Draw It: An Aside

DRAW IT - AN ASIDE


by Katherine Bostock





Draw It, which came sellotaped to the front of your November YS, is a


pretty cool program, but suffers from the rather spook problem that


128K Spectrum owners have to leave their tape players playing while


using it. Katherine Bostock was especially annoyed by this, and not


only worked out what was causing the problem but how to fix it as


well. What a star.





The difficulty apparently arises because "The compiler used to


generate the code assumes that bit 6 of port FE ..."





Er, let's jump straight to the solution, eh?


+ Firstly, type MERGE "" and load the first part of the program.


+ Save this onto a fresh tape by typing SAVE "DRAWIT" LINE 1.


+ Type NEW, and then CLEAR 24659.


+ Then LOAD "" CODE 30000 and restart the original tape.


+ When the first section of code has loaded, type SAVE "DRAWN" CODE 30000,6912


to save the loading screen onto your new tape.


+ Then go back to the covertape and LOAD "" CODE to load the main block of code.


(I hope you're still with me.)


+ Next, type in the listing below and run it. It'll take ages, but when it's


finished you'll be able to type SAVE "DRAWCODE" CODE 24660,40876 to save a


new copy of Draw It that'll work on any Spectrum without all that nonsense


with the tape player.