There’s a new type of page that can now be created; a “Child Product Node” is a numbered page which is attached to another product page. So for example, you could add a page to describe the content of an individual issue of a magazine.

To use it, you must first create the “Product Page” and make a note of its node number (which is in the URL). Then enter that number as “Parent node” when you create the child page.

Links from the parent product page, and to other child nodes, will be automatically generated.

On another note, you can now add tables in page descriptions using a simple markup:

[table !Heading1 | !Heading

]

West Coast

Stock from SAM Computers Ltd were bought by West Coast Computers in November 1992.

West Coast was essentailly run by Format Publications under Bob Brenchley.

They revamped the SAM Coupé into SAM élite where 512K memory became standard and an external printer connector was added.

West Coast was placed into liquidation in February 2005.

From Wikipedia

MGT

Miles Gordon Technology was started by Alan Miles and Bruce Gordon and produced peripherals for the ZX Spectrum including the DISCiPLE disc interface and the PLUS-D.

When MGT went under in June 1990 Alan and Bruce brought out the rights to the Coupé to form Sam Computers Ltd

Read more about MGT on Wikipedia

MGT’s Demise

This extract is from Contact magazine and was re-printed on Fred 11a.

A major investigation by Contact has led to this, a complete break down of Miles Gordon Technology’s final year in business. Why did the company collapse? Was it Mis-management…Over production…or just Bad debt?

Johnson Fry Corporate Finance Limited arranged the public flotation of Miles Gordon Technology, in charge of the project was Simon White, a senior executive at Johnson Fry. In his own words he explains why the company failed and the markets view of the machine.

During June and July of 1989, Johnson Fry acted as sponsors for the company Miles Gordon Technology plc and raised a sum of £500,000 which capitalised the company at a total of £750,000.The investment was always seen in the high risk/possibly high reward category and was intended to fund the final development and subsequent marketing of the SAM Coupe home computer both in the UK and abroad.

Software house from Dr Andy Wright

Produced BetaBasic from which Sam BASIC was derived.

Betasoft also sold some other utilities for the Sam, including File Manager a MasterBASIC database program.

BetaSoft

Dr Andy Wright

Games Development system similar to AMOS/STOS

Review by Tim Paveley from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Okay, this is a package to help you construct your own games. Basically, you plan the game out, and let GamesMASTER write the code for you. To try and explain.

The game is made up of a whole load of modules. The game is run by the first module, which sets things up. The rest of the modules are run on reaching certain conditions, such as you pressing the fire button. You can also have a module to run every frame (1/50th of a sec) to handle things such as a timer, or the release of nasties.

A key point of the game revolves around the sprites themselves. As well as being able to define sprites with several different frames (ie for animation), each sprite carrys with it some general information, about it’s movement, how it is affected by gravity, and should it run any modules on a certain keypress, etc.

Next, there are lots of tables which you can alter. These are used to control things such as what happens when 2 objects collide, To mark blocks over the screen, change colours, create sound effects. You can have 8 different keys defined for controls, which each key (ie Left, Fire) being a choice of 2 keys from the keyboard, or a combination of 2. You can alter the strength of ‘gravity’, and many other things.

A very basic game then, would start of by placing your spaceship on the screen, this is set up to be user controlled, and on pressing ‘0’ or space, then it calls a module that fires your lazer. This module simply places the ‘lazer’ on screen under the space ship. The lazer is set up to move upwards, kill itself on leaving the top of the screen, and on colliding with an alien, it runs the kill alien module. The kill alien module kills the alien and the lazer, and increases your score. There is a module set to run every frame, that once a second places an alien at the top of the screen. The alien moves down the screen, following a defined path at random, if it goes of the bottom of the screen then it is killed. If it touches you then it runs the ‘game over’ module.

SamCo

One of the ways in which SamCo kept in touch with their customers, was to launch a disk magazine. This contained demos of upcoming software, specially written articles, reviews, news and editorials.

Unfortunately, the information and demos didn’t translate into product sales. “We gave too much away” was a later comment, referring to the entire first level of Plasmoid (later called Dyzonium) and six levels of Batz 'n Balls which were included.

The NewsDisk was a creation of David Ledbury and Alan Miles.

Is there a method of providing data for a bulk upload as I have 85 Fred disc pages that I want to put up?