the magazine for members of - arm club · the magazine for members of kinetic power comes to the...

The magazine for members of

Kinetic power comesto the Risc PC

Oregano browser offersspeedier surfing

Looking forward to theRISC OS 2000 Show

The Interactive Tutorialwhich shows how to do

more with Draw

Issue 35 — Autumn 2000

What would you think about amajor piece of software which,

according to a report in The Times,has had a 50MB upgrade issued tocorrect 65,000 individual bugsreported by users? It probably doesn’ttake you too long to work out what thesoftware is likely to be. It could onlybe Windows! The upgrade is the firstservice pack just released forWindows 2000.

Its issue followed that of the latest 5·5version of Internet Explorer. This wasnot, however, included wi th theservice pack as Microsoft themselvesconsidered that it was “not reliableenough” !

RISC OS does not need any advocacywhen the so called ‘ industry standard’operating system produces facts likethose. What it does desperately needis some publ ici ty to draw i t to theattention of the big majori ty ofcomputer users who have never heardof i t or who sti l l think that Acornmachines are still just the Model Bsthey enjoyed using at school.

Advertising is expensive but if someof the bigger companies in the RISCOS community could get together andorganise some demonstrations atcomputer shows, in public areas oreven in enterprising supermarketsthere should be no lack of enthusiastsf rom local user groups wi l l ing toshow off their computer’s qualities.

This is something that RISCOS Ltdmight like to consider when they havesorted out their more pressing currentproblems. There has already been toomuch uninformed speculation aboutthe company so suffice it to say thatan internal reorganisation is going onand an announcement should bemade soon — even i f i t has notappeared by the time you read this.

RISCOS Ltd is now a key figure in theformer Acorn community but thereare other companies, who haveheavily invested both time and money,who also have a strong interest in thesurvival of our computer system.

Peter Jennings

Let’s Show Them The Alternative

All opinions expressed in Eureka are those of the authors and not necessarily

those of the Club or its Committee members and officers.

2 Eureka 35 — Autumn 2000

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Kinetic comes to the Risc PCA new, faster, computer and acard to boost earlier models get adetailed assessment.

OreganoBetter, speedier, surfing with thenew browser for RISC OS users.

Draw Interactive Tutor ialHow to do, the easy way, thingsyou never knew were possible inDraw.

Site SeeingThe unexpected variety ofsubjects on open.government.uk.

Oxford L iteracy WebRecognising the shapes andsounds of letters makes a game oflearning to read.

RISC User …in a NutshellAll the best from the formerBEEBUG magazine.

Linux 2000 ShowThe Show that’s helping toestablish the all-platformsoperating system.

ARM ArenaWhat’s new and what’s coming tothe RISC OS games scene,including an old favourite withsome new features.

Oxford Reading Tree clip ar tA collection of favouritecharacters from the children’seducational programs.

Living with a PC: Having to use itIs it love or loathing when you getto know it better?

The ARM Club Midlands ShowA date for your diary in December.

Have a chat with IRCYour Tuesday evening invitationto visit a chat room and join in thegossip.

ViewfinderGet the speed of a PC graphicscard on your Risc PC.

Can we help?Questions to our Technical HelpService with replies that may helpsolve a problem for you.

CONTENTS

Eureka 35 — Autumn 2000 3

58

62

63

Gill’s Journal: Food for SpodsGill reveals what not to eat freshif you really are a spod.

Mental Maths OlympicsOlympic medals for maths whenyou’ve learned how to calculatein your head.

Now read on: Par t 2We look at RISC World, thesecond of the two new CD-ROMmagazines.

Club ContactsWho does what and their address.

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What is FTP?Here’s the answer to anotherquestion sent to our TechnicalHelp Service.

Member ’s Adver tisementAcorns for sale. £50 each!

Return of the RISC OS ShowLast year’s highly successfulShow at Ascot is being repeatedand, this time, there’s freeadmission for Club Members onSunday!

Mental Maths Olympics — page 74

Since the StrongARM wasintroduced three years ago, the

Risc PC has remained unchanged,and has not had any performanceupgrades. At the time we enjoyed amassive boost of up to 7x overprevious ARM processors but it was

always said that the StrongARMcould deliver more if it wasn’t heldback by the slow memory bus on theRisc PC motherboard. The Kinetic isCastle’s attempt to remove this barrierand breathe a bit of new life into thevenerable Risc PC design to add anew flagship to their range.

It contains the latest 233MHz revisionT StrongARM and a 64MB or 128MBSDRAM DIMM memory module,which can be accessed much fasterthan the memory on the motherboard.This memory isn’t used as asecondary cache, such as on othersystems, but is in addition to thememory you already have. The new

version of RISC OS, 4.03, will use thefast memory first and when that isexhausted can still make use of all themotherboard RAM, giving you thepotential to have a huge 514MB intotal. (Note it is always displayed as4MB less, as the OS is loaded from

the slow ROMs into the SDRAM forextra speed).

The Kinetic is being sold both as acomplete system called the KineticRisc PC, and as an upgrade, theKinetic processor card for existingRisc PC owners, which can be used inplace of an ARM610, ARM710 orexisting StrongARM.

If you already have a StrongARMcard, a trade-in of £50+VAT is given.As it also requires a new version ofRISC OS 4 to work, again a trade-inof £50+VAT is given against the fullprice of £399+VAT for existing RISCOS 4 owners. However as these two

Eureka 35 — Autumn 20004

Kinetic Comes To The Risc PC

David Ruck looks at the biggest boost for the Risc PCsince StrongARM, measures its increase in speed andsuggests who can benefit most from it.

items are still in demand, it may beworth considering if you could getmore through a private sale.

ProblemsBefore getting to the results it isimportant to note a few problems thatmay be experienced with the Kinetic.

Due to the Kinetic’s design it is notpossible to use the motherboard’sDMA controller on the fastermemory and as a consequence allDMA on a machine fitted withKinetic is currently disabled. Whilethis isn’t a problem for the completeKinetic Risc PC system, which usesonly the standard internal IDE discinterface, many people who mightconsider upgrading to Kinetic willhave bought faster IDE or SCSI cardswhich use DMA.

Without DMA these cards will not beable to access the disc as fast, so someoperations will actually slow downwith the Kinetic. (See table below.)The degree will depend on how well

the card is designed. It should benoted that these figures are only foraccessing large files, some transfersof small amounts of data are actuallyfaster without DMA.

The first two cards are reduced toaround 60% of their peakperformance but the PowerTec card,which was not designed to workwithout DMA, performs extremelybadly. Very few cards rely completelyon DMA, but cards such as Videodiskwon’t work at all in a machine fittedwith Kinetic. Solutions have beendiscussed with Castle and the cardmanufacturers but as yet there hasbeen no progress.

The second problem concerns PCcards. A module (MemFix) must beplaced in the boot sequence to allowthe !PC software to claimmotherboard memory for use with thePC card. The latest version of this isavailable on Castle’s website andshould be shipped with new upgrades.However, some people with early


Risc PC 600 motherboards, myselfincluded, found that the PC cardwould not work correctly with anycombination of hardware andsoftware settings, including fitting thejumper that makes the Kinetic behaveas a normal StrongARM. With thehelp of Castle’s John Balance (whodesigned Kinetic) and Aleph One’sWookey, we traced the fault to thecapacitor C32. (Which was added byAcorn so they could use two home-made 128MB SIMMs to demonstratethe Risc PC with the full amount ofmemory at i ts launch, before largeSIMMs were commercial l yavailable). This capacitor degradesthe signals in the bus and, as i tsremoval is the common modificationmade by Reflex Electronics to curetiming problems, this may havealready been done for a lot of PC Cardusers. With C32 gone, the PC cardbooted without problems.

Another issue related to the PC Cardis the RC5 code cracker. The RISCOS port of this can use both the ARM

and PC processors. However when Istarted up the software after installingthe K inetic, before the MemFixmodule was available, I had a seriouscrash which resulted in my hard discmap becoming corrupt. This may wellhave been a coincidence but it is wiseto ensure that the MemFix module isinstalled and the PC card works with!PC, before using the RC5 PC cardclient.

PerformanceCastle has claimed substantialincreases in speed when using theKinetic; up to four times in someadvertising. Before the Wakefieldshow, where the card was launched,Mark Smith and myself wrote somememory benchmarking programs totest how much faster the SDRAM onthe Kinetic actually was. (See table

below.)

The Kinetic’s memory does showi tsel f to be substantial ly faster atreading and faster but not quite asmuch as expected at wri ting — i t


should be very slightly faster than theread speed — although not as fast asit is possible to squeeze out of theStrongARM, and certainly not the 4xclaimed (see the technical section fordetails). It should be noted that theKinetic accesses only the 64MB or128MB of main memory at theimproved speed. Any normal memoryused, including that of the screenVRAM, will be no faster than before.

The big question is how much fasterdoes this new memory make yoursystem? Most benchmarks, such asDhrystone, test the processor speed,as they are smal l and f i t in theprocessor cache are not greatlyaf fected by the memory speed.

Benchmarks speci f i cal l y on thememory system don’t give a realisticview of overall system performance,so the best way is to run a series ofreal world tests, using popularapplications to do common jobs andcomparing the results.

The fol lowing tests (shown on thenext page) were carried out on aStandard Risc PC SA 233 revision Srunning RISC OS 4.02 with 98MBRAM and 2MB VRAM in1152x896x32K screen mode and thesame machine upgraded with a 64MBKinetic (SA 233MHz revision T).Some tests give a range of results,which are representative of what wasachieved with different data.


The Kinetic card


Continued on opposite page

Saving as optimised JPEG 121% to 125%Redrawing speed in 256, 32K and 16M colours 116% to 123%

ChangeFSI 1.17 Load 512K JPEG 118%FireWorkz 1.30 Scroll up large spread sheet 199%ImageOut 1.00 Convert small 256 colour spite to drawfile 201%MakeMPEG 4% MPEG movie from 24 frame ARMovie 120%SPRtools Crop 10 sprites from 768x576 to 762x570 120%

De-interlace 762x570 sprite 135%Browse 1.07 Render Window manager chapter from PRM CD 141%Fresco 2.13 151%Oregano 1.03 181%

Redrawing speed in 256, 32K and 16M colours 120% to 173%GraphTask 3.53 Graphical apps running in Graphic TaskWindow

(Graphical programs running full screen )183% to 263%

(111% to 119%)Norcoft C 5.09 Compile and link 26 source files of 242K 182%

Application Test ImprovementPinboard Redrawing speed in 256, 32K and 16M colours 136% to 202%Filer Redrawing speed in 256, 32K and 16M colours 179% to 205%TopModel 2.13 Loading various models 113% to 115%

Rendering various models 132% to 162%SparkFS 1.37 Zipping 233 files 2MB on RAM disc 174% to 182%

Unzipping 233 files 2MB on RAM disc 197% to 211%

Zip 8MB file on RAM disc (scrap file on HD)* 94%

Unzip 8MB file on RAM disc (scrap file on HD) * 88%ArtWorks 1.70 Load application 211%

Render complex blends 136%

ImpressionPublisher 4.17

Load large file with 30MB of images* 83%

Scroll down large file 137%Redrawing speed in 256, 32K and 16M colours 123% to 136%

MoveDB 1.37 Find film 132%Display film 108%Display cast member 208%

DDE Tools Diff Fast difference of identical directory contents 218%DDE Tools Find Find string in directory of files 181%Zap 1.44 Jump to end of 32MB binary in text mode 113%

Find string with throwback in very large file 150%Thump Generate Thumbnails pages 121% to 128%

Redrawing speed in 256, 32K and 16M colours 120% to 155%

PhotoDesk 3.03 Various image processing ops on36MB sprite with different DA sizes

48MB* 68% to 224%

80MB 103% to 110%

ConclusionsThe average speed increase of 148%looks quite low on paper. I wascertainly disappointed it wasn’t more.However, after using Kinetic for amonth, I really do notice the difference.It feels a lot faster; even more so thanthe upgrade to RISC OS 4. Screenredrawing is wonderfully smooth, andthings I do all the time such asopening large mail folders are muchquicker, which is a real benefit.

Anyone looking to upgrade from anolder Acorn machine and who feelthey need better performance than thatof the ARM7500 based systems shoulddefinitely go for a Kinetic Risc PC.

As for the Kinetic upgrade, if youhaven’t you got a StrongARM cardthis is an excellent way to vastlyimprove the performance of your

machine, and get a discounted priceon RISC OS 4. For existingStrongARM 200 or 233 users, itmakes sense if you haven’t alreadygot RISC OS 4, or need extramemory. For people that already havea Strong ARM and RISC OS 4, it isquite an expensive option to providethe extra performance, so you’ll haveto decide exactly how much the extraspeed is worth to you. I make so muchuse of my Risc PC, that anysignificant improvement, such as theKinetic provides, is worthwhile and,after the initial teething problems, Iam quite pleased with the card.

Very Technical SectionContrary to popular belief, the RiscPC’s motherboard memory is notaccessed at 16MHz but 32MHz.However the fast paged modememory takes five clock ticks to


*The APDL IDE card was used for all disc access, resulting in a speeddecrease on the Kinetic for large file operations without DMA.

