Fred 21

Issue 21

Magazine

                       The (Fr)Editorial


  Bonjour mes amis! It's so nice to have actually started work
on this issue BEFORE it's due out! You may remember last month
that I started by slagging off editorials that say "it's been an
eventful month...." and so on, unfortunately, I now feel rather
hypocritical because I wish I could say it!!!

  Firstly, a new FRED Publishing project has come up and is due
for imminent release, but more about that later.

  Remember 48 weeks ago, Europress launched a weekly magazine
named Games-X? With crazy puns and amateur staff it seemed
doomed from it's day of christening. However, as you all know it
worked out rather well due to the demise of other weekly
publications. From day 1, Europress made it clear that
subscriptions and binders were not available, hence suggesting
that the project was not a long term one. It was. Until issue 48
(released 27th March) in which it was announced that there would
be no Games-X any more. Further details were not available.
                           Editorial

And now, some good news. As you all know, FRED Publishing
launched "Triltex - The Later Levels" just before issue 20. Now
I am proud to announce that I GOT ONTO LEVEL FOUR!!!! Oh, I'm
sorry, I meant to say that the Your Sinclair which is hitting
the shops any day now, has a MASSIVE review of it (loads and
loads of piccies!) and gave it a generous 84%. Despite spending
the last three weeks trying to do level 1, I finally worked it
out and got all the way to level 4!

Why does everyone like doing menus? This month, Steve "Wizard"
Taylor has taken time out to do this menu, he's also conjured
one up for next month AND Simon Cooke has done one (six tunes,
160K long....) AND the Masters Of Magic have done one! Wonderful
stuff guys! Any chance of more articles, reviews, demos, games,
piccies, letters etc etc ??

Simon Cooke has also managed to alter the Print routine in this
issue so that it actually works!

                         ProDOS owners

Having recently bought myself a copy of ProDOS (and sent it off
for review - expect the ratings next month), I got in touch with
the person that has started up the "FDOS PD and Shareware
Library" (FDPDASWL ??). So far there are seven discs available
and are as detailed :

1 : File And Disc Utilities. Pretty well essential.
2 : File Compressors and Archivers.
3 : Programming. Z80 assemblers and disassemblers.
4 : Comms. KERMIT, OTERM and BBS services.
5 : Text Processing. Very handy.
6 : Programming. BASIC, LISP, C, PASCAL, PILOT and FORTH.
7 : Games. Adventure, Space Invaders, Pacman and Tetris.

Each disc costs £2. Discs and more details available from :

[redacted]

                             Misc.

In case you're one of the "few" that havn't bought Enceladus so
far, here's your chance to squander a bit of money.
  Enceladus have compiled Tutorials, Demos, Utilities and
Screens onto a disc each and are selling them for £4 each.
  I can't comment on the quality but if you want to buy them,
the address is one their advert.

When you place an order to FRED in the future, please address it
to FRED - not Colin! This is because when someone else sorts out
the mail, they have to read otherwise "private" letters. If you
write to me personally, address it to Colin Macdonald but it may
lie unopened for a while if I'm away somewhere else....

Did you know???? That AMSTRAD actually stands for Alan Michael
Sugar Trading ? Well, now you do. And if you ever wondered what
the CBM on Commodores stood for, its Commodore Business
Machines! Not particularly useful, but you know now anyway.


                       More FRED Goodies


Yes, everybody knows that there have been THREE "Best Of FREDs"
released over the years. One by Masters Of Magic, SAMCo and more
recently, ZAT.

Now, due to popular demand, I will be selling the SAMCo / FRED
disc for £2. It's ideal for anyone who is thinking about
subscribing to FRED. The increased price of £2 is because of the
short run of labels I'll have to do and also to help increase an
ever decreasing bank balance...



   MORE DISCS ON THEIR WAY, BUT THIS INFORMATION HAD TO BE

   DELETED THIS MONTH - WAITING FOR REPLY.



                        New Project???

