Issue 11 of BYTE POWER, the Canadian tape magazine for the Timex/Sinclair 2068 edited by Eric and Kristian Boisvert. The tape opens with a magazine reader holding the issue’s pages: an introduction to the magazine, copying rules, a call for submissions, the editors’ Halloween note, a preview of the next issue, a page of instructions for each program and a tape catalogue. Its headline programs are Spreadsheet II, Tape Corrector and the “Wheel of Fortune”-style word game Guess What?. Most of the programs are by the two editors; Rockets was sent in by a subscriber.
The download has each item on the tape as a separate TAP and TZX (Slide Show II only as an SZX snapshot, Guess What? and Rockets only as TZX), a recording of the whole tape as WAV, and issue11.txt, the text pulled from the magazine reader. The reader (BYTE POWER) is a short BASIC loader followed by headerless blocks: its own loader with a “LOADING ERROR / Rewind tape and load again” message, the compressed cover screen and the page text. The magazine notes that POKE 23681,0 before loading makes a program stop at its SAVE line so you can make a backup.
Programs on the Tape
SHEET II: Spreadsheet II (Kristian Boisvert), a menu-arrow spreadsheet of up to 150 columns, 253 rows and 3,150 cells, with formulas up to 32 characters and business functions such as sum, average, present and future value, loan payments and compound interest (also #59102 Spreadsheet II)DRIVER: a 100-byte AERCO printer driver for Spreadsheet II, loaded at 23400SHEET DEMO: a demo file for Spreadsheet II, loaded from its FILE menuCOMPACTOR: Screen Compactor (Eric Boisvert), compresses a screen and saves it with a short decompression routine; the magazine’s own cover screen went from 6,144 to 3,691 bytes (also #59104 Screen Compactor)SLIDE II: Slide Show II (Eric Boisvert), eight full screens, some digitized with VIDEOFACE and some from CompuServe (also #72219 Slide Show II)COPY: Copy Entire Disk (Kristian Boisvert), an LKDOS utility that makes up to four backup copies of a Larken disk at onceGUESS WHAT: Guess What? (Eric Boisvert), a three-player hidden-phrase game in three rounds plus a timed winner’s round, with an editor for 26 pages of your own puzzlesCORRECTOR: Tape Corrector (Kristian Boisvert), a two-recorder tape copier that regenerates the signal instead of copying the noise (also #51791 Tape Corrector)DATA MAKER: Data Maker (Kristian Boisvert), turns a block of machine code into BASIC DATA statements (also #59107 Data Maker)JOYSTICK: Universal Joystick Routine (Eric Boisvert), builds a relocatable input routine for Kempston, Interface II, cursor or TS2068 joysticks and the keyboard, with optional pause and redefine-keys codeROCKETS: Rockets (R. L. Zarembka), animated launches of eight rockets, built with the EASYsprite routineThe End: the closing program of the tape
Program Analysis
The tape catalogue page lists 11 programs by loading name; the closing program, the AERCO driver and the demo file make up the rest of the tape. Spreadsheet II is a BASIC loader that auto-runs at line 9000 and loads 19,026 bytes of machine code at 46510 plus a 123-byte error trap (ONERR) at 28875. Screen Compactor’s code loads at 49159, and Data Maker and the Universal Joystick Routine are BASIC “customizer” programs that build the routine at an address you choose and tell you its length for saving.
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Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.