| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ DEPLOMBAGE ★ BEEBUG SOFT - LOCKSMITH ★ |
| LOCKSMITH (CPC Revue) | LOCKSMITH (Amstrad Action) | LOCKSMITH - Beebugsoft (The Amstrad User) | BEEBUG SOFT - LOCKSMITH (CPC Magazin) |
Once again, we strike a problem with packaging. I do not believe that what I received, simply a disc in a plastic cover and a small instruction book, is the final packaging for the products. However as that was all that I as given, I can only review them as delivered. More about my thoughts on this problem at the end of this article. Now on with the review. According to the front page of the instruction manual, LOCKSMITH is a tape and disc transfer package for the Amstrad range of personal computers. Oh no, not again. Here is another transfer package. I wonder how many more of these types of utilities the market will stand. However, putting that aside, lets have a good look at LOCKSMITH and see if it has anything that will make it stand out from the rest of the bunch. I put the disc into the drive of my 6128 and did a quick CAT to seewhat was on the disc. This revealed only four programs occupying only 15k of what appeared to be a vendor format disc. DISC.BAS appeared to be rather self explanatory. LOCKRAM1.2 and VERSION 1.2 seemed to fit in wit the normal run of BEEBUGSOFT programs and refer to the actual LOCKSMITH files themselves. The last file was called ROMOFF. BAS and had me foxed for a long while but I believe that it has something to do with the ROM version. This was later confirmed by reading the instruction manual. All that seemed none loo difficult. Lets type RUN"DISC and see what happens. I sat and waited and watched in spellbound amazement as the screen cleared, the disc rotated and I was presented with...........the Ready prompt. It must be time to dig out the manual and find out how to drive this program. Opening the manual, we come across the introduction, which informs us with what LOCKSMITH is supposed to able to do. Next in the book is the loading instructions. At least I had got those right. After a bit more reading, I find that LOCKSMITH is very much related to that other BEEBUGSOFT utility that I like to rave about, DISC DEMON. The reason that they are so related is the fact that both can be accessed by RSX commands. Aha, here it is! Type I lock and away we go. This will bring up the main menu. This looks very similar to DISC DEMON even down to the colours, and don't some of those commands appear identical. Now lets get down to the nitty-gritty of the package. These can be selected from the main menu, or implemented in the form of an RSX. If implemented from the main menu, all parameters will be prompted for. If instead you call the commands as an RSX, you are expected to supply all the parameters. In fact if you don't, an error code will be generated. As with DISC DEMON , the function keys on the numeric keypad are reset by the program. These seem to me to be a rather useful commands and include; :mode setting, Again BEEBUGSOFT have supplied a helpcommand, which is called in a similar way to DISC DEMON , but with a slight twist. Very logical if you think of it. This command is very useful while you are getting to know this package. LOCKSMITH supports five types of transfer between storage devices. These include:
Four of these are self evident. The fifth (BACKUP) is a type of cloning copier. There are approximately six other command available to help with your transferring problems. These command complement those listed above and include a copier for headerless tapes, and auto and manual transferring of programs on tape, something to load protected BASIC programs and a couple that give you header and status information. Again in LOCKSMITH we have a couple of commands that appear to be same as the AMSDOS ; commands, but as with DISC DEMON they operate slightly differently. How differently is for vou to read your instruction manual to find out. Section Five in the manual deals with some solutions that may help you to get your transferred programs working properly. It is amazing the number of people who believe that all one has to do is transfer that favourite program from tape to disc and everything is hunky-dory. For those of you out there who think this is so, boy have 1 got news for you. Transferring the program is usually the easiest part of the job. This chapter only skims over some of the problems that may crop up. The best way to find the answers to these problems is just to try rewriting parts of the program until they work. Finally in the back of the manual isa COMMAND SUMMARY, listing all commands, functions and parameters necessary to get all 19 commands to work properly. All the commands appeared to work well, although there was some trouble trying to transfer a couple of the programs that I use to test these utilities. This should not be seen in a wrong light though, as to date nothing has been able to transfer them. They have beaten everything 1 have tried to date! My summary of LOCKSMITH would have to say that this is almost what one could call a complete package. LOCKSMITH and DISC DEMON appear to complement each other very- well and as both are memory resident, they will allow you to leave-work on something else and then return to them to complete whatever you were doing, simply by pressing a function key. If you don't have any utilities of this type, then by all means buy LOCKSMITH. At the same time get a copy of DISC DEMON. Between the two of these programs, they could be almost all the utilities that you need for your Amstrad. CONGRATULATIONS BEEBUGSOFT!! Just a couple of final notes. In the front of the manual, there is a warning about what can happen to programs that arc in memory when you invoke a couple of commands. Read it, and BEWARE! TAU#26 |
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