Assembler Development Kit

Your Sinclair

Overall 6/10

Graham Rydout 6/10

THE COMPLETE QL SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE At under £200, the QL has started to look a real bargain. If you've splashed out on one already or you're considering taking the plunge this Christmas, you'll want to know just how much software is available for the machine. The answer is still not much but things are starting to look up. Graham Rydout surveys the field. THE LANGUAGE BARRIER Very soon after its launch eighteen months ago, the QL was blessed with a wide range of languages and a couple of 68000 assemblers from Metacomco and Computer One. Now that range has been further complemented. Title: Assembler Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £39.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: QL Pascal Publisher: Metacomco Price: £89.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: BCPL Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £59.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Lisp Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £59.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: QL C Publisher: Metacomco Price: £99.95 Rating: 9/10 All of these come supplied with the Metacomco full screen editor that has now become the QL standard. So much so, in fact, that Metacomco have licensed it out to other companies for inclusion in their packages. Title: Assembler Publisher: Computer One Price: £29.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Forth Publisher: Computer One Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Pascal Publisher: Computer One Price: £39.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: Assembler Publisher: GST (via Sinclair) Price: £39.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: Editor Assembler Publisher: Adder Price: £34.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Publisher: Hisoft Coming Soon This list will give you an idea of the range of Assemblers and language packages available from companies other than Metacomco Title: Mon QL (Microdrive) Publisher: HiSoft Price: £14.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Mon QL (EPROM) Publisher: HiSoft Price: £39.95 Rating: 10/10 Title: QL Monitor Publisher: Computer One Price: £24.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: QL Monitor Publisher: QJump Price: £24.95 Rating: 7/10 With only three disassemblers/debuggers on the market, HiSoft comes out tops with MonQL on EPROM but the others are expected to follow suit shortly. Title: QL Monitor Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £18.05 Rating: 2/10 This is a very simple package and suffers greatly from a sever lack of features - not one I'd recommend. Title: C Compiler Publisher: GST Price: £59.95 Rating: 7/10 This isn't a complete implementation of the language but it's well suited to the beginner. Title: Supercharge (compiler) Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £59.95 I haven't yet seen the finished version or this compiler out it promises to be a product that everyone can make use of. It's written by Simon Goodwin oi Zip compiler fame (take a look at Your Spectrum 3) and it claims to convert almost every SuperBasic program into fully multi-tasking 68008 code. Title: SuperBasic extension Publisher: QJump (via Sinclair) Price: £24.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: SEE (EPROM) Publisher: Hisoft Price: £39.95 Rating: 9/10 Of these two SuperBasic extensions, QJump's leads the way but HiSoft's SEE has some very useful facilities. It gives the QL true windowing capabilities and as it's on ROM you don't have to keep loading it in. Title: Microdrive Toolkit Publisher: Compware Price: £9.99 Rating: 5/10 Title: Microdrive Toolkit (with source code) Publisher: Compware Price: £34.99 Rating: 5/10 The toolkits change the QL#s microdrive commands into functions so that values can be returned and errors such as 'drive full' trapped. Title: Keydefine Publisher: Psientific Software Price: £9.95 Rating: 10/10 This is a complete key redefinition package that'll let you use the redefined keys in almost every QL package. You could, for example, define the P key so that when you press it with the Caps Lock held down, the current document from within Quill could be saved and then printed. Freebie programs provided are a fast copier (a multi-tasking directory lister that lists directories from within other programs) and a printer spooler. Title: ICE (EPROM) Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £49.95 Rating: 9/10 ICE (Icon Controlled Environment) gives the QL a full Icon based Desktop Manager and Frton End to QDOS. It removes most mundane file handling tasks and I can thoroughly recommend it. Title: WD Utilities Publisher: WD Software Price: Microdrive £7.50, 5.25" £10.00, 3.5" £12.00 Rating: 6/10 WD Utilities are a complete set of SuperBasic procedures providing a menu driven system to manoeuvre files. Title: Cartridge Doctor Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 9/10 If you're frequently visited by the 'Bad or Changed Medium' error message, you'll welcome this program. It's a fully automatic set of routines to recover corrupted and deleted files. Title: Q Doctor Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 If you prefer doing things the hard way, Q Doctor only allows you to load and edit sectors from the microdrive. Unfortunately, there are no similar products available for disk users. Title: GraphiQL Price: £34.