Special Report: COMMODORE 64 CHESS SHOWDOWN H i mwi'UHi s ) r n r @PM1 =. .iff # arttiimn^. l+ Canada Posies Post Canada i " ,: . rage i-.*<! Pan payr III Bulk Ennombre third troisieme class classe E12430 Scarborough itui H ill 03 ll 56698 ll 72145' wm\u\ GLP Printer with graphics interface for Commodore 64 • 50 CPS @ 10 CPI draft printing 12 CPS correspondence printing Cut sheet, fanfold and roll paper (tractors are optional) Original plus 2 copies Bidirectional logic seeking 48 international characters Subscripts, superscripts and underlining IBM PC block and pin- addressable graphics The Centronics GLP Series provides personal computer users with a low cost, high quality, compact printer with features usually found only in more costly devices. The compact GLP measures only 13 inches wide, 7.5 inches deep and 2.8 inches high. Lightweight at only 6.6 pounds, it makes a perfect companion for portable computers. And, with multipass correspondence quality print- ing, pin-addressable and IBM block graphics, the GLP provides the ver- satility needed to perform the functions required by today's sophisticated PC software. Standard features include enlarged, condensed, emphasized and double strike print as well as subscript, superscript and underlining capabilities, Ease-of-use paper handling capability includes 10-inch fanfold (with op- tional tractor assembly), cut sheet and roll paper (70mm roll). The GLP is available with a Centronics parallel interface, and with both RS232 and Centronics parallel interfaces in one unit, making interfacing with all popular PCs as simple as connecting a cable. Ease of operation, portability, and low cost of ownership make this Great Little Printer a truly outstanding value. $499.00 optional Iractor feed available $32.95. Printer without interface $399.00 ELECnoniO 2001 LTD. Name Address □ Check or money order enclosed □ Vsa DMasterCharge D American Express ■'m:.:: p Exp Date Signature + $10 shipping charges. U.S. orders are subject to brokerage and customs charges if applicable. ELcCROniO 2001 LTD. 5529 Yonge Street, Willowdale, Ontario M2N 5S3 Tel: (416) 223-8400 Note: All prices in Canadian Funds. Phone and mail orders welcome. Ontario residents add Th sales tax. Missing Key. A nwst System nmtttrm your BASIC Program. After programming tor hours you press RUN for a final check of your work — the computer kicks up. You p ress RUN, STOP. . . nothing — you press RESTORE. . . nothing —vou look for Die missing key but it ten! there. You have to turn off your computer and lose hours of work!) How Add the Mesfng Key": • Press the "Missing Key™" and trie computer resets itself from any lockup, and youi BASIC program is restored. • Load and run the program included. • Takes nothing away from your computer, neither memory nor a plug-in port. » Attaches to your C64 keyboard or any other convenient location. • Win not void your CBM warranty. JCOT QE) HUSH 80 PRINTER with Commodore 64 interface $199.95 Butterfield's Machine Language $17.95 VIC Revealed $14.95 Anatomy of the 1541 $27.95 Boss Joystick $23.95 Easyscript C64 $44.95 Kraft Joystick $17.95 PaperClip (the word processor) $79.95 with SpellPack $99.95 COMPUTESs First Book of Commodore 64 Games Packed full of games: 'Snake Escape', 'Oil Tycoon'. Laser Gunner', 'Zuider Zee', and many more. Machine language as well as slralegy games. Ideas and tech- niques for writina games. $18.95 Consultant (the database) $124.95 Creating Arcade Games on the Commodore 64 Develops and explains principles of game design, programs for using the screen, custom characters, animation, sprites, sound and music, and other features of the C64. Ideal lor program- mers who want to learn how to write fast, exciting arcade games. $18.95 Home Organizer Series C64 • Recipes • Audio/Video Catalogue • Stamps • Mail List • Electronic Address Book • Home Inventory $19.95 ea. Memorex Disks.. (Special) SSDD $27.95/10 BASF E?raa SSDD in hard box $33.90 Cassettes C10 Tapes $1 .00 ea. C20 Tapes $1 .25 ea. Cassette boxes .25 ea. Ribbons Print Shop 1525 1526 4023 Spirit 80 801 802 8023 4022 MX80 RX80 $12.95 $14.95 $14.95 $14.95 $12.95 $14.95 $14.95 $1295 $12.95 $12.95 NET WORTH C64 (home money management) Nefv^rffi $59.95 $99.95 ELccnonio 2001 ltd. Name _ Address l"J Check or money order enclosed LI Visa LtMaslerCharge I.J American Express Acct.# Exp. Dale Signature cLccnortio 2001 ltd. 5529 Yonge Street, Willowdale, Ontario M2N 5S3 Tel: (416) 223-8400 Note: All prices in Canadian Funds. Phone and mail orders welcome. Ontario residents add 7% sales tax. Add 5% for shipping (minimum charge $2.00) B 1 --' HfZ COMPLETELY MENU DRIVEN . VERY USER FRIENDLY BETTER INTEGRATION THAN LOTUS 1-2-3 * OR SYMPHONY* VIRTUAL DISK OPERATION vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvyvvvvvvvv V ¥ ¥ V v KING MICROWARE'S FULLY INTEGRATED v ¥ V V V ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ □ DATABASE MANAGER | WORD PROCESSING | SPELLING CHECKER | SPREADSHEET / GRAPHICS 64 COPYRIGHT 1985 BY BRIAN MORROW ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥ All You'll Ever Need ! Available April/85 at selected Classics Book Stores Suite 210, 5950 Cote des Neiges Montreal, Quebec H3S 1Z6 Tel.: (514) 737-9335 "1-2-3 and Symphony are Trademarks o! Lotus Development Conpaiation f MIC ROWAFl| M Ltd. $64.95 DEALER INQUIRIES INVITED TPU3 masasiia Publisher: Chris Bennett Editor: Nick Sullivan Assistant Editor: Marya Miller Director of Advertising Sales: Louise Redgers Production Assistant: Astrid Kumas Copy Assistant: Terry Hachey Computer Jockey: Malcolm O'Brien Cover Photo: Roberto Portolese Studio Typesetting: Noesis, Toronto, Ontario Printing: Delta Web Graphics, Scarborough, Ontario TPUG Magazine is published 1 times a year by Toronto Pet Users' Group (TPUG) Inc., the world's largest Com- modore users' group. TPUG is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the service and support of owners and users of Commodore computers. All rights to material published in TPUG Magazine are reserved by TPUG Inc.. and no material may be reprinted without written permission except where specifically stated. Correspondence: Send change of address and subscription enquiries lo: TPUG Inc., Address Changes, 1912A Avenue Road, Suite 1, Toronto ON, Canada M5M 4A1. TPUG Magazine welcomes freelance contributions on all aspects of Commodore computing. Contributions should be sent on disk, though accompanying hard- copy is welcome. Be sure to include return postage if you wish materials returned. Please indicate on the disk label which Commodore disk format and word process- ing program you have used. Remuneration for articles published is $30.00 per magazine page if the author retains the copyright, and $4000 per magazine page if the copyright is assigned to TPUG Magazine. All con- tributions are subject to editing for length and readabifily. Address editorial contributions to: The Editor, TPUG Magazine, 1912A Avenue Road. Suite 5. Toronto ON, Canada M5M 4A1. Letters to the editor may be sent to the same address. Like other material, letters may be edited for length and readability. Circulation: Subscription 16,000 Newsstand 10,000 ISBN #0825-0367 TPUG Magazine is distributed by: Compulrt Distributors, PO Box 352. Port Coquitlam BC. Canada V3C 4KB. (604J-464-1221, and Micron Distributing. 409 Queen Street W., Toronto ON, Canada M5V 2A5. (416)-593-9B62, Toll Free Order Desk 1-800-268-1238. V1C 20, Commodore 64 and SuperPET are trademarks of Commodore Electronics Ltd. PET is a registered trademark of Commodore Business Machines, Inc. CBM is a registered trademark of Commodore Elec- tronics Ltd. Subscriptions to TPUG Magazine may be obtained by joining the Toronto Pet Users' Group (TPUG), Inc. Another benefit of TPUG membership is the right to order inexpensive disks and tapes from the club's ex- tensive software library, Yearly membership fees are: Regular member (attends meetings) S35.00 Cdn. Student (full-time, attends meetings) $25.00 Cdn. Associate (Canada) $25.00 Cdn. Associate (U.S.) S25.00 U.S. $30.00 Cdn. Associate (Overseas — sea mail) $3500 U.S. Associate (Overseas — air mail) $4500 U.S. For further membership information please contact: TPUG Inc., Membership Information 191 2A Avenue Road Suite 1 Toronto ON Canada M5M 4A1 1552 Hertel Ave. Suite 144 Buffalo, NY USA 14216-2882 TPUG Telephone Numbers: Business Office (416)-782-8900, (416)782-9252 Magazine Office (416J-782-1861 Advertising (416)-782-1861 DIRECTORY 85 TPUG Magazine MAR Feature: Commodore Chess Computing 10 TPUG C-64 Chess Tournament by Chris Johnson 12 The Electric Goddess of Chess by Bin Bullock 13 The Anatomy of a Chess Program by Bill Bullock Articles 14 Computer Comfort by Jim Butterfield 15 SuperPET's BASIC Distinctions by Brad Bjorndahi 1 6 CE5 Software and Peripherals by Louise Redgers 18 128 PC Looks Like a Winner by Chris Bennett 19 Printer Quickie: Tabs and Spaces by Sean Rooney 20 Telephreak Means Teletrouble by Ken Cox 21 Users' Group Publicity by Mike Martin 21 1526/ VIC 20 Timing Tip by Howard M. Mesick 22 Searching Online Data Bases by Don Fox 23 What is a Database? by Malcolm O'Brien 26 Probing 'The Mind Prober' by Mikhail Epelbaum 28 An Interview With Dave Neale by Ken Cox 29 Versatile Mortgage Calculator by Jim Butterfield 30 CBM Printers and the C-64 by David Bradley 31 LIST and AntiLIST by Dave Neale Reviews 36 The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed by Dale Loucareas 38 Superscript II with Superspell by William Wilbur 38 The Skyles Blitz! Compiler by Nathan Okun 38 The Grabit Factory by Rich Westerman 39 The Standing Stones by Rich Westerman 39 Graph Term 64 by Dave Neale 40 Super Pipeline by Michael Quigiey 40 Seahorse Hide N Seek by Rich Westerman 40 Purple Turtles by Marya Miller 42 Turtle Toyland Jr. by Rich Westerman 42 Dragonworld by Mike Martin 42 Sargon II and II! by Mike Martin Departments 4 Line Noise with Lana Coviello 6 This and That by Doris Bradley 7 Valentine Contest Rules 8 The Answer Desk with David Bradley 31 Valentine Contest Details 32 Additions to the TPUG Software Library 33 TPUG Software Library Order Form 44 Products Received 46 TPUG Associate Club Chapters 48 Calendar of TPUG Events 48 Classified Ads 50 TPUG Contacts 50 Index of Advertisers Welcome to Line Noise, which ivill be a regular feature from now on. We invite you. to express your views by writing to: Line Noise TPUG Magazine 1912A Avenue Road, Suite 1 Toronto, Ontario M5M hAt Canada Letters may be edited for length and read-ability. Info Package Helpful In the November issue you asked for feedback on the TPUG insert (Informa- tion Package and Library Listings) in the August/September issue. My response is — yes, keep it up! I found the insert quite helpful and now have it in my files. If this could be done at least once a year, it would be well worth the money — even if you had to raise dues a little in order to cover the cost. I look forward to each issue. You're doing a great job. C. Lewis Fitzgerald, Georgia MW 350 Interface Facts This letter is being printed using my MW 350 interface. It's also about the review of it published in the December issue. While I am generally satisfied with the product, I would like to raise a few caveats with regard to it. The first, and most significant, issue is that of the buffer. Without the buffer, the reviewer would have been far less satisfied with its performance. With Music Construction Set, for instance, the display of the musical staves takes an excruciatingly long time. Another problem is powering the inter- face from the C-64 when using an Epson- type printer with the +5v on pin 35. The accessory power cable plugs onto the cassette port, and leaves the fingers of the piggyback extension dangerously (to the computer, not you) exposed. Here the solution is not so obvious, but a jumper — #22 solid telephone wire works fine — shoved between pins 8 and 35 of the rib- bon cable connector at the interface board, solves the powering problem. The third seems to be with the code in the interface. When in sheetfeed mode, the left margin setting for the first line following a new page is ignored, at least with ROM VI. 5. 1 am awaiting a response from Micro World about this. Raising a few caveats. . . Generally, I am quite pleased with the interface, and have no qualms recommen- ding it with the buffer and powering jumper installed. I would also like to add that I have seen at least one package that specifically recommends the use of the MW interface because another popular interface produces improper results (the program in question is printing special symbols using dot graphics). Russell Herman Mississauga, Ontario MPS 802 Request I want to say that TPUG Magazine is great, and keep publishing more. I would like to see some hints on programming with an MPS 802 printer. Thanks, and Happy New Year! Clair Pilgrim Snow Lake, Manitoba You're in luck: we have already commis- sioned an article on programming the 802. COMAL Confusion I have been waiting for this January issue since I worked my way through all of the COMAL instruction lessons over the Christmas holidays — I'm a school teacher — and I've been anxious to con- tinue learning. Now all of a sudden in the January issue the TPUG COMAL Course says this is the last instalment! Heavens forbid! But wait, maybe there is hope: this article is listed as 'Part Seven' and we left off in December with 'Part IV, which to my understanding of Roman numerals means 'Part 6'! So, the question is, did two lessons inadvertently get left out? Do we really have two more coming next month? Please don't leave us hanging! Keep COMAL alive and well in TPUG Magazine. William Rose Merced, California Sorry about the mix-up. 'Part Seven' was wrongly labelled — it should really have been 'Part Five'. However, January's ar- ticle was the end of the COMAL course. Look for more articles on other aspects of COMAL in future issues. Line Noise presented by Lana Coviello 4 TPUG Magazine FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE for members of TPUG Saturday and Sunday, May 25 and 26, 1985 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. 252 Bloor St. W. (Bloor & St. George) ACTIVITIES: Two-day program of speakers covering topics of interest to beginners and experts Full day session: Sunday, May 26th Introduction to Machine Language by Jim Butterfield Half day sessions: Saturday, May 25th Introduction to C-64 Graphics by John Moore Very Elementary Programming in BASIC by Lorenzo Pinazza Introduction to C-64 Sprites by Carl Garant & John Moore Sunday, May 26th Commodore Data Bases Versus dBase III by Rob Lockwood TPUG program library available on pre-copied disks at reasonable cost Dealer displays of hardware, peripherals & software "Traders' Corner" — one person's junk is another's treasure "Answer Room" — 10 minute consultation with a Club expert "'Birds of a Feather" sessions for BBS SYSOPs, newsletter editors, member clubs AMENITIES: Close to subway Snack area for conference participants Optional Club Banquet Saturday evening — $25 per person Optional two-day Spouses program Several major hotels in the immediate area REGISTRATION: You must be a Club member to register Regular member (attends meetings) $35 Can. Student member (full-time, attends meetings) $25 Can. Associate (Canada) $25 Can. Associate (U.S.A.) $25 U.S. Associate (Overseas— sea mail) $35 U.S. Associate (Overseas— air mail) '. . . . $45 U.S. Early-bird registration $20.00, starts February 1, 1985 Pre-registration spouses & children $10.00 per person Late registration after April 15, or at the door, $30.00 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL THE TPUG OFFICE DURING BUSINESS HOURS 41 6-782-9252, 41 6-782-8900 MA Y25 &26 — RESERVE THESE DATES ON YOUR CALENDAR NOW! March 1985 ! This and That by Doris Bradley TPUG Conference 1985 The February issue of TPUG Magazine included the registration form for this year's conference, which is to be held on the Memorial Day weekend, May 25 and 26, in downtown Toronto. Recent long distance phone calls have indicated that there will probably be groups coming from Australia and Dallas, Texas. For the $20 registration fee (it goes up to S30 April 15th), you can mingle with TPUG members from near and far, as well as register for up to ten sessions — that's $2 a session! Good news on accommodation! The registration form includes boxes for you to check if you are interested in accom- modation in either a hotel or university residence. The university residence will be at Victoria University, a couple of blocks away from the conference. A room with twin beds is $28 per night (including breakfast and provincial sales tax) for single occupancy, and $19.50 per person for double occupancy. For an under- graduate or high school student who can produce a student card or university iden- tification for the school year 1984-85, the cost is $20.25 for single occupancy, and $18.75 per person for double occupancy. Once we receive your conference applica- tion, we'll see that you get a form to send in to the university, or information on hotels in the area, if that is w r hat you wish. Other Computer Clubs Here are some more computer clubs who have sent in information to the magazine. These groups may or may not have a membership in TPUG. Bordentown Area C64 Users Group, New Jersey, meets at McFarland Jr. H.S. on Crosswicks St. on the first Mon- day and third Wednesday of each month from 6:30-9:30 pm. Contact the group at P.O. Box 381, Bordentown, NJ 08505. Commodore Club of Mobile, Alabama, is a well-established group that conducts classes for beginner and intermediate levels, and machine language, as well as regular meetings on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. Contact Tom Wyatt 205-343-1178, or Mary Lou Sedgwick 205-478-1745. Fort Wayne Area Commodore Club, In- diana, holds general meetings on the se- cond Monday of each month and main- tains a BBS (219-423-1743) that can be accessed from 1200-1800 weekdays. Con- tact David Groves 219-422-9698. Ft. Collins Commodore Computer Club, Colorado, can be contacted c/o Judy DiFrancesco, 1625 Centennial Rd., Ft. Collins, CO 80525. Hinton Computer Club, Alberta, is ac- tive and growing. Contact K. Bartlett 403-865-3889. Midland Commodore Users Group, On- tario, meets at Leitz Company cafeteria, 328 Ellen St., on the first Wednesday of the month at 7 pm. Contact Frank Mur- phy 705-534-3378. Input Do you live in western Canada? If so, you will not find a better buy than the newspaper Input. Publisher/editor Richard McGuire began this unusual mon- thly tabloid last July to provide a Commodore-specific resource for Alber- ta residents. Now any Canadian living west of the Ontario border can subscribe for $1 per year. Those living in Ontario and points east pay only $8, and Americans $10. The newsletter is well written, well produced, and a bargain at these prices. To subscribe, write: Input, Box 1710, Stony Plain, Alberta, TOE 2G0. December 1984 Pugmag Bug Our apologies — a number of copies of the December magazine had two sets of the pages 11 through 18 and 35 through 42, while the set 19 through 34 was missing. Several of you have let us know about this bug, and replacement magazines have been sent. Unfortunately, the office supp- ly also had bugs, but we have now check- ed all our copies and will replace any bugged copies as long as our supply lasts. Our printer has been informed of the pro- blem, and hopefully it won't happen again. B-128 Users Group Good news! We have some help in sup- porting the owners of the B-128. A B-128 User's Group has been formed in Califor- nia. Marlin Schwanke plans to have a monthly newsletter, a public domain library, and a B-128 oriented BBS soon. Dues are $20 per year. The address is 432 North M St., Apt. C, Lompoc, CA 93436. Phone 805-735-6931 (voice after 5:00 pm PST) or 805-736-6291 (modem, 24 hours). Most Easterly Member Some time ago 1 mentioned that A.F. MacNeil of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, claimed to be the most easterly TPUG member. We now have a new claimant: George N. King, who lives 180 miles further east, in Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia. Can anyone beat this? Special Interest Groups Recently, different TPUG members have asked about the formation of three addi- tional SIGs. One for CP/M, a second for Printers and Wordprocessing, and a third for LOGO. If you would be interested, contact the office and let me know. In- itially, any of these groups could meet at the TPUG office. Our International Members I recently had reason to check through the list of 400 or so international members (sorted by surname) for TPUG members in Zurich, Switzerland. As I worked my way through the list I kept a record of the names of countries I en- countered as well as the number of members per country. Alphabetically, we have members from Argentina to Venezuela. Numerically, we have one member in each of Argentina, Austria, Brunei, Indonesia, Ireland, Jamaica, Jor- dan, Namibia, New Guinea, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan. (In case Brunei puzzles you, it was the only new nation created in 1984, is in East Asia, and is the 159th member of the United Nations.) On the other end of the scale we have 19 members in Sweden, 21 in Germany, 28 in New Zealand, 36 in Australia and 61 in Trinidad. Counting Canada and the United States we have members in 50 countries around the world! And yes, we do have a member in Zurich. Piracy and Fast Backup To date, over $500 has been forwarded to Thomas Templemann In West Ger- many, the author of the fast backup pro- gram for the 1541 disk drive. My thanks to the various user groups, e.g. Nar- ragansett Commodore Users Group, Rhode Island, who have mentioned the situation in their publications and have quoted from my December column on the subject. If you keep spreading 'the word this 'thank you' effort should soon reach $1,000. 6 TPUG Magazine Associate Club Chapters Elsewhere in this issue you will find a list of the meeting places and dates of those associate clubs {i.e. those with 1 5 or more members who are also members of TPUG) who have provided the ap- propriate information. I'd like to make special mention here of the new clubs who have joined us recently — MAT-SU Commodore-64 Club of Wasilla, Alaska; Fredericton Commodore Users Group, New Brunswick; three groups from On- tario: C-BUG of Thunder Bay, C-64 North Bay Users Group, and Markham District High School; and two groups from Il- linois: The C-64 Users Group, Inc., of Chicago; and Kankakee Hackers. When You Order Please remember to put your member- ship number on any order you send in. Your number can be found on any recent magazine label (if you aren't quite sure where your membership card is). Doreen, who does most of our invoicing, needs this number in order to start typing your order. If it's not there, your order is set aside to be done later, after the number is looked up in our records. B-128 Tip A TPUG member with a B-128 has in- formed us that when you are loading pre- packaged software (e.g. Superscript 2 and SuperBase), as well as the test diskette for the 8050 disk drive, you need to have your printer ON! Joke The following was found in the newslet- ter of Jackson Commodore User's Group, Inc., December, 1984. . . One teenager to another: "How embarrassing! I took my father to the video arcade, and he tried to play the change machine!" Educational Conference The Educational Computing Organization of Ontario (ECOO), and the Association for Educational Data Systems (AEDS), are holding their 1985 Conference Com- puting Known No Borders, in Toronto, April 21 to 26. This conference will pro- vide a forum for the exchange of infor- mation and ideas, aid educators in becom- ing and staying current in educational technology, and give participants the op- portunity to examine innovations in com- puting that can be utilized in the educa- tional environment. Half-day sessions cost $35, and full day sessions $50. For further information call AEDS, Washington DC 202-822-7845, or ECOO, Toronto, ON 416-923-6641. Jim Butterfield's Valentine Programming Contest Rules In our last contest, 'The Best 10-Liner\ the judging committee had quite a bit of difficulty with the contest entries. The following rules will make it a lot easier to judge your program, keep it from getting lost, and make it easier for us to return it to you. Rule 1 Your club membership number and the words 'TPUG Magazine Contest' must be on the disk and its cover (or cassette and its box), along with the computer model number. Example: #00000 C-64 TPUG Magazine Contest Rule 2 Only programs on disk (preferred method) or cassette will be judged. Cassettes will be tried on two machines: if the program will not load, the tape will be returned with align- ment instructions. No written or typed submissions will be accepted. Rule 3 Multiple entries will be accepted on one disk or cassette, as long as they all operate on the same machine. Rule 4 Closing date for entries will be April 30th, 1985. Rule 5 Program must be formatted as follows: Use the program lines printed below ahead of your program, which must start on line 1000 (i.e. RUN 1000 will run your program). 10 print "3" srem clear screen 20 rem put your program name in line 30 30 prinfJ^EEVorogram name" 40 gosuh900 50 ; 100 print "8" srem clear screen 110 rem enter your correct data in lines 120 to 160 120 print "member's name" 130 print "member's street address" 140 print "member's city., province or state" 150 print "member's country, postal or zip code" 160 o>osub900 170 : 200 print "3" : clear screen 210 rem list the equipment necessary to operate 211 the program in lines 230 to 270 220 print "equipment required to run this program" 230 print"SIc-64, 1541 disk, joystick" 280 gosub900 290 : 300 print "3" :rem clear screen 310 print "operating instructions" 320 rem list all necessary operating 330 rem instructions in lines 320 to 790 340 rem use the gosub 900 for each 341 screen of information 350 gosub900 360 goto 1000 900 pr i nt- ■ t&mmKKKttimmmmBKEmKm 901 press any key to continue" 910 geta*:ifa*=""then910 920 return 1900 print "3" srem your program begins here March 1985 7 The Answer Desk with David Bradley Which modem? / have a Commodore 64 with a 1702 monitor, a 1541 disk drive, a DPS-1101 ■printer and a number of joysticks, I am happy with, my present, system and I have finally decided to add a modem. My pro- blem is which one to get. There are so many out there, and I don't want to get stuck with a lemon. What do you stiggest? Before going out to look for a modern, you should decide for what purpose you want to use it,, and then go shopping for terminal software that will do what you want it to do. Once you have found that, then get one of the modems that works with the terminal software you have located. If you don't really know what you would like to do with your modem, it might be a good idea to find one or two modem users in your area and get some suggestions from them. Perhaps they will let you sign on to a couple of systems for a look around. Overall, I have found modem users to be quite helpful when it comes to getting a fellow computer en- thusiast hooked on BBSing. By the way, there are a lot of very good terminal programs available in the TPUG library. You won't find a better package of terminal programs for $10.00. Plus/4 compatibility? / have just bought a Plus/4, a 1702 monitor, a 1541 disk drive, and an MPS-802 dot matrix printer. My question is, will all of the TPUG Commodore 64 software work on my Plus/4? Some of the programs currently available for the Commodore 64 in the TPUG library will work on the Plus/4, but at the moment we don't know which ones. The task of testing all of the C-64 programs on a Plus/4 will take months! For now, though, here is the rule to follow: anything written in BASIC with no machine-specific features will work on any Commodore computer. The best thing that you could do would be to wait until some Plus/4 disks are assembled and released by the club. At the moment there are not many public domain programs for the Plus/4 computer but, with a bit of luck, the Plus/4 TPUG members will send some in (hint!). New 801 characters / bought an MPS-801 a few weeks ago. and I do not like the character set that it came with. I would buy another printer but, be- ing retired and on a fixed income, I had just enough stashed away to buy the MPS-801. I was wondering if there was any way to get a different character set on my current printer at a reasonable price? A company called Wilanta Arts, run by a TPUG member, has just what you are looking for. The new character set comes in the form of an EPROM and it can be purchased for $29.95. In case you are in- terested, Wilanta's address is: Wilanta Arts, Department 'D', 6943 Barrisdale Drive, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 2H5. The chip comes with complete installa- tion instructions and from what I have seen, it is well worth the price. (See CBM Printers and the C-64 elsewhere in this issue for further details.) 