   New FRED project? Whatisit? I hear you cry. Well, it's
something that'll come in extremely useful for anybody that ever
uses a Word Processor. Yup, it's a Spelling Checker.

   It's not going to be just a few thousand words and a dodgy
program to run it either. No, this is your better-than-average
Spelling Checker with tens of thousands of words, functions to
incorporate it into almost any existing Word Processors, an
intelligent anagram solver and perhaps a game or two in there as
well. (Ever played Hangman against the computer, where the
Computer guess your word? I thought not!).
   Not only that, but I have just been approached with the first
ever SAM Word Processor which is 100% Machine Code! So, what
I'll consider doing is selling either of them for £9.99 or both
for just £14.99.

Scheduled for release in 6-8 weeks. Proposed packaging is a
Video box, like the Sound Machine came in - except this will
have A FULL COLOUR INLAY WHICH ACTUALLY FITS THE BOX!
                  Going out with a ... crash?!

You've probably now all seen the conclusive prove, issue 98 of
Crash that the FRED story leaked last issue was indeed very
true. Did many of you purchase that very issue?

If you did, you no doubt would have seen the review of "Danny
Duster" by Flashsoft. Which was duly awarded a Crash Smash with
an almost record rating of 98%. A bit high you thought? Well,
considering the graphics were drawn by our very own DJ Nicko,
and were given an astonishing 97%, it appears that the whole
three page review was an April Fool. Either that or a sick way
to end a magazine!

Throughout the magazine, many references are made to April Fools
and the word "fool" crops up in the review. They even talked
about issue 99!! But did anyone notice at the bottom of the last
page a little notice which said "April Fool"?? Presumably, this
very witty remark (no sarcasm here) was with reference to the
review, the next issue and to various "no-so-popular" members of
the Crash team, no names mentioned.
                    Another bumper issue??

Weeeeell, we're not so strong on the utilities this month I'm
afraid, but while I'm here, an Amiga user at a Brum show
actually had a good idea (no sniggers please). He suggested that
a database could be set up that stores the details of loads of
discs, ie, you bung your newest disc in and it'll store the
details of that and dozens of others on a single database which
you use to look at what you've got.!

Anyway, long standing FRED readers will know, that way back in
issue 3, FRED got the exclusive of the Tetris game - soon to be
ripped by many a library & magazine, on issue 4, FRED was the
first to publish Silly Demo 1. On FRED10, another superb machine
code program was published, this time it was the game / demo
"Tweety" (which incidentally, didn't get ripped quite so much).
The more knowledgeable among you will have noticed that all
these programs were done by Lord Insanity, coder of Batz 'n'
Ballz. Wouldn't it be nice if FRED got an exclusive on another
piece of his work?

                        Wait for it....

Now that you've been kept in suspense, I'll let you know that
this issue of FRED contains not one, but TWO of Lord Insanity's
demos!!! Mega-exclusive!!! Neither are brilliant, both feature
heavily on samples and both done by Lord Insanity!

Firstly, he's done : "Little Joke". Here's quite a number of
amusing jokes (despite the fact his English isn't terribly hot),
along with some rather nice laughing samples!!

Secondly comes "Sabrina". Happy memories huh? This one is a
little more complex (and took me a while to find out how it
worked!). When it loads up, pressing RETURN will give you the
picture and a continous sample. Pressing N will give you the
picture and keys 1-5 let you play different samples. The keys
are listed but now that you've read this, you'll know how to use
it.

CCGS is a little something from the AXE team which will give you
something to show your mates...
                            More...

Lord Blackadder (no relation to Mr Insanity), has come up with a
neat little demo called "Buzz". It's dead simple but quite a
nice effect, at time of writing it only works on 512K machines
but that may change....

Proffeseur Taylor (aka The Wizard) has once more astounted us
with his remarkable skill to complete a machine code article on
time. This time I don't have the foggiest idea what it's about
because he ran out of discs and his supplier forgot to send some
more...OK,OK, he gets the discs from me - SO I FORGOT! SO WHAT?
Anyway, I've been assured it'll reach me on time.....

