Multiprint

Your Sinclair

Phil South

RAGE HARD! You wanna know what's hardest in hardware? Once again YS whips out the magic screwdriver in our first hardware round up of '88. It's been ages since we did a really ripping hardware spread, so we thought it was about time. After a bit of barking at Phil Snout to get his screwdriver out and look at these beasts, we've pulled together a positive cornucopia of hoopy hardware and super software, to turn even the most soft-boiled trainspotter into a hard-boiled egghead. The star of our show is Miles Gordon Technology's Plus D disk interface, the only real alternative for tape users to upgrade to a +3, from the designers of the Disciple. Check out the review further on. Other contenders for the hardware crown are the Multiface family from Romantic Robot, the plastic pal who's fun to be with; a couple of wacky Multiplugs for those of you who work all your household appliances from one socket; an aerial switch so you can plug all your computers, game consoles and videos into your telly at the same time; and Computer Cupboard's nifty little Trojan Light Pen for you to scribble on your screen. Worra lorra lorra stuff. As well as all this hardware, we've got a brain-boggling selection of the most fascinating hardware-based software. So, let's cut the babbling and launch into the reviews. MGT PLUS D FAX BOX Product: Plus D disk interface Price: (Plus D only) £49.95, (with drive) £129.95 Supplier: Miles Gordon Technology, [redacted] A year ago Rockfort Products was marketing a sort of Interface 1 shaped disk interface called the Disciple. It was a very fancy bit of kit, as it goes, with a couple of joystick plugholes, a snapshot button for saving off screens or games, and a parallel printer port. This wangy little peripheral was actually the brainchild of Cambridge based Miles Gordon Technology. So when MGT decided to upgrade the Disciple and market it themselves, they looked very carefully at the mail they got about the Disciple and what people said about it. The result of their research is the new slimline, MGT Plus D. The joystick ports are gone, and the device no longer looks like an Interface 1. Actually it now looks uncannily like one of those flat joystick interfaces, with a button and power light on the top, and two flat IEEE type ports on the back for the disk and printer plugs. If you buy the unit as a package deal you also get a three and a quarter inch disk drive which is very slick and efficient. The Plus D is, to adopt the most massive critical cliche, a joy to use. It's fast, efficient and wholly reliable, and although it's rumoured that there are certain games it won't 'backup', so far we haven't found one. (Incidentally, info about what the machine can't do will no doubt be featured in the independant Disciple User Group Magazine, FORMAT, in the coming months.) The Plus D handles microdrive syntax (even the hook codes), so it can be used with a program which reads and writes to microdrives, without having to rewrite it. Using the button on the top you can print out a screen to your printer, save it to tape, or save the whole program in 48K or 128K modes. Some of the nicer features of the gadget are the ability to rename files, and boot a file in one of three ways; the usual microdrive way with all those asterisks and semicolons; using a LOAD D1 'FILENAME' format, the D1 bit meaning Drive 1; or by typing LOAD Pn, where n is a number. This is a special function of the Plus D, where each file has a number on the directory, and LOAD P1 loads the file numbered 1, LOAD P2 the one numbered 2. As well as this the computer can suss whether the file is a SCREEN$ or CODE or a Basic program from the entry in the directory. Neat, eh? Another item which should have been a feature of microdrive syntax in the first place (ahem!) is the wildcard. Basically, the Plus D can be as easy or as complicated as you want, and should fit into anybody's current setup, making it faster, more powerful and most importantly, a lot more fun. This really is, price-wise and facility-wise, one of the best alternatives to a +3 system yet devised. In summing up, it's nice to see so many good British products in this hardware lineup. There's not many computers you could say that of, and fewer that could match the quality and design of the peripherals represented here. HARD NEWS It's