities included and it is extremely useful for word processing.
As to how useful it is with AMPLE - well, unless you use the Staff editor, not very! In fact you can easily end up with less memory than with an unexpanded machine.
This is because when booting from the system disk, AMPLE reclaims some memory from the DFS. It moves PAGE back from &1900 to &1500, but ONLY if PAGE was &1900 to start with. All Shadow RAM systems require a page of work space, and most default to take this from &1900 to &1A00. This means that AMPLE won't reclaim memory, and you end up with LESS memory available!
However, if you don't intend to use the Staff printing facility you can move the workspace to &0A00, and gain about an extra 1K in all modes except the Staff editor, where you gain an extra 8K.
The following table gives an indication of the memory available in different modes as revealed by the "MEM" command.
Shadow     5000           5000-4
mode       release 3      release 1/2
OFF        15793          14505
ON
workspace  15025          13737
at &1900
ON
workspace  16817          15529
at &0A00

Using external effects

Mike Dobson
Like AMPLINEX my Music 5000 is now one year old. Since buying it I have added the Music 4000 keyboard and most recently a proper amplifier (rather than my Curry's bargain stereo). The fact that the amplifier has an overdrive distortion effect built-in has led me to discover the marvellous things external effects will do for your Music 5000/4000.
I also have a stereo delay and a flanger - both guitar effects pedals. The delay pedal has obvious benefits, the flanger can produce some far-out results and both allow my Music 5000 to do some very passable guitar impressions.
There are a vast range of effects that could enhance your Music 5000. Some are expensive (£100+ for a delay pedal) but can usually be found second-hand for less than half-price from music shops or magazines.

%STAFF

Quentin Stafford-Fraser
Many words, if loaded into the Staff editor with GET, leave just a blank staff - even those with lots of music in them! If this has puzzled you, then read on...
For some reason, words created (by MAKE) in the Staff editor always have the comment %STAFF at the beginning of them. If this is added to a word created elsewhere, for example in Notepad, it can then be loaded into the Staff editor without any problem.
Why the ATOS module checks for this, I have no idea - does anybody else? Note too that music on the staff cannot be played using the f1 key if it has certain words above the staff like REP( or FOR(. The editor will, however, MAKE it quite happily and the music can then be played by typing its name at the command prompt.
Published in AMPLINEX 007, September 1988
Labels: , ,