Back up your troubles

BACKUP DEVICES are at the best of times controversial and the new Multiface One from Romantic Robot is set to be the most controversial of all.

At the push of a button it allows you to backup your programs to disc (Discovery One or Beta), microdrive, or Wafadrive, with other disc systems to follow. It also provides facilities to POKE areas of memory for high score POKEs or to see what is there.

Multiface is so called because it can do more than just backup programs. It has a built-in Kempston compatible joystick port and a composite video monitor socket. Inside there is 8K of RAM which is available as, for example, a RAM disc or somewhere to keep a monitor or short machine code routines.

Its main use, however, will be as a backup device and as such it is very successful. It cannot backup programs to hardware where the program specifically looks for that hardware and does not run properly if it is connected - such as Elite and the Beta Plus - but it can, for example, backup the same program to microdrive.

To be able to get more programs onto one microdrive cartridge the Multiface uses some impressive compression techniques. Compression rates of over 50 per cent are possible with some programs.

Given the wide range of hardware which the Multiface can work with, and the extra facilities it provides, the price of £39.95 is reasonable.

John Lambert