funny, but there's two distinct categories of equipment that we get sent for review. There are the things we review which stay around for a long time after because we like to use them in real life. And then there's the other stuff which we like a lot when it first comes in, but when all's said and done has no real application apart from novelty value. First category things are used until they disintegrate, but second category things tend to just sit around collecting thick layers of dust. And why are we telling you all this? Because all the things on these pages are first category things, items of equipment that are so useful we have to buy new ones when they break down. 1. Multiface +3 Romantic Robot £39.95 Probably top of this list of things YS couldn't do without is the Multiface family of gadgets from Romantic Robot. The most recent of these of course is the Multiface +3. Without this box there would be no screenshots in YS, or if there were, they would be fuzzy photos rather than the technically perfect inkjet dumps we use today. How is this done? Well, having fastened a Multiface to your computer you simply blip the red button on the top of the machine, and follow the menus to save the screen, which is then done automatically. There's a toolkit feature built into the unit, not unlike the previous Multifaces for 48 and 128K, which enables you to POKE numbers into addresses in hex or ASCII formats. The unit can also send shaded print dumps out through the printer port on the back of the +3. So if you've got a printer connected, the picture on screen comes out on the page. If you haven't, the bits just spill out over your desk (that's a joke, by the way!). 2. Multiprint Romantic Robot £34.95 This printing out of screens on proper printers is a trick favoured by the Multiprint interface, a dedicated printer box for all Spectrums to Epson compatible printers. As well as supporting all the usual Speccy syntax of LPRINT, LLIST, COPY etc, it also does a nifty line in various sized dumps, straight to printer. But more importantly, it is the only interface that allows you to reconfigure it while the computer is still running. That's to say you can print out a listing at one measure which turns out to be too wide, press the red button, change the width, line feeds, margins etc and return to print it out properly without having to reset the computer. 3. Smoothflow Multiplug Cambrian Distributors £23.99 Speaking of resetting the computer, has a spike in your mains supply ever found you just topping the highest known score on Outrun and looking like you're going to finish, when suddenly...PHUT! The lights in your room flicker for a moment and your Speccy resets? Could you do without this? Of course you could, which is why you need a snappy new Smoothflow Multiplug. This gizmo, made in the UK by Conblock, screws to your skirting board and accepts four wacky little micro-sized versions of the conventional 3 pin plug. So four into one will go! Now, not only will you be safe from surges and spikes (fnar fnar), but you can also plug your TV, tape machine, Speccy and modem, or indeed any four machines, into just one socket! Incidentally, if spikes don't really bother you, you can just take advantage of the mini plugs by getting a regular Multiplug. 4. Multiplug (Cambrian Distributors) £10.99 Yes, for just over a tenner you can get a four-way Multiplug like this one, which, like it's big brother, uses those dinky little plugs, but also is manufactured to British Standard 5733, so it won't go phut in your face. The same spec as the Smoothflow, but with no buffering for spike protection, so don't blame us if your computer crashes when the mad scientist next door plugs in his generator. 5. 3-2-1 Aerial Plug (Cambrian Distributors) £4.99 Doesn't it give you a pain in the neck switching around the aerial plug on the back of your telly with the RF lead on your Speccy. It does? And what about when you plug in your Nintendo to play Super Mario Bros? Well, it really started getting to us, so we got ourselves a 3-2-1 Aerial Switch to solve the problem. This little box is a three-into-one coaxial switch, which means it can either drive three switchable receivers from one aerial plug (a coaxial plug!) or can send three switchable RF signals to one telly. This means that using this box you can not only have your Speccy, game console and video going into the same telly and push the switch for which one you want, but also (if you had enough aerial cable) have a telly in three rooms and switch the aerial signal to each one depending on where you are! Not a bad little gadget, really, with low interchannel interference. 