Your Spectrum
Issue 14, May 1985 - Frontlines
Home Contents KwikPik
SLEEP ON IT! . NORDIC IS ALIVE AND WELL ...
GYRON screen
Gyron - not exactly a ball of fire.
What a load of balls! They are, in fact, deadly spheres rolling around a complex maze in Firebird's new game, Gyron. It's taken four mathematicians four and a half man-years to write the game - and it shows. The graphics are stunning but the game is so mind-blowingly boring it'll take four and a half mathematicians even longer to solve it. That's why Firebird is confidently offering a prize of a Porsche 924 to someone who cracks it. Course, they're also saying that cheating is impossible, but then, you know what we think of that and where to send your POKEs!
Certainly not a game worth losing any sleep over - in fact, it'll be pretty difficult not to sleep over it. £9.95 secures this sleeping tablet substitute from Firebird on nn-nnn nnnn. 		award photo

Don't know what he's looking so happy about! As the first person to complete Hewson's dark-age 3D drama, Avalon, Colin Hoare (him on the left) has now got to face up to the almost identical Dragontorc. That'll wipe the smile off his face. 		And living on Merseyside. After reading of their demise in last month's Frontlines, Nordic thought it'd better let us know that reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. All it had was a severe case of laryngitis.
The company hasn't gone into liquidation and didn't at any time in the past. It did have a communications problem, however, when no one could contact the office for a five week period. British Telecom had placed a redirect onto a dead line just when we were trying to suss out the situation.
So, if you've recently bought a Nordic keyboard, don't panic. Nordic assures us that all guarantees will be honoured - they are determined to make a clean break with the less than illustrious Fuller tradition and are committed to the computer market.
If you want to talk to them on a line which is guaranteed to work (BT permitting), give them a ring on nnn-nnn nnnn or nnn-nnn nnnn.
P a p e r d a t a Spotty Dog
The Spectrum Operating System
Steve Kramer / Micro Press £5.95

This book's shot straight to the top of my 'what did I ever do without it' list. Steve Kramer has really taken on a mega task in trying to explain the inner workings of the Spectrum's operating system - and he's done a tremendous job.
The first few chapters provide a gentle introduction on how to use some of the ROM's most useful routines. You'll find out about printing techniques, scanning the keyboard, clearing and scrolling the screen and how to control the PLOT, DRAW and CIRCLE commands, plus an in depth look at the cassette routines.
Enough there to fill a whole book, but there's much more. Interface 1 is next for the full treatment. When it was launched it really increased the power of the Speccy but the extra facilities that it offers have never yet been fully 		explained - until now that is. This book gives one of the best breakdowns of the new 8K ROM that I've ever read and, what's more, it's written in plain English. There are full details of how to use all the ROM routines, to control the micro drives, the network and the RS232 port. In fact, it'll tell you all you could ever want to know about the shadow ROM - but didn't know who to ask.
Steve Kramer also steers a course for you through channels, streams and ports. As well as showing what attaches where, he manages to make the whole subject of I/O ports fun with a program that produces speech by digital recording.
You've probably got the idea that I'm impressed - and you'd be right. This is one mega task that has been brought to mega conclusion. Check it out.
Tony Samuels

HACKING
AWAY
Hacker cartoon

The column with the infinite POKEs. Send your hacking hints to Andrew Pennell, Hacking Away, Your Spectrum, 14 Rathbone Place, London W1P 1DE.

You'll notice that this month the POKEs are getting trickier and trickier as programmers become more and more devious. But they still can't keep a good hacker out. First off the mark is Adrian Askins with infinite lives on Pyjamarama. [see issue 18] The hyperloader makes things a little tricky here, so a small program [note] is required to get round it:
10 CLEAR 29999: RESTORE 70
20 FOR n=1 TO 14
30 READ a: PRINT n+29999,a
40 NEXT n
50 PAUSE 0
60 RANDOMIZE USR 30000
70 DATA 221, 33, ?9, 127, 17, 216, 1, 62, 255, 55, 205, 86, 5, 201
Run this and then start playing the tape at the first data block (not the program header) and press any key to load it. Stop the tape as soon as it's in, then use these POKEs:
 
80 POKE 32844,207: POKE 32845,26: POKE 32828,251: POKE 32829,201: POKE 32789,243: POKE 32921,0: POKE 33000,0

Next, to Hyperload it, enter RANDOMIZE USR 32789 and re-start the tape. If a loading error occurs rewind and try again. When it loads, it will not start, so for 'x' lives enter POKE 43883,x. Then use RANDOMIZE USR 64649 and away you go. You're now ready to make a right Wally of yourself.
Now it's reach for the sky time - for anyone having difficulty with Sky Ranger from Microsphere, Paul Ryan has come to the rescue. He has found the access codes which allow you to reach the higher levels: 1 - ENTER, 2 - MAGIC, 3 - PILOT, 4 - STOMP, 5 - PARIS and 6 - EVENT.
Mark Gibson would like to do a swop. He's offering the infinite lives POKEs for River Rescue - try POKE 33420,0 for player 1 and POKE 33452,0 for player 2. In exchange he'd like the POKEs for Pinball Wizard and Cyber Zone, so get cracking you lot.
Now on to a couple of goodies from Karl Hampson, starting with Starzone's Zaxxon. For 255 lives use POKE 48825,255. Melbourne House's Sir Lancelot is a bit trickier. For a lot of lives you'll need the following program:
1 REM Sir Lancelot 'x' lives
10 FOR a=50000 TO 50024
20 READ n: POKE a,n: NEXT a
30 DATA 49, 125, 91, 221, 33, 128, 91, 17, 128, 36, 62, 103, 55, 205, 86, 5,243, 62, x, 50, 38, 92, 195, 8, 92
40 PRINT AT 1,3;"Load Main Headerless Block"
50 RANDOMIZE USR 50000

The 'x' in line 30 should be replaced with the number of lives you want - Karl tells me that he's not sure how high you can go but he knows that anything up to 127 works. Forward the tape to the main block of code, after the SCREEN$, run the program and then play the tape. I'm coming Guinevere!
Barry Costas has been on an exploratory mission in Zombie Zombie and returned with the news of a lost city. Yes, there are two cities in the game! To get to the other one, you must load the game as usual, go to the main menu without playing it, then press P followed by CAPS, and an input prompt will appear at the bottom of the screen. Enter (in upper case) SPACEMAN, then press ENTER. In lower case type in xchg and you are ready to do battle with another city-full of the undead (keep an eye open for Troubleshootin 'Pete! - Ed.).
You may remember that some months ago I gave the infinite lives for Bug-Byte's version of Manic Miner. So that those of you with the Software Project's version don't feel left out, A J Bull has sent in POKE 35142,0 which does the same.

NOTE:
This code is reproduced as printed in the magazine. There is one obvious error (PRINT instead of POKE), plus the digit marked "?" is printed only as a fragment; it appears to be either a 3 or a 5.
Home Contents KwikPik