Marcel 1.53 Open large mail folder 179%Show old newsgroup messages 167%

Sleuth 2.01 OCR A4 page of 12pt text 131%Printers 1.63(Print to file usingESC600 driver)

PhotoDesk of sprite at 720dpi 172%

Impression mixed text & graphics at 360dpi 143%ArtWorks complex blends at 1440dpi 119%

Average 148%

deliver the first word and two ticks forthe next three, so you could considerthis to be 2.5 and one tick of a 16MHzclock. The Strong ARM always readscached memory in 32 byte/8 wordchunks, so it takes 5-2-2-2-5-2-2-2i.e. 22 x 32MHz cycles, giving atheoretic maximum of 44.38MB/s(There are various reasons why ourbenchmark doesn’t quite achieve this,but too technical to discuss here).

The Kinetic uses a different type ofRAM called SDRAM, which can beclocked up to 133MHz, although inthe Kinetic it is clocked at 66MHz asthat is as fast as the memory bus on aStrongARM110 will go. It hasdifferent characteristics, in that ittakes more ticks to get the first wordbut delivers subsequent words oneach tick. John Ballance, the designerof the card, has published details onthe Castle website that explains theStrongARM will be able to read eightwords in 7-1-1-1-1-1-1-1, i.e. 14cycles 66MHz cycles, giving amaximum of 144MB/s. However wesee significantly less than this in ourbenchmark and theorise that thetiming is either 7-1-1-1-5-1-1-1, or6-1-1-1-6-1-1-1 i.e. 18 cycles giving111MB/s which compares well with

the 101MB/s we achieved.

Writing speeds with SDRAM shouldbe even quicker, using 5-1-1-1accesses. However as theStrongARM is still being run in non-enhanced mode to enable it to accessthe motherboard via IOMD, theStrongARM’s write buffer cannotwork at its most efficient. (Writing ofeach of the 8 1-16 byte slots cannot bemerged into sequential cycles). Ourcalculations suggest that 125MB/sshould be possible, but tests show thatit’s only achieving half this at 63.3MB/s.We are trying discover the cause of thisshortfall with John Ballance. TheKinetic contains flash programmablecomponents which can bereprogrammed (by returning the card)should any improvements be possible.


Kinetic Risc PCPrice: (from) £999 +VATUpgrade card: £399 +VAT, less£50+VAT each to trade-inStrongARM and/or RISC OS 4.Supplier: Castle TechnologyTel: 01728 723200Fax: (free) 0800 783 9638Email: [email protected]: www.castle.org.uk

I f there is one area that people haveseen as being lacking on the RISC

OS platform and made them considerusing PC alternatives, it is access tothe Internet, and specif ical ly web-browsing. An increasing number ofsites and faci l i ties such as Internet

banking have been denied to us due tolack of progress wi thin the web-browsers we have available.

This is now changing with the releaseby Castle of Oregano.

Oregan, formerly known forproducing RISC OS ti tles such asPro-sound and Cineworks, left themain RISC OS market a few yearsago and became involved in networkappl iances. This led to themdeveloping the Oregano browser foruse on Acorn designed NetworkComputers and Set Top Boxes. Castlehave bought the rights to produce aRISC OS desktop version of the

browser, and the resul t i s anextremely good, up-to-date, fast andreliable product — just what peoplehave been crying out for.

Oregano comes on CD and hasoptions to install Oregano on its own,

if you have an existing Internet set-upsuch as ANT’s InetSuite or Acorn net,or i t can instal l a minimal set offreeware tools which will allow youto dial up an ISP. I t’s not pre-configured for any particular ISP, soyou will still have to choose one andregister before you can get onl ineproperly.

Surprisingly the CD contains only thedemo version of the browser (whichcan also be downloaded from Castle’swebsite) but the page it displays onloading is a registration form. Fillingthis out wi th your detai ls and theserial number from the back of theCD case will automatically download


Oregano

David Ruck goes surfing with the new RISC OS Webbrowser and finds it a blisteringly fast way to travel toareas of the Internet never visited before.

and upgrade you to the very latestversion.

Oregano has support for the mainsticking points which have preventedus f rom ful ly exploi ting the Web,namely 128bi t SSL for secure

connections and a goodimplementation of JavaScript. It alsohandles the rest of the HTML 3.2specifications with support for framesand tables etc.

Faking support is built-in, so it canpretend to be a different browser forbadly written sites that lock you out ifyou are not using the latest version ofNetscape or Internet Explorer. It hasthe standard plug-in interface, so ifyou use Java, Flash, Sound orMP3radio plug-ins with your existingbrowser they wi l l also work wi thOregano.

The first thing you notice when usingOregano (apart f rom the userinterface, on which I ’l l say more

later) is the speed — it’s blisteringlyfast with pages rendering and imagesdownloading faster than you thoughtyour modem was capable of. This is awelcome side ef fect of i t beingdeveloped for ARM7500 systemsrather than StrongARMs.

Its apparent speed is also helped bythe fact that i t wi l l start renderingcomplex tables immediately, insteadof waiting for a large amount of datato download first. It does have a smalldrawback in not using a local cache,so pages and images you have alreadyvisited have to be fetched again whenthey are redisplayed. However if youhave Browse, you can use i tscompanion appl ication, WebCache

with Oregano too.

I ts handl ing of JavaScript is verygood, which is essential as more andmore si tes use i t, albei t of ten forproducing unnecessary features (suchas buttons which change when themouse move over them) and are badlycoded. But without it some sites are


Machine / Browser Fresco 2.13 Browse 1.07 Oregano 1.03Risc PC SA 233 104.3 56.8 28.8Risc PC Kinetic 69.1 40.3 15.9

Test of rendering very large Window Manager chapter from the PRM CD

completely inaccessible. This hasbeen a problem for both the existingbrowsers that had some JavaScriptsupport; Webster XL understood onlya l imited set and Fresco seemed tocrash more often than not.

Oregano has handled all the sites I’vetried it with, many of which defeatedthe others. People have found somesites which don’t work or have minordisplay problems but i t’s a merehandful. Oregano has proved to beremarkably stable; in three weeks ofextensive testing I’ve had only twocrashes and both those were with thevery earliest version. With Fresco, I’dconsider myself lucky to get awaywith two crashes a night.

There are only two major niggles withOregano: its interface and the fonts.The NC version of Oregano has quitea simple interface sui table for aproduct which may be running on aTV and it is this that Castle have hadto do most work on to bring it up tothe standard expected of a desktopbrowser. The main window is a bitdifferent from other browsers. Thearea in the tool bar is shared betweenthe URL bar and the status l ine, soyou have to cl ick to see what URL

you have entered. The current URL isshown in the window title instead ofthe document title of the page, and athrobber activi ty indicator alsoappears over the bottom right cornerof the page which is unexpected butby editing a configuration file it canbe moved to the status bar.

These really aren’t a problem, as youget used to them quite quickly, but thebookmarks window is quite crude anddefinitely needs redesigning to give ahierarchical view with more than halfa dozen items displayed. There are afew features which I feel areimportant missing from the interface:find on page — essential when tryingto f ind information on very largepages such as the HTML PRMchapters — save as draw file, handyfor storing complete pages wi thpicture for of f -l ine viewing, andzooming in to see fine detail or smalltext.

The other problem is the font system.One of the main strong points ofRISC OS is the excellent anti-aliasedfont system, which is legible andaccurate at all sizes regardless of thefont. Oregano, being primari l ydesigned for the Far East market,


required the use of Unicode fonts tobe able to represent the larger numberof symbols in the oriental characterset. Acorn’s version of the FontManager shipped with the NetworkComputer does not allow this, soOregano has had to come up withtheir own. (Ironically PACE whobought the Acorn NC and technologyhave extended the Font Manager tohandle Unicode fonts as well but forwhatever reason this wasn’t used).Oregano’s font system is not as goodas RISC OS’s. On the majority ofpages you won’t notice muchdifference but with small text orcoloured text against a colouredbackground (especially with the fixedpitch font) the quality is very muchinferior, lacking the hinting and sub-pixel anti-aliasing of the RISC OSfont manager.

Although not implemented yet, itsfont system has one advantage in thatit will recognise the HTML font facetag, to use fancy fonts to displaypages as they appear on othersystems. This is because it usesTrueType fonts, which are thestandard on other platforms and manyfree versions can be downloaded fromthe Internet. Currently you can

replace the main and typewriter fontswith alternatives, although the processto do this is a little complicated.

One thing you can use the TrueTypefonts for now is changing the base andfixed pitch fonts used to display pagesso, for example, you could have Arialin place of Old Times (equivalent toHomerton instead of Trinity).Oregano looks can be changedextensively by the use of skins. Theseallow the appearance of most aspectsto be altered, from background tiles tobutton icons. The fonts, icon size andordering, are all configured by a textfile and the icons, including thethrobber animation, contained instandard sprite files. Two skins areprovided with the browser, and severalmore are now available to download.

In the rapidly changing world of theInternet, just as important as whatOregano can do today is what it willbe able to do tomorrow. Good andcontinued support is essential.Acorn’s Browse was a good productbut is no longer being developed afterthe demise of Acorn. ANT Fresco wasquite good before a very unstableversion of JavaScript was added andsullied its reputation. Its future on


RISC OS now remains uncertain.New versions have recently beenproduced for PACE for theircombined TV and Set Top Boxsystems. It is rumoured that thestability problems have beenaddressed but we are waiting to see ifArgonet can have any influence withANT to get a RISC OS build released.

The other alternative is Webster XL,which is still under development andhas just had a major release fixingmany problems However it isessentially a one man effort which isan uphill battle against constantevolution of the standards. Oreganoon the other hand is maintained by ateam of programmers: Oregan, withthe backing of major Far Easternmanufacturers plus a full timeprogrammer employed by Castle tolook after RISC OS specific matters.So it looks like our best bet at keepingup developments on other platforms. Iwouldn’t hesitate to recommendOregano to anyone one who spends asignificant time on the Internet.

A free trial version is available from:www.castle.org.uk/oregano/ and amailing list has been set up for usersto report their experiences and

suggest improvements. See:www.smartgroups.com/oregano/.There are also a number of skins andlinks to help pages, created by users,to download from the document vault.


OreganoPrice: £49 +VATSupplier: Castle Technology LtdOne Trading Estate,Woodbridge Road, Framlingham,Suffolk IP13 9LLTel: 01728 723200Fax: (free) 0800 783 9638Email: [email protected]: www.castle.org.uk

An example of the continueddevelopment by Castle came aboutwhen I was chatting to the authoron an Acorn talk room. I justhappened to mention it would begood if Oregano saved the imageunder the mouse on pressing F3,instead of going through threemenus. Everything went quiet forfive minutes and then he replied“ Done! ” . Two days later, whenversion 1.05 was released, the F3saving feature was included. Nowthat’s what I call support!

David Ruck

When I was asked if I would liketo review a Draw tutorial I

thought: great, this will not take melong. How wrong could I be? Thedepth to which this product goes hasgot to have been a labour of love. Thedetail and devotion that has gone intothis makes it by far the best tutorial Ihave ever used. Most of the time with

other tutorials I get bored after thefirst couple of pages and just skipabout.

Do you use Draw as well as youwould like to? No? Then read on.

I, for one, purchased Artworks forquite a lot of money so that I could getbetter at drawing on the computer. Itnever happened, I still use Draw.

Draw Interactive Tutorial has beendeveloped by a teacher, Tom Beeley,and arrives on eight 1.6MB floppydiscs. If you load everything onto

your hard drive it will take up justover 10.5MB. Alternatively, justleave the files on the floppies as itruns fine from them. It would actuallybe cheaper to produce on a CD (andthis is under negotiation).

In addition to the main files there arean index (in Impression and textfile

formats), half a dozen worksheets,Drawfile clip art produced by theauthor, and a four-page introductorypamphlet which includes a studentprogress check list.

Each tutorial page has beencompleted in Draw, not in a DTPpackage. The sheer quantity andquality of the material is a testamentto the versatility of the free softwarethat comes with every RISC OScomputer from the humble A3000 upto the current offerings fromCastle/Acorn, RiscStation and Mico.


Draw Interactive Tutorial

Ralph Sillett enjoys working through the best tutorial hehas ever used, without skipping about, and learnsthings about Draw he never knew it could do.

The files are not archived, so as not toconfuse complete beginners and forease of use.

The tutorial has two stages: for thecomplete beginner and for the moreadvanced. If you are a beginner then Iwould suggest that you follow thesequence of pages.

The files are organised intodirectories relating to the variouschapters of the tutorial. As the filesare all in Draw it is fully interactive.

The worksheets are provided inDrawfile format as well as a colourprinted copy of each. The clip art hasbeen produced by the author and is ofvery good quality, I particularly likedthe horseshoe. The original is in fullcolour.

I must say that on taking my time towork through each page of the tutorialit has given me some helpful hints andtips as well as things that I didn’tthink Draw could do, such as printinga four page poster. Read the tutorial tofind out how.

As I have said before, the detail andwork that has gone into this tutorial is

outstanding and gets 10 out of 10from me. I thought I could use Drawquite effectively but how wrong Iwas! A lot of the features are notexplained in the Draw manualeffectively.

Because you will be using Drawautomatically it is very easy to interactwith the tutorial either by having ablank Draw window to the side or byusing the drawings on the pages. Ifyou use the pages, either make surethat the floppies are write protected orthat you use the discard button onlywhen closing the page (if you haveinstalled to the hard drive).

The style for the pages is consistentthroughout the tutorial (See example


The horseshoe


Use the following pages to practise using !Draw.

If you need more practisedouble-click on the IntroPage drawfile icon.Otherwise close this windowand double-click on the Page 1drawfile icon.