6. Trojan Light Pen Computer Cupboard £19.95 And finally, if you want to do professional Computer Aided Design on your Speccy, why not buy a Trojan Light Pen? When you buy the Cadmaster graphics system, you get this pen shaped device, which allows you to draw straight onto the screen. This can be very handy if you are quite good at drawing with a pen, but not so hot with a mouse or joystick. With this package you can do freehand drawing, boxes, circles, lines, triangles and rays. You can choose line thicknesses, quills, brushes and text styles, copy, paste, fill with patterns, wash, colour and dump to printers to your heart's content. The program is now compatible with all flavours of Spectrum, from Issue One wubber keyboards, to the new +3 (for £23.95), and is also compatible with microdrives and other media that use that format. It's remarkably accurate, and doesn't suffer from the wristache and slap/rattle sound effects you usually get from using Spectrum mice. The biggest recommendation of the product is that it's British and so all technical backup is available from a telephone number printed on the pen itself. In summing up, it's nice to see so many good British products in this hardware lineup. There's not many computers you could say that of, and fewer that could match the quality and design of the peripherals represented here. SOFT OPTIONS Music Machine Sound Sample Editor Quasar Software £9.99 cassette Although this isn't a legitimate Ram Electronics product, it does work marvellously well with the samples from this excellent sound sampling sequencer. Using key letters (the same as the Music Machine's little menus) to activate various buttons on the screen, you can change the pitch of a sample, alter the volume and actually edit individual points in the waveform. You can also equalise the sound, shifting certain harmonics to make the sound easier on the ear. Brill for the closet Jean-Michel Jarre. The Last Word Computer Cupboard £14.95 cassette Word processing isn't an application you immediately think of in connection with Spectrum computers. But with the advent of The Last Word, all that changed. A sophisticated full featured word processor which, due to the +2 and +3's new keyboard, makes any kind of writing a piece of cake. There's an 80 column screen, up to 148 characters line length, mail merge for those important mailshots. a calculator for you to do Apple Macintosh impressions on, and over 60 commands for you to input and edit the text to your taste. The code for loading and saving is even user alterable allowing you to customise it to your own system. Also available on +3 disk (£19.95). Tasword Plus Three Tasman Software £19.95 disk There can't be a Spectrum user who hasn't heard of Tasword. It has been the standard text editor on the Speccy for more years than this magazine can recall. And now, keeping up with the times as ever, Tasman has produced an extended +3 disk version of the popular word engine. The thing which makes Tasword such a belt to use it it's little on-line help pages, which means you can call them up while editing a document, just by pressing a couple of keys. Like The Last Word it's user alterable to your taste, and like it says in the blurb "now you can write a manual without having to read one." Who wrote that? Qualitas Plus Seven Stars £10.95 The worst thing about writing on a Speccy has always been the quality of print you get from a normal Epson type printer. Either you use the quick draft mode (Ooooo) or you have to settle for one typestyle in the NLQ mode. But now all that has changed. You can beef up your printer's output with Qualitas. Originally planned as an NLQ printout program for Tasword files, Qualitas has now had a Plus added, not to mention compatibility with Tasword Two, Three, The Writer and The Last Word. Now you can print out in the five fonts supplied with the basic Qualitas Plus pack, or you can lay out another £5.95 with the add-on Display Pack and have another 10 decorative fonts to play with. Y'see? Quality doesn't have to be expensive.

