ASCII Search

ASCII Search


by Francisco Pinho





[ This program was unfortunately only half published. The


Basic driver program was all there, and that's what is


on the TZX, but the machine code mentioned in the text


was missing. Oh, there were two pieces of hex listing


in that month's Program Pitstop, but neither of them


was the desired code.


With ASCII Search itself was a listing of the required


number of bytes... starting at byte 0 in ROM. Not very


useful. Another program was accompanied by some bytes


starting at the address expected for ASCII Search, but


those were the correct code for that program - which


somehow had ended up at the wrong address, which was


(coincidentally?) the right address for ASCII Search!


If you ask me, that entire Program Pitstop was a


complete mess. McCandless at his best...


So there you have it: half a program. Maybe someone can


find the original author and get hold of the machine


code which should've gone with it - it's happened


before...


Richard Bos, November 2012. ]





Francisco Pinho, patriot of Portugal, has send in a


mightily useful program. With it you can smugly customise


your favourite game, search out hidden passwords and


information, and read the secret (and explicit) messages


often left by programmers in your programs. It's easy to


use, simple to understand, and a cinch to type in. Do I


make life easy for you or do I make life easy for you?





Method


To use it, first type in the Basic listing. Check it


thorougly and then save it with SAVE "name" LINE 10. Using


the Hex Loader, enter the 256 bytes of machine code (use


the Hex Loader program on the page opposite), and record


the code onto the same tape after the Basic program with


SAVE "name"CODE 23296,254. Now, reset your computer and


load the tape you saved everything onto. It should run


automatically.





Controls


The idea behind the program is that you load in a program,


look through it for interesting text, change it if you want


and then re-save it with your amendments. Use the following


controls:





L LOAD PROGRAM into memory address 26000


S SAVE PROGRAM will save the original program with the


original name, start address, and length.


N ADVANCE 703 bytes. The screen will change and the next


page of ASCII codes will appear. Don't worry if all you see


is garbage - keep advancing through the code and you'll


find something.


D EXECUTE to an inputted address. Warning: this may cause a


crash.


T TEXT EDIT MODE:


Q/A/O/P Move cursor around screen


CAPS+0 Backspace one character


ENTER Quit this mode


Just move the cursor to the message you wish to change and


type in your replacement.