To delete any object or part of a drawing you must first click on the"Select arrow" at the bottom of the real Toolbox.

The "Select Arrow" is at the bottom of the Toolbox and looks like this

To Select the object to be deleted, place the mouse pointeranywhere over the object and click select.

The object will be surrounded by a dotted red line with two smallboxes attached, one at the top right corner and the other atthe bottom right corner. The object has now been .

Pressing the delete key on the keyboard will delete all that is selected

© T. Beeley July 1996.When you are ready, discard this page and load Page1.

selected

This is the real Toolbox.

when you click on it.

This will then happen:

Now, practice selecting and de-selecting the flag below. Then deletethe flag completely.

We will look atthese boxes later.

If you delete anything on this page by accident, just close the windowand double-click on the "IntroPage" drawfile icon to load it again.

To de-select an object, place the mouse pointer anywhere away fromselected object and click select once. This will remove the red dotted boxand its two small attached boxes, so the object is no longer selected. This is called de-selecting.

de-select

opposite). As you can see the use ofDraw in DTP is feasible as well.

How far does it go? All the way, nearenough, including use of all the tools,the menus, keyboard shortcuts,selecting objects, printing and saving,text, f rame layers, text and objectal ignment and justi f i cation,interpolation (grading), undo/redo,start and end caps, winding rule,poster/ti l ing, zoom, using Edit forinput of commands within a text filefor importing to text areas includingcolumns, spri tes and producingDrawfiles from sprites.

The whole emphasis of this product isinteractivi ty which i t does wel l . Iwould thoroughly recommend this tobeginners especially, whether adult orchild.

The tutorial is very comprehensiveand very good value for money. Haveyou ever wondered how you coulddraw such things as a flame? If youare as good an artist as me then youwill realise how difficult that could bebut after reading through this tutoriali t wi l l not be a problem. I wasimpressed with the whole packageand, as the saying goes: ‘ it does what

it says on the tin’. The author has puta lot of time and ef fort into thisproduct and it shows by keeping thepresentation consistent throughout.

This tutorial is a must for anyonewanting to learn about Draw but i twill not happen in a day. Take yourtime and you will reap the benefits.

The package is a snip at its price.


Draw Interactive TutorialPrice: £12·50 inclusive (£17·50 overseas)Supplier: Tom Beeley1A Den Hill DriveSpringheadSaddleworthOL4 4NRTel: 0161 652 0930Email:[email protected]

Interpolation made easy

This issue I am going to suggestthat readers take a look at one of

the Government’s Web si tes, atwww.open.gov.uk

The Internet has changed rapidly overthe last few years; now people log on

for an entertaining surf whereas a fewyears back it was the domain of theacademics who went online to get orshare information.

www.open.gov.uk i s basical ly agovernment run site that links visitorsto vi rtual ly anything that has aconnection wi th national or localGovernment.

It is an absolute mine of informationthat can be of use to people of all agesin relation to research, law,complaints, education, statistics,claims etc. Younger readers areprobably losing interest already butread on, there is something for you

too. See under the Younger readers

heading on the next page.

Log on to the address given and youwill be presented with a well laid outpage offering visi tors a number ofways to f ind whatever they are

looking for. There is an alphabeticall ist which is quite huge but easy tonavigate, click on a letter and you geta manageable alphabetical l i st oflinks. Then there is the topic index,which is an alternativeway to find alink. If you select this option you getan alphabetical group listing such as‘ Defence, Health, Transport’, fromthere you can navigate to the webpage of your choice.

What i s there on a boring oldGovernment site? Well, I’m not goingto list too many things but to give youan idea there are links to the Duke ofEdinburgh Award Scheme, EnglishHeritage, Air Accident Investigation


Site Seeing

Geoff Lane looks at one his favourite Web sites andexplains some of the fascination of the subjects you canfind connected with government.

Branch, Atomic Energy Authori ty,Science Museum and all the TouristBoards. There are also links to everyLocal Authority, Parliament, PoliceSites, Health Authorities, DHSS sitesand further l inks that show localsolicitors if you enter a postcode.

Aircraft safetyThe A i r Accident InvestigationBranch actually lists dates and detailsof incidents involving aircraft safetygiving dates, aircraft involved,airportand crew — quite fascinating reallybut probably not a good read prior toleaving on holiday.

There is a list of the Schoolsand College PerformanceTables as well as a page onOFSTED (Office for Standardsin Education) and links to alllocal government and councils.You can also find your localcouncillor and MP showingemail contacts if available.

I could go on but the site is a mass ofinfo and links and I could not do itjustice. View the site and see what ithas to offer; you may be pleasantlysurprised.

Younger readersWhat on Earth could interest youngerreaders in a Government site? Well,there are l inks to al l the defencedepartments, The Army, Navy and AirForce.

Go into these sites and you can findout about the equipment used by the


Government never sleeps

Everything with a connection to national or local government

Army, loads of piccies andinformation on tanks, lorries, rockets,guns, radar etc. The Royal Navy siteshows images of the various ships inuse including aircraf t carriers andsubs and wel l , the A i r Force —images of aircraft both up to date andhistorical. You can also find details offorthcoming air shows.

CadetsIf you are a teenager find out aboutthe Army Cadets, Sea Cadets or AirCadets or, if you fancy a career in theforces, each of the services has asection on job opportunities outliningwhat you could train for. The Army isBri tain’s largest employer andannually has over 15000 vacanciescovering a whole host of trades. Who

knows, by reading this article youmay end up with a career..

There is also the Duke of EdinburghAward page which gives loads of infoif you are involved in this scheme orwant to find out more.

Perhaps Royal history is yourfascination, if so then link in to theRoyal Si te and f ind out about thehistory of the monarchy in GreatBritain, read about early monarchy,the Stuarts, Tudors and the presentday Royal Fami ly — not to beconfused with the Royle Family.

James BondOveral l , this is a si te I have onlyrecently explored and as I have doneso I return regularly to see what else Ican find. Within the A-Z index theremust be other obscure and fascinatingGovernment departments wi thinteresting sites. Come to think of it,didn’t James Bond work for theGovernment?

Hmmm, must go as I want to searchon 007.

Have fun.


Check up on a military career

Learning to read is a complicatedbusiness. The first stage requires

the learner to identify the soundsassociated with the shapes of theletters in the alphabet — thephonemes associated with thegraphemes, if you wish to betechnical. Once this is mastered the

next stage involves realising howthese sounds are fitted together tomake words.

Many ingenious activities have beendevised to help young children coverthis stage in their learning in the

youngest classes in schools. ThreeCDs from Sherston: Big ABC, SoundActivities and SoundStories, will be amost welcome addition to thearmoury of the teachers concerned.

They cover the 26 letters of thealphabet plus the ch, sh, th and wh

digraphs and the activities are basedon the Sound Activity Cards in theLetters, Sounds and Rhymes strand ofthe Oxford Literacy Web.

Each CD has a similar interface witha teacher’s page on which variouschoices can be made. The children areguided through the activities by adelightful cartoon spider calledWebster.

Big ABC provides four activities foreach sound. Firstly object startingwith the sound must be chosen from apicture, then the three correct itemsfrom a choice of four highlighted ones


Oxford Literacy Web

Di Hillage takes an approving look at three CD-ROMswhich help children to associate the shapes and soundsof letters, as they learn to read while they play.

Webster

must be found. The two spellingpattern games involve choosing thecorrect word to match an objectchosen in the picture and the choosingthe first letter to complete a word.

RhymeThere is a rhyme for each soundwhich can be played at the beginningof each section, or not.

These rhymes are printed in the BigABC book and can thus be discussed

with the class.They are also in theLittle ABC individual books.

The Sound Activities CD covers twolistening and two spelling games foreach sound. The games involvechoosing pictures with the requiredinitial sound and then choosing thestarting letter for the object.

The instructions and narration, as ineach CD, are very clear and easy tofollow.


Recognise the word in the T-shirt game (Sound Activities)

The Sound Stories CD is myfavourite. There is a short Talking

Story for each sound in the customarySherston format in which the wordsare highlighted as they are read andthe chosen letter or digraph isdisplayed in a different colour. Thestories are followed by a listening andspelling activity with the latter askingthe child to chose the correct word tocomplete a sentence from the story.

Each CD also contains a text file withan extensive list of suggestedactivities for the classroom.

Work independentlyThe children would need someintroduction to using the programsbut once this has taken place mostchildren would probably be able towork independently. If the programhas been installed to a hard disc ratherthan just being run from the CD,individual records can be keptenabling the teacher to track thepupils’ progress.

Reception classrooms are very busyplaces. Computer activities that thechildren can use without adult supportare a real boon. They also provide anopportunity for extra reinforcement

for those needing a bit more time topick up the essential basics.

Providing headphones for eachcomputer would enable the programsto be used to best effect. It is a pitythat those who design computer casesdo not take this into account whenthey position the headphoneconnection on the back of the case.

These programs will have a usefulrole in any early learning classroomand are thoroughly recommended.

Each CD is in triple format forRISCOS, Windows and Apple Mac.


Oxford Literacy WebBig ABC, Sound Activities andSoundStoriesPrice: £35 +VAT eachPacks (same CD): 3 CDs £52·70,5 CDs £70 both +VATSupplier: Sherston Software LtdAngel House, SherstonMalmesbury, Wilts SN16 0LHTel: 01666 843200Fax: 01666 843216Email: [email protected]: www.sherston.com

One of the big changes whichreally i l lustrated the effects of

Acorn’s wi thdrawal f rom thecomputer scene was the drasticdown-sizing of BEEBUG, a majorplayer since the days of the BBC-B,which gave it its name (‘Beeb’ User

Group). Gone was the showroom(which had always been my localsuppl ier) and gone was the last oftheir magazines, RISC User.

This at least made a digni f ieddeparture at the end of Volume 12,unlike other Acorn magazines whichceased publ ication wi thout priornotice.

Now all 12 volumes (the first seven asMac f i les), al l the magazine discsincluding the end-of-volume specials,most of BEEBUG’s commercialsof tware, the source f i les for fourpublished books and a mass of bonusitems including unpublished articles

and pictures have been col lectedtogether onto one commemorativeCD-ROM: RISC User …In a

Nutshell.

All this material, apart from the itemsnever before made available, would

once have cost hundreds of poundsand, even if you think you probablyalready have a good deal of i t, youwi l l almost certainly f ind enoughdesi rable addi tions to make thecollection worth having.

The f irst thing to notice is that thecompiler, former RISC User EditorRichard Hal las, has painstakinglybuilt an HTML front-end to index andallow quick access to everything onthe disc, which has also been given acomprehensive Help section.

There is a complete index in ArcScanformat (wi th ArcScan provided toread it) and even an index listing all


RISC User …In A Nutshell

Peter Jennings finds everything you’ve ever read inRISC User (and more), all the monthly and special discsplus most of BEEBUG’s software all on one CD-ROM.

the instalments of thevarious series whichhave been published,with, of course, icons toclick on for any youwant to read.

If you haven’t got aWeb browser that is noproblem as one isprovided, along with arange of otherresources such as read-only versions ofOvation Pro andArtWorks, a specialversion of SparkFS (only usable onthe CD) to open archived files and thenecessary fonts to recreate magazine,manual and book pages. There areeven programs to fix problems withsome CD drivers.

There is no reader for the first sevenvolumes, produced on a Mac, (whichare less relevant to the current RISCOS scene) and no reader for articleswritten in Impression, although mostof these are also available in DeskEdittext (with DeskEdit also supplied).

Apart from the huge library ofinformation on this disc there are all

the commercial programs now madeavailable, in their latest BEEBUGversions. These include: ArcScan III,Basic Programmer’s Toolkit,ChartWell, DeskEdit 4, MenuBar,PlayBack, PolyGlot, TextAid andWimp Programmer’s Toolkit as wellas the contents of five RISC Userfonts discs, a collection of more fontsand font utitlities and a variety ofgames.

The books included are: Getting IntoOvation, Internet Survival Guide, PCSurvival Guide and WimpProgramming for All (complete withprograms from its software disc).


The CD is f i l led up with a diversemedley of Bonus items including theshort-l i ved Acorn Action gamesmagazine, digital photos taken for usein RISC User, images and logosincluding Acorn publicity photos andsome vector cl ip art, desktop‘ wallpaper’ made up of RISC Usercovers, unused and previously

unpubl ished materialf rom the magazine,utilities and files relatingto i ts production andresources relating to thematerial used on the CD(which, incidental ly, isthe only one everproduced by BEEBUG).

All pre-ordered copies ofthe CD-ROM have nowbeen sent out byBEEBUG but a l imi tednumber remaining can bebought, while they last,from R-Comp.

Whether or not you werea RISC User reader theNutshell version is wellworth having.


The cover (and computer) that never made it

RISC User …in a NutshellPrice: £30 inclusive (£32 overseas)Supplier: R-Comp22 Moffat, High Legh, Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 6PSTel: 01925 755043Fax: 01925 757377Email: [email protected]: www.rcomp.co.uk

The Linux operating system hasbeen around since the early 90’s

but has come to the attention of thepublic and business only in the lastfew years So i t hasn’t had anestablished show scene — until now.

The Linux 2000 show (does any showthis year not feature ‘ 2000’ in thetitle?) is the second annual show to beheld at London’s Olympia 2.Although quite a small venue (smallerthan the Acorn World’s of old), it waswell represented by large stands fromthe major L inux distributors andhardware manufacturers as well assmaller stands for a range of softwareproducts.