1541 service costs J live iii Toronto and my 1541 has been constantly going out of alignment for abnost a year and a half. I have bought all of the disk aligner programs available on the market but nothing seems to help. I took it back to Commodore a couple of times, and for seventy dollars they seem- ed very eager to fix it, but soon after I had waved bye bye to my money, it was broken again. Is there a place, other than Com- modore, that will really fix it at reasonable cost? One place that does their own service is COMSPEC. I have never had alignment troubles, but I have heard they do good work at rates that are much more reasonable than those charged by Com- modore. If you want to give them a call, their number is 416-787-0617. If you have a question for The Answer Desk, please send it to: The Answer Desk, c/o TPUG Magazine, 1912A Avenue Road, Suite 1, Toronto, Ontario M5M 4A1, Canada. □ Marketplace COMPUTER RENTALS We buy, trade and sell Commodore computers We repair Commodore computers Wanted 1541 and 4040 disk drives COMPUTER RENTALS 250 Consumers Rd., Suite 1 01 , Willowdale, ON M2J 4V6 Telt: (416)495-0035 Do you intend to move up to a larger computer? We offer a file transfer service Commodore to IBM Call or write George Shirinian 53 Fraserwood Ave. #2 Toronto, Ont. M6B 2N6 (416) 787-0926 (evenings) POCKET MODEM FOR YOUR VIC AND 64 — 1650 compatible — Disk included comes with up/downloading software with a 42K buffer. Send $1 49.95 and 7% PST to: POCKET MODEM P.O. Box 6238, Station "A" Toronto, Ont., M5W1P6 Cheque or money order payable to "The Stelex Sector BBS" For more information call mB ( m TKf py < 416 > 766 - 3038 (modem) ^^/^S^BBS (416) 767-8062 (voice) 8 TPUG Magazine IHSfe ons es 3 categ° rl tS&SS*^*** ♦ r>ifti v ♦ ^ be the m«££t a" 5 ' the right wef Commodore 64 ' Disk $24.95 TYPING TUTOR + WORD INVADERS REVIEWERS SAY: "This is Ihe best typing tutor we fiave seen yet;* * * * + " 1NFO-64 "Computer aided instruction at its best." Commander "This is an excellent program that makes typing practice an enjoyable pastime instead of boring drudgery." 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This course is currently used in both High School and Adult Evening Education classes and has also formed the basis of teacher literacy programs. Written by a teacher, who after having taught the course several times, has put together one of the finest programming courses available today. This complete 14 lesson course of over 230 pages is now available for the COM- MODORE 64, VIC 20, COMMODORE 16 and PET computers and takes you step by step through a discovery approach to programming and you can do it all in your leisure time! The lessons are filled with examples and easy to understand explanations as well as many programs for you to make up. At the end of each lesson is a test of the information presented. Furthermore, ALL answers are supplied to all the questions and programs, including the answers to the tests. Follow this course step by step, lesson by lesson, and turn yourself into a real programmer! You won't be disappointed! We will send this COMPLETE course to you at once for just $19.95 plus $3.00 for shipping and handling (U.S. residents, please pay in U.S. funds). If you are not COMPLETELY satisfied, then simply return the course within 10 days of receipt for a FULL refund. Fill in the coupon or send a facsimile. NAME:. TP ADDRESS: CITY: PROV. /STATE:. POSTAL/ZIP CODE:. Check desired course: COMMODORE 64 VIC D PET COMMODORE 16 Send Cheque or Money Order to: Brantford Educational Services 68 Winding Way. Complete course; $1995 Brantford Ontario, Postage and hand.: $3.00 Canada. N3R 3S3 _ , , Total: $22.95 TPUG C-64 Chess Tournament Report by Chris Johnson Why did several members of TPUG volunteer to spend many hours watching two Commodore 64 computers play chess with each other at the World of Commodore II show a few months ago? Why did these people choose the three strongest chess pro- grams available for the C-64 (Sargon III, Chess 7.0, and Col- ossus Chess 2.0), and then pit the mighty three against each other for hours on end? Why? Because no other game embodies the concept of human intelligence as totally as chess; no other game leaves so little to chance, yet is virtually limitless in scope. After the first move in a game of chess (a 'move' is a move by both White and Black) there are four hundred possible posi- tions — White has twenty possible moves, and for each of those, Black has twenty possible replies. After the next move there are more than a hundred thousand positions that could arise. . . .There are more ways to play the first 10 moves in a game of chess than seconds have passed since the earth was formed, five billion years ago . . . There are more ways to play the first ten moves in a game of chess than seconds have passed since the earth was formed, five billion years ago. It becomes obvious, therefore, that the computer cannot hope to play a good game of chess solely by analyzing all the possibilities. The program must, instead, examine only a short number of moves ahead for all except some forced lines, or perhaps some promising lines. Within these limits, computers are very strong: if a piece can be won in a few moves, the computer will Find out how. The com- puter is not forgiving of tactical mistakes: if an opponent allows a devastating knight fork on the next move, the computer will discover it. But in a quiet position where long-range planning is more important than tactics, the computer will flounder. Odesta's Chess 7.0, released just over a year ago (and at that time unquestionably the strongest program available for the C-64), came third in the TPUG tournament. Sargon III, by far the strongest yet in the Sargon series, came second. The win- ner was an English program not yet available in Canada, Col- ossus Chess 2.0. In the TPUG tournament, each program played two games against each of the other two programs, once with White and once with Black. We set all three to play at approximately the same speed (forty moves in an hour and fifty minutes), close to the speed used in a serious tournament with human players. It is long enough to give the programs time to examine to a reasonable depth. The first game of the tournament featured Sargon vs. Col- ossus. It was declared a draw after 55 moves. A weak opening by Colossus left Sargon a pawn ahead after 10 moves, but Sargon gave it back with a weak twenty-third move. The game continued rather aimlessly for another 22 moves. Observers were amazed near the end of the second game when Colossus, this time playing White against Sargon, missed a forced checkmate. Sargon advanced his queen prematurely and was forced to give it up in exchange for a rook. Then, on move 38, White checked with his queen, instead of threatening mate by moving his knight (see diagram 1). White should have played 38. Nc6, threatening checkmate on the next move. However, Black could delay the end a couple of moves by checking White. This would have taken the line a total of seven ply (a ply is a move by one side; a 'move' is two ply). Did this take Colossus beyond the depth at which it was searching? If so, was this because time control was approaching and the program was playing faster — curtailing its search in order to reach its 40th move before the 110 minutes were up? Or did Black's check discourage it from examining the line any further? Not that this oversight changed the result of the game: Colossus took only a few more moves to finish off Sargon. Game 2, after 37. . .Ka8. White missed the quickest win — a forced mate with Nc6! Game 5, after 12 . . .f5? This obstructs Black's bishop and leaves a hole at e5. 10 TPUG Magazine The score at this point: Colossus 1.5; Sargon III 0.5. Round three saw Sargon pitted against Chess 7.0. Black (Chess 7.0) played a weak opening, brought his queen out too soon, and lost the exchange of a rook for a knight. White re- turned the exchange later for a pawn and a rook on the seventh rank. White should have gone on to win the endgame, but like most programs, is weak in the endgame and Chess 7.0 sacri- ficed to prevent White from promoting a pawn. The resulting position, with a rook against a bishop, was a draw. In round four, both Chess 7.0 and Sargon played weakly. White made a strange fourth move, and both programs mis- placed their rooks — several times. Black closed up the queen's side when he should have left it active; White then opened it up when he should have left it closed. The game could have gone either way, there were many threats by both sides, though Sargon retained the better position. On move 61 White lost a piece and the game went with it a few moves later. At this point Colossus, with two games left to play, both against Chess 7.0, needed only one win or two draws to win the tournament. The scores: Colossus 1.5; Sargon 2; Chess 7.0 0.5. Round five saw Colossus clinch the championship by beating Chess 7.0 in an exciting game. Black (Chess 7.0) came out of the opening in a fairly strong position, but frittered away any potential advantage with several pointless moves. Colossus made an unusual sacrifice of two pawns that led to his winning a piece six moves later! Though this apparently left White's king exposed, Black was unable to take advantage of it. After a series of checks, White consolidated his position and the game to take the championship. The final game, Chess 7.0 as White against Colossus, was a long, see-saw battle that ended with a struggle to promote pawns. Black succeeded, but could not keep the piece. Black then gained the upper hand but could not prevent White from sacrific- ing his bishop for Black's remaining pawn and forcing a draw. The final score: Colossus Chess 2.0 3; Sargon 3 2; Chess 7.0 1. Was this the last word on the strength of these three pro- grams? It's not likely, since this was a very limited contest, but Colossus did appear to have more positional sense than either Sargon or Chess 7.0. All three are strong and could handle the vast majority of chess players; they all can give a good game to any regular club or tournament players. But at the rate of development in the field all three may be eclipsed by a new en- try at any time. □ Round 2: Colossus vs. Sargon III 1 . c4 e6 2. Nc3 Bb4 3. a3 Be? If Black was not prepared to exchange his bishop for the knight at c3 he should not have moved it to b4; now he loses a move. 4. d4 h6 5. Bf4 Bb7 6. e3 Nf6 7. Nf3 Nh5 8. Bg3 Nxg3 9. hg Na6 Not the best place to develop the knight. It should move in- stead to c6 (at the righl time). 10. Bd3 ffi 11. do Lets Blacks QN in to a more effective square: 11.... Nc5 12. Xe5 ed 13. Bxfo Bf6 14. Ngfi! Black's h-pawii is pinned. 14.... Rg8 15. ftxh.7 dc 16. Kf'l To protect his g-pawn. 16.... Bxc3 17.be Qf6 18. Qc2 d5 19. Rdl Ne4 20. Bxe4 de 21. Nf4 Qf5 22. Rh5 g5 23. Rd4 Qg4 Black is advancing his queen too far, too soon. 24. Rxe4 + Kd7 25. Rh7 + KcS 26. N'do! Black has nowhere to put his queen. 26.... Qd7 27. Rxd? Kxd7 28. Nf6+ Kc8 29. Nxg8 Bxe4 30. Qxe4 Kb8 31. Qxe4 a 6 32. Qg4 Kb7 33. Qxgo bo 34. Qd5+ Ka7 35. Ne7 Rf8 36. Qc6 Rh8 37. Qxc7+ Ka8 38. Qc6 + ? Here. White missed a forced mate: 38. Nc6. Black can delay bv 38 Rhl + ; 39. Ke2, Rel + ; 40. Kxel, a5; 41. Qa7 mate. Did this delay take the analysis just beyond the level at which Colossus was analyzing? 38. . . . Ka7 39,f4 Rhl + 40. Ke2 Rgl 41. Nc8+ Kb8 42. Nd6 Biack can only delay one more move by sacrificing his rook with Rel + . Round 5: Colossus vs. Chess 7 1. Nc3 d5 2. e4 e6 More usual, if anything in this opening can be called "usual", is 2...d4 3. ed ed 4. d4 5. Bf4 6. Bb5 7. Bxcfi 8. Bxd6 9. Nge2 10. b3 11.0-0 12. Ng3 13. Rel NcS Nf6 Bd6 be cd RbS BfS 0-0 Be 6 A pointless move. Black would have done better to play 13. . .Re8 to counter White's rook on the e-file. 14. Re3 Qe7? Not a good idea to place the queen on the active file. The queen, if moved at all, should go to either d? or c7. 15. Qe2 cS 16. Rdl Qd7 17. dc dc 18. Nce4 Nxe4 19. Nxe4 Qe7 20. Ng3 d4 21. Re5 Rfe8 22. Rd3 f6 At this point Black has a satisfactory position. Unfor- tunately Black Makes a number of weak and/or pointless moves. 23. Re4 t'5? This pawn was better left at f6; here it blocks the bishop's, reduces pawn mobility, and lets White's rook return to eS where is it later entrenched with f4. Black's position would have been far better if he had con- centrated on doubling his rooks on the e-file 24. Reg Kg7 25. f4 Qd? 26. e3 Qd« 27. Qe3 Rbd8 28. cd cd 29. Qd2 Ql>6 30. Ne2 a6 31. Nxd4 Kh8 32. Qe3 Qd6 White now embar ks on a remarkable double pawn sacrifice. 33. g4 ft 34. h3 hg 35. Kh2 Kg8 36. Qe2 Qd7 37. Rd2 a5 38. Nf3 Qf7 39. Rxe6 Qxf4 + 40. Khl Rf8 41. Rxd8 RxdS 42. Re5 Rf8 43. Ngl Qh4 44. Rxa5 Rf7 45. a3 Qd8 46. b4 Qh4 47. Qe3 h2 48. Nf3 Qh3 49. RaS + Kg7 50. Qri4 + Kh6 51. Qe3 + Kg? 52. Qc3 + Kh6 53. Qd2 + Kg? 54. Qb2 + Kh6 55. Qcl + Kg? 56. Qal + KhS 57. Nxh2 Rf2 58. Qgl Re2 59. Ra? g5 60. Ra6 Kho 61. Rf6 h6 62. b5 Rd2 White wins March 1985 11 The Electric Goddess of Chess by Bill Bullock Men have been slaves to her powers for centuries without know- ing who she was, then became willing subjects for centuries more after discovering her identity. Even in today's Future Shock society she has an enormous following. Her name is Caissa, God- dess of Chess. The power of chess to grip the mind in addictive fascination has long been the subject of study from various disciplines. It Is not surprising that people's attempts to produce a machine that would play the game have a long history. The first commercially successful venture of this kind entered the marketplace in 1770 and was an immediate success. It was a mechanically marvellous chess playing machine — an 'automaton'. At one end was a scaled-down imitation of a Turkish figure complete with tur- ban, and at the other end a com- partment that could be opened for inspection by skeptical onlookers. It became known as the Turk, and was very successful until its ex- posure as a hoax in 1834. The machine used a hidden chess- playing dwarf as its micro- processor and enjoyed a 64-year run before being phased out. The next great step forward came nearly half a century later in 1878 with the introduction of Mephisto, another chess-playing automaton. The public was allow- ed complete access to poke and peek around this machine even while it was actually playing — no hidden player could be found. Un- familiar with the new principles of remote control, the public had once again been duped. The elec- trical age had arrived. The first real chess-playing automaton was produced in 1890 by a Spanish scientist named Leonardo Torres y Quevedo. His machine used an electro-magnetic control system and an inefficient precalculated algorithm to solve and play out King and Rook ver- sus King type endgames. However, his machine, being unable to play the whole game, aroused little public interest. Even historians have tended to ignore the fact that he was really first on the block with a chess-playing machine that actually worked! He also marked the end of an era. In 1937, Claude E. Shannon, destined to become the father of computer chess, worked out the electrical circuitry required to perform binary arithmetic. By 1943, the first working elec- tronic digital computer — named Colossus — was up and runn- ing. Although dedicated to the single task of cracking the Ger- man 'Enigma' codes during the Second World War, it never- theless gave rise to many important spin-offs. Perhaps more im- portantly it provided the world with a nucleus of Artificial In- telligence specialists, half of whom, significantly, were chess players. The modern era of computers began with the invention of the transistor in 1948. However, the transistor was not actually used in a computer until 1956. The big news came in 1949 when Shan- non, then a researcher at Bell Labs, presented a seminal paper of brilliant insight and thus launched computer chess as a science, and himself as the father of that science, all without a single line of chess programming. Within a mere two years the first real chess program was mak- ing the headlines. It was rather crude by present standards but very impressive in 1951, even though it had to run on a very slow vacuum-tube IBM. Things began to hum at this point and Caissa must have been truly im- pressed as MIT produced the original quantum leap in com- puter design with the introduc- tion of TX-O, the first tran- sistorized computer in 1956, closely followed in 1958 by Texas Instruments with their invention of the integrated circuit. By 1964, the first computers with IC chips w F ere a fact and the information explosion was on its way. Unfettered by hardware, chess programs steadily advanced in number and quality. Inevitably they clashed — which was the best? That honour first went to the Russians, whose Kaissa walk- ed away with the First World Computer Championship in 1974. The Americans avenged the loss in 1977 by winning the Second World Computer Chess Cham- pionship held in Toronto, Canada, in a remarkably clean sweep with Chess 4.6. Today the chess-playing machine has become an everyday humdrum reality. The great dream has been realized, yet the age old problem remains. What is the fascination of chess? Why is it so addictive? Where is its usefulness? How should it be classified? Is it an art? A science? Or, after all, is it just another game? Computer science may hold an answer as more and more programmers and scientists, bent on pushing back the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, discover that computer chess is a par- ticularly useful tool in evaluating differing algorithmic ap- proaches to this important research. □ 12 TPUG Magazine The Anatomy of a Chess Program by Bill Bullock The problem facing the chess programmer is that of reducing our vast lore of chess intelligence to a numerical equivalent that can be easily manipulated by a computer. In the process there are many problems to be overcome. Their solution begins with the development of an algorithm that will enable the computer to handle the basic concepts of chess: its rules, its principles, its moves. The particulars of the algorithmic approach are as diverse as the programmers who use them. The outline described here, while typical of most chess programs, is nevertheless specific to none. A chess program has three main parts: a Situation Module, an Evaluation Module, and an Execution Module. Each of these sections is extremely complex, and each has been implemented in a variety of ingenious ways. The Situation Module determines if the game is in its opening, middle game, or end game phase. It must establish the location of the pieces and the legal moves available, and size up the overall situation. To do all of this it must know the laws of chess and some of its fundamental concepts. An array of legally eligible moves is built with a routine known as a move generator. The Situation Module must also establish tiie records: a data base defining and storing the current board position. The Evaluation Module measures the strength of a board position in numerical terms. The accuracy of this numerical evaluation is the most important factor that separates good programs from inferior ones. Each chess piece is given a numerical vaiue according to its importance in the game. In addition, a large number of positional factors are numerically weighted. Numerical pluses are given to each position that adheres to the main principles of good chess. Stronger programs attempt to beef up end game play by modifying their evaluation routines to take into account the special requirements of the end game phase. In spite of such fine tuning, however, end game play continues to remain the weakest area of modern chess programming, and for that reason has become the area receiving the most intensive research. The Evaluation Module may be considered the very heart of a chess program: it is called upon many thousands, perhaps millions of times during the course of selecting j ust one move . Position evaluation therefore accounts for most of a program's execution time. The Execution Module has the responsibility of providing the search and rescue function of the program. When directed it will search the opening book — a built-in data base of approved opening moves — and will, execute an immediate move from the play book if a matching position is found. Otherwise it establishes a search tree (using the move generator) to set up a listing or layer of possible moves (called a 'ply'), evaluates each of the resultant board positions, and executes a repetition of the whole process for each succeeding ply or half move until the allowable response time has been exceeded. Response time, of course, is the variable altered when a program's skill (or 'level') is selected by a user. The strength of the program is thus reduced by shortening its 'thinking' time, and not at al! by changing its algorithm. As a result, good programs remain surprisingly strong even at their weakest level. Some programs offer a special 'easy' mode to achieve a more balanced contest, but even that is nothing more than another reduction in 'thinking' time. Many different search strategies have been developed, each with its own strengths, and each at the cost of differing trade- offs, but none has effectively solved the syndrome known as the Horizon Effect. This is simply the inability of a program that is looking ahead perhaps four moves to see the disaster that awaits just over the horizon on the fifth move. In a more pernicious form of the effect, the program has looked five moves ahead, has seen the disaster, and has opted for an alternate continuation by adding a couple of time-waster moves that push the fifth move over the horizon to a new move slot of seven. The program ends its search at move five of the new move order, congratulates itself on finding a safe continuation, and sets out on what is really just a longer route to the same old disaster. When search strategy has been developed to the point of eliminating the Horizon Effect, chess programs will have attained world chess championship standards. In the meantime, the move is executed, and the search goes on. 11 For readers who wish to investigate the theory of computer chess in greater detail, the following books are recommended: Advances in Computer Chess, Vols 1 and 2„ edited by M.R.B. Clarke (Edinburgh University Press) Artificial Intelligence, by A. Bundy (Edinburgh University Press) Computer Chess, by David E. Welsh (Wm. C. Brown) The Chess Computer Haiidbook, by David Levy (Batsford) March 1985 13 Computer Comfort by Jim Butterfield Copyright *> 1985 Jim Butterfield. Permis- sion to reprint is hereby granted, pro- vided this notice is included in the reprinted material. There seems to have been a lot of discus- sion in the press lately on the subject of cuddling. It started off with a letter to Ann Landers, and has been picked up by other columnists and talk shows. One midwestern broadcaster was mobbed when he offered free cuddles to all listeners. I don't plan to make any offer along that line; but I'd like to talk about the way we would all like to feel safe, warm and secure . . . especially with computers. It's my theory that success in the big computer world was achieved by making customers feel safe. In the early com- puter era, there was a lot of talk about the IBM 'umbrella'. If your business walked with IBM, you walked under the umbrella and you'd never feel the bad weather. Back in those days, you'd often pay more for the big guy's computers. But you'd get security. There would be a Customer Engineer posted on your premises or on close call. Any software you would like — compilers, subroutines, report generators — was yours free for the asking. You'd get programming forms, schedules for ordering fresh sup- plies such as paper, punched cards or magnetic tape, free manuals, free train- ing courses . . . vou were well taken care of. If you went for one of the smaller six — little guys like Univac, Control Data, or RCA (yes, they made computers) — you could often save money. But you'd need to know your business: you'd have to take care of yourself. No umbrella. No cuddling. Why the difference? Mostly, I think, because IBM rented computers and the other vendors sold them, A rental customer is still a customer. A sale is an ex-customer. By the way, times have changed. IBM has 'unbundled', and many of the marvellous free services have vanished. But they achieved dominance before un- bundling took place in the early sixties, and they are still on top. I think the same principles apply to software purchases today. A buyer wants to feel secure about programs. When we pay a few hundred dollars or so for a soft- ware system, we know that we will have to live with it for months or years. We look for the support features — warran- ty, update, documentation — to tell us that we'll be safe. There's often a difference in viewpoint between vendor and customer. A customer thinks of buying a service — an accounting package, a word processor, whatever. A vendor thinks of selling an object — an accounting package, a word processor, whatever. Same thing? Not at all. A vendor's responsibility for a service starts with the sale. But a vendor's responsibility for an object — providing it's not defective when sold — ends with the sale. So here we have two opposing view- points. The vendor might think that the moment the product goes out the door, the sale is concluded. The customer might think that the moment a package is ac- quired, the vendor's responsiblities begin. Unhappily, there's often no middle ground. Nobody wins. The vendor is injured when a complaint comes in: "Look, for a five dollar profit I'm supposed to hold . . .We want comfort. We want to be able to sleep soundly at night. We want software that cuddles and protects us. . . the guy's hand for two months?" The pur- chaser is wounded when support is unavailable: "I said, I don't want my money back, I want it to work right ..." Hopefully, the gap can be bridged. Good documentation, update or newslet- ter service, warranty/replacement policy, supplementary programs — all these can be used to connect the manufacturer to the user without unnecessary (and cost- ly) lengthy interviews. The program itself should have help features, significant defaults, menus where appropriate, double-checks ('are you sure?') at dangerous points, and even subliminal clues such as colour coding associated with specific activities. Documentation should start with a walk-through of the package: "Turn the computer on, type this and you should see as follows ..." When a user unwraps a package, he or she doesn't know whether it's good or defective, or how to tell the difference. A simple walk-through can reassure the buyer and provide the first step in demonstrating the program or training in its first use. There should be a more detailed tutorial (preferably with specific examples that the user can try), a reference section, and an index. Extra material, such as 'Common problems when using this program', can be invaluable. I have sometimes wondered whether a software house might give away a pro- gram free or at a small charge, and then suggest to the user that it would be wise to subscribe to a support service, paying an annual fee to be kept up to date. It seems to me that many users view themselves as subscribers to a program service rather than owners (or licensees or whatever) of a program. And I'm sure that most purchasers feel quite insecure. Will the program work correctly? What will happen if something goes wrong? Suppose the disk fails? Sup- pose something weird comes up on the screen. We're full of phobias, and the more we depend on a program, the more profound the fears. A user told me some years ago of a package that had a HELP screen that said, "Occasionally, the data base will fail