Disconnect to help loading

FIRST OF ALL, it is good to have a magazine only for the Sinclair users. Unfortunately you have fallen into the same trap as other computer magazines and books.

Having looked through your Othello you state in your last paragraph about making changes to lines 1220 onwards to 1280. Reading the program there are no such lines.

Some of the contributors to magazines are the first to chide Uncle Clive for his shortcomings, with some of which I agree. Unfortunately they should practice what they preach when submitting programs for publication, some of which leave much to be desired, for when they have errors it is difficult for the beginner to spot them.

I would like to tell you about a tip for loading the ZX-81 which has enabled me to load 99 percent of the time. I have a 14in. black and white Waltham portable which, used in conjunction with the SUGA and using all the standard procedures, I am able to SAVE but under no circumstances can I LOAD. I discovered that the following simple method worked perfectly.

Key-in the instruction LOAD 'program name', disconnect the aerial from the back of the TV set and position it on the loop aerial or on top of the set so that it hangs at the back of the set, to give a blurred picture of the LOAD instruction. Then follow the normal loading procedure, press PLAY on the tape recorder and NEW LINE and the program LOADS, giving the 0/0 on the screen.

Replace the aerial in the back of the TV set and proceed to run the program as normal. It is not necessary to have the blurred LOAD instruction, provided that you know the exact position on the tape of the program and again making sure you do not replace the aerial before the program is fully loaded; if you do you will lose it.

It would appear that a back EMF or signal from the TV set destroys the program. I have tried the method on two other TV sets and it worked perfectly.

J Pritchard

Thanks for the tip. Do readers have any other ideas they would like to pass on? We apologise for the error in the Othello but it is still possible to enjoy the game.

Black Jack points

CONGRATULATIONS on issue number one which I found most interesting. Having regard to Tim Hartnell's Blackjack here are two points:

I have seen it dealt under casino conditions and very often a 'shoe' is used which would contain probably packs, thus making it impossible to remember all cards which are dead.

In a normal game there are 16 chances in 52 of the next card scoring 10 but lines 20 and 50 give only four such chances. If those lines are amended to read LET CA = INT (RND * 13) + 12 and additional lines 25 and 55 inserted to read IF CA = 11 OR CA = 12 OR CA =13 THEN LET CA = 10 the imbalance is corrected. Also the new lines 20 and 50 obviate the duplication of 1 which occurs in the program as published.

Ted Maynell

Listings problems

I BOUGHT the first copy of your magazine two weeks ago and I am impressed by the general ideas and possibilities of a magazine devoted to one computer. The different dialects of Basic and different ROM mean that magazines catering for more than one computer tend to contain less specific information.

I found some rather tedious inaccuracies or bad presentation in the programs section, which is otherwise excellent value and the real "meat" of the magazine. I shall list the points for brevity:

Poor reproduction of listings in general, making the numbers sometimes difficult to read.

No listings of the variables in the programs. That makes it extremely difficult to follow a long program.

Where PRINT occurs, no indication is given of the numbers of blank spaces between the brackets. You can measure the distance and compare it to other characters to work out how many blanks there are but surely it would be easier to write PRINT "no. of blank spaces" or PRINT "    ", since that would be much clearer. Similarly, grey squares are printed as grey squares in the listings and it is often difficult to see whether they are graphics mode press key A or H again; this could be written PRINT "graphics A" to make the listing much clearer.

Simon Cross

We accept the problems in following the program listings and will be making every effort to improve them. Do readers have any other improvements they can suggest?

Need for size of programs

I AM very pleased to see your publication. No longer will I have to purchase three or more others to find a page or two of interest from each.

I suspect, like many others with 2K, 3K or 5K - not 16K - that it would be very helpful for contributors and advertisers if they could tell us the amount of RAM used, I appreciate that many do, but many more do not.

D J Bauernfeind

A good point into which we are looking.