the. coco A patriotic program for the coco See Page 9 THE COLOR COMPUTER MONTHLY MAGAZINE March 1993 Vo l. X II No. 8 Canada $4.95 U.S. $3.95 Feature Program Feature Program VEF Graphics for Disk BASIC by Thomas Wong ne of the CoCo 3 ·s best features grammers agreatdeal of developmem time. has always been its ability to The program presented here. VEFit, al­ create very detailed graphics lows CoCo 3 users to take advantage of this images through BASIC ur a format. VEFit allows yuu tu save any 0graphic s editor such asSpectra3 (THE RAIN ­ HSCREEN in memory as a VEF-format di sk BOW, October 1990, Page 10). Over lhe file, then view the image at a later time. years, many different file formals for sav­ With the excepti on ofType-2 VEF images, ing th ese creations on disk have been intro­ any VEF picture. including those created duced. However, as the disks also fill up un der OS-9, can be viewed. The Type-2 wilh th e wide assunment of th" picture image uses a resululion of l 60 by 200. with savers and viewers necessary fo r the differ­ 16 colors -- a confi guration fo r whic h there ent formats. it becomes obvious that a stan­ is no HSCRE Etlequi va lent. Thankfully, Type- dardized format sho uld have been devel­ 2 VE F'> are rare1y used under OS-9. oped earlier. Few of the numerous fonnats invented are programmer-fri endly or pro­ Getting Started vide support for more than one screen reso­ VEFil requires a Coco 3 with at least ver th e years, my Color Com­ Users with CoCo I ' s or 2' s must con vert lution. Meanwhile. OS-9 Level ll users I 28K and one disk dri ve. To get stan ed, pute rs have seen over 25 joy­ the program so it uses the PCCKC65280J have been able to sit hack and enj oy the enterthe listing for VE F r T. save the program sticks come and go. But until functi on to read the bulton since the BU TION 0 l wrote Joys tick Checker. I had command is available only on the CoCo 3. Byte# Bytes Description no easy way to detem1 ine if the joysticks In formati on about doing thi s appears i'n the were dead or alive. More recently, this short BAS IC manua l. Compression: o~none, 128=squashed utility has helped me with joystick repairs. Joystick Checker is a useful program Note: VEFit supports no compression To use Joystick Checker, enter the pro­ that should be in every CoCo user's bag of gram as shown in the listing and save it to tricks. 2 Lape or disk as JOYT EST. After running the program, simply fol low the screen prompts to derennine if your joystick works. If the Trevor Boelun is a tenth-grade student joystick does not have a second button (I ike whose greale t passion is challenging com­ the one on the Tandy Deluxe Joystick), the puters with new programs. He has partici­ program will break out of the loop after it pated in several sc ience fairs and has re­ tries to read that button. Other fa ilures will ceived numerous awards for hi s work . He cause the program to loop endlessly -­ can be contacted at 77 Inwood Cres., press BREAK to abort. If the joystick per­ Winnipeg, MB R2Y I A2, Canada. Please forms fine, the program reports the success include an SASE when requesting a reply. on the screen. See program listing on Page 3 -- -- -~ ---- VEF forrnat that essentially came with the to disk, then enter RU N. • Alphabet Scra mble 4)Modify W indow Descr iptors operating system. After a short pause, you are asked to by Keiran Kenny ...................... l! by Ernest Bazzinott i. Jr. ........... 6 The VEF fonnal has ga ined wide accep­ select the type of monitor you are cWTem ly Back Issue In fo rmation _ _ 7 Monthly Calendar tance in the OS-9 world for good reason: usin g. This is an important factor when ES)> Coco Consultations by Harold H. Bri nen ......... _.. 15 it's a srraightforward fo nnat that fits the loading or saving a pictu re )s palette values; by Marty Goodman .... _,_,,_,_ 4 • Reproduce Old Glory intended job. With suppon fo r five resolu­ since composite color monitors (or TVs) Delphi Bureau by John R. Mott Jr.................... 9 tions. four of them perfecr for BAS!c's and RGB monitors differ in the ways they by Eddie Kuns .......................... 4 Tips, Tricks a nd Tra ps HSCREE N resol utions. it is easy 10 sec tha t • Fast GET/PUT With Skipper by Tim Kie ntzle ...................... 13 VEF could have saved Disk BAS IC pro- VEF Graphics continued on Page 10. by Keiran Kenny ...................... 