Crash

Ben Stone

Dominic Handy

CHRISTMAS LISTE Ben and Dom, Crash, [redacted]. What's small and black and bursts the seams of a stocking? A Spectrum add-on, of course - there are hundreds of little black boxes for music, printing, screen art and program transfer. Dominic Handy suggests some utilities and hardware for the Christmas list, and Ben Stone brings joysticks to the world - but don't fight over them, or they'll all be broken by little black Boxing Day. JOYSTICKES TERMINATOR Supersoft £19.9 Like most pointless street cred - take Raybans, expensive earplugs on a Radio Shack personal stereo and the Beastie Boys - the Terminator does serve a purpose, but only just. And its wacky design takes a lot of getting used to. Being so tiny the Danish stick has a lot of travel, so it's quite unresponsive. And the fire pin is difficult to use: you have to hold the grenade and fire with the same hand, but you can get it to work fairly quickly it you're prepared to go through hand-ache agony. The Terminator is all but indestructible, made of very thick plastic and durable electrical parts, but for nearly 20 quid I'd expect something a little more efficient than this. OMPETITION PRO 5000 Dynamics £14.95 (£15.95 with transparent case, Competition Pro Extra £16.49 with autofire and go-slow mode) This is THE joystick. The fire action is brilliant and the stick performs like a dream. It looks much the same as the Euromax Professional, but for just a pound more you can get it with high-tech clear casing (as in the picture). It's durable, because the shaft is made of steel and the microswitched mechanism inside is remarkably simple (and pretty much user-serviceable). The fire buttons work with reed switches, sometimes considered unreliable, but I've never had any trouble. Sadly, there's no autofire on either model, though there's a souped-up version on the market (the Competition Pro Extra) with autofire option and a go-slow mode never before seen on any joystick. SPEEDKING Konix £11.99 (£12.99 with autofire) The Speedking was a novelty when it appeared - the first truly hand-held joystick that worked well. It's easy to use, though it has the problem of the Euromax Professional in reverse: the diagonals are a pig to find and use quickly, which makes playing games like fighting sims very difficult. The position of the fire button really makes your hand ache if you're pressing it a lot - shoot-'em-ups turn into a nightmare when you're doing well! - though it would be difficult to have it anywhere else on the compact little body of the Speedking. There is a Speedking with autofire available. Earlier this year Konix claimed one Speedking lasted for 17,604,000 waggles (that's 27 days of nonstop waggling, folks!), but the story is not now believed, Our Waggling Editor writes. PROFESSIONAL Euromax £15.95 (£18.95 with autofire) The Euromax Professional has most of the features now becoming standard in the joystick world: posey design and microswitches, and an autofire option if you want to pay a bit extra. (It's the autofire version in the picture.) At first it's a little difficult to get to grips with, literally, because it's biased slightly to the diagonals. Theoretically this means the joystick's eight directions are equally easy to use, but in practice the stick often slips out of the vertical/horizontal into a diagonal. But the Euromax Professional has a brilliant fire action. And it's a great stick for games where deft, precise movements aren't needed; it feels rather flimsy, but the couple that were in the office had fairly long lives considering the hammering a CRASH joystick gets! 125 SPECIAL Cheetah £12.99 This new joystick, introduced in last issue's PCW Show report, has the usual eight directional controls as well as two independent fire buttons - and a special rotate function which allows the player to twist the joystick for extra-realistic movement. Of course a joystick of such complexity needs more than the usual five pin in/outputs; you'll have to have an extra joystick port, or use both ports on the +2 and +3/. There is an autofire function. IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER MIDI INTERFACE Cheetah Marketing £49.95 With this interface box and accompanying software you can control any MIDI instrument via the Spectrum. It's superb for people who can write music but can't play - just enter the notes and the computer plays the instrument. Or do it the other way round: you play the music and the computer puts it into musical notation. Including a MIDI lead for connecting the interface to your instrument, the MIDI interface was reviewed in issue 40. MK5II KEYBOARD Cheetah Marketing £199.95 This 61-key fully polyphonic board with foot switch and MIDI output ports comes packed in a rugged steel case. It's an ideal accessory to Cheetah's MIDI interface. MUSIC MACHINE Ram Electronics £49.95 'One of the best all round music add-ons for the Spectrum' - Jon Bates, Issue 34. A sound sampler, sequencer, editor, drum machine and composer all in one little black interface, the popular Music Machine is supported by a wide range of software. Recent additions include Quasar Software's Sample Editor (reviewed last issue) and Tectrics's chord construction kit Compuchord (Issue 45). SPECDRUM Cheetah Marketing £29.95 Now the standard drum add-on for the Spectrum, the SpecDrum comes complete with eight samples of real drum sounds. Extra drum sounds can be loaded in from tape: the Electro Kit and Afro Kit both retail at £4.99 and the older Latin Kit at £3.99, and all come complete with their own