| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ DISQUE ★ WOPS / G.A.I OXFORD ★ |
WOPS: Camel on the Menu (Amstrad Action) | WOPS: MOTION CARRIED... (Amstrad Computer User) |
WOPS is Camel Micros'acronym for their windows operating system. It works in the wimp environment, much loved by writers of games with pretty pictures and no plot. Whenever you change a disc, the new disc is catalogued and a pointer appears. To do something with a file, you move the pointer over the filename using joystick, mouse or keyboard, hold down the Fire button, move the pointer over the relevant icon and release the Fire button. So to archive an entire disc to cassette you would click the Disc icon and carry it to the Cassette icon. To list a file to the screen, you would carry the filename to the Screen icon. You could make a 27-shade screen dump by carrying the Screen icon to the Printer icon and entering the filename of a picture stored on disc. The screen colours could be set first by clicking the Control icon and using the Wops' |INK a,b command.
Terse manual The program is nicely presented, and easy to use. The manual is disappointing - it clearly caters for those who know quite a bit about disc matters, and is lacking in detailed explanation of how to use the options. There are a few problems with the program. The most serious is that forgetting to disable expansion roms before you run Wops will eventually cause it to crash. Unfortunately, disabling all expansion roms obviously prevents the Control icon recognising any external commands except the Wops and Amsdos ones. The pointer (the P in Wimp) is a small, black, equilateral triangle. It flickers like mad when you move it, and is generally annoying. The oracle (John Keneally of Camel Micros) speaks: "The pointer isn't ideal. We will be improving it". Due to the small size of the main window, the sector editor can only display 100 bytes of a sector at a time, instead of the more normal 256 byte half page, and editing is frustratingly slow due to an awkward input routine. To change a value you have to move the cursor over the byte in question, press the Fire button (or Return), enter the replacement byte(s), and press Return. You can't just type in replacement bytes under the cursor, as is the case with most sector editors. The header information should, ideally, be available with the File icon, not relegated to an obscure place in the sector editor. (John Keneally: "Something we'll think about, certainly".) On the positive side, the program is crashproof and the copying and formatting programs are outstanding. The provision for users with extra memory is one good reason for buying a rampack. Wops has obviously been designed with minimalist users in mind (464 owners with 64k and one disc drive), but is flexible enough to cater for those with extra hardware. The tape-to-disc archive is superb. You can copy both sides of any disc to a single C60 tape, and retrieve it whenever you want. The icing on the cake, however, is the way one-drive disc operations are tackled. The program can automatically detect when a disc is removed and inserted, so there are no "Put disc into drive A then press any key" messages. Conclusions If you only have the CP/M disc copying programs, or a disc utility that turns its nose up at funny formats or lacks some of the options I have mentioned, Wops is recommended. Camel Micros is known for its outstanding after-sales service. It promises to, and does, consider any sensible suggestions for additions to Wops, and will make upgrades available at a nominal cost. ACU #8807 |
|  |
|
