Utility

SD Software

Ian Spencer

Spectrum Emulator utility featuring:

• All SAM keys mapped correctly
  
• Can use SAM Parallel port
  
• Utilise 360kB of memory as a RamDisc
  
• Plus D and OPUS disc support
  
• RD Util to hack files in the RamDisc

Public Domain

Edwin Blink and Martijn Groen

B-DOS Is an improved SamDOS. B-DOS was mainly written to use with a harddisk (using the ATOM internal hard disk interface). However B-DOS can also be used without a hard disk but it only works with one diskdrive.

B-DOS features:

• Faster verify (as fast as loading).
  
• VERIFY AT sector command
  
• Faster FORMAT (Formating a disk takes about 66 seconds).
  
• Disks can be named with a 16 character name (file names not).
  
• Date stamping (Both Dallas clock and SAMBUS clock).

Hard Disc Support:

BDOS works with ATOM IDE harddisk interface and supports harddisks up to 8 Gb.
To make using a hard disk as user friendly as possible. The harddisk works like a virtual second diskdrive. The storage capacity of a harddisk is devided into 800K blocks. Such a 800K block is called a record and has the same format as a floppydisk. (10 sectors per track, 80 tracks and 2 sides).

Hard Disc Booting

The Coupé can be booted from the ATOM by using a modified ROM3.0 called the HD Boot ROM

PDF for B-DOS17n by Wolfgang Haller

Public Domain

Steve Taylor

A superb interrupt driven pointer utility to work with the Mouse Interface as well as supporting the keyboard cursor keys making it easy for programs to support both input methods.

Used extensively for PD work, especially by Dan Dooré.

Released 10/12/93

BetaSoft

Dr Andy Wright

In the same wasy that MasterDOS was the update to SamDOS then MasterBasic was the same to Sam Basic.

This program provides major enhancements to the SAM Coupe’s editing, data-handling, sound, graphics and printing capabilities.

PDF Manual Scan at www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk

Review by Tim Paveley from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

I’ve already got a BASIC on my Sam, why do I need a new one?

A-ha! It’s not a new BASIC at all, but rather an Extension to the one you’ve already got, as well as doing up your DOS slightly, and generally improving things.
Eh?

Okay, I’ll go through it’s features one at a time for you, and you can see what you like the sound of.

Editting & Debugging

Okay, for a start we have options to move the cursor left and right by a whole Word (deliminated by spaces). There is also a small buffer, allowing you to recall the last few lines you have typed in. There is the option to join and split program lines.

There are several commands that allow you to search through the program, and to alter references (i.e. variable names). You can search through the program, calling lines in the edit buffer that contain the reference, or print the line numbers of each line containing the reference.

You can now trace through your program, either a line at a time, or a line every so often. When tracing through a program, the line and statement number are shown at the bottom of the screen.

There are also a couple of general speed improvements

Data Handling

You can now recall a string to be re-edited. ie if you have INPUTed a long string, and then noticed an error, you can recall the string and change it.

There is a very nice SORTing command, that allows you to do all sorts of sorting, using different parts of the string to sort by.

MGT

SamDOS 1.1 was the original DOS for the Sam Drive and external drives via the External Drive Interface.

Version 1.1 source of many problems highlighted in one of the most corking ROM bugs in ROM 1.0 that prevented correct bootstapping forcing the user to enter a CALL command (CALL 229385 for 256K or on a 512K CALL 491529) after pressing F9 or typing BOOT.

SamDOS 2.0 was released along with ROM 2.0 and booted correctly, although this episode forced MGT to ship new ROMs to all customers.

Information from Frode Tennebø from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Introduction

SAMDOS has been designed specifically for the SAM Coupe computer. It is similar to G+DOS as used with the MGT Plus D Spectrum disk interface.

Disk Format

We use 80 track per side, giving 160 tracks per disk. A track is made up of 10 data sectors, each giving 512 bytes of storage.

The first 4 tracks of the disk are given up to the SAMDOS directory, leaving 156 tracks available for storage. This leaves available 1560 data sectors of 512 bytes (798720 bytes).

Although each data sector can hold 512 bytes, only 510 bytes of them are available for storage. The last two bytes of the data sector are used by the DOS to locate the next part of the file stored. Byte 511 hold the next track used by the file, while byte 512 holds the next sector.

BetaSoft

Dr Andy Wright

In the same way that MasterBasic was Dr Wrights improvement to Sam Basic, MasterDOS was the improvement to the original SamDOS.

MasterDOS contains many features missing from the original, such as file directorys, date and time stamps using the real-time clock in the SamBus or in the Dallas Clock from Edwin Blink.

Another feature that was highly prized was the ability to set up Ram Discs which was especially useful with the One Meg extension that could be formattted into a complete 800k virtual disc.

See also MasterDOS Hook Codes

PDF Manual Scan at www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk

Review by Tim Paveley from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Urm, I got SamDOS free with my Sam, why do I need another one?

Because it’s just packed full of useful new features, that are of use to even a total beginner. I’ll tell you the 3 most useful features it has.

1. The most useful thing is that you can now have subdirectories, which makes file management far more easier. Each Subdirectory uses a free directory slot, but that’s it. They are incredibly useful, since they allow you to ie store all your word processing files in one directory, and all your pictures in another. Subdirectories can contain furthur subdirectories, and so on, allowinf nice tree like structures of files.
   
2. Another useful thing, is that it allows you to set aside areas of memory to use as a RAMDisk. This Basically acts as another (faster) disk drive, that you can carry out normal operations on. If you have a load of files to copy, copying them all to a RAMDisk, and then to the target disk, is a lot easier than 20 or 30 disk swaps. The RAMDisk is limited by the amount of free memory you have, and can be as large as a normal disk (800k), very useful if you have a 1meg expansion!
   
3. The 3rd “useful for anyone” feature, is that you can now reserve extra tracks on the disk for directory information. Basically this means that you can have more than 80 files on a disk, upto a maximum of 778, useful if you have a lot of small files, and subdirectories, since you could sometimes have about 1/2 your disk space free. Every additional 20 slots uses up 5k of disk space, a small price to pay.

So is that it then?

LERM

SamTape was a Spectrum Emulator by LERM a maker of ZX Spectrum utilities.

MGT

MGT Graham Mason

One of the selling points used to position the Coupé in the marketplace (which is often debated as both a good or bad move on the part of MGT) was as the upgrade to the ZX Spectrum and thus you could play backwardly compatible speccy games whilst enjoying the new features of the machine.

This meant that MGT had to provide some form of emulation to ship with the machine to allow this.

What users were not told at this stage was that the emulation was for the 48K only and not the 128K machines, in fact emulation of the 128K’s memory map would prove impossible at workable speeds. Simon Cooke began work on an emulator that ran at best at about 1/16th of the required speed although many demos and games were converted manually to great effect by people like Simon Cooke, Stefan Drissen and Edwin Blink.

The original emualtion was via a patched ROM image that was not 100% compatible leading to many problems with software that made extensive ROM routine calls or utilised undocumented calls or features.

Another issue discovered was that getting the software to load at all was an often problamatic due to differences in machine timing.
Many games with anti-piracy software protection loaders like Speedlok and Hyperload would not work at all.

To address this MGT engaged the services of Graham 'Turbo' Mason a well known hacker on the Speccy scene and Your Sinclair’s resident ‘game cheats’ expert to provide workarounds for the loaders.

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.

Public Domain

Rumsoft

A collection of compression and archive utilities including LIB, PAK and most importantly the code Impoder.