| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ UTILITAIRES RSX/LIGNE DE COMMANDE ★ UTOPIA (ARNOR) ★ |
| UTOPIA (ARNOR) (CPC Revue) | UTOPIA (Amstrad Computer User) | UTOPIA (CPC Amstrad International) |
Arnor are really getting into add-on ROMs in a big way. This is their crack at a disc and general utilities ROM. It is a very quiet little thing and, unlike all my other ROMs, does not announce itself when the machine is reset. (Who will be the first to have so many ROMs that the screen scrolls on startup I wonder?). The first thing I tried out was the help command. This shows all the ROMs on the system, together with their memory usage and whether they are foreground or background. An unusual feature is the new command IHELPR, which lists all your RSXs. The main idea though was to list the commands in UTOPIA. There are loads in there. Some of the commands in there appear to duplicate Amsdos, like |ERA and |REN. Why? Because these commands now prompt you for the filenames if you leave them off and will be much appraised by 464 owners who are fed up with typing @A$ all the time. This is the general format for all the UTOPIA commands and as such is very user-friendly. With all those commands in there, you are bound to have If the integrity of a disc is in doubt, there is a disc checking utility to search for bad sectors, tracks, traces of cat fur and holes etc. Their disc copy routine works fine, (with one or two drives, it's not fussy) so backups are possible without dirtying fingers with CP/M. One of the crafty bits in it is the disc editor. This is not for use by novices because simple tinkering can give any disc the ability U) give the Amstrad disc operating system a real headache. The only place this fell down was trying to read the last sector on a JOYCE disc, but only idiots and reviewers put JOYCE discs in an Arnold. This utility was very useful for re-instating VAX on the high score table of my Sorcery disc (I was displaced by a fluke anyway...). Bulk Delete If you want to delete a lot of files from a disc, the delete command alows you to earmark a group and wipe the lot when you are sure you have the right group. I can see this routine preventing many a tear being shed due to over-enthusiastic (and unintentional) disc housecleaning. A really useful utility is the |INFO command which tells all about the files on your disc. Hackers take note : there is also a utility to make files read/write or system/directory without delving into CP/M. Hackers may also be interested in Arnor's version of the call routine. This allows you to pass parameters to a routine in all the main registers (not IX or IY, the first one is set by a normal call and you should never alter the second one anyway). When it returns, it displays all the registers in the state the routine left them in. Useful for trying out firmware routines before incorporating them in the program and crashing it. Values to be passed to the routines can now be worked out as unsigned hex. or binary using the Utopia C command. To those uninitiated in the black art of machine code hacking, the Basic tends to convert every hexadecimal (look it up in the manual) number bigger that 32,768 to a negative number. Utopia doesn't. Other helpful hacking accessories are the |LOAD, |SAVE & |MEDIT commands which let you load ANY file off disc, hack the memory about and put it back with different load and run addresses. The |MEDIT command has an added bonus for 6128 users, it allows editing of the extra banks of memory. Beefier Basic The sort of thing that I find handy in Basic is the "list all the variables" command (it works on arrays too). This is also useful when you forget what the heck you called a variable. Spooling of stuff intended for the printer to a file is now a doddle, as is de-spooling (turning it off, for the Campaign for Simple English). To check what is going to the spool file, there is a command to echo all printer stuff to the screen. What else do we have on an Arnold ? Oh yes, a keyboard. This has also been got at by the A-Team and now produces RUN"DISC when the [CTRL ] [ ENTER ] keys are hit. The function keys are set up to a variety of useful strings to fire up Protext, Maxam and other utilities. One neat string is the one that resets the screen colours and mode, very useful for when you run one of those programs that crashes while printing everything out in a window two characters wide in black on dark black. This ROM contains a lot of useful utilities. Useful to the programmer that is. In this respect it is more realistic than most Toolbox' ROMs which assume every machine will be fitted with one. Whether you think all this convenience is worth thirty quid or not is a matter of individual taste. Some people like hacking about and others see no point in re-inventing the wheel. If you are not a wheel-inventor, get Utopia. If you want to delete a lot of files from a disc, the delete command alows you to earmark a group and wipe the lot when you are sure you have the right group. I can see this routine preventing many a tear being shed due to over-enthusiastic (and unintentional) disc housecleaning. A really useful utility is the |INFO command which tells all about the files on your disc. Hackers take note : there is also a utility to make files read/write or system/directory without delving into CP/M. Hackers may also be interested in Arnor's version of the call routine. This allows you to pass parameters to a routine in all the main registers (not IX or IY, the first one is set by a normal call and you should never alter the second one anyway). When it returns, it displays all the registers in the state the routine left them in. Useful for trying out firmware routines before incorporating them in the program and crashing it. Values to be passed to the routines can now be worked out as unsigned hex. or binary using the Utopia C command. To those uninitiated in the black art of machine code hacking, the Basic tends to convert every hexadecimal (look it up in the manual) number bigger that 32,768 to a negative number. Utopia doesn't. Other helpful hacking accessories are the |LOAD, |SAVE & |MEDIT commands which let you load ANY file off disc, hack the memory about and put it back with different load and run addresses. The |MEDIT command has an added bonus for 6128 users, it allows editing of the extra banks of memory. Beefier Basic The sort of thing that I find handy in Basic is the "list all the variables" command (it works on arrays too). This is also useful when you forget what the heck you called a variable. No matter, these lapses of memory are normal for us techies. In case we forget what functions we create, there is a routine to list those too. Unfortunately, it does not tell you what they do. But then the programmer can't always tell you either.... A slightly dodgy feature is the one to find and replace a tokenised Basic string in a program. This can fall over quite catastrophically when one of your line numbers is replaced by another string. This is the sort of routine that can teach you to make frequent backups. One unusual but harmless feature concerns the command to move chunks of Basic around a program. It moves the lines, but does not renumber. With skill, it is possible to write (and run) programs with the line numbers going backwards. Confusing, but the Basic's RENUMBER command kicks them all into line. The printer has not been ignored in all the chaos, there are now a few routines to stop the need of POKEs into the printer jumpblocks (if this talk is above you, mavbe you need this ROM). Spooling of stuff intended for the printer to a file is now a doddle, as is de-spooling (turning it off, for the Campaign for Simple English). To check what is going to the spool file, there is a command to echo all printer stuff to the screen. What else do we have on an Arnold ? Oh yes, a keyboard. This has also been got at by the A - Team and now produces RUN"DISC when the [ CTRL ] [ ENTER ] keys are hit. The function keys are set up to a variety of useful strings to fire up Protext, Maxam and other utilities. One neat string is the one that resets the screen colours and mode, very useful for when you run one of those programs that crashes while printing everything out in a window two characters wide in black on dark black. This ROM contains a lot of useful utilities. Useful to the programmer that is. In this respect it is more realistic than most Toolbox' ROMs which assume every machine will be fitted with one. Whether you think all this convenience is worth thirty quid or not is a matter of individual taste. Some people like hacking about and others see no point in re-inventing the wheel. If you are not a wheel-inventor, get Utopia. ACU #8601 |
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