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: M-Paint Publisher: Medic Price: £49.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Paint Master Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Tascopy Publisher: Tasman Price: £12.90 Rating: 8/10 Title: Sprite Generator Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £24.95 Rating: 6/10 Graphic printers are a personal choice. GraphiQL suits highly detailed work but is extremely difficult to use. For dedicated artists only! M-Paint is a coloured clone of Apple's MacPaint. Simpler to use but a shade less accurate on detailed work. Least sophisticated at all, PaintMaster is none the less the most appropriate tor your average QL user. Its ability to compile a drawing into a SuperBasic program that then copies it makes it practical if you want simple illustrations within your program. All have simple screen dump programs but Tascopy copies all or part of the screen in a variety of shades. Sprite Generator does just that but it's a complex to use package that isn't worth the asking price. DOWN TO BUSINESS The high reputation of Archive, Abacus, Quill and Easel is based on their quality - it's not just that they come with the QL. Other companies haven't released similar packages because most people are happy with what they've got. Doubtless improvements could be made but I expect these'll come from Psion rather than an independent house. Title: Q-Spell Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 Pore spillars will welcome Q-Spell - a full-spec spelling checker to Quill. But be warned! Extra mamory's needed to check your document with Quill still in memory. Title: Home Finance Publisher: Buzzz (via Sinclair) Price: £24.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Self Employed and Cash Trader Publisher: Quest Price: £69.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Small Business and Accounts Publisher: Sagesoft Price: £89.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Payroll Publisher: TR Rating: 8/10 Of the accounting packages aimed at home users Smallbusiness is the most professional. It has integrated Purchase, Sales, and Nominal Ledgers. Transferred from the IBM PC it just goes to show that the QL can compete in the business world. Payroll provides a perfect complement and deals with data for up to 75 employees. Title: Decision Maker Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Entrepreneur Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Project Planner Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 The Triptych products help solve various problems and educate you in the process. Title: Equate (Microdrive and disk) Publisher: Flite Price: £39.95 Rating: 7/10 For mathematicians, Equate can solve most problems - polynomial, linear, simultaneous equations, differentiation, integration, curve fitting and various graphical problems. Title: QL Gardener Publisher: Gordian Computing Services Price: £24.95 QL Gardener is a database with information on over 1100 plants. Just a shame that the package won't dig or even weed your garden for you! QL ADVENTURES When you consider the QL's large memory and excellent graphics you'd expect plenty of adventures. But only three quality games exist, and they're all text only. Title: Lost Kingdom Of Zkul Publisher: Talent Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: West Publisher: Talent Price: £19.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: The Pawn Publisher: Magnetic Scrolls (coming soon) Rating: 10/10 The Talents were released early on in the QL's history and they're still looking good. Zkul is based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons format and plays very well. West is set in the desert wilds - complete with menacing Indians. Few reservations about this one! The Pawn is extremely high quality, similar to that of the Level 9 adventures. It's set in the magical world of Kerovnia during a period at social upheaval and includes a very complex command interpreter that can understand commands as complex as "Get all except the cases but not the violin case then kill the man eating