Microreviews for January 1997 Micropendium by Charles Good ---------- AMS SLIDESHOW by Bruce Harrison. This is the second software product from Bruce designed for the extra cpu memory capabilities of the AMS card. The program is commercial and costs $7 directly from Bruce. There is a much slower public domain version of this (which I can send you for $1) for those without an AMS card. Other AMS software products from Bruce are currently in the thinking stage. AMS Slideshow lets you load a bunch of TI Artist pictures into memory and then display them one at a time in a slide show format. The common 256K AMS card will hold 20 pictures and if your card is upgraded to 512K you can load up 41 pictures including any combination of color or black and white TI Artist picutures. These are loaded one at a time off of disk in the order that you want to display them. You can load the same picture several times if you want that picture to appear more than once in a sequence of pictures. Once your pictures are all loaded you get to specify how many cycles you want to display, in other words how many times you want to display the same sequence of in memory pictures. You are asked if you want to change pictures automatically or with a keypress. If you want automatic display you are asked for a display time length. This is the amount of time a picture stays on screen before the next picture is fetched from memory and displayed. This interval can be as little as 0.1 second. Actually it takes a little longer than 0.1 second to print a picture to the screen, so if you select an ultra short display interval your computer will spend more time changing pictures than it does displaying them. Changing pictures is done with a top-to-bottom wipe. With a set of slightly altered pictures and a very short display interval it is possible to generate screen animation. The main advantage of AMS Slideshow over the non AMS public domain version of the same thing is speed. The non AMS software must fetch each picture off of disk each time that picture is displayed. Even if this is done off of a ramdisk or hard drive the process is not as fast as getting the picture from bank switched AMS memory. This is a quality useful product. It is commercial and only available from Bruce, for $7. If you willingly paid your $100 for a 256K AMS card then you should be willing to fork over an additional $7 for good software that uses the card. --------------- LOADMASTER V2.2 by Mickey Cendrowski and Bruce Harrison Yes, I know I reviewed this twice already in Micropendium. But it keeps getting better, much better. For those of you who don't remember, Loadmaster is for those wishing to organize their disk collections and find out what kind of software is on each disk. When you ask loadmaster to bring up a disk directory you are told all the usual disk directory information such as file name, size, kind (program, DV89, etc.) and protection status. You are also told the file kind in a way that is not often possible to guess from an ordinary directory listing. You are told "Infocom game", "TI Base data file", "Page Pro Banner", "Extended Basic long file", etc for every file on the disk. There are 52 file types that can be identified. This is very complete disk information not available from any other TI utility product. You can print disk labels, disk jackets, and create disk files that contain all this information. New to v2.2 since my last review of v2.1 are speed, the ability to run any runnable file, more extensive and accurate file identification, and user friendly error trapping. Bruce Harrison has added his assembly language skills to Mickey's extended basic earlier versions so that Load Master can now do things that cannot be done with just extended basic. The most immediately obvious change is speed. In my previous review I noted that the entirely extended basic v2.1 was very very slow. Version 2.2 really flys along. Code loads and executes quickly and screen refreshes are kept to a minimum. Sometimes if only half the screen needs refreshed then that part of the screen only is redone. Loadmaster requires extended basic and loads from an XB program called LOAD, but you don't have to boot it from DSK1. The product has boot disk tracking and will load from any floppy or horizon ramdisk drive. It also boots properly from the root directory (only) of either a SCSI or HFDC hard drive with the included extended basic loader. Just put all the files on one drive and run LOAD. When it loads press C to catalog a drive. If you don't like the default drive press another number within 3 seconds to catalog that drive. After 3 seconds the default drive is automatically cataloged. This default can be changed from an options menu. Loadmaster will catalog any floppy drive, but not horizon ramdisk drives if the horizon ramdisk is not at cru address 1000. The catalog provides you with file identification information that is much more accurate and extensive than previous Loadmaster versions. All PROGRAM files are now properly identified, which can only be done by reading file headers using assembly language support. TI Basic/Extended Basic, Extended Basic Only, EA5, Adventure, TOD, TI Artist, and other types of PROGRAM files are all labeled as such. The inability to correctly distinguish between the different types of PROGRAM files characteristic of earlier Loadmaster versions has been fixed using assembly language readings of file headers. If "*" appears next to a file name in a Loadmaster disk directory this means Loadmaster can do something with the file. Move the cursor next to the file and press enter. DV80 text files are viewed with a word wrap 40 column display. Not all DV80 files are text files, and Loadmaster knows this! TI Basic, Extended Basic, EA5, and EA3 files can all be run. Just press and the file