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| AMX MOUSE (Microstrad) | AMX MOUSE (Amstrad Magazine) | AMX MOUSE (Hebdogiciel) | AMX MOUSE (Popular Computing Weekly) |
The AMX mouse system made its first appearance for the BBC micro and its transition to the Amstrad is not surprising since the two machines have a very similar graphics resolution. What is especially encouraging is that in the months since it first appeared AMX have managed to prevent it becoming dismissed as an expensive toy by producing an impressive range of BBC support software to make use of the hardware's abilities, and the same is planned for the Amstrad. To set up the system you just fit a box into the joystick socket which is powered via a cable fitted to the monitor-to-computer lead. The box has on its side a BBC-style port into which the mouse itself, presumably unmodified from the BBC version, plugs. Movement of the mouse is then translated into interrupt-driven cursor control codes. The essential software is a piece of code that installs several RSX extensions to Locomotive Basic and these allow you to set up windows, move icons and pointers (smoothly and at high speed), detect cursor position on screen and read which of the three mouse buttons are pressed - in short all you need to set up a windows/icon-driven program of your own. Because of the lashings of spare memory offered by the CPC compared to the BBC B in high res, software is supplied on cassette but AMX also offer a Rom version which would allow you to use the routines with large programs or, to a degree, with commercial releases such as Amsword. The RSX's mean that you have a remarkably simple to use, but immensely powerful system. The potential of it is illustrated by the fact that the pattern designer, icon designer and Amx Art programs that are also supplied on the tape and which are all fast, flexible and very impressive, are written in Basic and can be modified or added to as you wish. The two designer packages are extremely easy and satisfactory to use and really need little explanation - rather as in an UDG designer you move over a large grid setting the squares to black or white as necessary whilst a small image of the icon changes to show you the result. Art is a different kettle of fish altogether - designed to emulate programs such as MacPaint and is very good indeed for certain free hand effects using pencil or spray-gun icons, texture filling etc. As a serious artist utility it suffers most from the lack of a magnify option to allow precision drawing and in not allowing you to use the entire screen to draw but some of AMX's demo pictures are truly breathtaking. Further releases planned are utilities that let you add colours, in many thousands of different shades produced by stippling, to the drawings you have produced using Amx Art, Amx Desk which provides icon-driven calculator, diary and memo pad functions and also a Pagemaker utility for composing A4 sheets for club magazines etc. Together they add up to one of the most impressive, and certainly the most original, Amstrad peripherals I have seen. Tony Kendle , PopularComputingWeekly |
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