editors. The SpecDrum plugs into most hi-fis via a connecting phone lead. Jon Bates enthused over it in Issue 27. MUSIC TYPEWRITER Romantic Robot £7.95 Coming complete with keyboard overlays (48/+), this clever piece of software is a sophisticated tool for music on the Spectrum. Music written on Music Typewriter is displayed onscreen using realistic graphics which can be dumped to most dot-matrix printers, so you can print your own music. And your compositions aren't limited to Music Typewriter - all your tunes can be converted to machine code for use in your own programs. Jon Bates went sharpening and flattening on Music Typewriter in Issue 16. PRINTING MULTIPRINT Romantic Robot £39.95 A printer interface with all the options, the Multiprint can dump any Spectrum screen to an Epson-compatible printer in three different densities - it's handy for listings, too. There's more info in Issue 43. RAM PRINT Ram Electronics £34.95 Not only does this little black box drive your printer using a very easy menu-driven system (all stored on a ROM chip), it's also useful for those apres-Christmas 'thank you' letters because it comes with a built-in word processor, accessible from BASIC at any time and also on ROM. And if you ever get bored of all those line feeds and ESCape codes you can always plug your joystick in the built-in Kempston port and bash away at a game. See the details in issue 35. FOR THE ARTIST THE OCP ART STUDIO THE ADVANCED OCP ART STUDIO Rainbird £14.95, £24.95 'Probably the best art utility on the Spectrum' - Mike Dunn (On The Screen Editor). Need we say more? Several versions of the mouse- and joystick- compatible Art Studio utility are available for different Spectrum setups; The Advanced OCP Art Studio, which really needs an Interface One and microdrive to use its full potential, is much more powerful than the original. It has a Scrapbook library facility so you can combine and paste together pictures. Issues 24 and 40 have reviews of The OCP Art Studio and The Advanced OCP Art Studio respectively. VIDEO DIGITISER Sunset £128.00 Ever wanted to change Prince Charles's ears, or rub out out that blot on Gorbachov's forehead? You can do this and more, provided you've a video recorder, with the Sunset Video Digitiser. This little black box has all the connections for grabbing TV pictures from the video and then using them anywhere you want - even in games. Sadly, there's no printer ribbon that will put them onto T-shirts. Franco Frey got frame-grabbing in issue 31. VIDEOFACE DIGITISER Romantic Robot £69.00 plus £1.00 postage and packing The Videoface Digitiser is amazingly cheap and fast - it's all here. You can grab and scan three pictures a second, and then produce a very realistic animation sequence using up to six screens. At about hall the price of the Sunset Video Digitiser, this represents unbelievable value for money. NOT A CREATURE IS STIRRING, EXCEPT FOR A MOUSE KEMPSTON MOUSE Kempston Data £49.95 There's no WIMPing out with Kempston's version of the yuppie controller, with button eyes and connecting tail. Don't forget to lock up your cheeseboard and keep the cats indoors. Kempston is still bundling Rainbird's OCP Art Studio with this rodent at £69.95. Or those with a Spectrum +3 you can get Kempston's new Desktop utility package for +3 DOS and the mouse for exactly the same price. COMCON Frei £17.95 (single port), £19.95 (twin port) This is guaranteed to work with any product that uses the Spectrum keyboard. By connecting the six plugs to the miniature keyboard add-on you can have eight directions and TWO independent fire buttons (provided you have the correct joystick - also available from Frei). A twin-port version is also available for complex games. Lloyd reviewed the single-port version way back in Issue Eight. AND... MULTIFACE ONE, MULTIFACE 128, MULTIFACE 3 Romantic Robot £39.95, £44.95, £44.95 'One of the most versatile and user-friendly units on the market' - CRASH Issue 29 - Romantic Robot's Multifaces are ideal for the serious gameplayer or utility user with a fast storage device: they can put cassette games on Beta, Opus and Kempston disks. The Multiface 3 (pictured) can transfer cassette programs for the Spectrum and 128 to the - +3's Amstrad disks. It was welcomed in Issue 45 as a good reason to buy the +3, though Sixword's Swift Disc and Rockfort Product's Disciple are also worthwhile disk systems. The Multifaces have other uses: most POKEs can be entered using the ROM-based toolkit. And printer-owners are also catered tor with a COPY command, ideal for dumping your greatest high scores! All these options are available at any time at the press of a little red button. CRASH first saw the Multiface One in Issue 26. PLUS D Miles Gordon Technology £49.95 (£129.95 with 3.5-inch 780K-capacity disk drive) The Plus D is a new disk and printer interface from the designers of Rockfort Product's Disciple. Its Snapshot button will save all 48K and 128K cassette programs to disk, it's claimed, and the interface can make single and double-size screen dumps to a printer. The Plus D is also available in a package with a disk drive. GAMMA-STRIKE Gamesware £24.95 Gamesware's Gamma-Strike target-shooting system is a novel combination of hardware and software - you plug a target into the Spectrum, shoot at it with a model gun and watch the computer monitor your score! It's all done with the latest signal-detection techniques, and Gamesware promises more 'plug-in games' including darts and snooker soon... look out for the CRASH review. Thank you Santa, lots of luv Ben and Dom xxxxx