Well, you all seem to be pretty impressed with the Sound Machine
demos you've seen lately, so here's a few more from our
favourite musician - Ian Slavin / AXE. Credit must also go to
Enceladus for letting me use his Sound Machine file compressor
which is wonderfully brilliant, is featured on Enceladus 9 and
if you order it, mention FRED and you'll get a free dust
particle (colour not specified).
                   More, and More, and More

Simon Cooke's here again, this time we've got a small collection
of a few of his routines : a scrolly, a piece of music and a
little goodbye message. There should be a megademo from him in
time for next month but we'll wait and see..


Here's a few effects from everybody's favourite programmer, AXE.
This time we've got three fancy routines which aren't actually
that useful but look pretty good! First up is Pulsar, a circle
palettey thing. Then there's Up'n'Down, a rather obscure way to
view the BASIC listing. And last of all (but by no means least)
is Snappa, another wierd way to view your listing....


As promised last month, Xtreme in conjunction with Dirty Habit
have come up with a Poolschecker. And remember folks, if this
program helps you win the pools, you are NOT obliged to give the
programmers and publishers 10% each of your winnings (although
you might get your legs broken if you don't)
                      Phew - Nearly there!

 Due to the lack of memory used up this month, I can actually
give you loads and loads of screens! Sent in by Lord Blackadder
and other artists as credited.

In the Bits 'n' Bobs this month the line-up is as follows :

TWO SCREEN   :  A two screen scroller by Paul Milner

KIM 256      :  A MasterDOS way to play the Kim Wilde sample on
                256K machines.

COLOURIZER   :  Add colour to those pictures, shrink them and
                make them look like real,courtesy of AXE (who?)

RAY TRACER   :  Hah! Here we go! A ray-tracer,OK, it's slow but
                it's good (see piccy in Screens for sample) and
                it's been done by N. Clayton

FIFTH ROOTS   : Something to do with pretty patterns,by D.Davies
                            Contacts

[redacted]

                          Rumour Mill

Ah Hah! The reason this issue was a few days later than I wanted
it to be is because of certains whispers I've been hearing
through the grapevine! Both of these concern SAMCo and both are
with regard to new machines! Here's what I picked up :

At the moment SAMCo are thinking about doing the coupe up with
Kaleidoscope (the 32,000 colour chip) and possibly the printer
and mouse interface as well as ironing out a few bugs. Price is
undecided. If it goes ahead, they would hope for a late Summer
release.

Instead of a step up, here's a backwards step : How about a SAM
with only 256K and no disc drives for about £100? I reckon they
hope to overtake the C64 "cheap but OK" machine market, and with
the A***a doing so well, I don't think Commodore would be
particulary bothered!

If you think I should congratulate SAMCo or tell them not to
bother, then get in touch and I'll pass it on....
                         It's Tragic!!!

And now, for another FRED exclusive, Chris White the esteemed
programmer of Prince Of Persia and SAMPrint is leaving Swansea
and going to work for Domark's in-house programming team, The
Kremlin. Chris has been working on many projects recently
including Lemmings, Projector, a Shoot 'em Up, 3D routines and a
Thrust clone.
  However, lack of royalties from certain titles have forced him
down into "Da Smoke", yup, ol' CID is moving to London. He'll be
starting off working on Sega Master System titles, then moving
on to other titles. Once he's gotten himself established down
there, Chris plans to complete Lemmings. Naturally, Chris will
continue to contribute to the best disc 'zine around, FRED for a
long time to come.
  The future of Noesis Software is still unsure, talks between
Noesis and FRED Publishing will commence at the beginning of the
week.....(6/4/92). What's planned? Wait and See!!

                   We'll all miss you Chris.

                    The chip - it's here!!