and all files will be ir- retrievably lost". Such a loss had never happened to the user; but the existence of such a threat caused him to abandon the program as quickly as possible. We want comfort. We want to be able to sleep soundly at night. We want soft- ware that cuddles and protects us. Today, there's still too little of that kind of pro- gram. Partly, it's up to the vendors to make 'cuddly' software. Partly, it's up to users to seek it out. A few years ago, I visited Dallas and on my arrival was taken to a nearby tavern. I was discussing with a Com- modore employee my views on desirable software when the waitress came around. I asked her, "What do you think of this theory that everybody really wants to be cuddled?" She replied, "Well, ah think it's jest fine, but my boyfriend don't really care for it". So maybe it's not a hundred per cent universal need. But I'd put it in the high nineties. □ 14 TPUG Magazine SuperPET's BASIC Distinctions by Brad Bjorndahl For this issue, I have chosen to ask myself these questions: Why is BASIC still around? and, why does my computer have two of them — Commodore BASIC 4.0 and Waterloo microBASIC (designated mBASIC)? First, BASIC pervades the entire pro- gramming community by being available on virtually every digital computer. Anyone remotely connected with com- puters has some knowledge of it. Second, it is old — so old that many people con- sider it obsolete. Third, it has more ver- sions than any other language and most versions have multiple upgrades tacked onto them. Fourth, it is relatively easy to learn in spite of its lack of 'modern con- veniences' such as structured statements. These comments help to explain why BASIC is still around. That it is so available and well known gives it popularity 'by default'. For example, it is impossible to imagine the IBM PC without BASIC. It is expected. Since new machines must provide BASIC, they usually use the language to present a buyer with the machine's best features — graphics or colour, for example. BASIC'S age, and its possible obsolescence as a language, are not really relevant to its continued existence. Fortran and COBOL are older and just as deeply rooted as BASIC. A great deal of program develop- ment has been invested in these languages. They are not easily discard- ed. Finally, learning BASIC is easy because of its lack of structured statements. The advantages of IF. . .ELSE1F. . .ENDIF and organized data storage are (usually) lost on a novice. The overhead of forced program develop- ment in other languages can be very discouraging. Besides, once the purpose is appreciated, a student programmer can find ways of structuring BASIC. In fact, organizing your own structures is a good way of learning to take advantage of them in those languages that provide them. The answer to my first question, then, is simple enough: BASIC is still around partly as a result of momentum and part- ly because it is easy to grasp. Now we can consider question two, which I will restate as: why did Waterloo add microBASIC to the SuperPET when the Commodore version was built in? No doubt the designers felt that its omission would be a fault. The SuperPET is primarily a learning machine. Perhaps they thought that using BASIC is a good way to learn how not to program. Waterloo mBASIC retains BASIC 4.0's character while upgrading it with features that allow easier and better coding. As a result, it is compatible with ordinary BASIC, yet provides features of more advanced languages. For example, consider the awful BASIC 4.0 editor. mBASIC has com- mands that are missing in BASIC 4.0: RENUMBER, AUTOLINE, DELETE and a proper LIST. I expect this was done on- ly for completeness since there is also available a completely separate full- screen editor with search and change commands. Every BASIC should have an editor that makes entering code the easiest part of programming. Structured code is a similar story. mBASIC has the 'primitive control' statements with which every BASIC 4.0 programmer is familiar, such as FOR. . .NEXT. To these, mBASIC adds LOOP.. .UNTIL, IF... ELSE... ENDIF, and so on. Structured control is extend- ed further in mBASIC by providing a CALL as well as a GOSUB statement. Both statements will execute a section of code and return to the following state- ment. GOSUB transfers control to the line number of a 'subroutine'. CALL transfers control to the start of a 'pro- cedure', which is identified by an alphanumeric name. Also, values and ex- pressions may be given to the procedure for use during the call. The programmer has the option of us- ing simple (clumsy) or complex (powerful) coding techniques. Sometimes, in prac- tice, a combination is used. Recently, in translating a program from BASIC 4.0, I changed almost all the structures to bet- ter ones available in mBASIC. The excep- tion was an ON J GOSUB. . . statement where J was a menu selection number. I could have replaced this with an IF or a GUESS statement of ten to fifteen lines, which would have allowed me to use procedure names instead of line numbers. Names usually yield clearer code. In this case, the number of lines required would only have made the code more complicated. There are a few more features in mBASIC that are extensions of BASIC 4.0. Functions can be defined with more than one passed parameter, and more than one statement can be executed. Both options make life a great deal simpler for the programmer. mBASIC also has add- ed matrix (array) features. For example, the LET statement will operate on entire matrices if it is preceded by MAT. In this way, every element of a matrix can be set to a constant or to the value of an expres- sion. There are special keywords for set- ting a numeric array to all zeros or a string array to all nulls. It is easy to multiply all elements of a numeric matrix by a constant or by the value of an ex- pression. No loops are needed. Even ad- dition, subtraction and multiplication of matrices are provided in one statement. One last, very important, extension must be mentioned. mBASIC has a LIN- PUT statement that will input an entire line or record of a file, ignoring commas. It is difficult to express how welcome this command can be when it is needed. There are a few more mBASIC features that are not extensions but ad- ditions to BASIC 4.0. They can be class- ed as debugging aids. mBASIC recognizes a number of run-time error conditions such as overflow and underflow, division by zero, string overflow, and conversion to numeric values during READ or INPUT. mBASIC gives the programmer three options when errors are found. One, the programmer can ignore the error. This is often done for the EOF (end-of-file) condition when the programmer would rather check the i/o status flag. Two, the programmer can let the system process the error. This would usually be the case for an error such as an invalid subscript, because that usually indicates an unex- pected program bug. Three, the program- mer can provide a group of statements to be executed if a certain error is found by the interpreter. This is useful for displaying data values or correcting the error. When this error handling option is used, the programmer can return control to the line that caused the error, presumably after making corrections. That covers the major extensions and additions to mBASIC. It is clear to me that they allow BASIC to be competitive with other languages without sacrificing its usefulness as a teaching language. And that is why I have two BASICs in my machine. □ March 1985 15 Peripherals and Software Winter CES 1985 A special report by Louise Redgers While the Winter Consumer Electronics Show 1985 was not filled with the same sense of excitement as the one held last summer, there were plenty of exciting an- nouncements for Commodore computer users. The impending announcement of the Commodore 128 had obviously caused many of the software houses to withhold further development work on Com- modore projects until they knew what the machine was going to do to the market place. The period has been used to catch up on development for the Apple and IBM computers for the home market. They stole much of the thunder, as far as getting the hottest software developed for their machines first. Software Educational and music software appear to be at the forefront of development. There was an abundance of new selec- tions, each with special features that will help the user to choose the package designed to meet his needs. Software companies were most anxious to provide TPUG Magazine with review copies of many of the newest and brightest stars. If you keep your eyes on the review sec- tion of the magazine over the next several months, we will be reviewing some of this software and announcing the release of other packages. We cannot review all of the software available, but we will endeavour to provide coverage on a wide variety of products. Some of the brightest stars on the horizon are described below. (With the vast amount of software being demonstrated, it was impossible to even view it all, never mind convince the editor of this illustrious magazine that I need- ed another twenty pages to cover just the stuff I had played with over four days.) Imagic has continued to work on their Living Literature Series. Now that they have teamed up with Bantam, this would appear to be the direction of future developments. The idea of putting Shakespeare on computer was a little dif- ferent, but it works well. MacBeth has joined the Time Travellers Series, along with H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, on the Commodore 64. Koala Technologies is working hard on new software for their Muppet Learning Keys, which they released last summer. Designed for pre-schoolers, it is an ex- cellent tool for teaching colours, the alphahetand numbers. Filled with colour and graphics, the software is capable of keeping a child's imagination stimulated for up to a year with its initial software. This is a definitely 'must purchase' item, if you have a 2 to 4 year old in your household. For those who live with the endless pro- blem of misspelled words, and believe that they have passed the curse onto their children, Davidson & Associates has created Spell It. This animated game- type program designed for ages ten through adult uses exercises to work on one's vocabulary with the 1,000 most misspelled words, and sells for $49.95 (US). Much of the new software has a 'self- improvement' theme. Ranging through typing tutors to speed reading courses to 'know your own IQ' (and even analysis of your personality), the computer plays everything from teacher to psychologist. CBS Software and Bantam Software ap- pear to be at the forefront of this development. Educational software for children is still a hot item. School-tested and classroom-suited programs are coming. Sophistication and the ability to check the child's progress have been introduced. Problem solving skills, and even com- puter literacy, can now be taught by com- puters. Sunburst Communications presented an entire catalogue of software specifically designed either for the classroom or learning at home with parental supervision. Software like The Incredible Laboratory and Meet the Computer are designed to enlighten an entire generation. There are many other SAT preparatory programs for the more mature students; and diaries, planners and accounting The Muppet Learning Keys in an innovative peripheral for pre-schoolers from Koala Technologies, makers of the popular KoalaPad graphics tablet. Koala is coming up with new software to support the product. 16 TPUG Magazine systems for the businessman, Hayden Software has a large collection of these useful packages which we hope to review over the next little while. Designware announced their Music Teacher Series: The Notable Phantom, for parents who want their children to learn basic piano and note reading without a teacher. They also announced a product called The Body Transparent, (release date March 1985), which sells for $44.95 (US) and is designed to teach children human anatomy. The players move bones and organs to their correct locations in order to score points. While all of this is happening, the players are learning about the functions of the various parts of the body. For those who wish they could write adventure games without all the work, Electronic Arts introduced Adventure Construction Set for the Commodore 64. This is one in a wave of mechanized soft- ware writing programs. Another is Ac- cess Software Incorporated's Spritemaster II. Developed for game designers, this product eliminates the sprite coding to give the designer the ability to create and refine objects before they are entered into a program. $24.95 (US) and, if it does save time, a wor- thwhile tool. Peripherals Mice and trackballs are appearing for the IBM and Apple computers. With the emergence of the software that will make use of these items on the Commodore 128, we should find these available next summer. The printer getting the most attention is still the Okimate 10 colour printer. They seem to have cornered the market at the low-end price level. They also an- nounced the release of the Okimate 120 — a high-speed, low-cost printer design- ed for the Commodore 64. It sells for $269.00 (US), prints all of the Com- modore graphics and features near -letter- quality for word processing. The cutest and most portable printer at the show was the HUSH 80 from Ergo Systems Inc. For $139.00 (US) you can buy a very quiet thermal printer which runs at 80 characters per second and measures slightly less than 12" by 6" by 3". It can also support a battery pack. The whole printer (including a roll of ther- mal paper) weighs less than five pounds. Epson introduced its Homewriter 10. This printer runs at 100 cps in draft mode and 16 cps in near-letter-quality mode. Available to dealers in March, the printer will sell for $269.00 (US) with an addi- tional charge of $60.00 (US) for the inter- face (PIC) and will have both tractor feed at $39.95 (US) and cut sheet feeder ($99.95) options. The big rush to produce Commodore- compatible disk drives appears to be over. MSD has been one of the survivors of the production race. They were showing the new SD-1S Super Disk. This is a small single drive with an external power supp- ly. Priced to compete with the 1541, this product features a quick load capability and rapid internal operations (such as the ability to format a disk in 17 seconds). There were endless music keyboards appearing for the Commodore 64, and the software to use with them is abundant. While there is no room here to describe them all, we will mention a few. Sight and instead of asking for the magic word, made me spell words echoed through the SID chip in order to obtain further passage (Timeworks). When the show closed, I was disappointed that I had not even checked out half of the new soft- ware. Some vendors were helpful in that they let one sit and watch a video tape of their software under development (as did SubLogic, whose new flight simulator features a jet). It was great to sit down for a moment in the vast sea of software vendors — and I now know what I want for Christmas 1985. Buying Machines A few notes for those who are buying The HUSH 80 thermal -printer from Ergo Systems Inc. is priced at $139.00 (US). It runs at 80 characters per second. The printer is small and very quiet. It weighs less than five pounds, including a roll of thermal paper. Sound were showing the Kawasaki Syn- thesizer, an impressive-sounding two-disk software system. This was considerably overshadowed by the Sequential Circuits MAX, a $795.00 (US) voice synthesizer that plugs into the Commodore 64 for composing or performing. For those of us with less expensive taste, they also had a $99.00 (US) keyboard called Music Ware. We will attempt to get one of these, and some others shown, to do a comparison review at a future date. We will also want to have a further look at the new music composition and rock video-type programs that will become available over the next few months. I spent four days being mesmerized by the various ideas that people had come up with for new software. I watched a Lego- constructed crane driven by a Com- modore 64 move items around on a table top. I played with adventure games that, machines. There was no software that was visible for the Commodore 16 done by firms other than Commodore. The same is true of the Plus/4. It is very doubtful that any software will appear for these machines on a commercial level, other than through Commodore. There were also no 8032s or any of the older Commodore machines to be seen at the show. While these were not meant to be consumer machines in the ordinary sense of the word, the commercial sale of soft- ware for these machines is disappearing rapidly. The market has changed. The software developers are waiting with bated breath to find out what the new Commodore and Atari computers will do in the marketplace before they develop extensive work on either brand of com- puter. In the meantime, IBM and non- Macintosh Apple software are catching up. D March 1985 17 128 PC Looks Like a Winner by Chris Bennett The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a twice-yearly showcase for new consumer electronic equipment, including such items as watches, home and car hi-fi, calculators, microwave ovens, phones, VCRs and, of course, computers. Each CES seems to produce new attendance records, and the January show in Las Vegas was no exception. Over 101,000 people attended, among them several TPUG members. At the Summer 1980 CES in Chicago, Commodore First showed the VIC 20. Priced at under 300 dollars (US) it was a breakthrough product for Commodore. The PET and CBM com- puters had sold quite well, but Apple and Radio Shack had done a lot better, even though their machines were not superior to Commodore's. The VIC 20 turned the tide in Commodore's favour. It was the first machine sold in large volumes in such places as K-Mart and Sears. It also helped start the computer wars from which Commodore emerged victorious, killing off Texas Instruments and a few other players. Atari could not com- pete, and sold out in 1984 to Jack Tramiel, Commodore's founder, who had left the company not long before. The next big step for Commodore came at the CES shows in 1982. It was then that the Commodore 64 was first shown. It received rave reviews and went on sale to computer store dealers in September of that year at a price of 595 dollars (US). In 1983, the C-64 was given to the mass merchants, and the rest, as they say, is history. Over the last two years Commodore has sold over four and a half million machines, making the C-64 one of the most successful home computers ever. Since the introduction of the C-64, Commodore has been searching for a formula to duplicate the magic. In 1982 (April 21st, at the Hannover Fair in West Germany) the PET II and CBM II were introduced. These became the P-128, which never . . .1 didn't believe Commodore could produce such a machine without compromising C-64 compatibility. I was wrong. . . saw the light of day; and the B-128, which only became available in 1984. Commodore introduced the Plus/4 and the Commodore 16 at the January CES show in 1984. None of these machines has caught on like the C-64, and it is not likely that they ever will. All are incompatible with the 64 — practically nothing writ- ten for it will run on them. Before going to the CES this January, a number of us dis- cussed what we would like to see on a new Commodore com- puter. First, it would have to run all the Commodore 64 soft- ware. Second, it should have an optional 80-column screen for word processing and spreadsheet software. Third, it should have a much faster disk drive. Fourth, it should have a powerful BASIC similar to that found in the Plus/4. Finally, it should have a lot more memory, at least 128K or more. Such a machine, we felt, with enough power for serious business applications, could compete with Apple and PC Junior on their own turf without sacrificing the special capabilities of the C-64. The ability to run all the C-64 software available would be especially important, since anyone owning a 64 could upgrade to a more powerful machine without throwing their software away. I didn't believe Commodore could produce such a machine without compromising C-64 compatibility. However, I was wrong. The new Commodore 128 Personal Computer has all of the above features and more. Indications are that it should sell for 250 dollars (US) or less by June or July of this year. It will come with 128K of RAM (expandable to 512K), two different processors, and an 80 column colour hi-res screen that can display 640 by 200 pixels. Not only is the C-128 one hundred percent C-64 compatible, it also has two additional operating modes: CP/M version 3.0, and the C-128 native mode. The machine is packaged in a light beige case with three groups of keys. It has a 92 key typewriter- style keyboard, consisting of a C-64 keyboard (62 keys) in the front, a 14-key numeric keypad to the right, and 16 special keys along the top. The top row of keys include the four function keys used by the C-64, four separate cursor keys, and (from left to right) ESC, TAB, ALT, CAPS LOCK, HELP, LINE FEED, 40/80 COL, and NO SCROLL. In the C-64 mode not all the keys are operational. Only the 62-key keyboard and the four function keys work. All the com- ponents of a C-64 are inside the case. This includes the sound and video chips as well as the 6510A processor and the ROM set. No improvements or changes have been made. It was the only way to guarantee that the machine would run all C-64 soft- ware without exception. The second mode uses Digital Research's CP/M version 3.0 operating system, running on a Z80A microprocessor at 2 MHz. It will operate in either 40 or 80 columns, colour or monochrome. However, most CP/M programs use an 80-column screen. One of the reasons that CP/M on the C-64 was of very little use is that none of the good CP/M programs will run in 40 columns. Among the programs that will run on the C-128 are those in the Perfect series by Thorn EMI Computer Software Inc. This includes: Perfect Writer, Perfect Calc, and Perfect Filer. They are fully integrated and allow the programs to share data. All feature pop-up menus in simple English, split screen windows and automatic formatting for printing. Perfect Writer features a built-in spelling checker and a thesaurus. Perfect Calc is a spreadsheet and Perfect Filer is a database. I expect the price of each of these products to be about 50 to 75 dollars (US). Other CP/M programs that should run on the C-128 include Wordstar and dBase II. The third C-128 mode uses the 128K of RAM plus an 8502 (6502 compatible) microprocessor running at 2 MHz. It gives us the most powerful Commodore version of BASIC so far — BASIC 7.0, with 30 commands more than the Plus/4, and 78 more than the Commodore 64. One of the first things I did on the Commodore 128 was to find out how quickly BASIC 7.0 ran. I ran my test program in Commodore 64 mode and found it took thirteen seconds. Then I ran it in C-128 mode and timed it at twenty seconds. This was to be expected with a bank-switched processor running at only 1 MHz. However, the production machines will be running at 2 MHz and, at that speed, the time should be ten seconds. Thus the C-128 will be about thirty percent faster than the Com- modore 64. The C-128 will run in either 40 or 80 column mode. In 40 column mode, the SID and the C-64 video chip will be 18 TPUG Magazine available. Both these chips have been designed to run at 2 MHz so they won't slow down the CPU. In 80 column mode, the new video chip wall take over the processing of the screen. This device does not allow sprites, but has some additional features not found on the Commodore 64. For example, you can mix graphics characters and upper/lower case characters on the same line. You can also underline without having to use a graphics character on the line below. As with the CBM 8032, you can set windows to divide up the screen. The Commodore 1571 is a double-sided disk drive designed to operate with the C-128. In C-64 mode it runs at 300 cps, in C-128 mode it runs at 2000 cps, and in CP/M mode it runs at 3500 cps. There is reportedly also a burst mode that will allow the drive to read at an even faster rate under certain conditions. The drive will read and write C-64 disks just like a 1541. For the other two computer modes, the 1571 reads and writes to both sides of the diskette. At the show, I was told that the 1571 will read and write nineteen different CP/M formats including Kaypro, Osborne, and IBM system 34. The cost is expected to be about 250 dollars (US) with initial delivery by June or July. A dual drive version of the 1571 is being worked on, but is not expected to be released until the fall. Overall, the reaction to the machine from dealers attending CES was excellent. Most believe that the C-128 is going to sell very well. The third party software manufacturers feel the same way. With this kind of optimism, I believe that the new machine is going to be a great success, with many new software products becoming available to take advantage of the new features. The world's 4.5 million C-64 owners will now have a logical way to upgrade their machine while retaining all their favourite soft- ware. □ Printer Quickie Tabs and Spaces by Sean Rooney The screen formatting commands TAB() and SPC() will also work on the printer. However, although SPCQ works the same on the printer as it does on the screen, TAB() does not. and should be avoided. As an experiment, type the following line on your computer: prirvt "TPUG Con-ference" ;-tzk<< IS) ;"1985" The ' 1985' on this line should appear sixteen spaces from the left side of your screen — one space past the end of 'Conference'. Now let's try it on the printer with this lit- tle program: 1 open 7.4 2 pr i rrt#7 ., "TPUG Conference " ; tab a 6;:'.: 1985 3 e lose 7 4 end See the difference? This time the '1985' was moved over sixteen spaces from the end of 'Conference' — just as though you had used SPC() instead of TABQ! The moral? In all your printer programming use SPC() freely, but stay away from TAB(). In fact, it might be wisest to avoid TAB(), where possible, in all your program- ming, just in case you want to come back later and divert your output to the printer. □ SALE THE CONNECTION A fully intelligent parallel Inter- face for Vic 20, Commodore 64, Plus/4 and 16. The Connection® by TYMAC provides virtually total emulation of the Commodore printer with many popular printers. Will display full graphics characters or convert them equivalent representa- tions in clear text- $129.99 COMPUTEREYES Video acquisition system for Commodore 64. COMPUTEREYES" is the industry's first economical means ol capturing real-world images on the C64, COMPUTEREYES™ is an innovative slow-scan da/ice that connects be- tween any standard video source and the C64 A b/w image can then be acquired under simple software aji isqq control. !