shrew with the contents of the violin case. Remove the shrew's tail and use it to tie the pole and the noose together!" See what I mean? This game's by far the QL's best adventure yet. A WINNING STRATEGY If you compare this list of strategy games for the QL with the selection for the Speccy, it looks pretty paltry. Still, there are some good 'uns here. Title: Chess Publisher: Psion Price: £19.95 Rating: 9/10 Computer chess takes on a new dimension with a full 3D board display that makes impressive use of the QL's graphics. Title: Match Point Publisher: Psion Price: £14.95 Rating: 9/10 Match Point is converted from the Spectrum and improved graphics make the game more playable. Title: Area Radar Controller Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 2/10 This is a very poor aircraft control simulation written in SuperBasic. Title: Bridge Player Publisher: CP Software Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Backgammon Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £12.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Reversi Publisher: Games of Skill Price: £12.95 (Coming Soon) Aimed at novices, Bridge Player and Backgammon are of little value to the experienced. Coming soon is Reversi - a full version of Othello. Title: Comos Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Patrick Moores, stand by your QLs. This is an astronomy package that allows you to display star and solar patterns as seen from any place on Earth at any point in time. From the star map you can choose any star with the cursor to find out extra data. ARCADE ACTION This list of arcade games for the QL may produce a snigger from Speccy owners - it doesn't exactly rival the selection on offer to them. Still, it's growing all the time! Title: QL Cavern Publisher: JMF (via Sinclair) Price: £12.95 Rating: 7/10 A massive 50 screen Jet Set Willy clone with 395 gems to collect. Good value, with a good many improvements over the standard platform game. Title: Meteor Storm Publisher: Arrakia (via Sinclair) Price: £12.95 Rating: 4/10 A bog standard version of Asteroids. Title: Booty Publisher: Firebird Price: £9.95 (Coming Soon) A locks and doors classic on the Speccy that sells for £2.50. Microdrive problems push up the price on the QL. Looks impressive! Title: EVA Publisher: Westway Price: £12.95 Rating: 9/10 A Jetpack-style game with very large sprite graphics. The most annoying feature is the almost continuous sound. Title: Star Guard Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Galactic Invaders Publisher: Shadow Games Rating: 5/10 Shadow Games range from the reasonable to the pathetic. This pair come on the one cartridge and are just copies of Arcadia/Invaders. Title: Night Nurse Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 3/10 This uses Digital Precision's Sprite Package (see The Language Barrier) and it just goes to show that commercial games cannot be produced with it. Shame. Title: Quazimodo Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 7/10 Reasonable I suppose, very colourful and should satisfy if this is your thing. I'd back it! Title: Space Paranoids Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 4/10 Another Arcadia style game - hardly worth loading up. Title: Zapper Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £10.95 Rating: 6/10 Similar them to Paranoids but slightly better value. Title: Master Blaster Publisher: Compugem Price: £9.95 Rating: 8/10 Excellent shoot 'em up that puts the rest to shame. Very smooth animated graphics and a wide range of aliens. Title: Cuthbert In Space Publisher: Microdeal Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Microdeal has a very varied quality range. Cuthbert's aimed at the younger game's player and the hidden strategic elements make it more than a quick shoot out. Title: Lands of Havoc Publisher: Microdeal Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 A well packaged 2,000 screen arcade that players very well but could've made better use of colour. Title: Crazy Painter Publisher: Microdeal Price: £12.95 Rating: 8/10 You can hardly call this an Arcade copy - it's so different. Crazeee! Title: QL FLight Publisher: Microdeal Price: £19.95 (Coming Soon) A flight simulator that's due for release soon. Title: Hyperdrive Publisher: English Software Price: £14.95 Rating: 8/10 The QL's official Pole Position - rather disappointing considering what could've been achieved. It's on a par with the Spectrum version. LET US KNOW... We've tried to make this guide as comprehensive as possible but a list like this can never truly be complete. If you own a piece of software, or if you produce one, that's not included here, tell us about it and we'll pass the info on to Your Sinclair's software hungry QL readers. The address to write to is Your Sinclair, [redacted].