3 ES)> Twenty O ne (a nd Over) • Joystick Tester by Trevor Boehm.................... 12 by Trevor Boehm ...................... l . VEF Graphics for Disk BAS IC Letters to Rainbow --- 2 by Thomas Wong .................... .. 2 March 1993 We imagine there are ut /easr one or rwofor Sugar Software? I have some disks from THE RAINBOW creating music through BASIC09, as well. Sugar and am having problems with them. My Jerrers are returned marked "No For­ Pascal a nd Trouble Booting OS-9 warding Address." Editor and Publisher Editor: John W . Anderson Lawrence C. Falk Regarding the inquiry by B.N. Gregoire 1709 W. Union Street in the December issue of THE RAINBOW . Lancaster, OH 43130 Managing Editor Tandy did market a Pascal compiler for OS- Cray Augshurg 9 Levels I and TT . The product (Cat. No. 26- We' ve tried to duplicate the problem Associate Editor 3-34) was reviewed in the December 1989 you are having. and the only way we've Sue Fomby issue of THE RALNBOW. In addition, it is been successful is to use an empty input Submission/Reviews Editor currently in s!ock and available through file. Make sure tltefile you intend tn print Julie Hutchinson LETTERS Radio Shack Express Order. is a standard text file that actually contains Technical Editor I have a Radio Shack FD-502 disk con­ text. In the meantime, we have forwarded Greg Law troller that runs with Disk BASIC. When I try your letter to the author. Technical Assistant to boot OS-9 with rhis controller by entering Ed Ellers DDS , however, I get a syntax error. I don't Needs Help With OS-9 Contributing Editors have this problem with my Disco Super Editor: Martin Goodman, M.D,, Controller II. Any suggestions? I have had a 128KCoCo3forabout five Tim Kiemzle , Eddie Kuns John Kolb years now. Alrhough I am very experi­ Consulting Editor 20-4F Mos/tofu Pkwy. S enced with the CoCo 3, there are many Laura Falk Looking for CoCo l's and 2's Bronx, NY 10468 things about it that I don't understand Art Director Editor: abour OS-9. When entering commands O'Neil Arnold To support our R&D work with deaf We' II venture a guess: Since you have the (such as date) at the OS-9 prompt. I fre­ Designers chi Jdren, I am looking for working CoCo Disto controller , it is likely you have in­ quently get errors (especially Error #249). Sharon Adams, Heid i Nelson l "sand 2's in good cosmetic shape. If any stalled and swapped a few different DOS Am I doing something wrong? Do I need Editorial Director readers of THE RAINBOW have spare units chips between the controllers. Could you special software? John Crawley they• d be willing to sell, they may contact have installed Disk BASIC 1.0 (which dis­ Also, what is BASIC09? And how do I me by phone, letter or fax . Thank you for plays as 2.0 on the CoCo 3 startup screen) in type in those weird listings in THE RAtN ­ your kind a'5istance. the FD-502 controller? Disk BASIC 1 .0 does BOw? You know the ones that look like Falsoft, Inc. Norman Lederman not support tire DOS command, whereas President Oval Window Audio Disk BASIC 1.1 (which displays as 2 .1 on cite setend lda lf$Dd carriage return Lawrence C. Falk 33 Wildflower Court CoCo 3) and most other DOSs do. sta .y+ to end of path General Manager Nederland, CO 80466 Judi Hutchinson (303) 447-3607 (Phone/Fax) Dueling Computers Jesse Burr Asst. General Manager for Finance Editor: 2 Lombard Lane Donna Shuck Wants Telecommunications Articles I liked the idea you presented about put ­ Eastham, MA 02642 Asst. General Manager for Editor: ting a PC nex.1 to your CoCo (" Print#-2," Administration I want to send my kudos to THE RAIN · May 1992) and decided to imitate it, though Unlike Disk BASIC , 0S·9 does not al­ Tim Whelan BOW for its fine work. Through time, I've l ' m not ready to invest the money required ways ke ep all of its commands in memory Adntlnistralive AssL to the managed ro coll ect every hack issue. T also for a new Imel-based PC as you suggested. - there are simply too many of them. Publisher want to point out that it looks like the future I decided to purchase a 640K PC-XT with a Generally, some commands are automati­ Ellen Patterson of the CoCo and its community is going to monochrome monitor, a hard drive, a mouse cally loaded into memory when you hoot reside in telecommunications. Already and srnne software.