It reminded me very much of the oldAcorn shows too. The explosion inpopulari ty of the operating systemwas reflected in the large attendancefor a mid week show and theenthusiasm of both the visitors and

exhibitors was obvious. Every standwas handing out leaflets and glossybrochures and you rapidly acquired aton of paper to haul round.

The Linux is market is dominated bythe companies producing

distributions and this was reflected bythe large stands for RedHat, SuSE andCorel on the first of the two floors.

As L inux is a col laborative opensource project, with thousands peopleworking on various parts of thesystem, a way is needed of bringingtogether al l the new developmentsand enhancements to making a stableworking system. This is where thedistribution companies come in; eachproduce a flavour of Linux which isbroadly simi lar (and, importantly,compatible) with each other’s, butdi f fers in what tools and bundledapplications are supplied and the easeof installation.


Linux 2000 Show

David Ruck reports on the Show for the operatingsystem seen as a rival to Windows and even a possiblesuccessor to RISC OS.

Various distributors are aiming atdifferent markets. RedHat, which wasone of the first, seeks to have the mostcomprehensive and up to datedistribution, with a large number ofadditional packages covering manydifferent types of applications. Corelis aiming more at the consumer, withease of use and installation being itsstrength. One thing shared by all thedistributions, and indeed stipulated bythe rules under which Linux isdeveloped, is that they are all free fordownload from the Internet.

However most people and businesseschoose to buy a CD boxed set for areasonable sum. This has theadvantage of convenience ofinstalling from CD and also theadditional technical support whichthe distributor can provide.

One of the new features of the show isthe attendance of the large hardwaremanufactures who are now puttingtheir weight behind promoting Linuxto run on their systems, rather thanjust acknowledging it was somethingthe user could do if they wished.

IBM showed Linux working acrosstheir entire range from ThinkTop

portables up to large NetfinityServers. SGI have always beenknown for their stunning 3D visualsystems, such as flight simulators,now run Linux on their platforms,which despite now being Pentiumbased have far better multi-processorperformance than a standard PCsystem.

For raw power the combination of the64bit Alpha processor and 64bitLinux cannot be beaten. A dual Alphasystem was churning out 1024x768ray tracings in two to three secondsper frame. Last time I did any seriousray tracing, It took me an entire day todo that on my A5000 and it would stilltake at least half an hour on aStrongARM.

Linux has typically been makinginroads into business mainly as adevelopment and server platform andhas not been well provided with offthe shelf software. This is nowchanging with a large variety of titleseither of new origin, or ported fromother platforms.

A large section is still aimed atInternet and database servers butthere are now serious integrated


office packages from Corel andApplixware. They consist of wordprocessing, spreadsheet, database andpresentation software and rivalMicrosoft Office for features and,importantly, offer file exchange withthe MS Office applications.

On the entertainment side, there havebeen freeware versions of populargames such Doom and Quake onLinux for some time but now thelatest titles are beginning to appear forthe OS alongside the Windowsversions.

Risc PCOn thing I wasn’t expecting was tosee those familiar curves of a Risc PCon the Debian stand. A version ofLinux has been available forAcorn systems for a number of yearsbut has always been notoriouslydifficult to install and was based on aquite old version of the RedHatdistribution. Together with Aleph One(of PC card fame) some of thevolunteers who form Debian areworking on a port of this distributionto the Risc PC.

It aims to be much easier to install,and more up to date, allowing the use

of the modern window managers suchas Knome and KDE, which do muchto improve the look and feel of Linux.Currently the ARM version is built byhand each time but it will shortly bedone by a build-engine, which is amachine that automates the workrequired and will enable it to keep upwith versions released for all the otherplatforms supported.

Although because of their designAcorn machines are best at runningRISC OS, you can run Linux quiterespectably, giving you access tothousands of applications andcompatibility with other systems andthis serves as a good introductionwithout the expense of buying asecond machine.

If you’ve already had to do theunpleasant process of getting a PC togain access to particular Microsoftapplications, installing Linux inaddition to Windows is an idealsolution.

You then have a very stable system tosit alongside your RISC OScomputer, which is able to providefast and reliable file and Internetserving at no extra cost.


This month I am bringing somegaming news from the Wakefield

show as well as much of the latestnews to be rumoured or announcedon the Internet.

I’ll start with news and releases fromthe major publishers and then moveonto other news.

WakefieldThe annual Acorn/RISC OS showwas this year relatively exciting forRISC OS games enthusiasts for anumber of reasons. Perhaps the mainattraction was the presence of Artexwho were giving workingdemonstrations of TEK 1608 and IronDignity.

TEK looked quite complex and nodoubt would require some practiceand a prior look at the eventualmanual, I assume. Nevertheless, witha release date set for this summer(surprising myself as I thought Iron

Dignity had the priority release date)it is an exciting prospect that theRISC OS games scene will see a newstrategy game. It is dishearteningsometimes to see the constant release

of strategy games on the PC platform(and even dedicated magazines!) soit’s to be hoped that this releaseproves popular.

Iron Dignity’s release date has nowbeen moved to 2001, which isdisappointing in certain respects as itwould be nice to have this visuallyimpressive game to play this year.

I was later informed that thedemonstration on view at Wakefieldwas running on a hidden PC. I havenot probed into the reasons for thisbut on speaking to Jan Klose of Artex,he explained that he regards RISC OSas the best platform to develop on butthat versions for other computerplatforms must be written


ARM Arena

Andrew Weston reports on what you can play now andlooks ahead to some of the exciting new projectsplanned for the RISC OS games scene.

simultaneously to generate sufficientsales to justify investment. With thisin mind, Jan said that sales of theirRISC OS games must be good forArtex to stay with the platformalthough I don’t know how this willbe worked out exactly.

Iron Dignity looked extremelyimpressive at the show and one couldnavigate one of the armed vehiclesfrom within, looking to the externalscenery. Throughout the Saturdaythere seemed to be a group of visitorsaround the stand and I’m sure Artex’sreleases are being anticipatedenthusiastically by many. With newhardware being developed for RISCOS users, a healthy interest and theapparent commitment of Artex, thefuture would appear to a bit morepromising.

Adding life to the games field wereRComp Interactive, once againselling their excellent range ofconversions and to new releases. Thefirst was The Chaos Engine, aconversion from the 16-bit platformoriginally released in the early 1990s.The conversion, I understand, waslargely complete a number of yearsago, but for various reasons a release

was not finalised until recently,thanks mainly to the efforts of NathanAtkinson of Visions of the Impossible(VOTI) who contacted RCI. Thegame has been well-received on thenewsgroups and the Press and issignificant in a couple of respects. Asa top-down walk-about combat gameit also allows the player to select froma range of characters with differentattributes. That is, basic role-playingelements are included in the game.RCI also state that, if sales are good,future conversions from the originalpublishers may be possible.

The second major games release fromRCI was the TBA Classics CD. Thisis released following negotiationswith TBA Software who haverecently announced they are to closeas a publisher of RISC OS games.This comes after a large number of, ingeneral, very high quality andenjoyable releases into the Acorngames scene. Several of their titles areincluded on the CD: BHP (the 3Dracing game), Cobalt Seed, CommandShip, Formula 2000, Merp andDragonball. Several of these madeuse of TBA’s advanced graphicengine (TAG) which delivered somequite impressive results, notably BHP.


For those interested and capable ofdeciphering this kind of code, thesource to the TAG engine, BHP andCobalt Seed are also present on theCD.

RCI also informed me that a releaseof a classic-games CD is beingconsidered. I believe this is to includea number of early Archimedes games,that is those released early in the lifeof the 32-bit range.

Also at Wakefield were ParadiseSoftware who have been largely quietfor several years since the release ofInferno in 1996. They weredemonstrating and selling their newtitle Overload — a sideways scrollingshoot-’em up. Ian Jeffray of Paradisesaid that the game had taken a longtime to develop owing to work andstudy commitments by the variousmembers of Paradise but, as he alsosays, releases generate more hope andinterest in the games scene which willhopefully generate more demand.Overload certainly looks on thesurface a polished product and Iunderstand it will run on most Acorncomputers with the top-end machinesbeing able to run with improvedgraphics.

Paradise have demonstrated also theadvantage of having budding gameswriters collaborate and contributevarious parts to a game. For manypeople this would be necessary ascoding a RISC OS game is usually apart-time effort but there are otherobvious advantages to this strategy.

Other newsVOTI are planning to release anoverhead-view racing game similar inprinciple to Micro Machines andHigh Risc Racing, called Eat MyDust. The release date is uncertain butthe VOTI website is regularlyupdated so I recommend this as thelatest source of information regardingany of their projects. After talking toVOTI agent Nathan Atkinson, itseems clear that VOTI hope to makethe game as enjoyable and attractiveas they possibly can before release.

More news from the VOTIheadquarters is the departure of one oftheir members, Paul Thompson,whose work commitments simply donot allow him to contribute to thegroup’s work. This is a great pity,since judging by Mr Thompson’sprevious work on graphicaldemonstrations for the DFi demo-


group and the3D-helicopter gamedemonstration he releasedvia Acorn User, he is aman of significant talent.This is a disappointingblow to VOTI in light ofNathan’s aspirations givenin an Acorn Arcadeinterview. Let’s hope hiswork can be made use of insome way.

Another VOTI projectmaybe of interest toEureka games fans is Sumisu Sam, aplatform game which VOTI receivedincomplete from the departed GEKgames group. Details, again, are ontheir website.

In fact, VOTI mainman Mr Atkinsonhas often worked hard behind thescenes to bring new leisure softwareto the market so its to be hoped thiscan continue.

PD projectsLast month I reported on two projectsto update classic games, Elite and StarFighter 3000. The good news is thatthese projects seem to be ongoing andprogress has been made.

EliteElite: The New Kind is a project toimprove the original BBC discversion of Elite, imparting variousnew features to the game.

Several new changes have been madeto the freely (I understand) availablecode and these are available from thewebsite, including improved planetgraphics (such as solid, fractallandscape) and support for differentconsoles among others.

Judging by the website for Starfighter3000, Chris Bazley has someambitious plans for the game and Iwould enthusiastically recommend


New features for an old favourite

visiting this site to read about them.Already available is a texture editorwhich allows the player to change theappearance of an SF3000 map. This,all being well, will develop into a fullmap editor allowing ‘editing of all thegame elements’. Next to be releasedwi l l probably be a patch al lowingRISC OS 4 users with StrongARMprocessors to play the game.

There are exciting plans for the futureand, again, there is behind the scenes

work going on here. We’l l have tokeep an eye on the newsgroups!

DarklandsAnybody who closely surveys GarethMoore’s 32-bit gaming pages mayhave noticed a project cal ledDarklands a Civil isation-type gamewhere the player is responsible formanaging the growth of a settlementand its expansion etc. In other words,often the player can act as ruler oreven a God in this game-genre!


An early development screenshot of Darklands

Since announced, little more has beensaid on this project. However, aftermaking a few enquiries, the author,Matthew McKinnon, revealed a rangeof details regarding Darklands. Thedelay, Matthew says, is due to all hisdata being lost when his A3000suffered a hard-disc failure!

The game is said to have beenimproved dramatical ly (since f i rstpreviewed on the Web) in graphicalterms and will run in a range of screenmodes on machines using ARM2processors to RiscPCs usingStrongARMs.

Roman invasionThe player will control a populationfrom just after the end of the Romaninvasion unti l the Middle Ages,adopting strategies to increasetechnology along the way.

Mul tiplayer capabi l i ty i s to beincluded allowing single machine aswel l as network (local or remote)playing. The strategy element will bein ‘ real-time’ (that is, events progressas in reality) and the game featuresbattles as wel l as populationmanagement.

Other features promised includeMIDI music with in-built support andhopefully a low memory requirement(2-4MB).

AmbitiousOverall, Darklands seems to be quitean ambitious project and I hope that itreaches completion, set at Septemberthis year. Equal ly appeal ing is thereasonable stated price-tag of£15-£20. At present there is nooff i cial websi te but according toMatthew, there will be one soon and itwi l l be announced oncomp.sys.acorn.games.

OvercastI f I may, I wi l l just mention that agraphical exploration game I havecreated is available from my websiteso, i f you want, have a look foryourself! A sequel is planned.

FinallyJudging f rom the response to thefavourite-game poll I mentioned lasttime, I assume most people have haddifficulty deciding!

If you would like to send me the nameof your favourite ever 32-bit title theninclude the name in the ti tle of the


email and send to me at:

[email protected]

I’ll hopefully include the result if afew more people respond.

Also, a quick reminder that AcornUser are planning to release a CD fullof old commercial and PD games withtheir August issue and some of thetitles mentioned oncomp.sys.acorn.games suggestthis could be something special.

Until next time, I hope the newreleases and developments interestyou. As ever, watch the newsgroups ifpossible or the magazines if not!

Contacts and Websites

Andrew Westonwww.argonet.co.uk/users/awestern/over2.html

Elite: The NewKindwww.newkind.co.uk/elite.html

StarFighter3000www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/ug/cs99/cjb/mysite/sf3000/sf3000.htm

Acorn Arcadewww.acornarcade.com

Paradisewww.paradise-uk.net36 Marlborough DriveSydenhamLeamington SpaCV31 1GD

RCIwww.rcomp.co.uk22 Robert MoffatHigh LeighKnutsfordCheshireWA16 6PS

Artexwww.artexsoft.comwww.iron-dignity.deGames distributed by RComp

Interactive.