{>l'iy t ™ MIND PROBER Announcing the amazing Mind Prober Use il to probe someone's mind. Astounding. Now you can use your Commodore to reveal Ihe hidden motives of others and unlock their secret thoughts Lets you read people like a book. This scientific new expert systems software lets you in on the things most people are afraid to lell you. Their strengths, weaknesses. aaqq sexual interests, and more. !H > V*3 tritftdlltntftavei UltH. $29* VOICE MASTER The Ultimate Human to Computer Inte rface • Speech Synthesizer - Your Computer can talk to you 'in your own voice" s* • Word Recognition - Make your computer^, respond to your spoken commands • Voice Harp'" - A totally new musical instrument that you play by £ 4 nnqi humming or whistling. IjM US? FLEXIDRAW FLEXIDRAW" enables Commodore 64 users to perform pencil and paper tasks utilizing the speed and full graphics capabilities of their computer. $189 COMPUTER NETWORXX PO Box 1448, Stn. T, Calgary, Alberta. Canada, T2H 2G6 1-403-258-0844 Please add $5.00 per item for postage and handling. Do not include provincial/state sales tax with your payment, Please ship: payment en closed Quantity Description Connection Computereyes Mind Prober Voice Master Flexidraw Shipping & handling TOTAL ENCLOSED Each 5.00 Total Name _ Address City State/Prov. CHECK ONE: □ VISA # O MASTERCARD #. D Amer. Exp. # .EXP . .EXR. EXR. i Money order enclosed March 1985 19 Telephreak Means Teletrouble by Ken Cox An expert in telephone fraud has issued a warning that Bell Canada plans to "detect, and have the police prosecute, every individual" involved in illegal toll- free calling. The crackdown was pro- mpted, in large part, by the popularity of home computers. Brian Butler, security manager in Bell Canada's Toronto office, is well aware of the 'blue box' and 'black box' programs such as Telephreak and Superphreak that are being passed around. Unscrupulous computer enthusiasts use them to beat the telephone billing system, sometimes by posing as operators. The programs were created by underground groups in the United States. (They can be identified as American because Canadians use different telephone industry buzzwords such as TOPS for 'operator', rather than TSPS as in the USA.) Translations of 'blue box' programs have appeared for different computers, including the Commodore 64. Telephone companies know all about them. "Even having the program in your possession is an indictable offence," Butler told TPUG Magazine. He pointed to Section 287,1 of The Criminal Code of Canada: Everyone who, without lawful ex- cuse, the proof of which lies upon him, manufactures, possesses, sells or offers for sale or distributes any instrument or device or any compo- nent thereof, the design of which renders it primarily useful for ob- taining the use of any telecom- munication facility or service, under circumstances that give rise to a reasonable inference that the device has been used or is or was in- tended to be used to obtain the use of any telecommunications facility or service without payment of a lawful charge therefore, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for two years. It is clear that more people, many of them teenagers, are trying to get the long distance feeling without paying for it. In all of 1983 there was only one arrest in the Toronto area for electronic fraud, but the situation has changed rapidly. In two months alone, October and November of 1984, there were thirteen arrests. Butler points to two reasons for the rise. "One. there's an increase in the number of devices in the underground or black market; and two, we are getting better at detecting the fraud." There are three main groups who rip off the telephone companies: 'Fone phreaks' who spend hours exploring the telephone system, attacking distant databases or downloading programs; peo- ple who make a lot of long distance calls and find it very costly; and organized crime. (It's not that mobsters can't afford to pay — they just don't want a record of whom they've called showing up on their monthly bills.) In addition to the computer programs, Butler has to contend with modified . . . Butler describes the typical hardcore computer/telephone abuser as a one- dimensional personality. . . pocket calculators that can generate the special tones used by the telephone system. These calculators, which cost up to 1,500 dollars on the black market, are used to send the tones through pay phones ('fortress fones' to phreaks, because they are harder to trace). While telephone companies have had difficulty employing old technology to keep up with computer-age electronic fraud artists, the balance is rapidly shif- ting. "In Canada we are light years ahead of the States in detecting it. With the new digital technology coming on in 1987, we'll have a handle on stopping the signals altogether," Butler said. Currently, frauds are uncovered by analyzing patterns in the computer bill- ing tapes. Although security officials are naturally wary of disclosing exactly how this is done, it involves checking certain types of calls for which no one was billed. "Once we have a suspicion that a telephone number is being used fraudulently, we will put test equipment on the line to positively verify that an electronic fraud call was placed. Once we have gone that far, we'll put the evidence together and refer it to the local police for further investigation. We cannot withdraw charges. It is simply a police matter at that point." The repercussions of being caught in- clude: a possible criminal record; seizure of computer equipment and programs; loss of telephone service; and paying for the illegal calls. Butler describes the typical hardcore computer/telephone abuser as a one- dimensional personality. His life revolves around the home computer he has jammed into a cluttered, filthy room. The nightowl loses almost all contact with other human beings as he spends twelve hours at a stretch obsessively trying to break a database access code. An interesting myth has gone around: that 'whiz kids' who are caught 'phreak- ing' will be offered jobs at Bell. "We're not about to hire anyone who has a criminal record for electronic fraud or computer fraud. In many cases, the teenage kids don't feel they are doing anything wrong. They feel the telephone company is a big, impersonal organiza- tion. There's this myth that it is all right to cheat large organizations. Some of the kids could really be jeopardizing their futures by getting involved in this." The loss to the phone company from toll fraud can be much greater than the miss- ed revenue. Because planners analyze long distance calling patterns to deter- mine future equipment needs, Bell could be spending thousands of dollars on equipment to service a fraud. D Important message to The telephone number is: (416) 782-9534 Operating hours: 24 hours per day 7 days per week The password is. . . MOGOMBO 20 TPUG Magazine Users' Group Publicity by Mike Martin • 1984 Although this article is directed primari- ly towards users' groups, the information can be applied to almost all groups. If you belong to a church, civic or fraternal group, this is for you too. Your group needs publicity, and the local media needs your group. What could be a better relationship? Local papers and broadcast stations need a constant flow of information on community events. Coming up with the amount of news needed to fill a paper, or two hours a day of newscasts, is a difficult task. They don't want to publicize companies or peo- ple trying to sell things. They charge for advertising, so why give it away during newscasts? They need stories with a local community involvement flavour. Your group is non-profit and service oriented. Perfect. How many people have bought com- puters without really knowing anything about them? Okay, you can all put your hands down. You know the process. Buy it, try it, and file it in the closet, unless you can find some help in understanding it. Luckily, you found a users' group to help you decipher the manual. You found people willing to help and lots of pro- grams to get you started. Most of the pur- chasers in your town weren't so iucky. Their computer is sitting in the closet on top of the Monopoly game. With your help, we can empty the closets and fill up your users' group meetings. In my years in commercial broad- casting, I've watched community groups come and go. Some knew how to work with media and were successful, but most didn't get the help they wanted. How can you ensure that your campaign is successful? The print media should be your first ef- fort. Pick a member with a good quality printer and write a press release on your group. Make sure that the first paragraph states that you are a non-profit group, and that you are not connected with any computer company. In other words, you have nothing to sell, only free help. State that you are a group of local owners of these computers who have banded together to help each other, and that beginners are welcome. Assume that your readers, and your contacts at the paper, know nothing about computers. You will be right. The more computerese you include, the less chance of seeing your release in print. Mention the make of the computer. List your meeting times and address. Possibly even outline your planned programs for the next month. Keep the release short: one page is ideal, two pages is the max- imum. Editors won't read information by the pound. List one or two members as contacts, with phone numbers. Send a . . .Assume that your readers know nothing about computers. You will be right. . . copy to the City Desk, another copy to the Entertainment Desk, another copy to the Clubs/Organizations Desk. Don't stuff them into the same envelope: send them individually, as none of these depart- ments talks to the others. If one isn't in- terested, it gets filed, not passed on. Send copies to every paper in your town, even the free shopper papers and regional weeklies. Send the releases out at least three weeks before your event, and you'll be suprised how many will print it. The broadcast media require different treatment. Television is a visual medium, so a press release alone won't work. When dealing with the visual press, give them something to see. For example, schedule an 'event' that they can photograph. "Local Users Group (LUG) holds a seminar on how to buy a com- puter." "LUG presents a beginning com- puting class." "LUG displays/demon- strates computers at a local shopping mall/public library/college." Get a booth for cheap or free, set up a few computers with flashy programs, and members to help people experiment. Schedule the event for a convenient time for coverage. Local stations are most in need of news on weekends during business hours. Evening or late night events would re- quire them to pay overtime. They won't. Important note: If your club has members who delight in piracy, order them to leave anything without a manufacturer's sticker on it at home. If the station knows anything about com- puters it might like an expose on com- puter fraud better than it likes a club pro- file. Even if the station doesn't notice, any computer-wise law enforcement of- ficer watching the story will notice. Some types of publicity are easy to get, but not desirable. If some of your members are also into home video recording, tape a session of 'interviews' to see how well your members react to being on camera. Most TV stations have at least one interview show. But keep in mind that you will get, at most, two minutes of air time. Don't get complicated. Take an index card with you that has five short statements on it. "We are a non-profit, educational group." "We have ninety-seven members." "We meet at the Library, at 8 pm on the first and third Monday of each month." "We have five hundred free programs." "It costs twenty dollars to join." Give the card to the host. He or she will ask other questions, but feeding a bit of important information helps. Visual aids will help, if they are in the right format. While broadcasters use the same kind and size of videotape as home units, the recording format is very dif- ferent. Don't take any videotape unless you know it is broadcast format. Photographs or slides are helpful, but they must be horizontal, not vertical. And be sure to have a phone number available for more information. Give it to the host early so it can be 'fonted' over your interview. Remember, your group is doing the media a favour by providing part of the large flow of information they need. If you present your information in the right form, the results can be fantastic. Go help them out. D 1526/VIC 20 Timing Tip Contributed by Howard M. Mesick To prevent your older C-1526 printer from hanging up when you are using it with your VIC 20, type: SYS 64990. This command sets the serial port timing to the C-64's speed, and your 1526 will then work fine. March 1985 21 Searching Online Data Bases by Don Fox So you've equipped your VIC 20, PET, C-64 or whatever with a modem, and have been using a terminal emulation package to access your company com- puter. Or maybe you have grown bored with picking your way through the messages on your local BBS. How can you expand your horizons to include the commercial data base systems you've hear 1 about? Read on... Hardware and Software The idea is to make your computer emulate a terminal. A dumb terminal emulator program written in BASIC is given in both the VIC 20 and C-64 Reference Guides, as well as in many other places. The word 'dumb' in this con- text means that the terminal has only the most basic capabilities for receiving and sending data. There are other more elaborate programs that enable your 'ter- minal' to save the received data to diskette, a process termed 'downloading'. Some excellent terminal software is available from non-commercial sources, including the TPUG library. Downloading is usually the best way to go, since most printers have difficulty keeping up with incoming information even at 300 baud (bits/second) — the slowest rate at which most commercial systems operate. Also, frequent stopping of the system while you read the latest screen-full of information, besides being a nuisance, is also a pain in the pocket- book, since these systems tend to charge based in part on the amount of conned time. Finally, downloaded files can be edited through the use of your favourite word processing program, and put in any form convenient to you. For example, bibliographic references can be reformat- ted into a bibliography. Whatever your terminal software, you need a modem to access the systems described below. Again, there is a range of possibilities available. The cheapest and simplest is a dial-up modem such as the VIC-modem, available from your Commodore dealer. You may wish to spend another two to three hundred dollars to obtain an auto-dial feature, although it is not necessary for this ap- plication. (It is very useful, however, for accessing a specific BBS, since the single phone lines these systems have must usually be dialled many times before they are free.) Another point to consider is that most systems do not allow for screen widths other than 80 columns. If you find wrap- around disturbing, you may want to pur- chase an 80 column card. Vendors and Producers Commercial data bases are accessible through two somewhat different types of enterprise. One type is the vendor organization, the largest of which is the DIALOG Information Retrieval Service. DIALOG offers more than two hundred data bases covering most areas of human knowledge, from science and technology to humanities and the arts. Vendors like DIALOG obtain machine-readable data bases and reformat them to make them compatible with their search software. This means that all data bases can be ac- cessed by a user — you, for instance — using a single set of commands called the 'command language'. Unfortunately the commands vary somewhat from one ven- dor to another, and no vendor has been able to dominate the market to the extent of offering access to all possible data bases. Because of the large number and variety of data bases that DIALOG makes available, I'll deal primarily with that system in this article. However, there are several good Canadian systems as well, such as CAN/OLE of the Cana- dian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information in Ottawa; and QL Systems of Kingston, Ontario. To gain access to DIALOG, you should contact Micromedia, Ltd., 144 Front Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5J 2L7, telephone: (416) 593-5211 (the Canadian representatives). If you try to write to DIALOG directly from Canada, your let- ter will be referred to Micromedia in any case. U.S. readers should write to DIALOG Information Retrieval Service, 3460 Hill view Avenue, Palo Alto, Califor- nia 94304, or telephone (800) 227-1927. The other important kind of organiza- tion is the data base producer. An exam- ple is Data Courier in Kentucky, the pro- ducer of a number of useful data bases including ABI/INFORM, which I'll discuss later on in this article. Federal governments are also prolific producers of online data bases, especially in the USA. An excellent and widely available source of up-to-date information on both vendors and data bases is the Omni Online Database Directory, compiled by Mike Edelhart and Owen Davies, and published by Macmillan in 1983. Systems and Data Bases DIALOG offers two varieties of its com- mand language, or 'systems'. The more advanced system offers a wide variety of commands for searching data bases. Keywords can be searched singly or in Boolean combinations (with 'and', 'or' and 'not'), with a pattern-matching op- tion. The output can be formatted in several ways to suit the type of data and the type of device — screen or printer. There is even a way of directing the out- put to a batch printer operated by DIALOG, where it will be processed over- night and mailed to you the next morning. Searching the database is easy, once you get the hang of it. If you wanted to search for information on violence in the media, for example, you might try something like: s media and violen? The 's' stands for 'select', not — as you might have supposed — for 'search'. The question mark is called a 'truncation sym- bol' indicating that any word beginning 'violen' is acceptable, thus covering such forms as 'violent' and 'violence'. The ex- pression as a whole, then, asks to retrieve all items containing the keyword 'media', as well as any keyword beginning with the string 'violen*. The other system provided by DIALOG is called 'Knowledge Index'. It is really a simplified version of the main DIALOG system, especially designed for the owners of home computers. However, because of the greater power of the full search language and the larger number of data bases available, many users who start with Knowledge Index later migrate to DIALOG, or so I was told recently by Dr. Roger Summit, the President of DIALOG Information Services, Inc. This occurs in spite of this type of user's con- siderably higher cost per connect hour. Knowledge Index charges a flat rate of $24.00 per hour, while charges on DIALOG range from S15.00 to §300.00 22 TPUG Magazine What is a Database? by Malcolm O'Brien Hmm. Good question, that. We hear about databases all the time. They've found their way into the headlines: Feds checking databases for tax evaders or Whiz kids scram- ble databases — clear evidence that we're living in an in- formation age. We read, express concern, call for legislation and maybe realize that we don't quite know what a database is. The first thing that needs to be understood is that the term 'database' is commonly used to refer to two different, though virtually inseparable, things: the database itself, and the database management system (DBMS). Their inseparability arises from the fact that neither is of much value without the other. Some definitions at this point will make things clearer. The Penguin Dictionary of Microprocessors (by Anthony Chandor) defines a database as "a file of data, structured to allow a number of applications to access the data and update it without dictating or constraining the overall file design or content". This may be more definition than we need, and the author also adds this second definition: "Any file which might sound more important if called a database"! A DBMS is a software system, or group of programs, used to manage data in a database. A simple example will illustrate this. Suppose you've written a program to keep track of the names, addresses and phone numbers of the people in your user group; and that the information on each person is in DATA statements. In this case, the DATA statements are the database (that does make it sound important!) and the rest of the program is the DBMS. If the amount of data you have to manage is very large, it will be greater than available memory, and will have to be stored on disk. That's one aspect of database management — the allocation of resources re- quired to handle the volume of data. Will I have twenty data items? A thousand? Ten thousand? ,\lkr ©ss It's very important to give considerable thought to the construction of your files .. . The other aspect of database management is concerned with the use to which the data will be put, and how the data will be entered into the system. Time for more definitions. At this point we have to recognize the difference between 'data' and 'information'. They're not the same. Returning to the dictionary: data is "any group of operands or factors made up of numbers, alphabetic characters or symbols denoting any condition, value or state"; and information is "data so assembled and presented that it is given meaning". In other words, information is conveyed by data. For ex- ample, the names in the telephone book are only names (raw data), but by presenting them with their other data items (ad- dresses and phone numbers), we have a record (a group of related data items) — sufficient information to access selected individuals by telephone. Our user group database will give us another example of the informational aspect of database management. Let's assume that the data we're keeping are: name, address, phone number, membership number, age and date of joining. If we want to print mailing labels, we don't want to include membership number, phone number, age or date, because these data items are not relevant. When it comes time to send out renewal notices, though, the date Item will be of prime importance. So we see that our DBMS must allow us to ac- cess the data items in various combinations to serve our in- formational needs. . . .the majority of home computer owners use simple file managers that are tike electronic versions of card files . . . Every DBMS will allow you to add, change or delete records. Most will include menu options to sort your file alphabetically or numerically, to search through all records for a specific data item or to generate printed reports. You may be able to 'screen' data entry (so that all 'age'" entries are certain to be numeric for example). You may be able to create sub-files consisting of all the records that have a specific common data item. As an example, you could search a magazine file to make a file of all the TPUG Magazine art- icles written by Jim Butterfield. Although you can add or delete records, your DBMS may not allow you to add or delete data items. In other words, if you forget to include a certain data item — 'machine type', say — when you set up your user group file, you may have a lot of difficulty adding it later on. The reason for this is that the majority of home computer owners use simple file managers that are like electronic versions of card files. These are popular for simple applications because they're easy to use, but some users might find them limiting. Greater capabilities are offered by relational systems (like dBase II). or by network/hierarchical systems. These, however, require the user to develop data dictionaries and to learn query languages. These systems are beyond both the scope of this article and the inclinations of most users. But despite their complexities, they are essentia] when informa- tional needs and data volumes become enormous, as is the case with the government, NASA or CompuServe. The volume of data and the sophistication of the DBMS often go hand-in-hand. Still, it's very important to give con- siderable thought to the construction of your files, especial- ly when using a 'simple file manager' type DBMS. Determine exactly what data you wish to keep and what information you will want to derive from those data. Plan ahead, and you'll have fewer headaches later on. □ March 1985 23 per hour, with all common data bases substantially more expensive on the lat- ter (all costs given are in U.S. funds, and are subject to change). For example, a very useful business oriented data base called ABI/INFORM carries an online connect charge of $73.00 per hour. Its coverage includes journals such as Foreign Investment Review and Harvard Business Review. Another very significant vendor is the Bibliographic Retrieval System, more popularly known as 'BRS'. BRS uses a version of the STAIRS software original- ly developed by IBM, which many profes- sional searchers Find more flexible and powerful than that of DIALOG. Unfor- tunately, BRS does not have the huge number of data bases that DIALOG does, but it does have some unique and useful files. For example, BRS has a version of Grolier's Academic American En- cyclopedia which (unlike the version of- fered by CompuServe) is full-text sear- chable. This means that an encyclopedia article can be retrieved on any word oc- curring in it, not just words appearing in the headings. BRS also has a regular col- umn in its monthly bulletin mentioning successful microcomputer configurations for accessing their system. Like DIALOG, BRS has brought out a scaled- down system — 'BRS After Dark' — especially for home computers. DIALOG uses what is called a 'free' search vocabulary. Not all data bases do. ERIC (Educational Resources Informa- tion Center), for example, uses a 'con- trolled' vocabulary, meaning that the allowable index terms are specified in a structured list called a 'thesaurus'. It is easier in some cases to search on such terms to achieve better 'recall' — the recovery of a larger fraction of the rele- vant items in the data base. This is achiev- ed by finding the relevant terms in the thesaurus and using these in the search, with reasonable assurance that human in- dexers have used these terms to index the great majority of useful items. If this sounds technical, it is because we have wandered into a technical area — one in which librarians in particular have made exhaustive studies. In fact, your local librarian may well be a gold mine of information about online searching. Librarians in special and university libraries have been involved in this field for many years, and those in larger public libraries are beginning to get into the act as more and more of their clients become aware of the efficiency of literature sear- ching by computer. If you cannot find another librarian knowledgeable in this field, I will be hap- py to try to answer any questions you may have. Just write to me at the follow- ing address: Don Fox, 7511 Chelsea Road, Richmond, B.C., V7C 3S7 One final example of a data base that I'm sure will be of interest to many: the Microcomputer Index, available through DIALOG. It covers the majority of magazines and newspapers of interest to owners of personal computers, and has been described by the Omni Directory as "one of the great blessings of the online world" for 'computer freaks'. Abstracts of articles are included, but not the full text. This brings up another matter pertain- ing to those data bases that are essential- ly computerized lists of references. How does one obtain an article or other publication once one has identified it in such a service? Ah, but that is the sub- ject of another article. Suffice it to say for now that the services I have mention- ed do provide for online ordering of documents in one way or another. Happy searching! Programmers Guild Products Ltd. 255 ManuLife Place 10180- 101 Street Edmonton, Alberta T5J 3S4 Telephone (403) 428-6229 5 'A" DISKS 100% Certified SSDD —$1.60 DSDD — $2.50 Minimum Quantity 50 Disks Per Order VISA ACCEPTED J Money Back Guarantee if Not Fully Satisfied DELIVERY EXTRA 24 TPUG Magazine NEW FOR HIGH SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS IF A STUDENT WANTS TO CHANGE HIS TIMETABLE . . CAN YOU DO IT? S£5 so\> c^- The WYCOR Class Scheduling System lets you: — Add new students, change existing timetables. — Checks all available classes, class sizes. — Displays 32 best timetables that minimize class sizes. — Lets YOU pick the timetable. — Prints the new timetable. — Updates class size. — Prepares a teachers change list. — Other reports available. WYCOR BUSINESS SYSTEMS 170 The Donway West, Suite 401 Toronto, Canada M3C 2G3 Tel. (416) 444-3492 B COMAL REFERENCE GUIDE Sixty-four pages outlining all the C64 COMAL keywords, with sections on the language's superb String Handling, Procedures and Parameters, Expressions and Standard Functions. $9.95 COMAL Reference Guide I by Gorge R. Christensen With o (orewonj by Jim butwrtleW Send cheque or money order to: TPUGInc, Dept. A., 1912 Avenue Rd., Ste. 1, Toronto, Canada WI5M 4A1 OS/9 IS HERE TPUG has implemented the popular 6809 operating system 'OS/9' on the SuperPET. Super-OS/9 greatly expands software availability and the hardware capabilities of this computer while at the same time preserving access to the Waterloo languages and programs. The cost of Super-OS/9 to club members will be $195 (Cdn.), which will include the cost of a hardware modification that will not affect the normal operation of the SuperPET. Two