Sinclair User

The most powerful assembler on the market for the QL. Source code is typed into the full screen editor which can be used to enter Basic programs or any type of ASCII file. The editor does not bring errors in the source to your attention but does provide powerful error correction facilities. It can be multi-tasked so you can work on several files at the same time. The assembler is a three-pass package, loaded independently from the editor. Any errors in source code are noted and passed back to you at the end of an attempted assembly. If an error is found, the source can be passed through the editor for correction.

Sinclair User

ASSEMBLER PRICE CUT The Metacomco Assembler Development Package has been enhanced and its price dropped. A linker has been added to enable assembler modules and user code to be chained together. Existing users will be able to obtain the upgrade for a sum which is as yet unspecified. The company says, however, that any charge will be nominal. Metacomco hopes to draw a new type of customer with the price cut from £59.95 to £39.95. The company says that the new price will make the product more accessible to the growing number of home users of the QL.

Personal Computer News

Features 4/5

Documentation 3/5

Performance 4/5

Overall Value 3/5

Tim Maddrell 3/5

MACRO ASSEMBLER BOOST Tim Maddrell offers his views on a new QL assembler kit. NAME: QL Assembler Development Kit PRICE: £59.95 APPLICATION: Assembly language tool kit PUBLISHER: Metacomco [redacted] OTHER VERSIONS: None FORMAT: Cartridge OUTLETS: Mail order. As usual with a new machine, especially with a relatively new chip, the QL is short of software - apart from the excellent Psion programs. Software developers have been waiting for machine code programming via an assembler. One of the first, and very good it is too, is Metacomco's QL Assembler Development Kit. FEATURES The package incorporates a powerful full-screen editor and a macro assembler. I feel the title is a bit of a misnomer as a full development kit should include some means of debugging and disassembling the resultant machine code as in Hisoft's Devpac for the Spectrum. The editor can be used to prepare any ASCII text file - not just assembly language source statements. The assembler supports the full Motorola instruction set and can produce absolute, position independent or relocatable code as required. A program to run via EXEC must be position independent, as the code is loaded anywhere in memory, and Metacomco's assembler automatically uses program counter relative addressing to assist in this process. The two-pass assembler provides full macro expansion, conditional assembly, standard Motorola mnemonics and over 160 error messages in plain English. PRESENTATION The kit comes on a Microdrive cartridge containing the editor, as one file, and the assembler which is held in four files - the main module and three overlay segments. The cartridge also holds two sample assembly language source programs. One is a simple test and the other provides a clever demonstration of the QL's windowing and multi-tasking abilities. The review manual is in A5 format with 13 pages describing this lovely editor and 28 on the macro assembler. IN USE Both programs are invoked using EXEC or EXEC_W. EXEC allows you to switch back to SuperBasic while ED is running - then you are prompted for a file name to be supplied in standard QDOS form. ED goes on to ask for the workspace required - default is 12K bytes which is enough for small to medium text files. Specify this amount as a number (smallest 8000) or in units of 1024 bytes by putting number followed by K (largest 61K). I used ED to edit a SuperBasic program of some 494 lines (using 88 percent of 20K space) changing all procedure names to upper case (once mentioned in Basic the normal editor will not allow change of case as it automatically converts to original) and generally tidying it up. At the moment I am using the editor on two files concurrently, having EXECed one and EXEC_Wed the other, so I can flip between them using CTRL-C plus a quick F4 to redraw the screen. The main review is in this one and I am keeping casual notes of points-to-mention in the other, smaller window. Multiple versions of ED can run at the same time but on my old ordinary 128K QL, multiple means two - even using smallest possible workspaces and windows. I found I wanted to redefine windows after starting editing - too large windows take time to refresh, especially if a right margin is specified off the edge of the screen causing horizontal scrolling of the whole window when passing this edge, and too small is also a nuisance. Redefinition means exiting and starting again; I am using an 80-column main window now and each time I come back to it, I must guess at the window size - not always correctly. Perhaps I should set the window too large and then specify the right margin at 80... yes, that seems to be the answer. Metacomco recommends 'snapshot' file saves at regular intervals especially if you are plagued by a spiky power supply - very simple with extended command SA. I have put an extension of _exp on the file name and will import it into Quill to print it. The bottom line of the window is reserved for error messages, and for entering extended commands; this single command line can hold many commands, separated by semicolons, and be up to 255 characters long. The editor has most things well covered, including file merging and partial saving; I should like it to have tabs at any position, not just at fixed spacing, window redefinition and perhaps insertions or deletions changing whole paragraphs. What is the next step once you have formed your assembly language source file? Unfortunately, there is not room to hold both the editor and the assembler together in memory, and use them, so there is a fair bit of swapping files in and out of memory via Microdrive during program development. The editor occupies about 20.4K on Microdrive and the assembler main module about 15.2K with the overlay segments taking roughly 6.6K, 30.5K and 2K each so these are large programs. I suppose this is the penalty paid for sophistication. A session which loaded the editor, edited a small file - correcting one error, saved the source back, loaded the assembler, assembled the program without a listing and saved the final program in executable form took 3.25 minutes. QDOS holds a wide selection of machine code routines available for use in your own programs-this should save having to write a lot of tedious code merely to handle character and file I/O, for example. These routines are called into action by putting various parameters into appropriate registers and then generating the requisite trap (all very well explained in QL Advanced User Guide, by Adrian Dickens). VERDICT A most professional product (reflected in its high price) which should enable the production of some really worthwhile software for this potentially powerful micro. On a fairly trivial level, it is fun to see a clock ticking away in the corner of the command window, a trace of your SuperBasic program going on at the top of the screen, an alarm to remind you to feed the budgie and your Basic program all chugging along happily together - thanks to multi-tasking. It is a pity the programs are so large that they, plus source files, cannot be held in memory which would make simple changes much faster, and I think the Assembler Development Kit lacks a monitor/debugger. Otherwise I cannot fault it.