Sinclair User

Rupert Goodwins

PRINTS OF DARKNESS Multiprint is a printer interface from Romantic Robot, the replicants responsible for the notorious and beloved Multiface. As you might infer from the name, this latest beast is a cross between your average Centronics printer interface and that hacker dream machine. It shows in appearance alone. Multiprint looks stunningly like Multiface. Red Button and all. It even allows you to run Multiface software, like the Genie Disassembler. The ribbon cable hanging out of the edge connector slot at the back and the changed labels (the back one still mentions Multiface) give the game away. Multiiprint interfaces with Basic in time-honoured fashion. Special versions of old commands set things up and allow the normal printer commands (Lprint, Llist, Copy etc) to work with an Epson compatible Centronics/parallel printer. Non-Epsons will work, but you'll lose some features. Any Spectrum apart from the parallel equipped +3 will work with the interface. The command which does all the hard work is Rem, followed by MP and some mnemonic instructions. For example. Rem MP, WD66, LM13 sets the width of the printed output to 66 columns with a left margin of 13. Similar magic works the line spacing, extra line feeds and page size. Multiface can also manage four subtly different types of Copy. First, fastest and least flexible is Text Copy (Rem MP, CPT). This just copies all characters on the screen to the printer in roughly their correct positions. Fine for word processing or account stuff, but no graphics. For graphic fiends there are the other three Copys, Normal Size Hi-Res (CPN), Large Size Hi-Res (CPL) and Large Shaded (CPS), but that sounds like a myth. The first two do different sizes of pixel-based copy where any ink is black and all paper is white, and the last has a creditable attempt at representing your Spectrum's sixteen chromatic coruscations as shades of grey pattern. Once you've chosen the old Copy command does the deed. The interface also knows about Spectrum graphics characters, and can print both the predefined and the user-defined variety with equal facility. You can also set up to six Print Driver strings, so that with a single Lprint Chr$. your printer can receive a stream of command bytes (up to four per PD string). This can be a useful way to change between (say) underlined and normal printing from Basic. For those with a limited attention span. Rem MP by itself calls up a menu screen or two to help you set up all these tedious options So don't say Romantic don't bend over backwards to help you. Ah yes, the Red Button. Again, the perceptive might guess that this is a Good Bit Press this while the Spectrum is doing something (and that includes running your fave game), and a menu appears on the screen. Once again, the Multiface ancestry is strong, with the traditional toolkit and other pokerama paraphernalia to hand. Most important, given what the thing is, is the capability to dump the screen in whatever mode you've set up. You can even set your own special Copy mode, providing it uses not more than four bytes of control sequence and you can work out what the interface is going to do... The manual is short, useful and tells you exactly how to use the interface with various favourite word processors, disk drives and all that jazz. The sort of info people need, and usually write to Sinclair Surgery for. And the port addressing is identical to the Kempston interface, so lots of software should work with it. I've had the interface now for about three weeks, and it all performs as advertised. It doesn't have the built-in word processor that the Ramprint interface has, but it does have a lot more hackery potential. And a Red Button. Who could resist? Not I. Price: £39.95

