Utility

Persona

Andrew Collier

The files saved by the ProTracker 2 editor are very large, and the music playing routine supplied by BZYK is rather slow. This program solves those problems, by converting a large file into a much smaller one which can be interpreted very quickly.

The routine which plays these music files runs in (usually much less than) half the time it takes the standard E-Tracker music player to run, so it is very suitable for use in demos and games where cpu power needs to be conserved.

Revelation, later Persona

Paul Angel

(Cover art: Darrren Blackburn)

The first sound package for the Coupé, was superceded by E-Tracker and ProTracker 2.

Aquired by Persona and released with Blitz magazine.

Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

How many times have you heard a tune on a PD program, and said to yourself…”I want to write a tune like that!”. Unfortunately, you had no utilities to write music…Until now! We have a copy of The Sound Machine, uncaged and dangerous, for this is an excellent piece of software! In the actual Sound Machine pack, you get 2 disks and a hefty instruction booklet, neatly put into a huge box with a bad colour photocopy inlay…! The booklet itself is a rather good read, as it tells you how to write and compose music, how to transfer sheet music to the program and how to write your own waveforms!

Enough of the booklet! As soon as the first part of the program loads, you are treated to a piccy of SAM with a keyboard, and a little arrow (well not little, it’s flippin’ huge!). You can control this arrow by mouse or keys, but BE WARNED! It is possible to use the Sound Machine with keys, but the cursor is very slow, so watch out! From this screen you can choose to load the actual Sound Machine or the rather spiffy Waveform Generator so we’ll review the latter first…

The Waveform Generator allows you to save your own waveforms, for use on the Sound Machine. This is the actual “nerve centre” of the Sound Machine, as you can define up to 10 waveforms for instruments….drum beat, bass guitar, tamborine, you name it - it can be simulated on this! Actually, you may need to combine 2 waveforms to produce one instrument. The Generator is well presented, and very easy to use. You can select noise or tone, the frequency of the waveform, and so on! If you are a little confused over the business of waves, there are several wave files on the disk, which you can load, examine and modify!

MGT

Bo Jangeborg

The Art Package bundled with the Coupé for which Bo gave up his summer of 1989 to produce for MGT.

Based on this high-quality packages The Artist One/Two for the ZX Spectrum it was the first major application for the platform.

The split-screen editing to keep the menu bar on screen was different from the now more normal ‘screen swapping’ method used by Atari ST and Amiga packages.

Flash! gets a lot of bad press when compared to other art packages such as Sam Paint and ones on other platforms but remember that this application was written not so much in the Coupé’s infancy more like when it was embryonic.

Available on the SamDOS disc.

PDF manual scan at http://www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk

Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Chezron Software

Bob Wilkinson

Brian McConnell

Word Processor

Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

How about this, eh? A review of Outwrite, written on Outwrite itself!! (then ported and htmlised using MicroEMACS, but the thought was there - Tim) This also means, I can show you it’s features, etc! I usually write reviews on a word processor, and to tell you the truth, my word processor was CRAP! Letters were repeated, crap keypress, limited space, etc. Now Outwrite has arrive, we can kiss my problems goodbye, and format the crappy old disk!

I can say that the word processor is well worth the money! Now then - a first! A review done on the software I am reviewing it on!! For a start, there are a huge amount of fonts to choose from, including Amiga, Greek, Gothic, Normal, etc. all of which can be loaded onto the wordprocessor itself. The top of the screen tells you the file length, the page number the insert, wrap, justify and caps status, and column position! By tapping INV, you get 2 Help pages, without you refering to the manual! The function keys play a role as well, F0 tells you the amount of words, F1 justifies the line.

Also there’s word wrap, which I can also demonstrate - Word wrap, allows you to wrap words around lines of text - oops! This is a PC package… er..! I also hate Wordwrap, but this suits all tastes… Also, you can use EDIT as a Function Mode, and tap a key, for Saving, Loading, (Oh, you can also load files from Tasword, and other processors which save code as ASCII (all of em!!!)), Inserting words, Merge text files (pretty damned useful to disk mag editors….), Print the page or file, Quit, Change printer options, Enter blocks to files…. The list is endless, and Outwrite will appeal to all of you SAM owners, whetever it be writing a diary, or a novel!