TABLE: EXTENDED COMMANDS A/s/ - Inert line(s) after current B - Move to bottom of file BE - Mark block end at cursor BF - Backwards find BS - Mark block start at cursor D - Delete current line DB - Delete block E/s/t - Exchange s into t EQ/s/t - Exchange but query first F/s/ - Find string s IB - Insert copy of block IF/s/ - Insert files SH - Show editor information T - Move to top of file U - Undo changes on current line

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 9/10

John Gilbert 9/10

THE FIRST BYTES The standard of QL software has been set by Metacomco. John Gilbert investigates. Format: Microdrive Price: £59.95 When a new microcomputer, such as the QL, is launched critics and users alike expect the first few pieces of software which appear on the market to be rushed efforts, written sloppily in a level language and containing many bugs. Although few software packages are available for the QL the machine and its manufacturers have been extremely lucky in that what does exist is of a high quality. A case in point is the new Assembler Development Package from Metacomco, a company which has almost single-handedly provided an insight into what the QL can do. The package consists of an assembler and full-screen text editor and is a result of several years of experience in 68000 programming by its principal author Dr Tim King. It uses the full 68000 instruction set and provides access to the much-vaunted multi-tasking abilities of the Sinclair machine. The editor part of the package is more complex and robust than many which are available on other microcomputers. It has to be because although 68000 assembler language is easy to learn it can become complex when writing applications which require a great deal of code. It provides a user-defined window, initially at the centre of the screen, which can be changed both in position and size to suit the needs of the user. It is also possible to define other windows and run a version of the editor in each so that several files can be entered into the QL simultaneously and edited one after the other. You might, for instance first decide to do some work on the file in window one and then change some lines listed in window two. Switching between the windows is a simple matter of pressing a few keys and makes complex editing tasks much simpler than they would normally be. It is possible to squeeze 12 windows onto the screen and have 12 files in memory at the same time but the text within each is only just legible. The editor will allow the entry of any ASCII file. So, you could type in assembly source listings, data files or even high level language programs, de-bug them and save them to microdrive. The full screen layout means that you will no longer have to cope with the simple line editor with which the basic QL has been equipped. Innovations such as automatic word-wrapping have also been included. Word-wrapping has been the province of word processors where if a word ran off the edge of the screen the computer would put it onto the next line. It would then space out the rest of the sliced line so that it appeared as a block of text and the last character on the left- and right-hand margins were aligned vertically. Once you have entered your assembly language file, either from microdrive or by hand, there are a variety of options available through which you can correct errors and amend programs. When you enter a long program you will see that the user-defined window through which you can look at the text may only display part of the source program because you have changed the margin settings. In such a case the program lines can be scrolled horizontally and vertically across a specified window. Other options include copy and delete functions which allow blocks of code to be copied into various sections of memory, exchanged for other sections of source, or deleted altogether. Some simple de-bugging aids such as Search and Replace will also make your life easier when manipulating source code. Those will allow you to change all occurrences of a string of characters within the source and then replace it with another piece of code. For instance, you might have used a block reference label several times within a program but then decide that it no longer represents the function of that block or you can think of a more apt name with which to describe it. By using Search and Replace you can remove the label and insert a new one. The real ability of the editor lies in its ability to link or merge files of source. A file can be entered from microdrive and inserted at any point within one which is already resident in memory. That will not only prove useful when