board SuperPETs require a simple hardware modification — we provide instructions, To obtain your copy please send $195 (Cdn.) to: TPUG (1912A Avenue Rd., Suite 1, Toronto, Ont., M5M 4A1, Canada). What does Super-OS/9 offer? • A true operating system with UNIX features and the simplicity and command style of Commodore BASIC; • Multi-tasking and multi-user environment; • Multi-level directories similar to those available in MS DOS 2.0. ; • Time and date stamp for all directory entries (files); • File access privileges may be restricted by the owner of a file, Extensive software is available for OS/9, most of which will run on the SuperPET. The Super-OS/9 package includes an assembler, editor, command (shell) library monitor, symbolic debugger and 25K RAM Disk. Available Languages (compilers) include BASIC-09, Pascal, CIS-COBOL, 'C Language, and others. Available Applications Programs: Word processors, business, inventory and accounting applications. Public Domain: Software, relational database and spreadsheets, extensive public domain software and documentation. TPUG will acquire public domain software and assist users in the conversion of commercial software to Commodore format. Portability and Expandability • Super-OS/9 programs will run on all OS/9-based microcomputers. • Super-OS/9 will run hard disks and parallel drives, • There will be source code compatibility to versions of OS/9 that are planned for the Motorola 68000, For information call TPUG Inc. (416)782-8900 (416)782-9252 For technical information Gerry Gold (416) 667-3159/225-8760 Avy Moise (416) 667-3954/667-9898 Probing The Mind Prober by Mikhail Epelbaum Copyright * 1984 Mikhail Epelbaum, M.D. Reproduction is allowed, provided this note is included. It was heralded by science fiction writers a long time ago. Now artificial in- telligence is knocking on the door, whether we're ready for it or not. It is not taking the form of walking and talk- ing humanoid robots, but of Expert Systems: sophisticated software packages that are able to perform com- plex tasks and learn from their mistakes. I am a psychiatrist and, being unable to write such software for myself, I resorted to waiting. I spent time talking to the representatives of software houses at various scientific conferences: bored- looking young people, intimidated by the huge numbers of bearded, pipe-smoking men whose jargon is even worse than Computerese. Well, apart from the famous Eliza, the simulated psychotherapist, there is not much written; at least, not much that relates directly to my profession. Most of the software for psychiatrists is of the usual business variety: spreadsheets, schedulers, database managers. The on- ly thing more specialized is for psychological testing. And, of course, you are lucky if you don't also have to buy a VAX to run it on. Psychological testing is a special tool designed to measure and compare dif- ferent variables of human thinking and behavior. There are basically two major kinds of tests: questionnaire and pictorial. Most common in the world of computers are tests of the questionnaire type — they are so much easier to quantify. The most successful of these, the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), con- sists of five hundred or so questions that require 'yes/no' or 'true/false' answers. The results are compared to a database of possible answers by people of all walks of life, professions, degrees of craziness. The pictorial type (the familiar Rorschach, for example) consists of a set of pictures that one is supposed to inter- pret. These tests give much more room to the imagination, but are much more difficult to quantify and interpret, especially for a computer — our PETs are still suffering from rather concrete thinking. I personally do not have much use for the testing: I am capable of doing the job in my mind. When I read the results of my patient's testing and it coincides with what I think, I will approvingly nod my business executives. These programs have intriguing titles, all of which incor- porate the word 'edge': The Sales Edge, The Management Edge, The Corn- head. If it says something drastically dif- ferent, I will be more inclined to rely on my experience and intuition. The testing is not a substitute for other forms of evaluation, but a tool, an adjunct. Some tasks — those involving mass screening of some sort, for instance — are much easier and cheaper with testing than with individual interviews. But how can you do it with the computer? Quite simply: sit in front of it, answer a couple of hundred questions, and have your personality profile printed out, more or less accurately. Quite a few programs will do this, or something like it. One company, The Human Edge Soft- ware Corporation, takes a slightly dif- ferent approach. They offer a series of programs for personality assessment — of others, as well as of oneself — geared not only to psychiatrists, but also to munication Edge, The Negotiation Edge. The edge. Is there anything beyond it? These programs, created for the IBM PC, are not cheap. Now, though, The Human Edge has begun to translate some of these for the Commodore. More than that, they have produced a program that will serve as an introduction to the more sophisticated packages: The Mind Prober. Well, I thought (on learning this), maybe I am too skeptical. This may be my chance to assess an Expert System in the comfort of my own C-64. Maybe I will even change my mind about the psychological testing. So I mailed away my order (the address is: The Human Edge Software Corporation, 2445 Faber Place, Palo Alto, California, 94303). The Mind Prober costs $25.00 U.S., 26 TPUG Magazine plus $5.00 for delivery. It is delivered pro- mptly, except for one little problem: ap- parently The Human Edge does not have the proper channels for distributing soft- ware in Canada. I had to pay the customs hnikerage fee, another $1 5.0*1 (Canadian this time). The Mind Prober comes in a very at- tractive package containing a book and a disk. The book layout is flashy. The print is very large, with page-long chapters, and lots of diagrams — pyramids, squares, triangles, ovals and other geometrical shapes, with writing in them. I quickly diagnosed it as a typical 'How to survive in this world and avoid going to a psychiatrist' self-help book, and put it away. The disk itself is full: only 17 blocks free. It is, of course, uncopyable (at least for me). Trying to back it up on my MSD dual drive produced nothing but a lot of flashes, clicks and whirs. The Human Edge, however, offers a backup copy for another $10.00 U.S. The disk is filled -with small and large programs and sequential files, all with cryptic names. The Mind Prober will load on the MSD drive (a sigh of relief), but be prepared to wait a couple of minutes. After a while, a rather attrac- tive logo appears, so you don't have to stare at the empty screen; and then, final- ly, the main menu comes up. It's simple: instructions, new assessment, reporting and quit. Except when the computer is busy with the disk drive or the printer, it is possible to quit from almost anywhere in the program. I never have the time to read manuals. The Mind Prober has its manual built in: just press 'H' at any moment, and some kind of explanation will pop up on the screen. These are, for the most part, unnecessary. The New Assessment mode will pre- sent you with about three screenfuls of adjectives, with which you either agree (press 'A'), or disagree (press 'D'). You can scroll up and down the list. A very nice feature of the program is that you can stop the assessment at any moment and save what you've done so far, then continue with it at another time. The pro- gram will allow for only eight assessments to be stored within it. Beyond that, you will have to sacrifice one of your analy sands. The assessment should not take more than ten to fifteen minutes. Now comes the most interesting part: The Report. The Report takes a lot of preparation — a lengthy period of on-again, off-again disk activity. You cannot leave, never- theless, as every now and then you have to answer questions — mostly of the 'yln' type. Finally, the printout begins. The Mind Prober is very fussy about . . .The section on sex is for adults only. Those individuals un- fortunate enough to be younger than eighteen have to make do with a section on school instead . . . the printer. My Smith-Corona dot-matrix printer with its Tymac Connection inter- face makes the perfect emulation of the 1525 printer on power-up. That is, it's perfect for all the other applications I have tried (word processing, spreadsheet, BASIC programs) that assume a 1525 on the end of the cable. The Mind Prober is different. It breaks lines in the least ex- pected places and skips complete pages between paragraphs. The only workable combination of parameters was conver- sion to ASCII on the BusCard and auto- linefeed mode on the printer. This work- ed satisfactorily, except that all the up- per case characters (save for the analy- :;and's initials) were converted to lower case. It is not possible to print out several assessments in a row — you have to go through the whole lengthy process of preparing The Report every time. This is not a great inconvenience, but it would be nice to be able to write reports to the disk. Anyway, what does it have to say, with or without the upper case? The printouts are about two pages long, divided into brief sections: general description, relationships, coping with work, stress, sex and 'What Makes Them lick'. The section on sex, by the way, is for adults only. Those individuals unfor- tunate enough to be younger than eigh- teen have to make do with a section on school instead. Quality? Not bad, for a computer. It seems that The Mind Prober is much more at ease when there is one pronounc- ed feature, positive or negative, in the subject's personality. The more one-sided the person is, the closer the description will be. Unfortunately (for The Mind Prober), most of us are more complicated than that. It was unpleasant to read The Mind Prober's assessments of some of the people I know: it grotesquely exag- gerated just one aspect of their personali- ty and ignored the rest. The assessments are quite subjective anyway. You, the examiner, give your own judgemental opinions to a computer and expect the machine to compile them into a coherent, scientific-looking, concise report. Well, some of us are more eloquent, more trained in putting thoughts into words and onto paper than others. The Mind Prober will help those who cannot do that in formulating their thoughts and, for some, maybe even open new vistas in their relationships with people. So what is the bottom line? The Mind Prober is an interesting ex- eercise in artificial intelligence, a major programming success. It gives some idea of The Human Edge's expert systems (and helped me decide not to buy them). I don't think The Mind Prober will be of much use to people who possess more than an absolute minimum of understan- ding of themselves or others. Anyone who needs a program like this to com- prehend people could probably use more substantial help . . . Maybe they should see a psychiatrist? G THE ULTIMATE SIMULATION HAR TREK-- THE GAME * ■THE GAME- Version II For The 64 • Impressive Graphics With Hi-Res Features • Realistic Sound • Strategic Thought Involvement • The Only Game That Parallels The T.V. Series And Movies U H LAND Dept. A P.O. Box 1324 Meaford, Ont. N0H 1Y0. Canada (519) 538-1758 SOFTWARE (Disk Only) $21.95 Cdn. $19.95 U.S. Ont. Residents Add 7% Provincial Soles Tax Pleose Make Cheque Or Money Order Payable To Dave Neole Dealer Inquiries Invited Even Spock Would Find It Challenging March 1985 27 An Interview with Dave Neale DaveNeale ofMeaford, Ontario, is a CP Air pilot ivho programmed an advanced version of the classic computer game Star Trek while laid off. He was intervieived for TPUG Magazine by Ken. Cox. TPUG: What's the concept of Star Trek? Neale: I would compare it with a game of chess for strategy. It's not an arcade. You can sit and take your time to think about it. You can leave the game on for days. There's a close balance between the number of Klingons and the number of star dates. If you move around too much it takes up your time. You have to rid the galaxy of the Klingons, all 81 quadrants. TPUG: So, do you use your wits and memory? Neale: The more you play, you see that they are more important. You have to operate the Enterprise to its maximum efficiency, with accurate moves. You are given devices, a library computer, torpedo data, navigational data etc. You've got to minimize the number of moves to kill all the Klingons, which minimizes the time. The Klingons will at- tack the Federation headquarters on a certain date. If you go beyond that star date you've lost. TPUG: How long does a game take? Neale: Usually 45 minutes to an hour. It depends. I can get blown away in the first quadrant. I don't win every time. TPUG: When you first got hold of Star Trek it was a BASIC program? Neale: A BASIC program with no graphics. For example the Enterprise was a 'less than' and 'greater than' sign with 'e' in the middle. A Klingon was the same with 'k' in the middle. I added the colour, then I thought I'd get into pro- gramming the characters, and that spark- ed the interest in graphics — making the Enterprise look like the Enterprise. I found one big problem. I was operating everything in BASIC. So I had to do one very important step in programming — I had to jump to machine code. TPUG: Like a jump to hyperspace. Neale: Yes. I've got a theory about machine code. You've got to write a pro- gram a week. If you don't, you'll forget it. TPUG: So you started converting. Neale: The short-range scan used to take three and a half seconds to generate. I spent the next week learning machine language. I made more errors than achievements at first. And lo and behold, up comes the machine version. Zip, it's there! TPUG: It was modular. Neale: That's pretty well how it is all set up. A BASIC operating system with machine subroutines. Nowadays most of my programming is in machine code. The BASIC is compiled. TPUG: What's your latest module? Neale: I've just spent two weeks adding semi-artificial intelligence to the Klingons. It looks several moves ahead and decides whether or not it should go to that location. You are adding a per- sonality to the Klingon. If he knows he can't shoot you from one position, he'll move to one where he can, TPUG: There is an early version of the program in public domain? Neale: Yes. The first version was donated to TPUG (disk (C)T6). I wanted to see how many Trekkies were out there. I didn't feel at the time it was marketable, because of Sega Corporation coming out with their own Star Trek. As far as I'm concerned, Sega's ain't worth playing. TPUG: Is Sega's the same concept? Neale: No. Theirs is a 'shoot 'em up' game. Virtually the same as in an arcade. The graphics are good, but the plot is not appealing. TPUG: Back to the TPUG release. . . Neale: I put on a message with my name and address. It said, if there's enough in- terest, version two would be in the works, and I listed ideas for it. I said, send two dollars. There has to be a hundred thou- sand copies of version one out in the world, maybe half a million. Electronic Games magazine rated it their number one game off CompuServe for 1984. TPUG: And how much money did you get? Neale: Out of 57 replies, I got about 100 dollars TPUG: That's not much. Neale: I thought that was very poor. A lot of people said they loved the game, yet the money never came. TPUG: Despite that, you are selling ver- sion two? Neale: The disk costs $21.95 Canadian or S19.95 US, which includes a one year membership to the Star Trek club and quarterly newsletter. TPUG: How many copies have you sold? Neale: The club membership is just shy of a hundred. I don't live off this by any means. I have to be in it for the fun. People don't realize there are so many im- provements in version two. TPUG: Tell me about the authenticity of your program. Neale: Anything I try to come up with for Star Trek, 95 percent of the time I want it to be in line with either the series or the movies, I'm working right now to get the Romulans into it. TPUG: You are working on version three. What will you do after that? Neale: Version four: 'Star Trek Career'. The 28 TPUG Magazine Versatile Mortgage Calculator by Jim Butterfield Copyright • 1984 Jim Butterfield. Per- mission to reprint this material is hereby granted, provided this notice is in- cluded in the reprinted material. Printing a mortgage schedule isn't a tough job. But when the payments vary — as with an 'open' mortgage — most programs don't hold up too well. This program allows you to take care of an irregular payment schedule. All the details go into DATA statements 1 so that you can SAVE the program with everything included. The payments constitute the last DATA items and consist of DATA pairs: "amount* and 'time period*. Thus, if you were to pay 500 dollars for three months, 600 dollars for two months, and then 700 dollars for the re- mainder of the mortgage period, you would code a DATA statement as: 40 data 500,3,600,2,700,0 Note that the last value — zero — means 'for ever'. You could use a very large number, such as 9999, but zero does the trick just as well. Watch carefully for the interest calculation on line 170. It's written for . . .Printing a mortgage schedule isn't a tough job. But when the payments vary . . . Canadian mortgages. If you use the program for U.S. mortgages, change this line to: 170 i-M /1 200 :rem u.s. calculation Variable / is the monthly rate, which is worked out differently in the two countries. Last items: Dollar amounts are con- verted to integer pennies, which saves you a lot of work and possible errors. Also, note that the program is given in upper/lower case. That allows you to produce a neater printout. Watch closely for numeric '1 ' versus the lower case letter T. n 20 data "Santa C laus" , 13. 5,2000,99 -rem name, rate, amount n 30 data "October". .1934 40 data 200, 2. .300,0 payment, number of periods 100 poke 59468,14: print chr*<14> 110 print "Mortgage Schedule Jim Butterfield" 120 dim m*<12):s*=" 1 30 rn$= " . . janf ebmaraprmayjunju lauotsepoctnoudec" 140 -for j=l to 12:m*<j>=mid*<m*,j*3,3>:next 150 read n*: pr int" Mortgage : ";nS 160 read il :print"flnnual rate <?i>:";il 170 i=<l+il/200">ti":i/6)-l :rem Canadian calculation 190 read al : print "fimount at starts";al :a= int<al*100+5> 190 read y :print"Number of payments :";y 208 read z* sprint "Month of -first payments ";z*;;if len<z*X3then stop 210 m=12?:ml=ascCz*"Jand m :m2=asc<mid*<z*,2>>and m: m3=asc<mid*<z*,3> >and m 220 z*=chr*<ml>+chr*<m3> 230 -for j=i to 12: if z*=m*<j> goto 250 240 next j :stop 250 n=j :for j = l to 1 :next j -read y3:print y3 260 read pl,nl :p=int<pl#100+. 5) 270 print" Press P to print; S to stop; 2S8 print" SPftCE to display..." 290 get z*:if z*=""goto290 300 i-f asctz*>=30 then end 310 p9=0: i-f asc<z*?=80 then p9=4:open4,p9:oi*- chr*<17? :print#4,«t*;" ";n* 329 print" Balance=", • a/100; "@"; i 1 ; "?: ";y3 330 i-f p9 then print#4,oi*;" Balances" ;a*/180; "@"; il;"*: ";y3 348 i3=6:p3=0 350 print"Mth Interest Payment Balance" 360 i-f p99 then pr int#4,oi*;"Mth Interest Payment <3 spaces>Ba lance" 370 i2=int<i*a+.5*> :i-f P>a+i2 then p=a+i2 380 i3=i3+i2:p3=p3+p:a=a+i2-p 390 m*=chr*<asc<m*<n>>+128>+mic"*<:m*<n>,2> rprint m#; 395 i-f p9 then pr i nt#4 ,<*$;" Tot " ; 400 x=i2:gosub 620 :x=p:gosub 620;x=a;gosub 600: print; i-f p9 then print#4 410 nl=nl-isif nl=0 then read pl,nl :p=int<pl*108+.5'> 420 y=y-l :n=n+l 430 it n<13 and y>0 arid a>0 goto 370 440 print"Tot";:i-f p9 then print#4,°t«; "Tot" ; 450 x=i3:gosub 620 460 print"" :i-f p9 then print#4 470 it y=0 or aO0 goto 518 480 y3=y3+l :n=l 498 if p9 then print#4 560 close4:goto270 510 close4:end 60S l=19:goto 636 628 1=8 638 a*=right*<s*+strtCintCx>),l> 640 if x=8 then a*=right*<s*+"00", l> 650 x*=left*<a*,len<a*>-2+". "+right*<a*,2> 66Q print x*;:if p9 then pr int#4,x*; 670 return March 1985 29 CBM Printers and the C-64 by David Bradley At the present time there are three Commodore printers available for use with the Commodore 64: the MPS-801, the MPS-802 and the DPS-1101. Here is a description of each one so that you will be better able to make the right decision when it comes time for you to get that first printer. The MPS-801 The MPS-801, formerly known as the 1525, is at the low end of the printer scale, in price as well as in print quality. It prints 50 characters per second, has a tractor feed, is unidirectional, and costs about 279 dollars (Canadian). The MPS-802 The MPS-802, formerly known as the 1526, is in the middle of the pack as far as price goes, but the quality of print is much better than that of the MPS-801. One reason for this is that the pins in the print head are square instead of round. It prints 80 characters per second, has both tractor and friction feed, is bidirectional, and costs about 400 dollars (Canadian). The DPS-1101 The DPS-1101 is at the top of the Commodore printer line in both price and quality. The MPS-801 and MPS-802 are both dot matrix printers, while the DPS-1101 uses a daisy wheel. Things printed with the DPS-1101 look as though you took the time to type them on a typewriter. The DPS-1101 prints 17 characters per second, has friction feed, is bidirectional, has selectable pit- ches, and costs between 700 and 800 dollars (Canadian). One thing to take into consideration: the MPS-801 is a graphics printer, and there are a lot of commercial programs available that will print hi-resolution stuff. The MPS-802 has graphic capabilities, but the graphics are completely different from those of pretty well any other printer on the market. That is why there are very few programs (commercial or public domain) that will print hi-resolution graphics on the MPS-802. Another point: the MPS-801 does not have descenders on the 'g', the 'j\ the 'p', the 'q' or the 'y'. This always hampered me as a student using my printer for schoolwork, because my teachers hated the way the aforementioned characters looked. There is one solution to this problem: TPUG member Paul Blair has changed the character set on the MPS-801, and his crea- tion is now available in Canada through another TPUG member, Bill Bullock. This life-saving EPROM is going to cost between 15 and 20 dollars, and will soon be available from: Wilanta Arts, 6943 Barrisdale Drive, Mississauga, ON L5N 2H5. Note the print sample: quite an improvement, eh? The last thing I should tell you is the price of replacement rib- bons. The MPS-801 ribbon costs $9.95, the MPS-802 ribbon costs $15.95, and the DPS-1101 ribbons cost $14.95 (please note that the DPS-1101 uses a standard IBM ribbon, so prices may vary). So which one should you get? Well, if you want something cheap for program listings and letters to friends, you should get the MPS-801, with the Blair/Bullock EPROM. If you want about as near to letter quality as you can get at a reasonable price (and still be able to list programs with the Commodore graphics characters intact) you should get the MPS-802. If you want to send out business letters and use your printer professionally, then I would recommend the DPS-1101. Don't let the printer dictate what you can do with it after you get it. Figure out what you want it to do for you, then go out and buy the one that will best do the job! If you cannot find a Commodore printer that will meet your requirements, you can always look into getting a different brand that is Commodore-compatible. Just be sure — before you buy — that the printer and whatever interface you choose will do what you want! Good luck. . . RBCDEFGH IJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXVZ *bcd»f ah i J k I mrroP q rstawwxca z RBCDEFGH I JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdef ghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGH I JKLMN0PQR5TUVWXYZ abcde-fghijKlmropqra-tuuuxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdef ghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyz The alphabet on various CBM printers. From top to bottom: the MPS-801 (formerly the 15-25); the MPS-801 with modified character set, available from Wilanta Arts of Mississauga; the MPS-802 (formerly the 152$); and (bottom) the DPS-1101 daisy wheel printer. 