Fred Publishing

Mat and Ziutek of ESI

The first ‘tracker’ music composition program for the Coupé, based on the ZX Spectrum port of the Amiga SoundTracker program.

Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Review by Lee Willis from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Excuse me for being a bit late with this review! As by some lucky fluke of chance (Hah!) Lee has sent me a load of notes about E-Tracker, and wants me to put those arkward notes into some sort of review. Ah well, here goes… Considered by many (especially ESI) as the “best 8-bit music utility yet” which I could also be as bold as to say it compares well to other 16 bit utilities I have seen, this is indeed a stiff bit of competition. This music utility is exclusively designed to use every last drop of the SAA1099 sound chip in terms of it’s love juices (ahem!). That means 2048 tones, 96 notes, 8 octaves and 6 channel sound with full control of left and right stereo speakers. The last music utility was of course, The Sound Machine. Reasonably priced at 14.99, this was pretty to look at, but the disadvantage of being a bit user-friendly to any bod with a mouse, and abuser-friendly to the saps on keys. I suffered terribly from the sluggish cursor movement, but enough of my troubles! Help is here…

The utility comes in a professionally painted box, with a manual (surprisingly) in English. I know that ESI (the blokes who wrote this) are foreign, and their English in their scrollies is terrible, but I can find little wrong with this manual! A reasonable size of 20-odd pages, this talks you through the utility in a damn-spunky manner. You also get two disks - the E -Tracker and compiler disk, and a programme disk. More on these later…

Kobrasoft

Transfers most ZX Spectrum tapes to disc including fast loaders, pulsed, countdown and multi-block.

SD Software

Nev Young

The Hard Disc OS for the SD IDE Interface.

Tragedy struck for HDOS when the source was lost in a drive crash on one of Nev’s machines:

Quote from Format Vol 12 No 2 (Jan 1999) from Bob Brenchley:

Nev Young wrote HDOS using a C compiler on the PC which was designed to produce Z80 object code as its output. This was by far the most efficient way to write the operating system, I know because Nev and I talked it over on the telephone and in person for many (many) hours. However, due to a faulty hard drive on the PC, the C source for HDOS no longer exists.

Kobrasoft

DICE stands for Disk Information Copier Editor.

SAMDICE is a powerful yet easy to operate utility for use with the SAM Coupe disk system. It combines simple automatic operations for the novice with full analyser and editor facilities for the more experienced SAMDOS user.

Features:

Read Disk Sectors - Data displayed in Hex and ASCII with cursor readouts of byte (binary & decimal), word (decimal), line disassembly and BASIC token.
Modify Disk Sectors - Input in alphanumeric, decimal or hexadecimal
Supports most 3.5” Double Density Disk formats
Analyser to examine and edit non standard sectors
Access any part of the Disk - by Track and Sector or Cursor Keys
Back-up Disk Files - Copies all or selected files, unfragments files(unless copying to a fragmented target disk)
Full Directory Listing - including hidden and erased files
Automatically locates the start of a selected file’s data
Automatically follows file data via fragmented sectors
Automatically assesses whether an erased file can be recovered
Single key press to recover (unerase) files
Recover lost data from part files or disks with defective directories
Erase single or multiple files by cursor selection
Rename files (checks for duplicate filenames)
Set/cancel file attributes
Move files within the Directory
Read file headers and displays file type and details
Graphic and numeric display of file location and disk space used
Graphic and numeric display of overall disk space used
Print out of HEX/ASCII sector data
Fast disk search for a string of up to 10 bytes in length.
Format whole Disk and single Tracks
Displays DOS error warnings with permanent reminder
Check Disk with option to lock out defective sectors
Decimal/Hexadecimal convertor (0-65535 0000-FFFF)
Confirmation checks before writing to Disk
Easy single key selections from menus

PDF manual scan at http://www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk

SD Software

Nev Young

Sam IBU (Incremental Backup Utility)

Disk backup program that kept a record of changed sectors (if memory serves) and backed up only the changing data, allowing a backup to be made incrementally from an initial first backup.

SD Software

Ian Spencer

Utility to transfer files, format and convert from MS-DOS discs.