VOTIwww.visionsoftheimpossible.co.uk42 Wales StreetDarlingtonCo. DurhamDL3 0LT


The software is suppl ied on thestandard triple format CD. The

cover is part of a handy manual whichnot only contains instructions on howto load the software but also a host ofideas on how this CD may be used inthe classroom.

On set up you are presented with theoption to use the browser (local CDuse) or to install the software to thehard disc.

On clicking on the Browser softwareyou reach an opening screen with abright bubble in the centre, with thelegend ‘ Oxford Reading Tree Cl ipArt’ emblazoned across i t and theSherston and Oxford logos in the topcorners and i t was here that Iencountered my first problem.

Now call me old-fashioned (I’ve beencalled much worse!) but when I seethis set up I expect the central pictureto lead me to the cl ip art and the

Sherston and Oxford pictures/logos tolead me to information about thecompanies in question.

Er....No! For some odd reason, they all

send you to the opening menu for theclip art! No, I couldn’ t fathom it either.

Anyway, onward and upward! Themain menu divides the groups up intof ive groups: Main characters,Objects, Scenes, Story characters andKeywords and anybody familiar withthe ORT wi l l know the variouscharacters and scenes.

Clicking at random on one of the subgroups (Objects) I was presented witha page ful l (12 objects) f rom theseries.

To access these one simply has topress on one of the two buttons by theside of the object; one is grey(monochrome image) and one iscoloured (polychrome image). Doing


Oxford Reading Tree Clip Art

Teacher Chris Price looks through a collection of clip artcontaining the familiar Oxford Reading Tree charactersand scenes for children to use in their own stories.

this means that a Drawfile pops upwhich can be dragged to theappropriate area of your hard disc.

At this point I have to say that I wouldhave liked the option to have beenable to double click on an image tosee it in greater detail just so that Iknew that I had got the right one, butmaybe I’m being pedantic.

Each sub directoryconsisted of at leasttwo pages with theexception of theKeywords directorywhich, for obviousreasons, is ratherdeeper.Incidentally, thefont used in the

Keywords will be familiar to anyoneused to the Oxford Reading Tree,perhaps obvious but still useful to seethe continuity maintained.

This is a simple idea for children touse to create their own stories or workcards. The idea is very easy to useand, within minutes, I had put up aDrawfile and was merrily dragging


Two separate pictures of a boy and his dog put together can suggest a story

characters and words into it in orderto make up simple stories! It would beequally feasible, given theappropriate constraints, to use a wordprocessor to form the story, althoughI am not sure that this approach wouldbe quite as flexible.

The idea of providing both a colourand black and white image is alsouseful as it would allow children tocolour the images in themselves,either to match the ORT ones or toinvent their own characters.

Again this is another simple idea thatSherston have executed with due careand diligence. Highly recommended.


Oxford Reading Tree Clip ArtPrice: £25 +VATSupplier: Sherston Software LtdAngel House, SherstonMalmesbury, Wilts SN16 0LHTel: 01666 843200Fax: 01666 843216Email: [email protected]: www.sherston.com

A Victorian street for your setting

When I first accepted that I wouldhave to get a dreaded PC to be

able to do all I needed in digitalphotography (as explained in the lastissue) I had a sneaking feeling that Imight find myself discovering moreand more uses for it with its advanced

specification and vast array of newsoftware, at the expense of my RiscPC.

It hasn’t happened! The PC is usedregularly for just two purposes: itgives me free access to the Internet,easily set up without having to use amass of separate programs, and itallows a direct connection todownload and manipulate the imagesfrom my new digital camera.

I have bought just one CD-ROM, theEncyclopaedia Britannica, but foreverything else I still thankfullyswitch on my mature but still activeold Acorn.

I certainly haven’t come anywherenear to loving my new PC, which Istill find just a necessary andintensely irritating evil.

Of course there are a few good points.It is useful to be able to put a file in a

directory by just dragging it onto theunopened directory icon and there arethe neat little USB (Universal SerialBus) sockets for connectingperipherals.

Actually, the main reason why theUSB sockets seem so good is thatthey simplify the usually tediousbusiness of having to install hardwareto get the PC to recognise itsexistence.

I have to use the USB connection todownload the images from the digitalcamera’s Smartmedia cards; done byeither plugging in the lead directlyfrom the camera or using a reader (an


Living With A PC: Having To Use It

In the second of our series, Peter Jennings reveals whathe is using his newly acquired PC for and whether it isnow starting to take over from his ageing Acorn.

expensive optional extra) for a fastertransfer. I save the images onto a PC-formatted Zip disc and, as this is fullycompatible with my Acorn, I can thenswitch from the IBM clone to my RiscPC and use the pictures in a morefriendly and familiar environment.

Digital imageSometimes I enhance or otherwisemanipulate the digital image on thePC using the free program whichcame with the camera.

There is also a good supply of freeprograms (usually cut down or olderversions) on the CD-ROMs whichcome with PC magazines. I subscribeto one of the half a dozen or moremagazines published to helpWindows owners learn to use theprogram and to cope with its manydifficulties and failings. (There hasnever been the need for anythingsimilar for Acorn/RISC OS users.)

I also use a Zip disc to save emails andattachments, which I can reread atleisure on my Risc PC. These includemost of the contributions to Eurekawhich can be dropped into an OvationPro page although this usually entailssome change of filetype first.

I found a problem with some archivedattachments sent from RISC OSmachines which Outlook Expresssometimes saves out as zero sizedfiles.

More experienced PC users mayknow a simpler way to deal with thisbut the method I use is to save thewhole email, switch over to the RiscPC and select and save the attachmentfrom the bottom of the emailmessage. I change the DOS filetype totext and drag it onto the SparkPlugicon, which unarchives it as a datafile. This can then be given its originalfiletype.

CompatibleThis ability to use hardware andsoftware compatible with bothcomputers is a real asset. One of themost useful packages for this purposeis the multi-facetted Textease, whichbegan life as a simple word processorfor the Acorn and has developed intoa versatile package now offeringdesktop processing, a spreadsheet anda database interchangeable betweenRISC OS, PC and Apple computers.

Files saved on any of those computersare equally at home on the others.


Where the original font does not existon another platform the nearest matchis used to preserve as near an identicalappearance as possible.

This ability to transfer files betweenmachines has been found particularlyvaluable to schools which have amixture of platforms.

There wi l l be a review of the newspreadsheet and database, which canbe used with Textease or on theirown, in the next issue of Eureka.

We would welcome a contribution tothis series from anyone who is nowusing a PC along with their RISC OScomputer.

Let us know why you have to use thePC and any of the problems you havemet and how you have overcomethem.

Send your article to The Editor at theClub’s usual address, on page 80, oremail to [email protected].


A live spreadsheet, text and a graphic, all in a Textease file created on aWindows PC and loaded onto a Risc PC

45Eureka 35 — Autumn 2000

On December the 2nd 2000 rocket down to

at the National Motorcycle Museumnext to the NEC in Birmingham

10:00am till 4:00 pm

For more details contact Ralph Sillett

Tel: 01785 714535 Email: [email protected]

M40

M42M42

M6

A45

NEC

NationalMotorcycleMuseum

6

3a

7

signposted offthe roundabout

Birmingham

Adults £2·50ARM Club members £1·50Children under 14 FREE!

For a galaxy of companies and products.All the latest computers and software atshow prices on more than 45 stands packedwith bargains.

10:00am to 4:30pm

Would you l i ke to be able tocommunicate di rectly wi th

other Acorn/RiscOS users online inl ive time; have the opportuni ty tomeet new friends, share interests,solve problems and generally have aninteresting time?

You can do so wi th IRC (InternetRelay Chat). This is one of the oldestInternet fuctions and was originallyused by the academic institutions toexchange text messages and conductreal time discussions and lectures.

IRC has developed into an interestingfaci l i ty whereby groups of peopleparticipate in keyboard conversation.Like a group within a room there canbe a number of smaller groups eachchatting about a different topic buteach can immediately join in another.

It works by launching a special IRCprogram, logging on to an IRC serverand then joining a ‘chat’ room.

I f you want to take part you arewelcome to join ICENI and theWelwyn Hatfield Computer Club whohave their own specific ‘ room’ whereanyone with a computer interest —yes, even PC users — can join inevery Tuesday from 8·30pm onwards.

Normally when an IRC program isrunning the screen divides and in onesection is a list of people within thechat group while the other section,which is generally bigger, shows theconversation.

All you do is type what you want tosay and on pressing Return it prefixesyour input wi th your identi ty soeveryone knows who’s said what.

You moni tor what each person ischatting about and join in whicheveryou want to. Once you get the hang ofit it is quite simple to join in a numberof chats at the same time.


Have A Chat With IRC

Want to have a chat on line? Geoff Lane invites you tojoin in a regular session, where everyone’s welcome,every Tuesday evening.

If you are new to it just join in and seewhat is going on. There is no need toparticipate but I bet you will want to.

There is no joining or registrationrequirement and there is no obligationto stay on for a certain period. Someparticipants stay on for an hour orlonger and others pop in for a fewminutes to say ‘Hi’.

You can do all your other Internetbusiness at the same time so whiledownloading that file, sending thosemessages, getting those Newsgroupsyou could be exchanging ideas andchat with other computer users.

Our meetings are not Acorn/RISC OSspecific but most participants arecurrent or former users of thatplatform so you will not be met withblank expressions when you mentionRISC OS.

Our participants cover the completeage range from teens to senior citizenso, whatever age you are andwhatever experience or interest youhave, you will be made welcome.

Naturally when you learn how easy itis you may like to set up your owngroup meetings among friends orfamily across the country or globe.Give it a try and see how easy it is.

There are numerous decent IRCprograms about but if you log on towww.wolfchat.org you candownload Acorn or PC IRCprograms.

Go on to www.bigfoot.com/~whccand select the IRC link for anexplanation about how to connect oremail me directly at the addressbelow.

Give it a try. You will not be sorry.Geoff Lane: [email protected]


<viking> wizzco: I don’t think you’ve met Vic …. he’s from Launceston<Wizzco> ’ansome<Vic> Wissco ..where be ’e frum mate?<Wizzco> Ipswich boooy<Vic> Long time no see Ipswish. Are the streets still as narrow as thereused to be?<Wizzco> narrower, thanks to bus lanes :(

Newcomers are always welcome

For years people keep coming upwi th wacky ideas on the

newsgroups, such as “Why can’t weput an accelerated PC graphics card ina Risc PC” . I ’d usual ly reply withreasons such as: it wouldn’t fit, youcouldn’t interface the podule bus to an

AGP bus at any decent speed andyou’d have to re-write most RISC OSto use it. Well I’ve been proved totallywrong, John Kortink (best know forthe popular graphics programs!Translator and !Creator) has doneexactly that!

When the Risc PC was launched backin 1994, its graphics capabilities werephenomenal — up to 1600x1200 in256 colours and 800x600 in 16million colours — compared to mostPCs of the day using 640x480 in 256colours and 800x600 in only 16colours. However, these days, PCgraphics cards which can exceed theRisc PC’s capabilities are very cheap

and al l come wi th features toaccelerate 2D window redrawingoperations and often 3D accelerationfor use with games.

John has taken a small form factorATI AGP graphics card and piggy

backed it on top of a podule card so itfits in a Risc PC. The card has 8MBon memory board, which is enoughprovide the modes such as:-

• 1280x1024 in 256/32K/16M coloursat up to 120Hz• 1600x1200 in 256/32K/16M coloursat up to 82Hz • 1920x1440 in 256/32K colours at60Hz

Of course you will need at least a verygood 17” but preferably a 19” orlarger monitor to benef i t f rom thegreater resolutions and higher refreshrates. The 17” AKF85 shipped withmost Risc PCs is l imi ted to


ViewFinder

David Ruck said it couldn’t be done but is now delightedto find that the wacky idea of putting a PC graphics cardin a Risc PC has now come true.

1280x1024 at 76Hz and1600x1200 at 66Hz.

After installing the newpodule, you swap themonitor cable from thesocket on themotherboard to the oneon the back of thepodule.

The first thing you noticeis that you don’t see theboot messages —currently they are still being output onthe standard connector. So if you havea problem booting, you either have toswap the monitor cable back or, ifyour monitor supports a second input,wire in two cables.

On reaching the desktop you see,well, nothing different. TheViewFinder emulates your currentmode (as long as it’s 256 colours ormore). On closer inspection a newmonitor icon has appeared next to thedisplay manager. This has a simplemenu to allow you to select the largermodes, greater number of colours andhigher refresh rates that the card givesyou.

There is no need to write monitordefinition files. So, to select a newmode which you have not previouslyused, just enter a string into thedisplay manager’s mode box, such as‘V X1600 Y1200 C16M F82’ (notethe new V for ViewFinder prefix).You can then use the menu to add thismode to the list of those availablefrom the ViewFinder icon.

One of the main concerns of such adesign is what would the speed belike? Having to transfer largeamounts of data across the slowpodule bus to the video memory onthe graphics card is going to be slowerthan writing to the VRAM on themotherboard. To get round this the VF


The Viewfinder piggy back podule

uses the 2D acceleration features ofthe AGP card to speed up operationssuch as moving and scrollingwindows and plain filling with colour.So this is actually faster in some casesthan the standard Risc PC.