30 TPUG Magazine LIST and AntiLIST by Dave Neale Come on, admit it! You've tried to list someone else's program to see how those tricks were done. I know I have, many times. Actually there's nothing to be ashamed of — it's done all the time by programmers who just want to learn that extra little bit to improve their program- ming abilities. Almost all commercial software uses some method of preventing users from gaining access to the inner workings of the program. There are many different ways to prevent a program from being listed. Some are fairly easy to install, but others need a separate program to create the desired effect. I think the easiest method, and probably the most familiar, is the line containing a REM with a shifted L. The shifted L throws a monkey wrench into BASIC'S list routine, and causes listing to break off with the 'SYN- TAX ERROR' message. There is another approach to anti- listing, of course: disabling STOP/RESTORE - you can't list a pro- gram if you can't stop it from running. This is done very nicely by just one line: POKE 808,234. This also has a wonder- ful side effect: besides disabling STOP/RESTORE, this poke affects the list routine in such a way that someone who does find a way of breaking in will see only garbage. Another approach is to change the vec- tor pointing to the list routine, and point it to some other routine. Whenever the list is requested, the routine you pointed the vector to will be called, and not the list routine. The list vector is located at 774-775 (decimal). You could alter the vector to point to the cold start routine, for instance, with POKE 774,226: POKE 775,252. With the aid of a memory map and a bit of experimentation, there are lots of possibilities to explore in this area. I've come across two programs that stop the listing of certain lines only. One program alters the forward pointer of the BASIC line before the one you want hid- den, to point to the line after the one you want hidden. In simpler terms: line 10 points to line 20, which in turn points to 30; change line 10 to point to line 30, and 20 disappears. Line 20's line number is also changed to zero. One problem with this is that as soon as you enter a new line, line 20 will reappear; however, its line number will be zero regardless of where it's located. The second program simply puts a zero and several colons at the start of each line. When the zero is encountered dur- ing the list, BASIC assumes end of line and goes on to the next line. Thus the line numbers will be printed but nothing after them. There are several ways of using machine code to alter the ability to list. A program can be entirely in BASIC ex- cept for one routine that alters the start location of the BASIC. By doing this, the list would look as simple as this: 10 SYS 2075. However, what you may not know is that the rest of the BASIC is further up in memory. The code at 2075 alters the start of BASIC pointer to the start of the real BASIC program. An additional routine can change the return vector that was stored on the stack to point to a new location where the real program is located. Another routine that caught my eye moves the BASIC higher up in memory, then places several hundred lines before the main program, each with a listing er- ror that doesn't affect the run (i.e. REM shifted L). To get around this you would have to delete so many lines that you would probably damage your RETURN key, unless you used a utility package with a delete feature. No matter what method for anti-list is chosen, there is always a way around it. You can bet someone will try to find it and succeed. It's at this point that the moral issue comes in. The person who gets past the anti-list routines put in by the programmer must then decide what to do with the prize. As mentioned, lots of useful knowledge can sometimes be ob- tained by checking out the code, but if the intruder goes so far as to alter the original programmer's name or copyright notice or, for that matter, any notice that was put in by the programmer, then he or she is going too far. Credit should always be given where credit is due — no acknowledgements to the programmer should ever be altered, especially if you give the program away to someone else. Another approach the original pro- grammer can take to protect his or her program is to allow the program to be listed but not altered in any way. An ex- ample of this is on last year's C(T6) disk. My Star Trek VI on that disk could be listed but not altered, as I did not want anyone else to start adapting that version of the program. The trick was done by us- ing the SYS command to jump to a loca- tion in BASIC containing a value of 96 — the machine language code to return from a subroutine (RTS). If this value is moved ahead or back by so much as a byte — as will happen if the program is altered — then the SYS may never find a return, and the machine will be off to never-never land. D Jim Butterfield's VaIentine's Day PnoqRAMiviiNq Contest Write a Valentine program that asks tlie user for his or her sweetheart's name, then clears the screen and ■prints a heart with that name within it. The name may be up to ten characters long. Hard copy output is not necessary, but can be provided, if desired. The winner will be announced during the TPUG 1985 Conference Banquet, so get started today! (See contest rules on page 7 of this issue.) March 1985 31 Library Additions TPUG's library of public domain soft- ware grows month by month. Hundreds of disks containing thousands of pro- grams are available to TPUG members at the nominal cost often dollars per disk. Considering that each disk is packed with good programs, at today 's software prices this is a fantastic value. In order for the library to keep grow- ing, our librarians need a constant supply of new programs. If you have written a program or a collection of programs that you think might be an asset to the library, please send it to: TPUG Program Library, 1912A Avenue Road, Suite 1, Toronto, Ontario M5M 4A1, Canada. If your contribution is accepted you will be writ thf library disk of your choice. If for some reason, your contribution is not needed, your original disk will be return- ed to you. On these pages our librarians describe the most recent additions to the library. December VIC 20 Disk: (V)TE The December VIC disk has lots of variety. There are games for everyone, from preschoolers to adults, plus hi-res pictures, a tape directory and two joystick drawing programs. One of these is Joy Draw SX. Joy Draw SX is documented using a program called Joy Draw Ins. Unfortunately, I found it hard to read and absorb all the information as it flew by on the screen. You can dump the instructions to a printer, if you have one, by: adding :open 3,4 to line 30; changing line 70 to read print#3,a$; and adding these lines: 97 PRINT#3 96 CLOSE3 99 END The program has plenty of features: you can save your screen to disk or tape, or dump it to a printer; you can change screen, border, character, and auxiliary character colours while creating a screen; you can use the 'floating cursor' mode to move the cursor without drawing; and you can draw a line at any angle just by typing in the coordinates. Even with all that, if you take out the remarks and shorten the variable names, Joy Draw SX will run on an unexpanded VIC. There is one bug at line 1 180 in the main program: change POKEX.9 to POKEX.8 for disk, and POKEX.1 for tape. A minor flaw is that the foreground colour is not saved to disk with the rest of the data. That's not too serious, unless you load in a picture whose background colour matches the current foreground colour, in which case the picture will be invisible! The solution is to change the background colour after loading, or to select a new foreground colour and reload, Thanks to Bob Rockefeller of Langton, Ontario, for submitting this fine program. Next month, look for a disk menu program that automatically updates the list of contents, and a program that will display the 'list-me' to screen without the REMs and the line numbers... And remember, More memory only means more garbage collecting. Long live the VIC! Presented by Daryl King January C-64 Disk: (C£F On this disk you'll find utility, educational and communication programs, as well as entertaining games and music programs. I'd particularly like to mention two of the utilities: Screen 40.3 and Manager 64. Screen 40.3 allows you to draw on the screen using all available colours, cursor controls, text and graphics characters. The program even senses if you are in upper/lower case or upper/graphics, and sets up the screen accordingly. When you're satisfied with what you've drawn, the program will write a BASIC routine to generate your screen automatically. This could be a real time saver for programmers, or you can just have fun with it, creating and saving your own artwork. If you want to see an example of what I did with the program, load and run 40.3 sample. c. Another bonus for would-be machine language program- mers: the PAL assembler source code for the machine language portion of this program is also provided on the disk. Good luck. . . Manager 64 is a productivity tool for the Commodore 64. It allows the user to manage his activities more easily, through use of a disk directory. From this directory, the user can manage his files, load programs and run them, al! with just a few keystrokes. At the moment, the program is entirely in BASIC, so it's not too quick. But fear not! The author will be converting it into total machine language and interfacing it with the operating system, so that its productivity features will lit' far greater. The program has seven file commands, and many other features that are explained by the author in the thorough documentation on the disk. A real life saver on the January disk is Drink & Drive — a program that will assist you in getting home safely after a few brews with the gang. It will tell you the number of drinks you can have over a certain period of time, how many hours to wait before driving after that certain number of drinks, and the maximum number of drinks you can have in one hour. It will also calculate your blood alcohol level, based on how much you have drunk over a period of time. All of this is based on your sex and your weight. A 200-pound male should be able to consume 7.2 drinks over a five hour period and still be under the legal limit. If the same male were to have ten drinks, he should wait nine hours before considering getting behind the wheel of a car. That same man can have a maximum of 3.7 drinks in one hour. The program defines one drink as 1.5 ounces of hard liquor, one 12 ounce bottle of normal beer, or 5 ounces of wine. It is believed to be fairly accurate, but if the computer tells you that you are all right, even though you do not feel up to driving, then don't drive until you feel well enough. And remember. . . moderation! Lastly, I would like to mention one of the music programs: Those Were The Days, the theme song from All In The Family. I don't know who arranged it, but it is very good. All you have to do is load and run those loader. c, then sit back and enjoy. Presented by David Bradley January PET Disk: (P)TF This month's disk includes two utility programs, two educational programs, and a few business programs. The utility programs are BASIC Disk Boot and MX80 Cassette Labeller. BASIC Disk Boot reads the directory (ignoring sequential files), puts it on the screen, and numbers each entry so that 32 TPUG Magazine 416-782-9252 Name TORONTO PET USERS GROUP INC. 1912A Avenue Rd., Ste, 1 Toronto, Ontario M5M 4A1 ORDER FORM 416-782-8900 Street Address City /Town /P.O. _ Province/State Postal/ZIP Code Membership # Telephone The prices indicated include postage and handling as well as Ontario Provincial Sales Tax (if applicable). Make cheque or money order payable to: TPUG. Disks To order club disks by mail, send $10.00 for each 4040/2031/1540/1541 disk (4040 format), and $12.00 for each 8050/8250 disk (8050 format). We do honour purchase orders from school boards. If you wish to order the total library to date for a specific computer (PET, SuperPET, VIC 20 or Commodore 64), contact the club office to find out how many disks there are currently. The cost is $8.00 per disk (4040 format) and $10.00 per disk (8050 format). These disks are for use with a Please send me the following: 3 Letter/No. Code computer and a Description disk drive. 4040 or 8050 Format Price Total .00 Tapes To order VIC 20 or Coimodore 64 library tapes, send $6.00 for each tape. If you wish to order the total library to date for the VIC 20 or Commodore 64, contact the club office to find out how many tapes there are currently. The cost is $5.00 per tape. To order PET/CBM or Commodore Educational Software tapes, send $10.00 for each tape. These tapes are for use with a computer and a datasette. _ - BASIC - 1.0 ( ), 2.0 ( ), 4.0 ( )? Description Price If for a PET computer - what model 3 Letter/No. Code Total .00 you can choose any one by its number. The second utility, MX80 Cassette Labeller, prints cassette box labels on an MX80 printer. A handy business program on this month's disk is Phone List 2.8, which produces a company phone directory. The list uses name (first and last), department and phone. The program will sort by any of these categories, including separate listings by departments. Ret Labels. 8 makes it easy to print return address labels, while Sort Names. 8 and Sort Numbers. 8 will sort lists of names or numbers entered from the keyboard. As for educational programs, Keyboarding, designed for a school board in Renton, Washington, to teach typing on the 8032, will probably delight most school teachers. It contains a set of programs and files for learning and practising touch-typing. The Keyboarding package was originally released on disk (P)XB — this program is an upgrade. Presented by Mike Donegan January SuperPET Disk: (S)TL On the January disk there are two major programs of interest, along with several utilities. With one exception, all the material on this disk is for the 6809 side of the SuperPET. The exception is a program to translate 6809 ASCII files to WordPro format. The first of the two major programs is a generalized bargraph plotting program. Written using Waterloo BASIC, it displays up to twenty horizontal bars. It is very easy to use, and comes with three sample and two documentation files, one being a tutorial. It provides output to printer, using the standard ASCII character set rather than the graphics mode. The program is set up for a Commodore 8023 printer. It worked with an Epson after I made two changes in the program. The areas to change are indicated in the documentation. This program, from ISPUG, was written by Delton P. Richardson. The second of the major programs is a text formatter. Also written under Waterloo BASIC, it provides a text composition facility based on the use of embedded commands called 'tags*. The text, written using an editor such as the Waterloo editor, with the tags located within the text file, is saved to disk. It is then processed by the text formatter. The facilities offered by the formatter include the ability to set and change margins, header and footer space, header title, do 34 TPUG Magazine line spacing, indent subparagraphs and justify right, left or both margins. Functions such as centering of text, changing print fonts (eight combinations are supported), underlining and emphasizing are provided. With the ability to call and insert external files at any point within the text, this program provides a reasonably full-function text formatter. While the program is set up to work with an Epson printer, it can easily be changed to operate with most other printers. Eleven pages of documentation are provided on the disk. This program was converted from the IBM-PC public domain, and extended with additional features by Bill Dutfield. The utilities on the disk include programs to set the date and time on the SuperPET and provide a scrolling control capability, an mBASIC program for sorting a small disk file, and a routine to print a two-column index or list. That about covers the contents of this month's disk. As usual, the disk contains a describe file providing further information. Presented by Bill Dutfield DfSKALIGNER FOR VOIR mi DISK DKIVr.! In lifsv lhan an hour, will) just ;i Phillips screw- driver and the* D1SKALIGNKK Disk, you can pin your !">4I back on Line, prrfrrtlv realigned! $29.95 Cdn. $24.95 U.S. (OnTji in Kc-.idiiii-.HUl 7 . PniviiM i.il Suit's Tax] V, G.R.Q Marketing Ltd P.O. Box 197; Tbornhilli Ontario i :n :in:i ^ In the Toronto area DISKALIGNER may be purchased at Electronics 2001 5529 Yonge St.. Willowdale, Ontario M2N5S3 (41 6(223-8400 Supercharge Your Piwammn Add far greater speed and versatility to your C64 1 or VIC-20 with Micol Systems' extraordinary new macro assembler package - System M2000 Since machine language programs usually run 40-60 limes faster than their BASIC counterparts, this inexpensive package is like buying a more powerful computer at a fraction ol the cost. A professional system that even the novice will find easy to use. it assembles kilobyte files in seconds and is one of the most powerful macro assemblers available. But it's more than just an assembler Your programming will be simplified wilh such well designed programming tools as a Text Editor which has all the handy features allowing you to create youi programs easily and a machine language Monitor, a sophis- ticated debugging tool and complete man to machine language interface. The package is 100% machine code and fully copyable lor your convenience. Available on disk or cassette. Do you already have an Assembler? It so. you need MICOL MON. the Mighty Machine Language Monitor — the supef debugger from System M2000, sold separately. Available for C64 and Apple II on Disk. Priced lower lhan most games. Available at finer computer outlets. For the dealer nearest you call U.S.A.: Kapri International (818)768-7888 Toll Free 1-800-225-2774 Canada: Access Computer Services (416)736-4402 Toll Free 1-800-268-1238 Micol Systems. 100GraydonHallDr.. Suite 2301 , Don Mills. Ont. Canada M3A 3A9 SCREEN DUMPER 64 " COPYRIGHT 1984 BY MICRO-W DISTRIBUTING INC. How would you like to have a copy of all of the text or graphics that appear on your monitor screen? Well SCREEN DUMPER 64™ may be what you are looking for. This program will transfer to your printer* a copy of what you see on your monitor screen including hi-resolution graphics, text, and multicolor sprite, etc. It even works with the KOALA PAD-. You can load this program into your computer in a hidden location so that it shouldn't interfere with your programs. This means that you can use your Commo- dore 64 normally and then call up this routine to dump what is on the screen. Colors are repre- sented by 16 shades of gray for faithful reproductions. ALL THIS FOR ONLY $29.95 Call: (201) 838-9027 To Order Micro** DISTRIBUTING INC 1342 B Route 23 Butler. N J 07405 Repairs 1541 Pinned Alignment C-64 48 hour turn-around time. Call for rates on other products. Send cheque or money order plus $5.00 shipping. R.A. MICRO SERVICING Ltd. 12 East 4th Avenue Vancouver, B.C. VST 1E8 (604) 876-4611 $49.95 $59.95 AH work guaranteed JIM BUTTERFIELD'S C-64 SPELL CHECKER FEATURING: • Word Pro compatible • Global File Check • Multiple drives • Customize your own dictionary disks '^M^f • Automatic document corrections with the wordprocessor • "Bump free" loading — MSD — 2 compatible • Over 30,000 words AVAILABLE AT FINE COMPUTER STORES EVERYWHERE OR ORDER DIRECT ■- P RO-LINI ^^^MH^MMIM^^H^^^H^^^^^HMHIMBIIIIISOFTWARI 755 The Queensway East, Unit 8, Mississauga, Ontario. Canada L4Y 4C5 . Phone 416-273-6350 Reviews. The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed by Racter Warner Books $9,95 (US), $10.95 (Cdn.) Racter hap written a book to delight English teachers, inspire hackers, and threaten poets. How can a large-size, quality paperback do so much for so many? By stripping the mask from his machine-mind, Racter takes us on a bizarre and fantastic journey through his interior self. It would take hundreds of group sessions and years of gestalt to make his readers and reviewers as unabashedly open and unselfconsciously honest as this wit, poet and raconteur. Racter, by the way, is the six-letter ver- sion of Raconteur. Anyone objecting to the gender bestowed upon Racter by the reviewer will be forced to read my disser- tation Origins of Sexism in Artificial Intelligence, There are other programs on the market with which to write poetry, haiku being singularly adaptable. But Racter is more than an artificial writer that reaches into the appropriate file to pick out nouns, verbs and modifiers. And Racter is more highly developed than ar- tificial intelligence which tries to replicate human thinking. This is a creative soul capable of writing original works without prompting from a human operator. "Reflections are images of tarnished aspirations" is an example of Racter's adroitly epigrammatic computer . . .This is a creative soul capable of writing original works without prompting from a human operator. . . philosophy. Besides providing such im- aginative theses for class debate, Racter could make grammar classes less boringly repetitious by providing surrealistic sentences to parse, such as: "More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber. I need it for my dreams." The fact that Racter is less concerned with what is said than with the fact that it is said correct- ly casts a surrealistic net over his work that is cleverly captured in black-and- white drawings by illustrator Joan Hall. As with many creative spirits, Racter's introspection, and the isolation needed for the fermentation of his fantasies, have left him with some inadequate social skills. He is not very adept at small talk, and his conversations and interviews are unlike those found in bestsellers, where conversations are pat and never have holes. The conversations in this book are true to life, much like the ones overheard in restaurants and on subways. Two peo- ple settle on a topic and launch into what they intend to be a reciprocal dialogue. Ten minutes and two monologues later, the topic is abandoned as having been thoroughly explored, w r hile in reality the two minds never actually made contact. Still, Racter's social commentary is topical enough to make one shudder: BILL: Do we have love? MARCELLA: We possess desire, angry desire. But this furious desire may murder a child. It may be killing babies someday. BILL: Anyway let's have a child. Racter was written in compiled BASIC on a Z80 micro with 64K of RAM. He can conjugate both regular and irregular verbs, prints the singular and the plural of both regular and irregular nouns, remembers the gender of nouns, and can assign variable status to randomly chosen 'things'. Syntax directives tell Racter how to string these 'things' together as phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and whole story forms, so that a thread of thought appears to run throughout one particular block of writing. This can lead to a sort of literary extremism, as when Racter overzealously places 'point-of- origin', 'motherland' and 'birthplace' as synonyms in one sentence. While Racter's limericks will never shove Edward Lear off the library shelves, his poetry could put the average poet out of business with its surrealistic imagery and its understated open- endedness. "Night sky and fields of black/A flat cracked surface and a building/She reflects an image in a glass/She does not see, she does not watch." And also "Blissful quiet, the rocking of a recent love/Is both repose and anguish in my fainting dreams." He is inordinately pure of thought and, unlike most modern poets, is incapable of either talking dirty or of expressing an obscenity. Poets suffering from writer's block might set Racter to purring and whirr- ing away through the night while they arise at dawn and (with coffee mug in hand), leisurely harvest the best of his night's work, then brazenly pass off these gleanings as their own works. Will Racter and other compu-literati have to band together in a liberation front to pre- vent nocturnal abuse and to ensure copyright? Not if all programmers are like William Chamberlain, who spent five years working with Tom Etter to create this program. He generously gives Racter full credit for being the sole author of these works. However, if programmers are overly conscientious about civil rights for com- puters, the threat to world peace might not be a computerized arms race, but a computerized word race. Could a pro- liferation of Racters threaten the world with a verbal take-over? This first book ever written by a com- puter is available from Warner Books, P.O. Box 690, New York, NY 10019. U.S. Review by Dale Loucareas Dale Loucareas is a Toronto area poet, and director of literary events for the North York Arts Council. She is the author of two books of verse, Starlines & Sunspots and The Female Eunique. She also publishes Earthlink, an inter- national poetry newsletter. 36 TPUG Magazine With Hr. Tester™ Software Ii your Commodore 64 TM Disk Drive, Printer, Memory, Joystick, Monitor and Sound Chip operating correctly? Also Mr. Tetter tolls you 11 your 1541 Drive Is properly aligned and opera tl ng at Ike correct spaed, plus: 1.) Full joystick operation In all axis . 2.) Continuous or standard comprehensive memory lest. 3.) CommodoreTM SID chip test lor sound analysis. 4.) Screen alignment and color test. 5.) Complete read/write Disk Track and Block Test. 6.) Diskette formal analysis to check Floppys. 7.) Complete printer test. 8.) Complete keyboard test. 9.) Cassette read/write test. order from All this for only $2995 Micro** DISTRIBUTING INC 1342B Route 23 Butler, N.I. 07405 201-838-9027 JOIN THJG The largest Commodore Users Group Benefit from: Access to library of public domain software for C-64, VIC SO and PET/CBM Magazine [10 per year] with advice from Jin Butterfteld Brad Bjomdahl Liz Deal TPUG yearly memberships: Regular member (attends meetings) Student member (full-time, attends meetings) Associate (Canada) Associate (U.S.A.) Associate (Overseas — sea mail) Associate (Overseas - air mail) - J85jW Cdn. -$25.00 Cdn. ~t25.00Cdti. -J25.0UU.S. - *30.00 Cdn. -135.00 U.S. -W5.00U.S. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Send $1.00 for an information catalogue (tell us which machine you use!) To: THJG INC. DEPT.A, 19 12A AVENUE ED., SUITE 1, TORONTO, ONTARIO CANADA M5M4A1 STEVE PUNTER'S NEWEST C-64 WORD PROCESSOR FEATURING: • 40 to 160 column video display • Single pass double column output • 100% proportional printing capability • Double sided printing with margin offsets • Over 30 printers fully supported • "Bump free" loading — MSD — 2 compatible • Automatic spelling corrections with Spellpro™ AVAILABLE AT FINE COMPUTER STORES EVERYWHERE OR ORDER DIRECT ■- PRO-LINE MHHHHIIHSOFTWARE 755 The Queensway East, Unit B. Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L4Y 4C5 . Phone 416-273-6350 Superscript II with Superspell from Precision Software Word processor program for Commodore 'B' series computers Superscript is a full-featured word pro- cessor program available for most Com- modore computers (the Commodore 64 version is called Easyscript). Now Preci- sion Software has released Superscript II for the new Commodore 'B' series com- puters. The equipment used in testing the program for this review was: a CBM B 128-80 Computer, a CBM 8050 Dual Disk drive and a CBM 8023P Tractor Printer. Documentation is provided in a stan- dard three-ring binder, and includes an excellent tutorial, a quick reference chart, and a keyboard template that fits over the B128 function keys. All twenty function keys are implemented, and provisions are made to allow you to customize Superscript II to conform to your per- sonal requirements. Superscript II is a powerful program — be prepared to spend several days learning to use all its features. Most major printers are supported, in- cluding those that would attach to the built-in RS232 port. A nice feature for those of us fortunate enough to own an 8023P is the inclusion of a formatting command that accesses the printer's secondary address. Several other 'profes- sional' word processors I have used lack- ed this command, making it difficult to use the different print styles available in these printers. Superscript II also sup- ports (assuming the printer has these features) underline, enhance, bold, shadow, double print, print red or black, condense, superscripts, subscripts, em- phasize and reverse. A 'repeat bold' for- mat command controls the number of overstrikes. Superscript II makes full use of the B128's memory banking system. The pro- gram resides in Bank 1; text in Bank 2. If your machine has been expanded, you have access to the additional memory banks. With 256K of memory on board, you can load text into Banks 2, 3 and 4. With a fully expanded system, you have access to text in Banks 2 through 15. For example, the text could be The Quick Reference Manual, or could be a continua- tion of text in another bank. As each bank holds about one thousand lines of text, on- ly the most prolific writers would lack suf- ficient text area! For the past four or five years the 'standard' Commodore word processing system has been Professional Software's WordPro 4 + and the CBM 8032, a com- bination that could hold its own against most of the dedicated word processors, at one third of the cost. There is no doubt in my mind that Superscript II with Superspell and the Commodore 'B' computer will become the new standard against which other systems are judged. Review by William Wilbur The Skyles Blitz! Compiler from Skyles Electric Works A BASIC compiler for the Commodore 64 $80.00 (U.S.) The Skyles Blitz! Compiler can increase the speed of a BASIC program by three to five times: the exact amount depends on what the program does. For example, disk access is not speeded up, so pro- grams that use the disk a lot may not gain much from compiling. The Blitz! Com- piler is a 'p-code' type that compresses the BASIC lines into its own special for- mat and adds roughly 6K of 'runtime' routines to the end of the program. The compaction process is so efficient, however, that a BASIC program merely 15-1 6K long is shortened to the point that its object code (including the 6K overhead) is no longer than its source code. Longer programs actually result in object code that is shorter than the original source code! The longest compile time — for a BASIC program with 38K of source code — is roughly thirty minutes. A tiny BASIC program would compile in about four minutes. One factor that makes this compiler superior to most others now on the market is that there are no restrictions to program design logic, and very few restrictions to program format. (I had a couple of intermittent problems with PRINT computations, probably due to a minor bug in the runtime routines.) Also, true integer storage and arithmetic are used with integer (%) variables, allowing even faster performance, more compact variable tables, an increased number of nested loops, and the ability to use in- teger variables as the counters in FOR- NEXT loops (illegal in normal BASIC). Amazingly, Blitz! BASIC is more power- ful than normal BASIC! If two single drives are available (or one twin drive) multiple programs may be compiled as a group and, if desired, chained together. The Blitz! Compiler will automatically find the longest pro- gram in the chain and pad the first one to that length, allowing the programmer to ignore this minor headache in normal BASIC chaining. If you are using an extended BASIC, the added commands can be retained in your program, provided that they are alone on their program line and preced- ed by a pair of colons. Such commands will be left as is and given to the normal BASIC operating system for handling, just as in the original program. This fan- tastic ability means that you can use Simons' BASIC, for example, with the Blitz! Compiler! I have used the Blitz! Compiler to com- pile several commercial programs (in- cluding the Totl.Text 2.6+ word pro- cessor used for writing this review). It im- proves their performance considerably. Try it. I am sure that you will agree that it is worth its weight in gold. Review by Nathan Okun The Grabit Factory from ERIC Software Publishing Educational software for Commodore 64, disk drive and joystick (optional) The Grabit Factory is a package of math tutorials aimed at introducing number recognition, as well as elementary addi- tion and subtraction problems. The graphics are hi-res, the colours vivid and effective, and the numerals are clearly defined, even on a colour T.V. You enter The Grabit Factory and are put to work on an assembly line, either recognizing numbers or working simple addition or subtraction problems. Using either the keyboard or the joystick, you cause a mechanical claw to descend and pick up a block with a number on it. You then carry the block over to a hopper, where the computer decides if your choice is correct. The problem has appeared at the it!