runs. In the case of EA3 files if there is only one entry name then the file starts running. If there are several entry names then these are displayed. You put the cursor next to the most promising of these entry names, press and see if the software starts properly. If not you can try one of the other diaplayed names. Running EA3 software is much easier with Loadmaster than it is with the EA module or with Funnelweb, the only other ways I know to run such software. You don't have to remember the mysterious and often undocumented startup name needed for the EA module, and you don't have to first blank the screen as is the case with Funnelweb. In starting assembly software Loadmaster clears the screen before running the software. Some assembly software does not clear the screen at the start of the assembly program. Such software produces a messy screen with other assembly loaders, but not with Loadmaster v2.2. This is a really first class product. It's main use for most of us will be printing disk labels or disk jackets with complete file information. The new version is also the best software I have seen for running software from a disk directory, better even than Funnelweb's Disk Review. All 99/4A users should evaluate this unique product. It is fareware. The title screen tells you where to send your "whatever you think it is worth" donation, which will be divided equally among the two authors. Send me $1 and I will send you the latest version. If you have an earlier version you should definitely upgrade. ----------------- CONTRACT BRIDGE v4.0 by John Bull This was initially released about 5 years ago and reviewed at that time in Micropendium. This new update has several new and improved features and plays a much more intelligent game than the original. This software is sort of the Bridge card game equivalent of TI's Video Chess module. Both Bridge and Chess are games of skill rather than luck. Stratgey, tactics, and experience count for everything. Both Contract Bridge and the Video Chess module will play a good medium level but not an expert level game. In both cases the software can serve as a teacher/tutor of game strategy in both cases the human and computer player can switch places, and in both cases you can set up and play specific game positions such as those obtained from newspaper articles. There are other similarities. When you start Contract Bridge you are given the options of Tutor, Rubber Bridge, and Duplicate. The tutor is exactly that, it teaches you how to play the game of bridge in general and specifically how to use the Contract Bridge software. The rules of play and some suggested general tactics are presented. Then the learner is presented with a trial game with all the cards exposed. The learner bids and plays all 4 hands with no limitations except that the computer will not allow an illegal bid or card play. Rubber Bridge lets one player play an ordinary game of bridge against the computer and see only his card hand. The human player plays south and also the Dummy hand if you win the initial bidding. Computer play is much more intelligent than in previous versions of Contract Bridge. The author considers himself a medium grade Bridge player and tells me that his program now beats him about 1/3 of the time. I am not a Bridge player, so I cannot personally comment on the quality of the computer's play. The author believes that playing against the computer is now at least mildly challenging for experienced players. In previous versions, the author says the computer often made dumb bids and bad plays. The Duplicate option allows you to play with predetermined sets of hands, or boards. The game comes with 50 of these, each of which has already been played by the author. The object here is to beat the scores made by the author or others who have played with these same sets of hands. You can also set up your own custom boards and play them, such as thodse that are published in newspapers and magazines. The screen display has the playing table in the center, the four hands on the NSEW side of the table, and bidding and score information at the top of the screen. In Rubber you only see your own hand unless you specifically cheak and ask for a (L)ook. You can do an assembly language screen dump to a printer and you can save hands as a new board. The software can keep track of 99 boards including the 50 that already come with the software. From within the program a directory of boards files is available. In Rubber you can change the hand you play by shifting all hands at once clockwise. This shift can be repeated as often as desired. Contact Bridge is expensive shareware. I can send it to you on a DSSD disk to evaluate for $1. The registration fee is $20. That is a lot of money, but look what you get! There is nothing else like this in the TI world, and maybe not in other computer formats either. If you don't know how to play bridge you can learn from this software. If you do know, or once you learn, Contact Bridge will play an intelligent game with you with the emphasis on "intelligent". The author states that Bridge is the most popular card game in the world and feels that many of the younger generation are missing out on the social pleasure and mental stimulation of the game. Tutor will teach you and Rubber will give you that pleasure and stimulation. ------------- ACCESS: John Bull (Contract Bridge). 409 Blue Valley Lane. Knoxville TN 37922. email bulljh@delphi.com Bruce Harrison (AMS Slideshow). 5705 40th Place, Hyattsville MD 20781. Phone 301-277-3467. Mickey Cendrowski (Load Master v2.2). 100 Pine Street, Russellton PA 15076. Charles Good (your humble reviewer). P.O. Box 647. Venedocia OH 45894. Phone 419-667-3131. Email good.6@osu.edu Visit my web site for the May 1997 TI MUG Conference at www.bright.net/~cgood/mug1997.html