I/O Board

SPARE SOFTWARE

I'm seeking an ST Bowling League Secretary program to help manage the weekly statistics of a bowling league. I've heard of things for the 8-bit but not for the ST Any ideas?

     Patrick Radaj
     Milwaukee

Antic would be interested in publishing good Bowling League Secretary programs for both the Atari 8-bit and ST lines. We've invited bowling submissions before, but unfortunately we just threw gutter balls till now.--ANTIC ED

ATARI HAS HEART

I'm severely disabled, having had surgery on my back, hands and legs at age 55. About five years ago I started saving for an Atari system, and in July, 1985, I bought a 130XE, a 1050 drive, a Teknika monitor and Atari 1020 and 1027 printers.

Last December my 130XE died. I sent a letter to Atari and told them what had happened and that money was hard for me to come by. In March I received a brand new 130XE. The invoice had all zeros and said, 'Sorry it took so long. (Signed) Sam T." It was a miracle.

     Ralph Sandell
     Columbus, Ohio

ATARI WRITER PLUS

According to your review of the Star NL-10 printer (Antic, January 1987), the NL-10 is compatible with the Epson FX-10. But when I use AtariWriter Plus, I can't use all the word processing features--such as superscript and elongated print. If I need another printer driver for it, where can I get one?

Also, how can I print the Atari graphic symbols and inverse characters such as those in your program listings?

     Paul Kowalski
     Brooklyn, NY

The first time you ask Atari Writer Plus to print a document, it asks what kind of printer you're using First choose "Other" then choose "Epson FX-80" which is what our review specified, not FX-1O. That's what we did, and we didn't have any of the problems you described. As for printing out those symbols, try Lister Plus ($19.95, The Catalog, AP0179).--ANTIC ED

8-BIT ABROAD

My article about visiting Antic last fall has been printed in the West Germany "Atari Magazin" (March/April 1987). In Europe, the 8-bit Atari is far from dead. Many new programs have arrived on the software market here, such as Spindizzy, a Marble Madness type of game; Tomahawk, a 3-D helicopter simulation; Trivial Pursuit; and Airline, a multi-player strategy game featuring window graphics.

     Frank Emmert
     Furth, West Germany

MICROMOD TURBOBASE

I own many Atari 8-bit business application programs, but I have been looking for the one that could "do it all" for a small business. I believe I have found such a system in Micromod Turbobase.

I had bought Micromod 3.0 in September, 1986, and while I was impressed with it, I noticed a couple of bugs and was disappointed with the manual, which assumed too much knowledge on the part of the reader.

I contacted Micromod boss Steve Bolduc, who was gracious, receptive and supportive. Micromod 3.0 was removed from the market. And in February 1987, I received a copy of Micromod Turbobase Quick Course and Cookbook, as well as a demo of Turbobase. Mr. Bolduc had listened very well indeed. QCC does everything it claims and then some, and the new manual is outstanding.

     J.J. Moniz
     Huntsville, AL

Antic currently has a review of Micromod Turbobase in the works. We hope to print it in the next issue.--ANTIC ED

V-GRAPHICS

After I had typed in and run V-Graph (Antic, November 1986), the PRINT command threw my poor Prowriter 8510 into some sort of fit. The accompanying article suggested substituting my own graphics dump in lines 670-710. This is beyond my modest programming talents.

I finally came up with a crude solution: I put a screen save routine in place of the printer routine, and I printed out the saved screen with a long, involved screen dump in machine-language. It's messy, but it works. However, I'd much rather someone took pity on me and sent a nice, simple routine I can actually put in the program.

While you're at it, you wouldn't happen to know of a nice gentleman (fortyish) who would like a hopeless computer addict equipped with three sons, would you? (I even love football--what more could a man want?)

     Rebecca Pyle
     Urbana, Ohio

Antic currently knows no one fitting that description. However we will forward any mail to you.--ANTIC ED

Help!

Apparently the Atari Fair Update list supplied to Antic (June 1987, page 19) was somewhat buggy. Two corrected fair dates/sites are:

• Detroit, August 28-30, Southfield Hilton.
• Boston, October 10-11, Worcester Centrum

The "Coldstart in BASIC" June 1987 Tech Tip should have been:

X = USR(58487)

CITADEL

If Citadel (June 1987) is producing an ERROR 141 AT 440, the fix is below. Many thanks to Antic Contributing Editor Dave Plotkin for helping us isolate and fix this problem.

RR 430 POSITION 10,9:? "{ATARI CONTROL CHARACTERS}":GOSUB 220:POKE 559,34
RG 440 FOR X=35 TO 0 STEP -1:SOUND 1,10,4,8:POSITION X,1:? "hga":FOR D=1 TO 15:NEXT D:NEXT X
FI 445 FOR I=2 TO 37:BFLAG(I)=1:NEXT I

About The Cover: A resurgent Atari Corp. has muscled its way back into the center of the personal computer merketplace and is competing poewrfully against the big guys. One demonstration of Atari's new strength is the 112% rise in its stock price--up from $12.50 to a current $26.50 per share since Atari went public with a $50.6 million stock issue on November 7, 1986. Cover models: Bryan Stewart, courtesy of Gold's Gym, and Tom Chandler, courtesy of Antic.

Antic welcomes your feedback, but we regret that the large volume of mail makes it impossible for the Editors to reply to everyone. Although we do respond to as much reader correspondence as time permits, our highest priority must be to publish I/O answers to questions that are meaningful to a substantial number of readers.

Send letters to: Antic I/O Board, 544 Second Street, San Francisco, CA 94107.