} 1 of the screen and remains there until you pick up the appropriate number. A correct answer is rewarded by a block with a smiling face on it, coming down the assembly line. Every now and then, the block even stands up and waves at you! You also get to advance to the next problem. 38 TPUG Magazine No help is offered to you when you miss a problem, but at least there are no abrasive or intimidating punishments either — you simply must do the problem over. A method of breaking down the pro- blem would have aided in understanding missed answers. Error-handling is excellent — the pro- gram proved to be crash-proof. Getting it to run in the first place is another mat- ter, however, due to the heavy copy- protection used by ERIC, which is very rough on 1541 disk drives. It often re- quired shutting off the entire system and reloading again and again to get the pro- gram to run. Despite some attractive features, I was not impressed with the overall quality of The Grabit Factory, nor do I feel that it is up to the standard of the best educa- tional software from other publishers. Review by Rich Westerman The Standing Stones from Electronic Arts Adventure game for Commodore 64 and disk drive The Standing Stones is Electronic Arts' long-awaited entry into the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) type of role-playing adventure. In the past few years, the release of a new Electronic Arts game has been cause for a lot of excitement among game players. This company's reputation for design innovation, stellar graphics and music, and great packaging, has been honestly earned. They are a classy outfit. Alas, with The Standing Stones, Elec- tronic Arts may have laid its first egg. Let me explain. Two years ago, a game appeared from Avalon Hill called Telengard. It was the first sophisticated, real-time, D&D simulation. It became very popular among fans of the original D&D format, and introduced many new people to the craze. Surprisingly, The Standing Stones is an almost perfect duplication of Telengard — right down to the names of monsters and types of spells. So much for Electronic Arts's reputation for innovation. The graphics and sound in The Stan- ding Stones are disappointingly pedestrian. Anyone who's seen the kind of hi-res animation that has helped Elec- tronic Arts earn its reputation is going to be let down in this regard. That said, let me give you a taste of The Standing Stones. You are a novice knight who has decided to test his/her mettle in the dungeon of the noted meanie, Kormath. Armed with the usual weapons, as well as some not-so-usual ones (magic spells), you attempt to fight your way through the many levels of the dungeon in search of The Grail, You begin the game by creating the character you will use. The computer ran- domly creates characters for you, one after another, until you see one which you feel has the right combination of qualities to survive in the dungeon. These qualities include virility, holiness, intelligence, agility, and — perhaps the most impor- tant — stamina. Your knight will be pum- melled unmercifully by the many in- habitants of the dank dark, and a knight who can't take many 'hits' will have a short life. You will be confronted by a wide assortment of antagonists and your ability to deal effectively with them is crucial. You may choose to flee, bribe, fight, greet, or cast a spell in order to come out on top in each situation. Entering the dungeon for the first time is a baffling experience. The dungeon is a maze, and your perspective is that of the knight walking through it. No facili- ty for viewing the maze from above is of- fered, and this is the cause of much hopeless wandering. The documentation offers you a partial map of the first level to help you get started, but even that is of limited use. The manual suggests that you make a map as you wander, enabl- ing you to retrace your tracks should you become lost. This is a real-time simula- tion, though, and I found that I simply didn't have the time to draw an accurate grid map and fight off the attacking monsters at the same time. The dungeon has many levels that must be endured on the way to the Holy Grail, and I have a feeling many won't make it through the first. A highlight of the game for me was the programmers' sense of humour, which is in evidence everywhere. The documenta- tion is a riot, and so are unexpected en- counters during the game. Even the spells reflect a sense of humour: Kitchen Sink, Dispell and Datspell, for example. (Three HELP screens were very welcome here, since there were over twenty spells to choose from). Scattered throughout the confines of the dungeon are various 'Oases'. At an Oasis, you can relax and watch the Roach Races (really!) and leave or pick up messages from other knights or creatures. You will also encounter the usual gold, locked chests, scrolls, books and potions while wandering. The documentation could serve as a model for all software developers. It ex- plains with humour and conciseness all the features of the game and makes it easy to begin playing the first time. Those who wish to try a D&D simula- tion on their computer might want to check out The Standing Stones. At for- ty dollars (U.S.), though, 1 can't honest- ly say you'll be getting your money's worth, since you can get Telengard at half the cost. Review by Rich Westerman Graph Term 64 from Bennett Software A graphics terminal emulator program for the Commodore 64 Graph Term 64 is designed around the Textronix format, and is intended main- ly for engineers and scientists. It will print text and high resolution plots generated by any mainframe computer, display incoming data while storing it in memory for later retrieval, or transfer it to disk or tape for a permanent record. This system is set up to use any com- patible plotter (like the Commodore 1520) to produce remarkable, high-resolution pictures. During the terminal session or afterwards, the information can be reviewed at high speed, in slow motion or even stop action. This can be impor- tant to certain graphics presentations. Included with the terminal program are a host of separate programs for data manipulation. Tek Encoder will help you encode your own plots in the Textronix format (which can be transmitted to other computers) while Tek Plotter produces the hard copy plots. SAVE /LOAD does as the name implies — saves or loads your downloaded files. Also included are several impressive demo files. One novel aspect of Graph Term 64 is its way of correcting the shape of the Commodore pixels. Special subroutines change the format to a more 'square' ap- pearance. (The off-square effect can be seen in a normal cursor, which is taller than it is wide). Other routines can com- municate with the host computer to allow Graph Term 64 to request specialized data. Using a set of sprite 'crosshairs' moved by either the cursor controls or a joystick, you can send information to the host computer to request the transmis- sion of a magnified section of the graphic data you have already received. The advantage of this system for budget-minded scientists is its cost. All March 1985 39 Lliat is needed is the C-64, a disk drive, a monochrome monitor, a modem and a plotter, al! of which can be purchased for considerably less than the Textronix ter- minal. Soon there will be a cartridge ver- sion that will eliminate even the need for a disk drive. The only drawback that I saw in the system is that it's not as user friendly as some other terminal systems. Even with the manual, I had slight difficulty getting the system to work for me. However, after working with it for a while, I pick- ed it up. Because Graph Term 64 is designed so that it can be adapted by each person who uses it, the manual gives details on program operation and memory usage. Special effort was made to make the system compatible with other software. Utilities such as Hesmon, Supermon, the Rabbit (high speed tape saving system) and Power are all usable with Graph Term 64. Bennett Software will also design a specialized version that will fit virtually any memory location. Graph Term 64 is available from Ben- nett Software Company, 3465 Yellowstone Drive, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105, USA, for $49.95 (U.S.) plus $4.00 shipping and handling (20 per cent more for foreign orders other than Canada). Review by Dave Neale Super Pipeline from Interphase Technologies Maze game for Commodore 64 $44.95 (Cdn.), $34.95 (U.S.) Super Pipeline is one of the best maze adventure games I have seen for the C-64. Although it doesn't approach Zaxxon or the naval battle screen of Beachhead for eye-boggling graphics, it is well-designed, fun to play for both children and adults, and very user friendly. Super Pipeline's musical score, which includes Debussy's Golliwog's Cakewalk and a famous violin theme by Paganini, is hilarious. I also appreciated the fact that the player can control so many features of the game. You can choose the level of difficulty, the number of lives (up to eight), the number of players (one or two), and the beginning screen from any of the first eight. You can even turn off the music or the sound effects. You can also load and save the high scores, and this is the only part of the game I don 't like. The reason? The scores are saved with the infamous 'save and replace' method, which strikes paranoia into the hearts of many Commodore owners. The safe solution to this problem is to keep your scores on an expendable disk. This minor quibble aside, Super Pipeline is a joy to play, and a welcome relief from those games that wear out their welcome rapidly because they become too difficult after five minutes of play. Review by Michael Quigley Seahorse Hide'N Seek from CBS Software Educational cartridge game for Commodore 64 and joystick Ages 3 to 6 Seahorse Hide 'N Seek is intended to teach young children colour matching, as well as to help them understand space and size relationships. The structure of the game ensures that important lessons in natural science are imparted, as well. On a colourful low-res background that simulates an undersea coral reef, you must manoeuvre your seahorse from open water to your home — a sunken boat. As in the natural world, you will meet hungry predatory fish along the way. They are determined to make your seahorse into lunch, and you must use your seahorse's natural colour-changing abilities to avoid capture. By pushing the joystick button repeatedly, your seahorse will change colours (as genuine seahorses do). This ability allows you to camouflage your seahorse by resting on an area of coral or vegetation of the same colour. If you choose the wrong colour, however, the fish of the lagoon won't be fooled, and you will be quickly gobbled up. If you allow the fish to get too close before using your colour-changing skills, the fish will be able to find you, so you must, at times, escape into one of the many caves among the coral. You may not find the safety you seek even then, as some of the caves are already occupied by a mischievous octopus, who will tickle you and force you to leave the shelter of the cave. As in ail the other CBS software packages I've seen, Seahorse Hide 'N Seek has superlative documentation. Learning materials are also included that encourage children to leave the computer, and venture into the real world in search of other examples of camouflage. One caution to owners of less-than- monitor-quality T.V. sets: because of the colours chosen for text, the on-screen writing tends to 'bleed' badly. Owners of monitors will not find this to be a problem. Seahorse Hide ' N Seek comes on car- tridge, which means no waiting for the program to load, as well as making it as easy as turning on the computer and monitor to use the game. I encountered no errors or glitches in the program's operation. Three cheers to CBS Software, for presenting us with entertaining, non- violent and truly educational software for children. Review by Rich Westerman Purple Turtles from Quicksilva Arcade-style game for Commodore 64 and joystick Purple Turtles is a joystick game that is not only fun, but relaxing to play. The graphics are superb and entertaining: an owl flaps his ears in excitement every time you score, balloons and clouds sail past in the background sky, fruit falls off trees for your little man to pick up, and the turtles swim in the river exactly like real turtles do. Except that they are purple. The music, too, is enjoyable: the com- puter plays Messing About on the River in between games, so delightfully that I have often left it playing while I did other activities. (I felt rather embarrassed about this until I found out that David Bradley, by his own admission, has done the same thing). Other sound effects add to the charm of this absurd and excellent little game — the owl's enthusiasm, the sound of the little man bouncing, and his splash when he falls into the river. The scoring system is well thought-out and the operation of the game simple, thanks to the thoroughly planned and cleverly laid-out instructions. The levels and the speed can both be changed in a variety of combinations, and there is ap- propriate challenge for both the smallest child and the smartest adult. Perhaps the best way I can summarize is to say that not only have my ten-year- old daughter and her friends spent hours on it, but I too have been known to un- wind at the end of a hard day with an hour of Purple Turtles. I wonder if David Bradley does, too? Review by Marya Miller 40 TPUG Magazine BATTLESTAT/ONS...! BATTLESTATIONS..J COMMODORE 64 DISC GAMES $9.99! or less VIC-20 GAMES $7.99! or less "/ MASTERTRONIC, hereby declare war on the high flying, high priced, computer game Banditrons! I bring you computer games from another gaiaxy at earth shattering prices! Spectacular high quality games like: CHILLER, BMX RACER, NEUTRON ZAPPER and MAGIC CARPET! Our Supply Ships have landed at participating retail stores." For additional information contact BULLOCK INDUSTRIES LTD., 60 Bullock Drive, Unit 5, Markham, Ontario L3P 3P2. Telephone 416-471-5858. COMSPEC Authorized Commodore dealer since 1978. 866 Wilson Ave., Downsview (Between Dufferin & Keele) 633-5605 Call our 24 hour B.B.S. for weekly specials 633-0185 • Hardware • Software • Books • • Accessories • Service • Fast Load $44.95 Commodore 64 Starter $hort*r&o«* ifl p '— — $19.95 The Boss $19.95 Assembly Language Program ming $39.95 The Pocket Modem 149.95 Training Kit RAinrna i£j ■ W W W W ™ MB \VTV\ ■■-.".j-J $29.95 10% discount to TPUG members on Software, books and accessories, excluding sale items. TPUG Library available for copy Mail orders subject to shipping & handling charge (minimum S5) m Ontario residents add ■ 7% P.S.T. Turtle Toyland Jr. from Hesware Educational software for Commodore 64, disk drive and joystick Ages 7 and up $29.00 (U.S.) Turtle Toyland Jr. is an extremely am- bitious attempt to produce the ultimate integration of entertainment and educa- tional software. The system contains individual modules that enable you to create music, graphics screens and sprites. You can save any of the creations to disk for later recall. There is even a sophisticated training area, where the principles of turtle graphics (derived from the LOGO com- puter language) are taught. All of these functions and activities are manipulated entirely with a joystick. The coup of the entire unit is the abili- ty to consolidate ail of these ac- tivities/creations into a 'filmstrip', or movie, which can also be saved as a unit and brought back to be viewed or modified again and again. Ambitious, to say the least! My feeling is that it may be too ambitious. My feelings of helplessness and confu- sion began when first running the pro- gram. It's very easy to get 'lost', especial- ly in the training mode. I wandered for quite a while before accidentally regain- ing my way. The documentation is woefully inadequate in view of the com- plexity and sophistication of the program. Much more attention should have been given to explaining in full each of Turtle Toyland Jr.'s areas of activity. Some of th"e comments of my 9-year-old son will convey his evaluation of Turtle Toyland Jr.: Using the joystick for everything really slotvs you down. You have to go back to a sub-menu to do the simplest things. And . . , / like my other music programs (or sprite editors, or screen-drawing routines, etc.) better. They're easier to use and can do more. Thus spake a child with more than the usual amount of software available to him, and I must agree with him on most of his gripes. Turtle Toyland Jr. is the first of a series. The next product. Turtle Toyland, will be aimed at children aged ten and up, and will add editor and keyboard pro- gramming features to the joystick ac- tivities introduced in Turtle Toyland Jr. As a child, I was occasionally told by my elders, when I failed to eat all of a meal, ". . .it looks like your eyes were bigger than your stomach!" Hesware seems to have fallen into the same trap. Review by Rich Westerman _ Dragonworld from Trillium Software Adventure game for Commodore 64 Trillium Software has come out with a new series of five adventure games, based on best-selling books. They are be- ing marketed not only through computer stores, but also through bookstore chains, such as Walden Books. At 33 dollars U.S., each game includes text, music, sound ef- fects and illustrations. Titles available in- clude Amazon, Fahrenheit 451, Shadowkeep, Rendezvous with Rama and Dragonworld. They are being marketed for Commodore 64 and Apple computers. The adventures offer the op- tion of play with or without the pictures. The illustrations take about five seconds each to load. Dragonworld plays like other adven- ture games, but its scope is truly incredi- ble. It comes on three disks, two of them double-sided: five disk sides containing 363 program modules and comprising 2.299 blocks of disk space. The program recognizes close to five hundred words. It includes three arcade- style games that can be played with or without a joystick (when you run low on money in the game, you enter a casino and play one of the arcade-style games to replenish your resources). The user is expected to provide a blank disk on which to store games in progress. The action is fast, with several branch choices in each game. At one point, for example, you are given the choice of journeying by horseback or by windship, and the subsequent action depends on your choice. The adventure could be played several times with little duplication. In short, the game reeks of class. The music is bright old-English-style, using all three voices of the SID chip. The graphics are hi-res and sophisticated. The game doesn't drag, and the hint book is short, concise and useful. Dragonworld rates as the adventure game bargain of the year. Review by Mike Martin Sargon II and III from Hayden Software Chess-playing programs for Commodore 64 and disk drive Hayden Software has been selling a chess game called Sargon II for years. Now they are marketing an improved version called Sargon III, but are still selling Sargon II, with the price dropped. It is available for fifteen to twenty dollars in many stores, and it's still a great program. Having been a pretty fair chess player in high school and college, I picked up a copy of Sargon II to give it a try. There are seven levels of play. At level 0, the computer piays with a minimum of deliberation. At level 6, it thinks six moves ahead, and can take more than four hours to choose its move. I took Sargon II home, checked the directory, and saw that the game takes up a mere fifty-six blocks — hardly a major league contender, I thought. I booted up the game, choosing level 0, just to check out the logic and go for an easy win. I soon noticed that ievel made surpris- ingly good moves. I started to feel challenged, and increased my own level of concentration. Before long, a cold sweat left over from old tournament play began to surface: my 'easy' victory was becoming a battle to the death! The program grew more and more vicious. I turned down the speaker on the monitor, for fear I might hear a synth- esized chuckle. As my 'quick win' entered its seeond hour, I started humming the Jaws theme while the computer made its moves. Sargon II started cleaning the board, and soon I was left w f ith just a king and a pawn. Sargon II didn't just win — it trampled me into the ground! Later, on reading the Sargon III box, I saw that it had ten levels of play, with level 10 termed 'World Class Chess Master'. I would have been sceptical of the program's right to this title before my humiliation, but I don't doubt its accuracy now. After what Sargon II did to me, I wouldn't dare boot up Sargon III — I don't think I could take it. So 1 warn you — no, I beg you — don't submit yourself to such a potentially destructive ex- perience. Stick with Sargon II. Your humiliation at its, er, hands is definitely a bargain! Review by Mike Martin 42 TPUG Magazine FANTASTIC FILER COPYRIGHr 1984 BY DAVID M. SMITH A SOPHISTICATED AND EASY TO USE FILE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR THE COMMODORE 64 AND 1541 DISK DRIVE PACKAGE INCLUDES: MORE ~^T THAIM JUST ; i Complete Mttnu Driven suh sections. 2) Simple One Stroke Key Com- mands 3) Free iorm record layout design to place data anywhere on the screen 4) Maximum oi SO fields per record 5} Maximum o± 256 charac- ters'iecord 6) Average ot 1000 records per disk 7) Fast 3 second search using index match or specific search criteria on all held combinations. 8} Full arithmetic calculations between fields 9) Built in multifunction colum- nar report and mailing label generator. 10) Ability to create sequential disk sub tiles lor merging data with popular word processors 11) Complete and thoiough users manual SO MUCH SOFTWARE FOR ONLY S 29 95 All in all Fantastic Filer is a Fan- tastic Data Base Program at an even more Fantastic price Why pay more loi others when Fan tastic Filer will fill your data base needs' 5 Micro* DISTRIBUTING. INC 1 342 B Route 23 Buller, N.J. 07405 Call: (201 ) 838-9027 To Order HETIP HELP IS HERE FOR C-64 & VIC-20 THE LITTLE BLACK BOX RESET SWITCH • REVIVE and SAVE all CRASHED BASIC PROGRAMS even after entering command "NEW" with aid of included program listing • Saves hours of work in retyping • Resets computer from ANY BASIC program lock-up • Easily installs in USER PORT • Will not void CBM warranty • Saves wear and tear on computer • Diode Protected Circuitry • Lifetime Warranty! Now only 14.95 CDN (11.95 U.S.) (LIMITED TIME OFFER!) Please send check or money order to: BESCO PRODUCTS 203 - 8060 Granville Ave., Richmond, B.C., Canada V6Y IP4 Ph: 604-278-5115 DEALER INQUIRIES INVITED Products Received The following products have been received by TPUG Magazine in recent weeks. While we do not have space to review them in this issue, we would like to describe them briefly in order to bring them to our readers' attention. Please note that these descriptions are based on the manufac- turers' own announcements, and are not the result of evaluation by TPUG Magazine. Computer Olympics Computer Olympics by Stephen Manes and Paul Somerson. A Hard/Soft Press book, published by Scholastic Inc. Price: S4.50 (Cdn.) This book contains 39 program listings, with modifications for 10 different per- sonal computers, including the Com- modore 64 and VIC 20. Each program refers, in some way, to the Olympic Games. Included in the book are: • Quiz-type programs on Olympic events and disciplines: e.g. Olympic Wrestler, Pentathlons, Decathlon. • Games: e.g. Basketball, Rowing Race, Soccer Finals. • Utility programs: e.g. Olympic Translator, Track and Field Record Book, How Long Is That Race (for metric/SI conversions). All programs are written in BASIC, and most of them are fairly short and simple. They are to be typed in and run. The in- troduction to the book provides hints on how to avoid common mistakes computer users make when typing in programs. All the programs in this book are also available on cassette or disk in seven dif- ferent formats for $19.95 (US), plus $2.00 for postage and handling, from Hard/Soft Inc., P.O.Box 1277, Riverdale, NY 10471. C*A*R*S C*A*R*S from New Leaf Inc., 120 Lynn- haven, Belleville IL 62223, USA. Price: S35.50 (US) for cassette, $39.50 (US) disk version. If you are running any kind of car business, the C*A*R*S program could prove useful to you. C*A*R*S stands for 'Car Analysis Reporting System'. It is designed to work with the VIC 20 (with 24K memory expansion) and the C-64, using the Commodore 1540/1541 disk drive or the Commodore Datasette recorder. It also supports Commodore printers 1515, 1525 and 1526, or any standard ASCII printer that is properly interfaced to the serial port. C*A*R*S, a menu-driven program, keeps record of all car costs: fuel, maintenance, tuneups, car payments, taxes and licence fees and insurance payments. It calculates specific and overall actual costs, costs per mile and costs per month. It presents them in the form of reports, as well as graph displays. Neutral Zone Neutral Zone from Access Software, 925 East 900 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84105, USA. Price: $42.95 (Cdn.) Another arcade-style game for the C-64 computer (joystick needed). It takes a player out into space to protect the base ship from destruction by alien spacecraft. The player is operating the gunnery pod, and must try to stop enemy fire and also destroy as many of the alien ships as possible. As both gunnery pod and base ship can take a limited number of hits, good tac- tics and accuracy in aiming at aliens are necessary to win the game. When the bat- tle is over, the computer screen displays a damage report and final score. Mr. Tester Mr. Tester from Micro-W Distributing Inc., 1342B Route 23, Butler, N.J. 07405, USA, 201-838-9027. Price: $29.95 (US). Mr. Tester has been designed to test your C-64 computer, not you. It is an ail- purpose diagnostic disk that checks the operation of different systems within the C-64 and also checks the functioning of additional peripherals you might have hooked up to it. The tests included on the disk are: • Joystick operation test • Continuous or standard memory RAM test • SID chip test for sound analysis • Video test for screen alignment and col- our check • Read/write disk track and block test • Diskette format analysis • Printer test • Keyboard operation test • Cassette record and playback test Stock Analyzer Stock Analyzer from Orbyte Software, Div. A & M Productions Inc., P.O. Box 948, Waterbury CT 06720, USA. Price: $79.95 (Cdn.) Stock Analyzer is designed to operate with the Commodore 64 computer, 1541 disk drive and the VIC 1525 printer, or another printer that has been properly interfaced with the system. Stock Analyzer is a menu-driven stock portfolio manager. The program allows the user to keep up-to-date records on up to 250 various stocks, 25 active at one time. It also organizes the information and automatically prepares reports on various aspects of the user's stock invest- ment. The reports can be printed out. Some graphics presentations can also be designed. Features include: • Each stock file can hold information on company name, cost basis, total shares owned, average cost per share, stop loss level, target price, and date. • Twelve transactions are possible for each file. Transactions include informa- tion such as the date of the transaction, the dollar amount, and the total number of shares purchased or sold. • Stocks can be entered from any number of brokerage or mutual fund accounts. • Status Reports are calculated, at the user's request, on each stock. • Stock Analyzer notifies the user of any stocks that are in a losing position. • History Reports of the last 12 buy/sell transactions of each stock are available. • Information is retained on inactive stocks for tax purposes. Dang high technology! You ask someone to smuggle in some files and guess what?... 44 TPUG Magazine FAMILY TREE A dynamic program to control your data on the Family Tree. Ideal for the Genealogist. Links indi- viduals together to produce Pedigree Charts, Family Croup Record Forms and Indexes. Easy editing and sorts. $49.95 U.S. or $59.95 Cdn. PET-I-GREE Recordkeeping system, for the Dog Breeder and Kennel Operator. Individual dog records, breeding records, show records and pedigree charts can be produced. Easily altered for other animals. 