Yes, mere hours before this issue goes into duplication, the new
ROM chip, SC_Autoboot, from Steves Software arrived! I must say
how much I've been looking forward to this, and on the whole I'm
not dissapointed.

The chip comes with extremely simple instructions to follow,
which means you'll have no problems if you're 9 or 90! Once in,
you immediately notice the differences : the biggest things are
the instant "power-up" ie as soon as you switch on, the machine
is ready to go - no waiting for flashing borders! And if you put
a disc in as you switch on, it'll automatically (and instantly)
boot up. I will point out that it is still possible to corrupt
discs by switching the coupe on with a disc in - I did it to my
FRED21 Master!!!! Other improvements include the reset button
not clearing all memory (if required), a more powerful NMI
button, memory restorer and special mini-Dos's which give you a
few extra features. The price of £15 is well worth it if you use
you're coupe a bit irrelevant of what ROM you already have.
Address and more details on advert (if you can read it!!)
         Goodbye, Farewell, It's so sad to see you go!

A Hundred and One thanks go to the following kind souls :

Lord Blackadder        Lord Insanity           AXE
The AXE assistant      Wizard                  Cookie
Xtreme                 Dirty Habit             Banzai
Mork                   J. Hampton              N. Clayton
D. Davies              P. Milner               CID
MoM                    DVB                     ETM
Hedgehog               My SAMCo "contact"      You!!!

OK, folks that about wraps it up for another month, all that's
left for me to say is "Thank you, and goodmonth"

"Oh! And remember to buy FRED22 when it comes out sometime at
the start of May for just £1.50". Now ONLY from :

[redacted]

Letters & Reviews

         Reviews, Letters, And everything else really!

Not much in the way of reviews or letters, so we've got a bit of
a mixed bag for you this month. Anyway, you're sure to find some
of it interesting reading - aren't you?

1    :     This Page!

2    :     Stephen Donaldson - "The Real Story"

6    :     Speaking the Lingo by Banzai

10   :     Puzzle Corner no. 4 with Mork

17   :     Letter from Stephen Donnellan

19   :     My Reply




                        Donaldson Review

Yes, I know it's been a long time since the last one, so I
thought I'd do another one - just for something to keep you
entertained as it were!

As you probably don't know, my favourite writer is Stephen
Donaldson. He's not particulary famous, but out of the nine
books he's had published so far, I love every single one of
them. The 9 he's done are all fiction / fantasy based, with
strange characters in even stranger lands, twisting yet easy to
follow plots and graphic descriptions of characters and events.
He originally wrote a trilogy which won him several awards, the
follow up to this was another trilogy - totalling a 6 book
story! Named, the First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
these, in my mind, are on the same track but far superior to
Tolkien. Since them, a collection of short stories (The Daughter
Of Regals) has appeared as well as a two book story - The
"Mordants Need" series.  Before I review this book, I would very
strongly suggest that you go out and read one of these books -
they are thoroughly fascinating and enjoyable.
                        Donaldson Review

Enough of the history, breaking away from his fantasy frolics,
Donaldson has decided to write a science fiction novel, a space
epic. To clear things up, this particular book is called "The
Real Story" and is the first of five books in a series named
"The Gap Into Conflict".
  The whole story follows the adventures of three people : Angus
Thermopyle, a space pirate who enjoys watching others'
sufferings , Morn Hyland, a beautiful young woman who falls
foul the Angus and Nick Succorso, a successful space captain
whose pirating exploits are told as if he were a saint.

As Donaldson describes in his afterword, the story starts off
with a Victimizer, a Victim and a Rescuer (respectively),
however, by the end of the book the roles are reversed with Nick
victimising Angus and Morn being Angus's Rescuer. You would
wonder how it's possible! Well, it is rather clever and is
actually very logical but I don't want to reveal more than I
have to.