However the redrawing of certainapplications’ windows can be muchslower, which makes the VF slowerthan the same size and colour depthmode on a standard Risc PC overallbut not distractingly so.

Remember if you normally work at1600x1200 in 256 colours and startusing 16M colours there is four timesas much work for the system to do.

The table opposite shows the result oftiming various applicationsredrawing their windows when asmaller window is moved over the top100x under program control.

Tests were done on a Risc PCStrongARM 233 with 2MB VRAMand the same machine upgraded witha Kinetic card.

The normal Risc PC used itsmaximum resolutions of 1600x1200in 256 colours, 1152x896 in 32K

colours and 800x600 in 16M colours,whereas the ViewFinder used1600x1200 in 256, 32K and 16Mcolours. The differences are givenbetween the normal StrongARM withand without the ViewFinder and theKinetic with and without theViewFinder and the Kinetic +ViewFinder combination compared toa standard Risc PC.

The ViewFinder is able to use DMA ifplaced in the lower two backplaneslots to improve performance and theresults show that the Kinetic, whichisn’t able to use DMA, is slower onsome tests, such as redrawing thepinboard, but is faster at most otherthings, making the combinationworthwhile and giving redrawingspeeds closer to the standard system.John promises further use of theacceleration features to improveperformance with later versions of thesoftware.

The software is still at a very earlystage and there are some major issuesto sort out. It is currently not possibleto use programs which work outsidethe desktop as only the *WimpModemethod for changing mode issupported. Also, the AGP card is not



Application Colours SA233 Kinetic

Comb

Pinboard(T6L texture)

256 50.0% 38.0% 51.9%

32K 54.2% 29.5% 41.0%16M 50.0% 17.6% 35.7%

Filer Window(Large)

256 54.3% 41.1% 77.8%

32K 49.7% 36.2% 63.1%16M 38.9% 22.8% 46.6%

Thump (Viewing JPEG)

256 92.6% 88.5% 128.4%

32K 64.9% 59.9% 74.1%16M 39.3% 36.0% 43.4%

ArtWorks(Complex blends)

256 36.5% 44.2% 48.5%

32K 23.5% 27.5% 25.3%16M 8.9% 13.3% 9.5%

Impression(Text only document)

256 80.6% 73.4% 100.0%

32K 79.8% 70.8% 87.6%16M 71.4% 62.8% 77.1%

Oregano (Textual page)

256 57.0% 56.0% 86.7%

32K 58.9% 54.4% 70.9%16M 78.7% 80.9% 97.3%

PhotoDesk (24bpp image)

256 47.6% 43.4% 53.3%

32K 30.2% 27.7% 32.2%16M 43.5% 39.2% 47.1%

Average 256 60.1% 56.2% 77.8%32K 41.8% 36.7% 45.6%16M 33.7% 28.0% 35.8%

Overall All 43.5% 37.5% 49.0%

capable of supporting less than 256colours so some very old (mostlyBBC era) software won’t work.

John will be working on a solution tothis but he is mainly concentrating ondesktop performance andcompatibility at first.

While most desktop applications Ihave tried so far work perfectly in allthe new ViewFinder modes, a fewdesktop programs showincompatibilities with the card.Certain display options in Zap causethe program to crash, TopModel (andTMViewer) run but corrupt the screenwhen redrawing their windows andPhotodesk displays some funnyeffects in 32K colours but is correct in256 and 16M modes.

Some problems have already beentracked down and John will be workingwith the other authors to iron out theseproblems as quickly as possible.

Thanks to the ingenuity of JohnKortink, a wacky idea has been turnedinto a very useful product. Thedifference of being able to work inlarger screen modes and with modecolours makes photo-retouching and

all graphic work easier and morepleasurable.

Combined with the extra processingpower of the Kinetic, it certainlydispels the need to looking to otherplatforms for better graphicsfacilities.

However probably the biggestquestion in potential purchasers’minds will be the launch of the Imago,which has even better graphicsfacilities (2048x1440 in 16M coloursat 72Hz) and will be at least twice asfast as a Kinetic Risc PC. The Imagois still at least six months away andwill cost in the region of £2,000 andso is considerably more than thecombined cost of both ViewFinderand Kinetic, which are both availablefor purchase today.


ViewFinderPrice: £235 inc VAT & UK deliverySupplier: CJE Micro’s78 Brighton Road, Worthing,West Sussex BN11 2ENTel: 01903 523222Fax: 01903 523679Email: [email protected]: www.cje.co.uk

DAT Drive BackupQuestion:I have a StrongARM Risc PC andhave borrowed a DDS DAT Drive,which I have been trying to backupmy system with. I have tried TAPEFSwith very little success, and I cannot

find a copy of tar corrected for PCarchives.

Is there any other software to allowthe backup of hard discs to DAT tape?

Richard Keefe

Answer:Simply attach and terminate the DATdrive as normal, check it is listed in*Devices then load !PowerMgr,choose ‘Advanced Install’ then‘Define and Create Partitions’ selectthe DAT drive and initialise the tape.Note that RISC OS is limited to amaximum of 2GB per file (in fact it isjust slightly short of 2GB) and so if

the DAT drive supports anythinggreater than this you won’t be able tomake use of all the tape.

PowerTec’s !Backup will work withtape drives, but it will only work withtheir SCSI interface or ones with the

PowerROM upgrade.

Disc drive errorsQuestion:(1) I own an eight year old A5000computer. Recently I haveexperienced problems with my1.6MB floppy drive. Several discsgave an error (sometimes at&00000000 — which seemsunlikely). Sometimes the disc’sdirectory window will appear but nofiles can be loaded (again a disc erroris given). Other times it claims thatthe disc is not formatted although it isformatted. Do I need a new disc driveor could I buy a head cleaning disc tofix the problem?


Can We Help?

Some recent queries sent to our Technical HelpService.The solutions shown are mostly composed ofanswers given from several members of the Help team.

Programming languages(2) Also, I would appreciate someadvice on programming languages. Iam already competent at using BBCBASIC and I am now beginning touse the assembler and softwareinterrupts in my programs. I amthinking of buying a C or C++compiler but I believe that thesoftware is very expensive. Which isthe best compiler, or are there other‘industry standard’ languages thatmight be better?

James Shaw

Answer:(1) You can try a drive cleaning disc,as there could be a build up onmaterial on the head after all this time.If it doesn’t work and you feelconfident about taking the machineapart, examine the floppy drive for abuild up of fluff and grime. Don’t useanything mechanical to clean it; use acan of compressed air to remove anydust. While you are doing this you cancheck the floppy drive leads arefirmly attached. If that still doesn’thelp, the heads are probably out ofalignment and it is usually cheaper toobtain a replacement drive than haveit fixed. Acorn dealers and Reflex

Electronics can supply replacements.

(2) There is a JAVA compiler(http://free.prohosting.com/~chocky/java) but to run it you will needAcorn’s RiscCafe Java CD which ishard to obtain at the moment and doesnot support the latest version of thelanguage.

Screen scan faultQuestion:I write this in the hope that it will notbe interrupted by a most irritating andunpredictable fault in which thescreen suddenly begins to scanrapidly but giving the impression thatit is filled by about nine icon bars, allscrolling together but at a slower rate.The fault can occur at any time fromstart-up to shut-down and may lastfrom a few seconds to an indefiniteperiod and in the latter case itbecomes necessary to enter aCtrl/Break. This response usuallyclears the problem but, of course, willcause the loss of any unsaved file.

I have put up with the problem forwell over a year although I havesought help from two Acorn dealersone of whom had my machine, a RiscPC 700 using OS 3.6, for a few days


but without experiencing the fault. Ialso sought the advice from ReflexElectronics who suggested that mycomputer equipment and cablesmight be too close together. Thisprompted me to rearrange things butwithout noticeable improvement untilmuch later when I was almost led tobelieve that the problem had cureditself. However, disillusion hasreturned together with thetroublesome fault.

As has often happened after‘scrolling’ has cleared itself there hasbeen no more trouble for theremainder of the session, sometimeslasting for several hours, but of coursethere is no certainty of this. In fact thefault occurred twice for a few secondsbefore starting this email which iswhy I began the way I did.

Ken Causer

Answer:It may be stating the obvious, but hasit been tested with a differentmonitor? It could be a slightlydamaged monitor cable?

Is there a mobile phone/TV/radio oreven a washing machine nearby?

It could be a dry joint on part of thevideo circuit (notoriously difficult totrack down). It seems most likely tobe a loss of sync, so possible on thoselines, or a failure in the associatedlogic components. If it is a syncproblem, it’s still being corrected (atleast temporarily) by a reset if itdoesn’t correct itself. That suggeststhat the problem lies within theVIDC20 and that something in thereset sequence is enabling it to workcorrectly again. Perhaps attempting amode change (albeit blindly — so itwould probably be a case of going tothe command line) might recover it?

Printer driverQuestion:(a) I have an Epson Stylus 860 and,having enquired of Castle about anAcorn printer driver, they sent me asmall archive with drivers for all thenew Epson printers. These appear towork fine until you decide, rather thanusing the graphics printing of anapplication, to drop a text file on theprinter icon to print it, whereupon youget every line printed on a new page!

(b) I also found something funnywhen trying to print images in thenormal way. I thought it would be a


good test to print the same image invarious dpi settings on the same pagefor comparison. So I loaded a smallimage into Draw at the top of thepage, set up the coarsest dpi on theprinter driver and printed it. Fine.Then I moved the image down thescreen page a bit, reloaded the samebit of paper, set the next betterdefinition on the printer driver andprinted it. Fine. But all subsequentattempts to print anything startingmore than about a third of the waydown the paper cause the paper to beejected and a new page to be loadedand printed upon, albeit in theexpected place (but not the samesheet, spoiling the test).

(c) I also get the impression that insome dpi settings the first thingprinted at the top of the paper maywell be being printed in a differentdefinition to the rest of the page, asthe printer head seems to make morepasses at the top of the paper thansubsequently.

It seems as though the set of Epsonprinter drivers may be pretty muchuntested.

David Dade

Answer:(a) Check the text margins for thepaper size that you are using. I’vefound many are setup with a height of0 lines, which will cause this sort ifthing.

(b) This is the sort of thing I do a lotwith my Epson Stylus Colour 600 andhave not noticed a problem. It couldbe a small change to the printercontrol codes for the 860, causing it tohave a problem with the large verticalmovement command which will beused to skip the blank area at the topof the page. Try putting a whiterectangle at the top of the page. Itobviously won’t print anything butmight fool the driver into thinkingthere is something there and not usinga large movement command.

(c) This could just be the arrangementof the heads. With most inkjets eachcolours and black are offset so that allthe ink is not deposited on the samepart of the paper at the same time,staturating it. The yellow nozzels areat the bottom, with cyan managentaand black further up, so for each passof the printer yellow is layed down onclean paper, cyan covers the yellowprom the previous pass, maganeta on


top of previous yellow and cyan, andback last on to of the three previouspasses colour. This does mean that atthe top of the page the printer has to tofour passes to do one strip, where asfor middle each pass does 4 strips(although still only completes one).Incidentally micro weave compoundsthis by doing eight passes per stipusing alternate lines, so there is not anobvious join between the previous dryband and a new wet one.

I obviously can’t vouch for the laterdrivers and printers but there havealways been a few driver/firmwareincompatibilities with the Epsonrange. My ESC600 works fine at allresolutions except 720x720 noninterleaves, which just causes paper tobe spat out. It’s a consequence of themanufacturor not giving the RISC OSdevelopers the information they need.

Printing from OvationQuestion:Can you help me with a printingproblem from Ovation? I changed tothe New Boot structure and a differentboot partition on a new hard drive anddo not seem to be able to print fromOvation. An error message ‘Invalidaddress print cancelled’ or similar

pops up when I try to print. If I changethe boot partition back to the old drivewith the original boot structure it isbusiness as usual. Printing from Editis OK on the new setup. I thought Ihad cured it but the problem cameback just now when my son wanted toprint some homework. Is it an out ofdate module or something, or have Idone something odd?

James W Rober tson

Answer:When you updated to the new Bootstructure did you copy the contents of!Boot.Choices.Printers from the oldto the new? Did you install anupgrade of !Printers at the same time?If so make sure you deleted the oldprinters completely before installingthe new one. That includes thecontents of both the Printing directoryand !Boot.Choices.Printers.

In either case, when using the newBoot structure, try loading !Printersand removing all the existing installedprinters and adding them again,remembering to do a Save Choices

before exiting !Printers. This oftensolves configuration problems.


Ftp is a protocol used across theInternet for file transfer.

Specifically, ftp (upper or lower case?— answers on a postcard), the FileTransfer Protocol, allows a file storedon one computer to be retrieved byanother computer anywhere in the

world, as long as both computers areconnected to the same network (suchas the Internet).

Why do we need it?You may be wondering why we needthis protocol when this seems tohappen without any fuss every timeyou go to a web page. We say withoutany fuss in the belief we aren’t usingWindoze. If you’ve ever used InternetExplorer on a PC you may well haveexperienced quite a lot more fuss,even the infamous Blue Screen ofDeath.

Ftp is designed specifically for largeuploads and downloads (an upload is

just the opposite of a download —that is, sending a file to a computerinstead of retrieving (downloading) it.Not to be confused of course withwhat the BBC Microcomputer used tocall ‘downloading’, which was toload a page of memory and then copy

it to a lower page, if my memoryserves me correctly.