you find that an extra piece of code needs to be added to a program, but you can also start building up a library of memory-independent subroutines, which can be placed anywhere within the RAM and be used in several programs. In order to assemble the source code it has to be saved from the editor and loaded into the assembler. The source can be loaded from a specific part of memory, made position-independent, or relocatable. In the last case a relocator routine is added to your code which can then be put into any spare section of memory by the QL. The first of those options will probably be used when only one short program is to be assembled and where it is not difficult to calculate the exact extent of any jumps that are required to other addresses with the program. The second option is more important. It can be used with long programs which you may want to alter frequently and do not want the bother of changing memory address references. The three-pass assembler takes approximately one minute to do its work and requires three program overlays to be loaded in from microdrive before it finishes all of them. The reason that, like some of the Psion software packages, all of the assembler does not fit into the memory at one time is that the error messages take up 10K of internal RAM. Each message is written in English and not the mumbo-jumbo that has become the industry standard and is hard to decipher unless you have the manual to hand. If an error is found in the source listing while assembly is taking place the process is stopped and the line upon which the mistake has been found is flagged by a cursor at the beginning of the statement. The error message is displayed at the bottom of the screen and a correction can be made cleanly and easily by re-editing the source. The most powerful aspects of the assembler package are the ability to make routine requests to QDOS, thus plugging into the power of the QL operating system, and being able to create and call macro directives. A macro is a series of commonly used instructions which can be packaged into one routine and given a label, or name. Those instructions will be executed in sequence when the name of the macro is called within a program. A large number of ready-made assembler directives are included within the package. Those include the usual ORG and EQU instructions which ensure that a piece of code is assembled at the correct location and produce the nearest thing to Basic variables within assembly language. Other directives include conditional assembly of source code, the setting of boundary size for data areas and the formatting of the code display on any device including screen and printer. The development package was still at the Beta test level when we looked at it. That means that it is the finalised version minus full de-bugging and the addition of routines recommended by the de-buggers. The assembler quickly showed, however, that the QL is a very powerful machine when the restrictions of SuperBasic are lifted. The package is a sophisticated piece of software which not only uses the QDOS operating system but also allows the user to gain access to that elusive beast. It is the first assembler onto the market and will obviously not be the last. Metacomco has no such problems with its package as the software was defined before the QL saw the light of day. Dr Tim King, had to make few changes to the specification to allow it to run on the QL as the specification of all 68000 chips is very closely linked. The company believes that it could sell the same product on an upmarket micro to clients who would be prepared to pay £400. The QL development package is to be sold for £60 which represents an astonishing switch in marketing policy that, if followed by other companies of the same stature of Metacomco, will certainly lower the price expectations of businessmen. Just as the price of hardware has fallen rapidly, partly due to the innovations of Sinclair Research, so the price of sophisticated software packages will fall because companies which have established themselves at the top end of the market will see a reason to move down, reducing prices of existing products, dumping them to other machines, and taking customers with them. A further innovation, admittedly started by WH Smith with the Advance computer but followed by Metacomco, is the introduction of such serious packages as the assembler into chain stores. The new moves will produce a better standard of software on the shelves of high street shops and they bode well for the future of the microcomputer market if the Metacomco Assembler Development package indicates the shape of things to come.