                        Donaldson Review

The book starts off explaining how certain inhabitants of a bar
told the story of Angus, Morn and Nick. The next chapter expands
and tells how the more "watchful" people in the bar told the
story. However, the author soon puts paid to rumours and spends
the rest of the book telling how the story really happened
(hence the title "The Real Story"), so in actual fact you get
the story three times - each time expanded and with a bit more
factual information in it!

Overall, as a Donaldson book I was dissapointed. Had it been
written by Willy the Writer or Norrie the Novelist I would have
congratulated him. But by Donaldson's superbly high standards,
it's poor.

What would you expect the average sci-fi storyline to be? An
evil pirate captures and takes advantage of a beautiful woman,
the handsome hero comes along, beats the villian in a dog-fight
(but doesn't kill him) then gets the girl? Yes, that does seem
to sum up the plot in a fraction of the space.
                        Donaldson Review

So what's wrong? Donaldson doesn't seem to take his usual time
and preciseness in describing characters and their actions -
they just seem to "happen" in Real Story. The characters have no
real life - in the Thomas Covenant books you felt as if you had
some control over him, you felt what you felt. But in Real
Story, if you're lucky, you imagine it as if you were watching
it down at your local drive-in - detached and emotionless.

Perhaps I'm stressing the point too far, Real Story is a fine
book by most standards, but by Donaldson's?  Perhaps fine, but
by no means the classics all his others were.

If you're a fan of Donaldson or sci-fi then this is a good book
but the thought of having to buy five books in total at £3.50
is an offer I easily refuse - unless the name Stephen Donaldson
brandishes the front cover.

It's good, darn good, but not THAT good.

DD/BP              SPEAKING THE LINGO

In case you didn't know, there are two levels of computer
language, Low-level (Machine code/Assembler Source) and
High-level (BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL, ADA, Pascal, C Etc.).
High level languages were developed to make programming easier
for the average person (such as you and I) and many great pieces
of software have been written using High-level languages; and
most commercial and business software are written in High-level
languages (mainly COBOL, C & Pascal), so even if your Cray
owning friend who programs in 32-bit ARM code says "If it ain't
M/C, It's C**p", remember that he/she is a bit of a duffer (NO
bad lingo in my scriblings!) and fails to recognoise the
importance of high level languages.

Anybody who progra ms M/C on the coupe can also write in BASIC,
If you can program M/C WITHOUT EVER using some form of high
level lingo then you ar either.

1. A genius.
2. A Masochist
Banzai                 Speaking The Lingo

Learning a language such as Pascal, COBOL or BASIC is an
essential stepping stone to the 'higher ranks' of machine code
as it teachs structured programming techniques (If you scream
'HE LIES! BASIC AIN'T STRUCTURED!' then read on..) and other
handy bits and bobs.

And then comes BASIC (You should ALL know what that stands for),
the default (or is that defunked? Ooooh bitchy!.) language of
most home micros and probably THE most bitched about language in
the world. (with the possible exception of ADA...)

History lesson.

BASIC was developed in 1964 by two Dartmouth College professors
to make computer programming accessible to the masses. It is a
procedural language (i.e. step-by-step instructions) and has
roots in FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation, used by scientific
people) and ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language, a fore runner of
Pascal). When a program has been typed in and run, the computer
Dan Doore              Speaking The Lingo

takes each line, translates it and executes it and then onto the
next line. This is what makes BASIC slow, as it uses the built-
in INTEPRETER to run the source code. The speed of BASIC can
by improved by up to 200% by using a COMPILER, which takes the
entire source code, translates it and then saves it as an execut
executable machine code file. This is still not as fast as pure
machine code since the generated code has many more instructions
than it's M/C counterpart. Most modern commercial versions of
of BASIC (e.g. TurboBASIC) have a compile option.