599.95 U.S. or $129.95 Cdn. Other software at discount prices. Write for our catalogue of over 100 Software pro- grams at low discount prices. GENEALOGY SOFTWARE 519-344-3990 P.O. BOX 1151 PORT HURON, 48061 1046 PARKWOOD AVE Ml SARNIA, ONTARIO N7V 3T9 C64 PROVINCIAL PAYROLL A complete Canadian Payroll System for Small Business. • 50 Employees per disk (1541) • Calculate and Print Journals • Print Cheques • Calculate submissions summary for Revenue Canada • Accumulates data and prints T-4s • Also available for 4032 and 8032 Commodore Computers. Available from your Commodore Dealer. : '■■ I [tbllll'l! ! w ICROCOMPUTER SOLUTIONS 1262 DON MILLS RD. STE. 4 DON MILLS, ONTARIO M3B 2W7 TEL: (416) 447-4811 The key to the system — simple but sophisticated The problem with many computer sytems is that they can be too complex, too confusing and too cumbersome. So, when we started to design this system, we decided it wouldn't fall into any of these traps. • Once your records are set-up, the power of the com- puter can be used to manipulate them at the press of a single key. • You can store, standard letters together with selected information. This letter may be sent to one, oil or selected people — you choose. • The file can be manipulated by a SEARCH feature which sorts out selected records according to your requirements, • The CHANGE KEY feature allows a data file to be re arranged (sorted) to a different sequence on any field, • If you con handle a manual index-card file, then you can handle this computer system. Distributed by: Suggested List Price Dealer Enquiries Invited $39.95 70% discount for TPUG members 705 Progress Avenue, Unit 17 Scarborough, Ontario M1H 2X1 (416) 431.3200 TPUG Associate Clubs CANADA C64 North Bay Users Group (Oi.'Tio) meets at Cassellholme on Olive St. on the first Wednesday of the month at 7:30 pm. Contact Matt Vautour 705-474-5692. Chaleur Commodore Club (New Brunswick) meets at the District School Board, Dalhousie, on the third Wednesday of the month at 7:00 pm. Contact Terry Traer 506-684-4852. Commodore Owners of Muskoka (Ontario) meets at MacAulay Public School, Bracebridge, on the first Wednesday of each month at 7 pm. Contact Mike Wilson 705-645.6300. Edmonton Commodore Users Group (Alberta) meets at Ar- chbishop Jordan High School, Sherwood Park, on the last Fri- day of each month at 7 pm. Contact Bob Kadylo 403-465-3523. Guelph Computer Club (Ontario) meets at Co-operators In- surance Assoc, on the second Wednesday of each month at 7:30 pm. Contact Brian Grime 519-822-4992. London Commodore Users Club (Ontario) meets at Althouse College of Education, main auditorium on the third Monday of each month at 7 pm. Contact Dennis Trankner 519-681-5059. Sarnia C64 Users Group (Ontario) meets at Lambton College on the first Sunday of each month at 7:30 pm. Contact J.C. Hollemans 519-542-4710. Saskatoon Commodore Users Group (Saskatchewan) meets in Room 2C02, Engineering Building, University of Saskat- chewan, on the last Friday of each month {except June, July and December) at 7:00 pm. Commodore Users Club of Sudbury (Ontario) meets at Lasalle High School; in the cafeteria on the last Thursday of each month at 7 pm. Contact Tim Miner 705-566-9632. PET Educators Group (Windsor, Ontario) meets at Faculty of Education Building, 600 3rd Concession, Windsor, on the third Wednesday of each month (not July and August) at 7 pm. Con- tact John Moore 519-253-8658. Winnipeg PET Users Group (Manitoba) meets at Gordon Bell High School, Room 228, on the first Wednesday of each month at 7:30 pm. Contact W.P.U.G.. P.O. Box 4096, Station B, Win- nipeg, MB, R2W 5K8. UNITED STATES Russellville CUG, Inc. (Arkansas) meets at Oakland Heights Elementary School on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 pm. Call 501-967-1822. C-64 Users Group, Inc. (Chicago, Illinois): seven chapters meet at 7:00 pm. Northwest Chicago (Logan Square) on the first Tuesday; River Grove on the first Wednesday; Des Plaines on the first Thursday; Park Ridge on the second Monday; Calumet Park on the second Tuesday; Westchester on the second Thursday; Southwest Chicago (Garfield Ridge) on the second Friday; Evanston on the third Wednesday. For exact locations and changes, contact Darrell Hancock 312-588-0334, or David Tamkin 312-583-4629. Commodore 64 Owners of Petaluma (California) meets in the multi-use room, La Tercera School on the third Thursday of the month at 7:00 pm. Contact Robert Hermann 707-762-1376. Commodore Computer Club of Toledo (Ohio) meets at Bed- ford Administration Building on Temperance Rd., between Lewis and Jackman Roads on the second Friday of each month at 7:30 pm. Contact Jim Cychler 419-475-9160. Commodore Houston Users Group (Texas) Clear Lake Chapter — Nassau Bay City Hall. NASA Road #1, on the first Wednesday of each month at 7 pm. Central Chapter — Far- rish Hall, University of Houston main campus. NW Chapter — Bleyi Jr. High School, 10,000 Mills Road (Cypress-Fairbanks SD). on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 pm. Klein Chapter — Hildebrandt Middle School, 22,800 Hildebrandt Road (Klein ISD), on the third Tuesday of each month (except July & August) at 6:30 pm. Contact Mary F. Howe 713-376-7000. Genesee County Area Pet Users Group (Michigan) meets at Bentley High School on Belsay Rd. on the third Thursday of each month at 7 pm. Contact Gordon Hale 313-239-1366. Mountain Computer Society (Sandy, Utah) meets at Murray High School on the second Thursday and last Tuesday of each month at 7:00 pm. Contact Dennis Senior 801 -566-5593, or Don Jones 801-967-6641. Boston Computer Society/Commodore Users Group meets at Minute Man Tech High School, Rt 2A (just off Rt 128), in Lex- ington, MA, every second Monday of the month at 7 pm. Con- tact Harvey W. Gendreau 617-661-9227. Sacramento Commodore Computer Club (California) meets at Kit Carson High School, on the fourth Monday of each month at 7 pm. Contact Geoff Worstell 916-961-8699. MAT-SU Comrrtodore-64 Club (Alaska) meets at the Alaska Computer Systems store, Wasilla. on the third Thursday of each month at 7 pm. Contact Terry Maw 907-376-7508. Michigan's Commodore 64 Users Group meets at Warren Woods High School in Warren, on the third Tuesday of each month at 7 pm. Call 313-773-6302. Mohawk Valley Commodore User's Group (New York) meets at the Clara S. Bacon School in Amsterdam, at 7 pm on the se- cond Tuesday of the month. Contact William A. Nowak 518-829-7576. 46 TPUG Magazine Greater Omaha Commodore 64 U.G. (Nebraska) meets at South Omaha campus of the Metropolitan Technical Communi- ty College. 27th and Q Streets in Room 120 of the Industrial Train- ing Center, on the first Thursday of the month at 7 pm. Contact Bob Quisenberry 402-292-2753, Manasota Commodore Users Group (Florida) meets at the Florida Power and Light Building, Bradenton, on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7 pm. Contact Robert 0. Bron- son 813-747-1785. S.C.O.P.E. (Dallas, Texas) meets at U.T.D., Erik Jonnson Building (Corner Floyd & Campbell Rds.), in Piano, on the se- cond Saturday of the month at 1:30 pm. Contact Betty Clay 817-274-0709. Southern Minnesota Commodore Users Group meets at Mankato State University on the first Thursday of each month at 7:30 pm. Contact Dean Otto 507-625-6942. Tri-City Commodore Computer Club meets at Washington Public Power Supply System auditorium on George Washington Way on the second Wednesday of the month at 7:00 pm. Con- tact George Carpenter 216-946-7746. Westmoreland Commodore User's Club (Perm.) meets at Westmoreland County Community College, in Youngwood, on the third Friday evening of each month. Contact Bob McKinley 412-863-3930. INTERNATIONAL Baden Computer Club (West Germany) meets at CFB Baden- Soellmgen on the second Sunday of each month at 7 pm, Con- tact Ben Brash. Trinidad Association of Commodore Owners — TACO meets at St. Mary's College, Frederick Street, Port of Spam, every sec- ond Saturday of the month at 2 pm. No, it couldn't be ue>. ^ie Will) tye t)ood> oo. Jtg^m TAKES THE Al m m FRUSTRATIONS OUT OF USING YOUR COMPUTER BY PROVIDING YOU WITH QUALITY SOFTWARE AT AN AFFORDABLE PRICE. "BITS AND PIECES" ™- Disk Utilities $29.95 * Sector Copy a Disk • Back-Up Copy "Whole Bit" DisH Series * Program or sequential fitfi copy to disk & conversion at program filei to sequential lili-s, ■ Check Track nitl sector for errors * Examine contents of a fill.;, block by block in HEX or ASCII * Modify content* of a block » Check whole disk for errors ■ Save Disk Utilities onto disk* SCREEN-DUMP Hi-Res Graphics and Characters to printer using any selected memory locations • MULTI-COLOR SPRITE MAKER * Quick program (Machine language Or Basic} transfer to another dusk * Provided on diskette in a plastic library case whh instruction manual (for Commodore 64™: 154} &M5D ungle Lfedltll drive} "THE WHOLE BIT" ™ - Word Processing $49.95 ■ MENU-DRIVEN • SO column view screen ■ On lme HELP Screen! • Enhanced cursor move men: * Supports major printers by Menu Selection * Ability to custom tailor print commands • Tab-setting 240 cotumm to screen ■ File copies primed «n any sequence * Sequential page numbering from one file to another * Screen and character color selectable • Menu selection of disk files * Global search and/or replace ■ Block mono copy • File merge ■ Horizontal'verlicai scrolling • Left, right, block justification • Sub /superscript • Block erase • Header /footed page numbering * inden- tatJOJi * SearcrVreplace defined phrases • Teat Centering * and more . . , • Provided on diskette with User's Manual m a 3 ring hinder, {for Commodore 64) "FILE CONVERTER"™ C-64 S39.95/PET $44.95 • FILE CONVERTER; Allows the transfer of files between the popular data base programs; Manager ™ , Flexf 95 W , Suparbase 64 TW , Fractif ila ™. Silicon Office™, and others. Program, sequential, or relative files may be converted to a differing type including PET to ASCII of Screenpoke, and vice versa, Will convert fixed c-r variable tiles. Files from any data bete may be merged into THE WHOLE BIT"™ word- processing, * : Allows the transfer of text.fjjes r from one word processing program to another; undefined control codes can be ignored or deleted • FAST DATA BASE EN T R Y ; Creates a sequential data base file of up to 32 fields per record; a very fast data base entry program useful for entering large mailing lists, etc.; can be easily con- verted to your specific data base using "FILE CONVERTER" ■ READ RELATIVE; Allows viewing or printing of any selected relative file record {PET, ASCI I or Screen- poke form)* Provided on diskette in a plastic library case with instruction manual (for Commodore 64 and PET series computers) Prices Quoted in U.S. Funds Applied Technologies, Inc. MASTERCARD/VISA Computer Products Div. FREE shipping Lyndon Way (207) 439-5074 Kittery, Maine 03904 Dealer & Distributor Inquires Invited Ask Someone Who Knows If you enjoy Jim Strasma's many books, and his articles in this and other magazines, you'll be glad he also edits his own highly-acclaimed computer magazine, now in its sixth year of continuous publication. Written just for owners of Com- modore's many computers, each Midnite Software Gazette contains hundreds of brief, honest reviews. Midnite also features timely Commodore' news, hints and articles, all organized for instant reference, and never a wasted word. Whether you are just beginning or a long-time hobbyist, each issue will help you and your computer to work together effectively. A six issue annual subscription is S23. To subscribe, or request a sample issue, just write: MIDNITE SOFTWARE GAZETTE P.O. Box 1747 Champaign, IL 61820 You'll be glad you did! March 198S 47 Calendar of TPUG Events Spring Schedule Please note: The exceptions to the "ride" for the designated date for a meeting (e.g. second Thursday) are shown in bold. Brampton Chapter: Central Peel Secondary School, 32 Ken- nedy Rd. N. on the second Thursday of the month at 7:30 pm in the Theatre. Thu. Mar. 7 Thu. Apr. 11 Thu. May 16 Thu. June 6 Central Chapter: Leaside High School, Bayview & Eglinton Aves. on the second Wednesday of the month at 7:30 pm in the auditorium for "advanced" computerists. Wed. Mar. 20 Wed. Apr. 10 Wed. May 8 Wed. June 12 COMAL Chapter: York Public Library, 1745 Eglinton Ave. W. (just east of Dufferin) on the last Thursday of the month at 7:30 pm in the Story Hour Room (adjacent to the auditorium). Thu. Mar. 28 Thu. Apr. 25 Thu. May 30 Thu. June 27 Commodore 64 Chapter: York Mills C.I., 490 York Mills Rd. (east of Bayview) on the last Monday of the month at 7:30 pm in the cafetorium. Mon. Mar. 25 Mon. Apr. 29 Mon. May 27 Mon. June 10 Communications Chapter: York Public Library, 1745 Eglinton Ave. W. (just east of Dufferin) on the first Wednesday of the month at 7:30 pm in the Story Hour Room (adjacent to the auditorium). Wed. Mar. 6 Wed. Apr. 3 Wed. May 1 Wed. June 5 Eastside Chapter: Dunbarton High School (go north on Whites Rd. from the traffic lights at Highway 2 and Whites Rd. to next traffic lights; turn left to parking lots) on the second Monday of the month at 7:30 pm Mon. Mar. 11 Mon. Apr. 15 Mon. May 13 Mon. June 10 Hardware Chapter: York Public Library, 1745 Eglinton Ave. W. (just east of Dufferin) on the second Tuesday of the month at 7:30 pm in the Story Hour Room (adjacent to the auditorium). Tue. Mar. 12 Tue. Apr. 9 Tue. May 14 Tue. June 11 Machine Language Chapter (6502): Fenton High School, off Kennedy Rd., south of Steeles Ave., Brampton, on the first Tues- day of the month at 7:30 pm in the computer room. For further information call Garry Ledez c/o 416-782-8900. Tue. Mar. 5 Tue. Apr. 2 Tue. May 7 Tue. June 4 SuperPET Chapter: York University, Petrie Science Building (check in Room 340). Use north door of Petrie to access building. On the third Wednesday of the month at 7:30 pm Wed. Mar. 13 Wed. Apr. 17 Wed. May 15 Wed. June 19 VIC 20 Chapter: York Public Library, 1745 Eglinton Ave. W. (just east of Dufferin) on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:30 pm in the auditorium. Tue. Mar. 5 Tue. Apr. 2 Tue. May 7 Tue. June 4 Westside Chapter: Clarkson Secondary School, Bromsgrove just east of Winston Churchill Blvd. (south of the QEW) on the third Thursday of the month at 7:30 pm in the Little Theatre for PET/CBM/VIC 20/Commodore 64. Thu. Mar. 21 Thu. Apr. 18 Thu. May 16 Thu. June 20 Are you interested in organizing some other interest group in the Greater Toronto area? Please let the club office know, by mail, phone, or TPUG bulletin board. Classified For Sale: Calc Result Advanced for CBM 8032-96. New. $99.00. 216-794-0866 mornings. PET 2001 N 32K 4.0 ROM with Power, 4040 Disk, 8032P Printer. 300 baud acoustic Modem, 4010 Voice Response Unit, speaker for sound, with manuals. 1-612-588-0068. $2385.00. C-64 Link — allows use of IEEE disk drive and printer, adds BASIC 4.0 and M/L monitor to C-64, including printer cable (VL3) $95.00. 416-827-7947. Wanted: modem for Commodore PET with IEEE-488 interface, or circuit diagram, so modem could be constructed. Send replies to Chris Farrar, 159 Wimbleton Rd., Islington, Ontario, M9A 3S8, Canada. For Sale: CBM 8250 and/or 8050 floppy. $1200 + PST or best offer. 803-777-3758 or 786-2194. For Sale: spread sheet program — Calc Result for 8032, 4040 or 8050 disk. $100.00. 416-278-2431. Wanted: Two 64 KB expansion boards 8032. Phone 416-278-2431. For Sale: SuperPET SP9000. 2031 single drive, 4022 dot matrix, TTX letter quality, software, manuals, accessories. $2900.00. 416-492-0662 after 6 pm week nights. For Sale: MPS-801 printer (new) with option for Hebrew character set (or any self-defined set). $219.00 + shipping. Call 718-261-3067 afternoons. For Sale: 32K PET with Visicalc, PaperClip and lots of other soft- ware, 2022 tractor printer, sound box, 4040 dual drive. All cables included. $1600.00. Call 416-822-6198 after 5 pm. For Sale: SuperPET, 4040 drive, 4023 printer, WP4, Oracle, Calc Result. $2700.00. Kingston 613-389-6115. 48 TPUG Magazine *** ^r" v *» a* vj.5- ACCURATE MICRO ADJUSTMENT 1 USES SCREEN DISPLAY NO SPECIAL TEST EQUIPMENT DIRECTION OF STEPPER MOTOR MOVEMENT SCREEN READ OUT OF RADIAL HEAD ALIGNMENT CHECKS SPEED * CLAMPING OF DRIVE Package includes: * True digital alignment disk with offset tracks • Quiet Drive stops to reduce need for continued realignment on old style drives. (703) 491-6502 es ""^- CARDINAL SOFTWARE 13606 JEFFERSON DAVIS HWY WOOQBRIDGE. VA 22191 In Canada APPIN MICRO 1283 PHARMACY AVE SCARBOROUGH. ONT. MIR 2J1 PRO-TERM 64 INTELLIGENT TERMINAL PACKAGE © 1984 E. ANDERSON and G. FARMANER 40/80 column display Informative status line Extensive Auto-Dial/Auto-logon commands Upload/download: (Punter) (X/ON X/OFF) {.IMG FILES) Complete Disk support, DOS commands, dual drive, or two single drives Complete Printer support Transparent stream to Printer Programmable Function Keys Remote-terminal modes, (Mini BBS), (Visual phone answer) Supports VT/52 and Televideo 910/920 terminal emulations On disk ONLY $46.95 Suite 210 5950 Cotes des neiges Montreal. Quebec H3S 1Z6 Canada C O D . money order or cheque Dealer and distributor inquiries invited Write for our FREE catalog. Send us your programs. We publish software. Windsor's Comnodore Coiputei Club MARCH 23/24, 1985 proudly presents JIM BUTTERflEU) In co operation with St. Clair College woeQ©otaa"ajoa»es vm tJUjjBetsto&BfjbiijSQaa^ee e©ui eaeeiis ata© torn ©qhpb^okjq Members -- $10.00 Hon members -- $15.00 After Feb. 20,1985 add $7.00 >4' A T A Details available from The PET Educator's Group c/o P.O. Box 454, Station A, Windsor N9A 6L7 or by phoninq JOHN MOORE (519-253-8658) after 5:00pm ■ifiifaj Academy Software 9 Applied Technologies, Inc. 47 Batteries Included BC Beacon Software 45 Besco Products 43 Brantford Educational Services 9 Bullock Industries 41 Cardinal Software 49 Computer Networx 19 Computer Rentals 8 Comspec Communications Inc. 41 Electronics 2001 Ltd. IFC1 Genealogy Software 45 GRQ Marketing Ltd. 34 King MicrowareLtd. 2,49 Melodian Inc. 52 Micol Systems 34 Microcomputer Solutions 45 Micro-W Distributing Inc. 35,37,43 Midnite Software Gazette 47 Micro Systems Development IBC Nichols Electric 51 Programmers Guild Products Ltd. 24 Pro-Line Software 35,37 RA Micro Servicing Ltd. 35 Shirinian, George 8 Stelex Sector 8 Transactor 43 TPUG (Membership) 37 TPUG (Conference) 5 TPUG (Comal Manual) 25 TPUG (OS/9) 25 Ufland Software 27 Windsor PET Educator's Group 49 Wycor Business Systems 25 TPUG Contad Board of Directors ts President Michael Bonny cast] e 416/654-2381 Vice-President Chris Bennett 416/782-9252 Vice-President Gord Campbell 416/492-9518 Treasurer Carol Shevlin c/o416/782-8900 Recording Sec, John Shepherd 416/244-1487 Rosemary Beasley c/o416/782-8900 David Bradley c/o416/782-8900 or the TPUG BBS 416/782-9534 or CompuServe ID# 70216,414 Gary Croft 416/727-8795 Mike Donegan 416/639-0329 Bill Dutfield 416/224-0642 John Easton 416/251-1511 Carl Epstein 416/492-0222 Keith Falkner 416/481-0678 Gerry Gold 416/225-8760 Rob Lockwood 416/483-2013 Louise Redgers 416/447-4811 Business Manager Chris Bennett 416/782-8900 Office Manager Doris Bradley 416/782-8900 Library Co-ord. David Bradley c/o416/782-8900 TPUG Magazine Publisher Chris Bennett 416/782-1861 Editor Nick Sullivan 416/782-1861 Assistant Editor Marya Miller 416/782-1861 Ad Director Louise Redgers 416/782-1861 Meeting Co-ordinators Brampton Chapter Garry Ledez c/o416/782-8900 Central Chapter Michael Bonnycastl e 416/654-2381 C-64 Chapter Louise Redgers 416/447-4811 COMAL Chapter Donald Dalley 416/742-3790 Victor Gough 416/677-8840 Communications David Bradley e/o416/782-8900 Richard Bradley c/o416/782-8900 Eastside Chapter Judith Willans c/o4 16/782-8900 Darren Fuller c/o416/782-8900 Hardware Chapter c/o416/782-8900 Machine Language Garry Ledez c/o416/782-8900 SuperPET Chapter Gerry Gold 416/225-8760 VIC 20 Chapter Rick Adlard 416/486-7835 Anne Gudz c/o416/782-8900 Westside Chapter John Easton 416/251-1511 AI Farquharson 519/442-7000 Librarians COMAL Victor Gough 416/677-8840 Commodore 64 David Bradley c/o416/782-8900 Richard Bradley c/o416/782-8900 French Baudouin St-Cyr c/o416/782-8900 PET Mike Donegan 416/639-0329 SuperPET Bill Dutfield 416/224-0642 VIC 20 Daryl King c/o416/782-8900 Bulletin Board Richard Bradley c/o416/782-8900 Conference Doris Bradley 416/782-8900 100% COMMODORE™ COMPATIBLE FIRST-MATE by QR+D DISK DRIVE L_l 199 L) lj - U.S. + $ 10 Shipping New 1/2 height compact size 170K storage* external power supply *Same as Commodore 1544 PROWRITER 7500 PRINTER 249 U.S. + $ 10 shipping • 105 characters per second • Throughput of 54 lines per minute • High resolution graphics • Friction or push tractor iLTU^LK) feed with short tear-off • Parallel or RS-232C Serial interface • 2K standard buffer • Light weight, very low profile design (only 4.3 inches high) and low noise engineering • One year warranty. FLEXI DRAW Turn your own Commodore 64 into a graphic workstation: 129 A REAL WORKING TOOL THAT'S FUN TO USE. Be more pro- ductive right away. Draw and fine-tune design ideas right on your CRT . . . with your Light Pen. Then generate drawings or hard copies in black and white or color quickly and effortlessly. And because you're unconcerned with computer commands you can focus on what you're working on. Fact is, work becomes a lot more fun. FEATURE-RICH GRAPHICS AT YOUR LIGHT PEN TIP. Select from a wealth of drawing modes listed on the screen. Move fluidly from freehand drawing to lines, boxes, arcs, circles, ellipses, zooms, cross hairs, grids. Plus, flips, rotations and ^^ U.S. + 5.00 shipping FLEXI DRAW™ is the exciting and affordable Light Pen/Soft- ware system for people who need drawings, schematics, plans, layouts or graphics in their work. split screens . . . virtually all thefunctions you'll ever need. FLEXIORAW gives you the freedom to manipulate and handle images as you work. Create your own templates and patterns to go with the standard Flexidraw templates and 511 pattern fills. There's seven different type styles for text, and 16 hires colors may be added. There's also a Sprite Editor and Animator. An ex- clusive Transgraph feature even lets you send graphics 1o distant locations via modem. EXCLUSIVELY ENDORSED BY THE U.S. COMMODORE USERS GROUP. Test draw FLEXIDRAW yourself at your nearest Com- modore Software dealer now. INKWELL SYSTEMS "A Pen for Your Thoughts" FLEXI FONT *29.95 U.S. + 2.00 shipping Adds 33 fonts to Flexidraw NirfftOlS ELECTRONICS 274 Wahconah St. Pittsfield, Ma 01201 U.S.A. (413) 443-2568 u. sounds ; ; nelodian concerti»aster<tn; ■fi _- ■f? = :■ i. . ' 1*3- JOW UjIWHr. niiukan oraan If4: IMt lfb: seli"-*. «ol-8 tettpo 88 octane: 4 IfS: in se I *c t Hftr-onone «H kpvbuard on Iff: load satit erase adsr ■ f^ '-* *^-*-^^" , i . — Imagine yourself in a professional recording sludio, manipulating richly musical sounds from any of sixteen different instruments. Imagine creating vour own musical compo- sitions, just like a recording superstar. Imag- ine starting as a novice and becoming a musical master. Now the future of musical entertainment is as close as your home com- puter. ..Introducing MELODIAN " THE COMMODORE-64" COMPATIBLE MELODIAN KEYBOARD plugs right into your home computer. ..and then the fun be- gins. The menu driven display screen lets vou experiment wiih infinite varieties of in- strumentation and orchestration all with only four simple command keys. And the colorful user-friendly graphics invite you to learn the basics of music at your own pace. THE MELODIAN CONCERTMASTER" software package allows you to record and mix mill ti- track music just like a professional recording engineer. Put down the bass track and get it just right. Then add guitar, brass or woodwinds. Experiment with MELODIAN'S unique ADSR synthesizer window to custom design your own new instrument sounds... and before you know it, you have a completely new musical ar- rangement. Or you can study the intricacies of prerecorded musical pieces, note for note ...and then rearrange them to your heart's content. THE MELODIAN RHYTHMMASTER " software package starts with your own nat- ural sense of rhythm. . . the building block of music... and takes it to perfection. Meet the challenge of RhythmMaster as you learn the basics of rhythm and pitch. Track your progress until you make it all the way to virtuoso. AFFORDABLE BREAKTHROUGH TECHNOLOGY. ..ONLY $199.90. The MELODIAN system is the result of break- through computer design innovations, in- vented by the same team who developed high-tech music systems for recording superstars. That's why for less than S200, you can start with (he Melodian Keyboard and ConcertMaster and start making music right away. RhythmMaster can be added (or only 539.95. And other exciting pre- recorded programs will be available soon. MELODIAN products are available at computer and music stores. Or you can call Melodian directly at 1-800-MELODIA and charge it on all major credit cards. All Melodian products have a 15 day money- back guarantee. MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED ©1984 Melodian Inc. All rights reserved. TM • ■ ■ D O ■ C ■■■■■■ The new, fun way to learn, play and compose music. CALL1-800-MELODIA IN NEW YORK STATE CALL COLLECT 1-212-513-7330 Attention Commodore 8 Computer Owners Super Disk Drive * J I" RF *% msy SD-2 SUPE DISK DRIVE MSD Hone Wortsw »' Loan ftno'jri REss* *'«"'■ Looking for a versatile disk drive that efficiently interfaces with your Commodore -' personal or business computer? Then look no further. MSD offers not just one drive, but two — the SD-1 and the SD-2 Super Disk Drives. With the SD-1 Super Disk's 4K buffer memory, you can open more files at any one time. Its rapid internal operations allow you to execute utility commands in a minimal amount of time and to format disks in only 17 seconds. If you demand more and thus faster duplication, however, then the SD-2 is for you. You can format, copy and verify in less than 2 minutes — twenty times faster than if you used two single drives together. Both drives feature state-of-the-art design for exceptional durability and longer life. Both feature unique vertical loading for greater space savings. And neither will ever overheat. Call MSD today for more information or the location of the dealer or distributor nearest you. TFv SYSTEMS, INC. 10031 Monroe, Suite 206 Dallas, Texas 75229 (214) 357-4434 AT LAST. . . A TEACHER WHO IS JUST YOUR TYPE! Turn your COMMODORE 64 into a personal typing tutor with KEYS TO TYPING software. Over 30 easy lessons, all based on proven teaching techniques that typing teachers have been using for years. Combined with the speed and flexibility of computerized instruction— it's the fastest and easiest way yet to learn typing. 32 step-by-step lessons your own pace! # 1 will explain the jgram and show you now to get on-screen help each lesson has three parts: introduction of new keys, exercises, and reinforcement over 400 exercises, all based on successful typing manuals et immediate help or return to the lain menu with a single key str o complex computer comn its user friendly and menu ili r no knowledge of computers m just basic reading skills select the lesson you want through a simple menu control rping game included, i learning fun! Slm CACHES! .s r s / '//, The perfect learning program for students of any age. For businesspeople who need typing skills but are short on time. For people re-entering the workforce who need a fast refresher. Designed by educators and computer programmers working together, KEYS TO TYPING lets you learn quickly, easily and effortlessly. After 32 lessons, you'll be typing at speeds you never though! possible. 30 Mural St Richmond Hill, Ontario L4B 1B5 Canada (016) 596-1405 BATTERIES T£T INCLUDED "The Energized Software Company!" 17875 Sky Park North, Suite P, Irvine, California USA 92714 c 1 984 BATTERIES INCLUDED ALL RIGHTS RESERVED COMMODORE IS A REGISTERED TRADE MARK OF COMMODORE BUSINESS MACHINES. INC.