In short, ftp can be used for uploadingdata files to another computer forbackup, for downloading publicdomain programs from softwaredeposits such as Sunsite(src.doc.ic.ac.uk) or for uploading awebsite to a server.

Most free webspace providers(GeoCities, AngelFire, Xoom,YellowPages to name but a few) usesome form of web-based upload (forsecurity) but if you are paying forwebspace or you have webspaceincluded with your ISP (Demon,


What Is FTP?

Among the recent queries to the Club’s Technical HelpService was a request for some detailed information onusing ftp. Darren Grant explains.

Pipex, FreeServe etc), the chances areyou will only be able to upload pagesthrough the use of ftp.

Ftp has two sides to it: a daemon,(standing for Disk and ExecutionMonitor) which in Unix is generallycalled ftpd, which sits on the hostcomputer (the computer you areconnecting to) and multiple clientswhich connect to the daemon.

If you’re not too sure of therelationship between the two, imaginean ftp client to be to an ftp daemon asan http client (a web browser, such asFresco or Netscape Navigator) is to anhttp server (such as Apache, the free— and most popular? — web serverfor Unix and just about every otherplatform under the sun).

Unlike the web, you will always needto enter in a user name and passwordwhen accessing an ftp site. However,any public sites will allow you to login with the user name ‘anonymous’(or even easier, just ‘ftp’) and youremail for the password. No, youwon’t always be forced to enter inyour email, but it’s polite. If you’redownloading really dodgy stuff andyou want to remain anonymous then

just make up a password [email protected]. The most that’s everdone is that the password is checkedto be in the correct format for an emailbut remember that nothing you everdo on the Internat is completelyanonymous — your activities cannearly always be traced and if you’reclever enough to stay really wellhidden then you probably won’t bereading this article ;-)

ftp clients for RISC OS usersIn order to connect to an ftp daemonyou will need an ftp client. Try FTPcfromwww.c-granville.freeserve.co.ukor The ARM Club’s or Argonet’s ftpclient. They are generally quite easyto use, especially the more graphicalones, but even if you are stuck withDOS’s plain-text Unix-ripoff (well,imitation is the greatest form offlattery I suppose) don’t be tooalarmed as a simple summary of thecommands will show they are notparticularly different from the AcornCLI system.

Also, if you can’t quite remember theorder of parameters to a command,then generally using that commandwithout parameters will get the ftp


client to prompt you interactively forthe information it needs).

Here is a listing of all the commandsDOS ftp supports:

These are all one-word commandswith one or two parametersfollowing. Opposite is a descriptionof some of the more usefulcommands.

The asc and bin commands are veryimportant. A file must be uploaded ordownloaded in the correct mode forthe transfer to work correctly. It’s not

usually the end of the world if a plaintext file is uploaded in ASCII modebut I, for one, have downloaded morethan one large program file in ASCIImode only to realise the error of myways after half an hour ofdownloading — in this case theQuake 3 executable ;-)

As can be seen, it’s not exactly themost difficult command line interfacein the world to get used to and you canjust use the help command to find outall the tens of commands I’ve notincluded here.

On a PC?As I mentioned, Windoze <insertfavourite variant here> comes with aDOS ftp program which is enough forthe basics. Likewise, any Unix orLinux distribution will also comewith Unix ftp which will do the jobfor you.

Possibly your distribution also hasnc-ftp (pronounced Nik-ftp) which issomewhat more powerful than anyother ftp program I’ve ever seen;recursive uploads, downloads,resuming, blah de blah, the works. Ifyou’re stuck in Windoze, check outCuteftp from www.cuteftp.com


! glo put? hash pwdappend help quitascii lcd quotebell literal recvbinary ls remotehelpbye mdelete renamecd mdir rmdirclose mget senddebug mkdir statusdelete mls tracedir mput typedisconnect open userget prompt verbose


open site Open a connection to an ftp siteget file Download a file from the server (or get remote-filename local- filename)put file Upload a file to the server (or put local-filename remote filename)close Close the connection to the current siteasc/bin Change to ASCII or binary upload and download modesmput Put a directory using recursive putting. Not supported by all clients/serversglob Toggles file name globbing, which permits use of wildcard characters (* and ?) in local file or path names. By default, globbing is onhash Toggles hash (#) printing for each data block transferred. The size of a data block is 2048 bytes. By default, hash mark printing is offpwd Displays the current directory on the remote computerappend Appends a local file to a file on the remote computer using the current file type settinglcd Changes the working directory on the local computer. By default, the working directory is the directory in which ftp was startedbell Toggles a bell to ring after each file transfer command is completed. By default, the bell is offls Displays an abbreviated list of a remote directory’s files and subdirectories.bye Closes the connectionmdelete Deletes (multiple) files on remote computersrename Renames a remote filecd Change the remove directory (in Unix format, so directory separators are /)rmdir Remove a remote directorymget Get multiple files from a remote directorymkdir Make a directory on the remote computerdelete Take a wild guess...help ask the ftp client for help — try also help command

which is probably the best you’ll getfor no money and a serial crack off theWeb. Feeling moral? Twenty buckswill sort you out with a license, butcheck out www.cdrom.com,www.tucows.com and any otherfavourite software archives foralternatives.

What about doing it with a webbrowser?

Most web browsers support the ftpprotocol as well as the http protocolused for transmitting web pages downthe line. Try enteringftp://sunsite.org into the URL ofNetscape Navigator, InternetExplorer or any of the Acorn browsers(I’m not sure which ones support itdue to my modem having gonewalkies).

Note that if you connect to an ftp sitein this fashion, your browser willhave connected as ‘anonymous’ and,if you’ve so configured it, will havesent your email down the line as thepassword (the default behaviour formost industry-standard browsers). Ifyou need to connect as a user, theformat for the URL is as follows:

ftp://username;password@site

So, for instance,

ftp://joebloggs;[email protected]

Well, that just about sums it up for ftp.There’s really not much to say aboutit. It’s a simple protocol to use andone that is commonly used on theInternet.

Any questions? Give a yell to:[email protected]


Member’s Ad

For sale Var ious Acorn machines A3000s, A420s etc. £50 ono each.Buyer collects.

Chris PriceMerton Court School38 Knoll RoadSidcup, Kent DA14 4QU Tel: 0208 302 4078Email:[email protected]

Last year saw The ARM Club enteruncharted territory with the

organisation of a major two-dayshow. Over the years, the Club hadorganised many one day shows fromlocal ‘church hall’ events to the thelarger National Motorcycle MuseumShow in Birmingham.

The Wakefield Acorn User Grouphas, for four years, organised thesuperb Wakefield Show and hasproved that there is a real demand forbigger events. Virtually everyone inthe RISC OS/Acorn market exhibitsat Wakefield, enabling visitors to seeall the products and talk to the dealersand developers.

For many, Wakefield has become anannual pilgrimage but those in theSouth bemoaned the lack of a suitableshow to replace the greatly missedAcorn World. This had traditionallybeen held in the Autumn; theNorthern show (originally Harrogate,

now Wakefield) in early Summer.This had given dealers and developerstwo well-spaced major shows tomarket their wares and talk tocustomers.

The decision was taken that The ARMClub would mount a two-day Autumn

show at a suitable venue. AcornWorld had been at various locationsaround London but all suffered frompoor access and parking was usuallynon-existent or very expensive.Eventually the Queen’s Stand atEpsom Racecourse was selected as asuitable venue for the show.

Easy accessThis is close to the M25, providingeasy access, especially for visitorsfrom the Continent, with the venueonly two hours from the ChannelTunnel. There is ample parking andthis prestigious venue is in a superbsetting above the North Downs.


Return Of The RISC OS Show

The big Autumn show is back, at last year’s successfulAscot venue. John Sawer tells how it has beenorganised and looks forward to some of the highlights.

Naturally we hoped exhibitors andvisi tors would not have time toadmire the view!

The Committee took on the manytasks needed to organise such a largeshow but much of the responsibilitywas borne by Mark Smith. The Clubbacked the show f inancial ly but i tsoon became obvious that enoughexhibi tors had been signed up toensure the show would be financiallysound.

EuphoriaThe success of the show is nowhistory but few wi l l forget theeuphoria of the f i rst day, f rom thequeues outside to the throng roundeach stand and the packed theatre.

More than a thousand people camethat day and many exhibitors had tore-stock overnight.

Diana Rawnsley of RComp said “Wesold out all of our Internet products —one by 2pm on Saturday”. Otherexhibi tors were equal lycompl imentary: “ Truly excel lent”from Aaron Timbrell of iSV and “Avery successful show” f rom RoyHeslop of RiscStation.

SuccessAfter the success of last year it wasonly natural that the show would berepeated in 2000. Mark had done anexcellent job with RISC OS 99 but infairness it was necessary to spread theload more evenly.

The core of the organisational team isdrawn from The ARM Club but twolocal user groups, Surrey and SussexAcorn User Group and RISCOS UserGroup of London, have also beenrecruited to help. As a consequencethe show team is:

Co-ordinator: Mark SmithVenue and theatre: Rob Brown Shell scheme: Toby SmithExhibitor contacts: Mark Smith andRalph Sillett Publicity: SASAUG (led by JohnSawer and Geoff Arnold)Transport and first aid: David RuckTickets and passes: Tom HughesHelper organisation: ROUGOL (led byDan Shimin and Andrew Harmsworth) Treasurer: Simon Burrows

The venue to be used is, once more,the Queen’s Stand at EpsomRacecourse. Shuttle buses wil l runf rom the main station in Epsom


(Please note, not Tattenham Corner orEpsom Downs).

By June the list of exhibitors wasrapidly growing. Those planning toattend include:

SpacetechRiscStationCastleCTA DirectRCompCumana/Cannon ComputingIcon TechnologySofteaseAkalat (Acorn Publisher)APDLSurftechArchiveWarm Silence SoftwareJonathan DuddingtonReally Good Software CoAcorn UserRISC OS LtdEFFCJE MicrosiSVCerilicaThe ARM Club

A big feature of the show will be thepublic release of the new RiscStationlaptop portable RISC OS machine

previewed at the Wakefield show.Details will be available in the nextmonth, while presentations on themachine will be given in the RISC OS2000 Show theatre.

The RiscStation sponsored smallexhibitor village is more popular thanever, with more than half the standsalready booked. Other sponsors of theshow are Spacetech and Acorn User.

Several of the palmtop communityplan to be there including Palmtopmagazine and leading Psion and otherdealers supporting the growingnumber of RISC OS/Acorn users withsuch equipment. The plannedimplementation of RISC OS4 on thenew StrongARM powered Psion addsto the relevance of the show for Psiondealers.

New exhibitors are being added allthe time, so for the latest showinformation visit the Club web site onwww.armclub.org.uk/shows/riscos/

The good news is that ARM Club,SASAUG and ROUGOL membersmembers can get in free on Sunday!

See next two pages for full details.



Organised by The ARM Club in association with SASAUG and ROUGOL

RISC OS SHOW2000

Saturday 21 October — 10:00 to 17:00

Sunday 22 October — 10:00 to 16:00

Queen’s Stand, Epsom Downs Racecourse, Surrey

Tickets: £4 in advance £5 on the door

Free entry on Sunday for all members of

• New hardware • New software

• Presentations in the purpose built theatre

• Local clubs

• All the leading RISC OS developers and dealers

The RISC OS Show of the year

Sponsored by Spacetech and Acorn User magazine

www.armclub.org.uk/riscos2000/ [email protected]

Tel: 07050 679264 Fax: 07050 679263 (call rates higher than national rate)

Advance tickets from:

RISC OS 2000, Merton Court, 38 Knoll Road, Sidcup, Kent DA14 4QU

Fresh tomatoes, tomato ketchup,tomato puree, tinned tomatoes,

tomato soup. What do all these havein common?

If you’re as lightening fast as I’d hopefrom Club members, you’ll have

spotted that there’s that word ‘tomato’cropping up in all of them. I’m gladyou spotted the similarity there. Andbased on that, you’d expect somesimilarity of contents — at least that ared, round fruit was somehowinvolved? Or is it just me?

So why, I have to ask, is it that mostof the spods I meet will eat any of theabove, bar the first; the fresh, the realversion of tomatoes? Why do theyneed to be crushed, peeled, canned,creamed or packed with additivesbefore your average spod will eat

them? There’s clearly something inthe destructive process ofrepackaging the tomato that removesall its goodness and makes it suddenlypalatable.

I’ve been trying to work out exactlywhat anyone could dislike about theinnocuous tomato. Responses rangedfrom the articulate “It tastes nasty,” tothe spoddier “There’s a danger that itmight be good for me,” with a quicktour via “Can’t remember, but I’venever liked them, ever since I was achild”.

It warms your heart to know that theseare the well-rounded individuals you


Gill’s Journal: Food For Spods

What’s round, red and fruity but can’t be eaten fresh ifyou’re a real spod? Gill Smith reveals the fruits of herresearch in the latest look into the pages of her Journal.

Recognise these? This is ketchupin its raw state

chose to steer The ARM Club throughthe murky waters of Acorn basedcatastrophes and attacks of Windowsmania.

Eventually I concluded that the ‘beinggood for you’ bit must be the realproblem. Tomatoes are packed withvitamins, nutrients, minerals andother stuff that’s really good for you.It’s that, combined with the fact that

in your fresh tomato, the pips are green.As I have been told many times by thevarious spods, green food is for girlies.

Mint ice creamSuch delights as broccoli, asparagusand mint ice cream are clearly afemale preoccupation. Real spodsdon’t eat green food. I presume thisincludes the new green ketchup thatshould be hitting the shops soon.