Back to business. The two main reasons that BASIC has had such
a bad press over the years are:

1. Interpreted BASIC is b****y slow.


2. The dreaded GOTO statement.

The first is blatantly obvious, the second not so.
DD/BP                  Speaking The Lingo

In early versions, BASIC lacked the control structures needed
for learning structured programming (such as procedures, GOSUBs
and DO...LOOP..WHILE Etc.) and so GOTO was used for everything.
This made programs into a mass of spaghettified junk, jumping
from one place to another and then back again and this was why
the scientists disliked BASIC so much. And so to this day, even
through countless revisions and updates the label of that dire
1964 BASIC has stuck.

Whenever I browse through the programs in FRED, I cringe at the
sight of a GOTO and there are rarely cases where the GOTO's
can't be replaced by better programming styles and techniques
(mind you, I occasionally cheat by using them, but VERY rarely.

I don't know about you but I would kill for a Pascal compiler
for the coupe, or even better a BASIC compiler...

And there you have it. If you found it completely worthless,
then you will know better next time to skip these few pages.....
                   Morks Puzzle Corner no.4


Welcome  to  "Morks  Puzzle  Corner".  Abandon  yee hope all who
enter...

Answer  to  (1). Yes I know there were a couple of real spelling
mistakes but they were just typing errors, so here's the correct
answer.  The  one  word  spelt  I  N  C  O  R  R  E  C T L Y was
"incorrectly"!

Answer  to  (2).  Talk  about "house guests from hell". It would
be you.

Answer  to  (3). No he's not stoned. He was in a tunnel (or on a
bridge).

Answer  to (4). The word that reads the same forwards, backwards
and upside down is NOON.


                         Puzzle Corner


Answer to (5). These sentences are paladromes, the have the same
letters  reading  from  left  to  right as they do from right to
left.  Talking  of  sentences,  what  is  the  longest  two word
sentence? Give up? It's "I do".


Answer to (6). It's nothing to do with Roman numerals the answer
is "11/11 +11"


Answer  to  (7). You don't need a calculator for this one. There
is  no  earth  in  the hole. If there was it wouldn't be a hole,
would it?


Answer  to  the  classic  puzzle; a rabbit can only run half way
into a wood because after that it's running out again!

                         Puzzle Corner

Okay dokay, enough answers...

(1)  In a pond there is some 'Amazonian swamp weed'. It grows at
an  incredibly fast rate. So fast, in fact, that it doubles it's
size  every  day.  After 100 days it completely covers the pond.
After how many days was it half the area of the pond?

(2)  A  snail  climbs  up  a greasy flag pole 20 metres high. It
climbs  up  3  metres  each  day but then it slips down 2 metres
during the night. It starts at daybreak on the 1st January. When
does  this  persistant little mollusc reach the top of the pole?
To  find  the answer, you could always put a snail at the bottom
of  a  flag pole and time how long it takes to get to the top. I
wouldn't recommend it though.

(3)  A  newly  laid egg drops 5 metres directly above a concrete
floor  without breaking. How is this done? And no, it's not hard
boiled.  Cue  eggstremely  bad  egg  yolks.  ( Sorry, I couldn't
resist it. ) Before I get any complaints, the egg was free range
                         Puzzle Corner

(4)  A  certain family has three children, and half the children
are  boys.  How  is this possible?

(5)  If it takes four men eight days to dig four holes, how long
does it take one man to dig half a hole?

                         Classic puzzle

Picture  it;  a  thief  running  away from the palace, the kings
guards  in  hot  pursuit. He has stolen three very valuable gold
rings.  He  comes  to a chasm, it's too wide to jump, to deep to
climb  and the rings are too heavy to throw far. The only way to
get  across it is a rickety old rope bridge. But alas the bridge
is  only  strong  enough to take his weight plus two of the gold
rings. How can he escape and keep the loot?

                        Computer Puzzle

The following is a puzzle that you can solve by writing a little
                         Puzzle Corner

program  on  your Sam. You could work it out yourself but you'll
be old and grey by the time you get the answer.

Your  task  is  to  find  the  next three paladromic leap years,
that's all!

                          Prize Puzzle

As  I  mentioned last month I am putting up a prize for a puzzle
competition.  The  winner  will get a free copy of SmartFile and
will  be sent a copy of every other SmartSoft release, when it's
produced.  Ok,  I know you'd probably prefer a colour TV and VCR
but my budget won't stretch that far. The puzzle is this:

A German officer has just discovered that one of his lieutenants
was lying about missing provisions, the punishment was death.

"Aha,  vee  have  a lier!", said the german officer, "zee german
army  vill  not  tolerate  a  lier!  Your last vords vill be von
                         Puzzle Corner

sentence. If you tell a lie you vill be eaten alive by rats, and
vill  die  a  horrible  death. If you tell zee truth you vill be
mercifully shot."

It  seems  that  the  lieutenant  has had his chips. What can he
possibly say to save himself?

If  you  think you have zee ( oops! ) answer then send it to me,
William  McGugan, at 46 Elliot Street, Arbroath, Angus, Scotland
DD11 3BZ, and mark it "Morks puzzle comp."

Well  that's  another  month of mind-benders to take your mental
capacity  to  breaking  point.  I  take  no responsibility if in
attempting  to  do  these puzzles you are reduced to a gibbering
vegetable. Bit like an Amiga user really...
Nanoo nanoo, Mork signing out.



                           Plug Time

You may be wondering what this SmartFile program is. Well,
here's a few quotes from Mr McGugan alias Mork :

"Disk organiser utility for the SAM Coupe. Mouse compatible.
512K only. Disc and instructions only £6.50"

"SmartFile is a sophisticated file organiser for the SAM Coupe
with MasterDOS. An easy to use menu system allows you to erase,
hide/unhide......Can be used with SAMCo mouse or keyboard"

Send cheques to :

[redacted]


                 Letter From Stephen Donnellan

Dear Colin

My SAM and Fred get on like the proverbial house on fire.

I find Fred to be a fun and interesting read, and I try to use
many of the utilities supplied.  Unfortuneatly (as this OUTWRITE
file may imply) I can't get SAM Word to work with the MASTERDos/
MASTERBasic combination, which is my main boot file on my disks.

With work, I don't get as much time for programming on the SAM
as I would like.  I would like to program a decent DataBase
using the facilities of MASTERDos, or a Word Processor similar
to the IBM PC's (I won't totally abuse the term PC...) Word For
Windows; whereby the keyboard is used for merely typing the
document and everything else (bold, underline, disk commands)
are accessed using the mouse and icons.  But, unless I become
unemployed (!), these are merely dreams.


                             Letter

I leant my SAM to a friend of mine, who owns a BBC, whilst I was
on holiday, and he converted a couple of programs from BBC user
(and possibly BEEBUG - a BBC version of FORMAT) to the SAM.  I
have put a couple of them on this disk, but I DO NOT KNOW THE
COPYRIGHT POSITION AS TO YOU BEING ABLE TO USE THEM OR NOT!  But
they may be of some ispiration to some one.  By the way, rumour
has it that this friend of mine is saving up to buy a SAM just
for Triltex...

Thanks for all the fun that is Fred - and can I have some of the
"interesting herbage" that Axe must be on to come up with some
of his demo's?

Yours sincerely

STEVEN DONNELLAN



                             Reply

Personally, I havn't had any problems with SAM Word but if
anyone out there has, and has come up with a solution to
Stephens problems, please get in touch.

As you will see when you get around to looking at the Bits menu,
you'll see I have used your friends programs. I don't think I've
got many problems with these sorts of copyrights but I would
like to point out to FRED contributors that there is nothing
more infuriating than getting some brilliant program only to
discover that if I use it, I'll get my behind sued off!

Thats a new one! Most of the people I know have sold their SAMs
just to get away from Triltex! Little do they know FREDs
expansion plans....

Herbage? Herbage? I'm sure I don't know what you mean! But if
you send an SSAE, I'll send some of Mum's garlic and cress. Hope
standing on that will help you to continue the Zeb Green story!
                                                               .