Before

Lettuce, all million new varieties of it,and other such vegetables thatfrequently find their way onto the sideof a plate beside a good steak, or anice fatty pie, should be ignored.They can be pushed around a little, orcut up, in a pretence of eatingsomething but only if the waitresshappens to be nice. Due to the greenhue of the pips in fresh tomatoes, theycannot be eaten, while thepreservatives that allow your puree ortinned tomatoes to retain thatbrilliance of red also carefully hidethe greenness of the pips.

Pale wan glowIt seems to come to this: eatinghealthy food might make you lose thatpale, wan glow that allows fellowspods to recognise you as one ofthem, from a hundred yards across acrowed room. You can picture thescene — their eyes met across acrowed racecourse venue — therewas something about the fluorescentI-sit-in-front-of-a-monitor-for-at-least-12-hours-a-day shade of her skin thatinstantly drew him. Moving swiftlythrough the sea of geeks he wassuddenly by her side “Do you spodhere often?”


later

SinisterNow we’ve got to the bottom of whythese poor misguided individualsdislike healthy food, it still seems thata specific dislike of tomatoes isinextricably linked with the affinityfor technology. There’s somethingmore sinister going on than a mereanti-tomato prejudice. This needsmore research.

My little brother used to hatetomatoes but my mother wasn’thaving any of it. Now aged 15, has thepoor boy had his technical careerinwittingly ruined by my motherinsisting on feeding him his tomatoesfresh?

Or did his dislike of tomatoes justwear off when he realised that fourolder siblings were just too many tofight off the computer, so causing himto give up his technical leanings?Which came first, the tomato or thespod?

Force feedIntrigued as I am, I feel it would be alittle unfair to start experimenting onmy cousin’s small children. After all,one of the little dears isn’t due untilSeptember. Mind you, if I force feed

my cousin a diet of fresh tomatoes forthe next couple of months, in order toget the little darling a very early start,will he turn out to love them, or tohate them and be the next Bill Gates?In terms of making his fortune that is,not in terms of being considered thedevil incarnate. Well, maybe both.

As a control, of course, I really oughtto ban his brother, currently exactly ayear and a day old, from any form offresh tomato. To make it really fair, heshould have tomato ketchup oneverything in sight and eat freshtomato only when it’s well and trulycurried. (I hope I haven’t ruined anyspod’s abilities to enjoy a vindaloothere — sorry to have to break it toyou, but they do put fresh tomato intosome curry dishes.

Next Steve JobsAgain, the interesting question iswhether depriving him will mean thathe becomes the next Steve Jobs orwill it lead to a passionate desire forfresh tomato and cause him to becomean actor, or an Olympic athlete.

At this point, I should exonerate myhusband, Toby. He complains thateveryone assumes every sad ‘spoddy’


thing in my columns is his behaviour.I ask you, why on earth would I stickto making fun of one spod, when wehave them queuing up for ridicule?No, I’m the generous sort, I’ll mockanyone.

ChooseAnyway, back to the case in hand.Toby not only eats fresh tomatoeswhen offered them, he’ll even choosetypes of tomato in the supermarket!

And no, that’s not the same aschoosing brands of ketchup.

Yet, in spite of this fearlessness whenit comes to that round, red fruit, Tobycan out-techie some of The ARMClub Committee and is employed as asoftware consultant by a supposedlyup-and-coming Internet site. He’seven the man in charge of makingsure their site runs properly on yourAcorn.


Afterwards

Still a spodSo we’ve established Toby is still aspod and sent him off into the jungleof cables that is up-and-comingcompany’s server room to do someserious research.

The first interesting specimen that hecame across was the OperationsManager.

For the less techie among you, thatmeans the bloke that keeps the reallybig computers up and running and hehas nothing to do with your positionon the NHS waiting list.

The Operations Manager also likestomatoes. This is strange. Any manwho, like Toby, delights in the arrivalof a new big Sun machine the waynew parents coo over a baby cannotdeny being pretty technically minded.

WivesSo, other than a love for computersthat are too big to fit in the lift, whatdo these two have in common?Wives.

Mrs Operations Manager is a lovelylady, in a non-techie profession, whoputs up with the Operations pager

going off at odd hours of the day andnight simply because some idiot didsomething strange to a computer.

Perhaps that is the key. All theprevious advice I’ve offered aboutfinding women may be utterlyuseless. Maybe all a spod needs to doto make him (or her) self moreattractive to the opposite sex is to eatfresh tomato. I know it’s a toughchallenge but maybe, just maybe, itcould be you getting your dreamticket to the girl of your fantasies.

Girl of your fantasies OK, maybe not the girl of yourfantasies, especially not yours Druck,that’d be illegal, but somethingcoming faintly close anyway.

You never know, you may find it’s solong since you tried a tomato that theyaren’t that bad after all — or at leastthe benefits may outweigh thetrauma.

Perhaps the clue was there all along,as tomatoes are also called ‘loveapples’!

Cartoons by Jan Pearce


The National Numeracy Strategyaims to improve pupils’ fluency withnumbers and encourage thedevelopment of mental calculationstrategies with much less emphasis onformal written methods.

To become fluent requires practiceand this range of CDs from Sherston,currently available for Year 4 (eight tonine year olds) or Year 5 (nine to 10Year olds), provides plenty ofstimulating opportunities for suchpractice.

Each CD focuses on some of thecalculation strategies for the yearconcerned, as listed in the NumeracyStrategy.

In the Year 5 example there are 21such strategies each of which can betackled at three levels of difficulty. Ateacher control panel allows theteacher to set the strategies to be usedfor each pupil — providing that the

software has been installed to a harddrive enabling records to be kept, inthe customary Sherston fashion.

The exercises are based on sevendifferent Olympic style events:

rowing, running, swimming, archery,ski jump, javelin and shot putt.

Once the user has chosen his or herevent a coach will guide them throughthe strategy being used. Although theexplanations are clear andaccompanied by spoken narration andanimated diagrams, it would seemvery desirable for the teacher to havecovered the strategy with the classbeforehand, encouraging commentsand explanations from the pupils asexpected in this style of teaching.

Some pupils may still benefit from thecoaching in the program but mostwould be better occupied in tacklingthe tasks and possibly developing


Mental Maths Olympics

Di Hillage finds how children can learn to docalculations in their heads and score their way to an‘Olympic’ medal and a certificate of achievement.

their own modifications to thesuggested method.

Twelve questions are given for eachevent with appropriate visual andsound effects for correct and wronganswers until a final score isachieved.

A conversion chart is provided toconvert these times, points ordistances into medal points. The threebest scores are used to compile eachuser’s medal rating.

Some of the programs marketed asuseful for maths practice contain somany sound and graphic effects thatthe user is distracted from the point ofthe exercise. This CD maintains amuch better balance with sufficientmotivation for the user to try toimprove their scores.

A considerable amount oforganisation by the teacher in settingindividual levels and the strategies tobe used will be needed to make fulluse of the idea. Nevertheless there is


Solve the sum to be in the running for an Olympic medal

every encouragement to do this withprinted resources such as medalcertificates, score sheets etc. includedon the CD.

There is very little, if anything, in theSherston catalogue that will not be ofuse in today’s primary classrooms andthis CD is yet another excellentexample of a way in which computerscan be used to help children learn.


Medals to be won with a printed certificate to prove it

Mental Maths OlympicsYear 4 & Year 5

Price: £49.95 +VAT each(multi packs available)Supplier: Sherston Software LtdAngel House, SherstonMalmesbury, Wilts SN16 0LHTel: 01666 843200Fax: 01666 843216Email: [email protected]: www.sherston.com

Last month we looked at two of thefour new magazines which have

appeared this year: Foundation RISCUser and RISC Nation. The other twopreferred not to be judged on theirfirst issue and so we agreed to holdback until the second one.

The first two copies of APDL’s bi-monthly RISC World appeared inFebruary and April, with a uniformappearance, in plastic envelopes and asimilar format. There is no title page;the CD presents a collection ofdirectories, some HTML pages, onetitled Index. Clicking this brings up abrief Editorial welcome with linksinto a RISC OS section with sprites,an alternative non-RISC OS one withPNGs and JPEGs and a contact pagewhich has details of how to get intouch, subscribe or place anadvertisement.

Selecting the RISC OS section (or itsalternative) leads to another copy of

the welcome message and an index ofthe CD’s contents.

Both issues have the same basicsections, including Regulars

comprising My World (Editorialcomment), PD World, Gaming World,Puzzle World, Portable World andDisc World (supplied software). Thissection is followed by Features,Reviews, Programming andAdvertisers, which of course all havedifferent subjects in each issue.

There were two non-technicalfeatures in the first issue; one on usingsupport services and a Wakefieldpreview. The second issue had more


Now Read On (Part 2)…

In our second look at the new magazines which havenow appeared on the RISC OS scene, Peter Jenningssees what the second one on CD-ROM has to offer.

techie features, on HTML authoring,TeX, and viewing PDF, as well as alook behind the scenes at CastleTechnology and an article on usingOvation Pro.

Reviews covered a data analysisprogram and a font collection, plussome mini review in issue one andDrawWorks Millennium and theProgrammers Reference Manuals onCD (reviewed by someone calledMark Smith) in issue two.

To sum up, it’s an interesting read andthe mandatory PD is up-to-date anduseful. It would benefit from having afront end to provide an opening titlepage, for both presentation and easeof use for the less experienced.

There are six issues a year, reasonablypriced at just under £3 an issue.


RiscAction/SmashThe fourth of the new magazines— the only one to be paper based —has changed i ts name f romRiscAction (which, it was thought,suggested a games title) to Smash.We have not received a copy in timeto review it in this issue.

RISC WorldAnnual sub (6 issues) £17·90 (UK)Overseas £19·9039 Knighton Park RoadSydenham, London SE26 5RNPhone: 020 8778 2659Fax: 020 8488 0487Email: [email protected]: www.riscworld.com

Smash (was RiscAction)Price per issue: £4·50 (UK)Europe £5·50, Others £6·50(cheques payable to ProcAction)40 Honiton Road, RomfordEssex RM7 9AJEmail:[email protected]

The RISC OS FoundationAnnual Sub: £30 + £5·25 VAT3 Clarendon RoadCardiff CF23 9JDTel: 02920 492324Fax: 02920 440071Email: [email protected]

RISC NationAnnual sub (12 issues): £15(cheques payable to V A Evans)72a Botley Road, Park GateSouthampton SO31 1BAEmail: [email protected]


Coming in Eureka 36

(If it all arrives in time!)

In our next issue we hear how a network of different Acorn computers is used,with some very special and expensive peripherals, in the work of designinggliders.

There will be a look at the amazingly easy to use new spreadsheet anddatabase which form part of the latest Studio version of Textease.

We have the next part of our new series on sed and awk, begun in our lastissue, and learn how to write a simple but useful script.

We review the latest version of BEEBUG’s Hard Disc Companion backuputility.

Remember Chocks Away and Architech? There’s a sentimental look at someold favourites dating back from BBC and Archimedes days which may not beentirely lost to us.

Among the regulars, there will be some more Site Seeing around the WorldWide Web, we’ll find some more new computer games to play, there’ll beanother of our popular word puzzles and Gill will be revealing more of herinnermost thoughts from the pages of her Journal.

And, of course, there will be more about the big RISC OS 2000 Show atEpsom.

Look out for it all dropping through your letter box in the Winter edition ofEureka.


Published by The ARM Club

• Chairman: Toby Smith • Secretary: Chris Price

• Treasurer: Simon Burrows • Membership Secretary: Rilla Paterson

• Technical Help Co-ordinator: David Ruck

• Internet & Products Co-ordinator: Tom Hughes

• Open Days Advisor & Quartermaster: Ralph Sillett

• Open Days Organisation/Support: John Stonier

Discount Scheme Organiser: Rob Brown

• Without portfolio: Matthew Cook Martin Ebourne Mark Smith

Editor: Peter Jennings© 2000 The ARM Club. All rights reserved

Club contacts

Email:General queries [email protected] Membership queries [email protected] Members’ technical help [email protected] Product sales [email protected]

Magazine [email protected] [email protected]

The ARM Club, Merton Court, 38 Knoll Road

Sidcup, Kent DA14 4QU

Telephone (higher rates):General queries 07010 709849Technical help line 07010 708098Fax: 07020 954018

Web site: http://www.armclub.org.uk/

Benefits of membershipThe national club for all users of 32 bit

Acorn computers and Pocket Books

Annual membership £12 (+£3 joining pack for first year)Europe £16 and rest of the world £19

The ARM Club, Merton Court, 38 Knoll Road, Sidcup, Kent DA14 4QUEmail: [email protected] Tel: 07010 709849 (Flextel)

• The Club’s magazine, ‘Eureka’, written by members, is published and sent free of charge four times a year.

• Free software to accompany articles in Eureka is available on the Club’s FTP site or can be sent to members on disc.

• Free Technical Help Service. We will do our best to solve any problems which you may have, by email, letter, telephone or fax.

• Special discounts for Club members from well-known companies.

• Regional open days and shows are regularly organised by the Club. Other events can be arranged on request.

• Special offers at shows and open days.

• Regional contact lists of other members, available on request.

• Opportunities to get involved in the running of the Club itself.

• School and Affiliate Membership available on request.

• Joining pack includes an extra copy of a recent issue of the magazine and software.

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