Crash

Simon N Goodwin

(Simon N Goodwin owns the copyright to this review. Please visit http://simon.mooli.org.uk to find original articles and updates, much new material and his contact details.) PRINTING WITH A PEDIGREE Romantic Robot launched its Multiprint interface at the ZX Microfair in May. Its a Centronics parallel interface for all versions of the Spectrum except the +3, featuring a unique front panel which can be called up at any time, whatever program is running, to save or copy screens, change pinter settings, and apply POKEs. Similar controls are available from inside a BASIC program. The Multiprint comes in a typical black box which contains two 8K banks of ROM and RAM, as does the Multiface. The RAM stores configuration information till you disconnect the power to the computer. Romantic Robot says the RAM can also hold utilities designed for the same company's Multiface, such as the Genie hacker/disassembler, the Gamester POKE-generator, and several forthcoming packages which will be reviewed in future columns. Early versions of Genie won't work, though, as Romantic Robot has reassigned the control ports. (The company will supply an upgrade for £1.95.) Multiprint hooks itself up to device p, channel 3 in ZX BASIC, so it can be used in programs with normal LPRINT commands. Special REM statements can set margins and control the translation of BASIC tokens - a nice touch. BUTTON OPTIONS By pressing the red button on top of the Multiprint, you can call up the rest of the ROM software at any time. A temporary menu then appears on the bottom two lines of the screen, as with the Multiface. You can edit memory, adjust printer settings, print the display, and quit or restart the program. The toolkit to edit memory lets you store data anywhere in RAM, typing the values in hex or decimal. A 16-line transient window can be opened to tabulate memory contents as text or in hex. Register values can be examined and changed. PRINT OPTIONS The printer-setting menu lets you impose margins and a line-width for text. You can print any group of consecutive lines from the display: by default the Multiprint outputs all 24 lines, rather than the top 22 printed by COPY. Some Centronics printers require separate wind-paper and move-to-margin signals, known as line feed and carriage return. Others, like my ageing Epson MX-80, can make do with carriage return on its own, and wind the paper on twice if both signals are sent. One keypress turns off the Multiprint's line feed. You can tell the interface to translate tokens - character codes greater than 127 - into Spectrum keywords, or to transmit them straight to the printer. The second option is useful when you want to send control modes. SCREEN PRINTS The last option on the printer-setting menu controls the effect of the PRINT option on the main menu. The first setting gives a text COPY, which prints all the characters onscreen very quickly but ignores graphics. The code only recognises the Spectrum's 32-column ROM character set, so it's not much use with programs that use alternative fonts, like the majority of adventure games. The second option gives a fast graphics printout. It takes about 40 seconds for my Epson MX-80 to produce a horizontally-stretched image: 110mm by 68mm for a full screen. The third option, Large, uses the same scale as the COPY built into the Spectrum 128. The Multiprint is about ten per cent faster than the Sinclair routine, though, taking a little over two minutes to produce a well-proportioned 165mm-by-130mm pnntout. This option takes no account of colour. Every set point on the screen is printed in black, so lines plotted on a black background print out as black on white, unless you've got a coloured ribbon and black paper! The Last and best option works to the same scale and speed, but uses shading to distinguish colours. The result looks like a rather grainy photo of a black-and- white TV screen. These 'Polaroid' screen printouts are useful for almost everyone with a Spectrum and a printer. Whether you're running communications software, business programs, adventures or platform or strategy games, it's very useful to be able to print the screen at any time - when mapping, for instance. The graphics options only work with Epson-compatible printers, so beware. I get letters every month from people whingeing that they bought a bargain printer and can't get any software to work with it. If you're buying a printer, or a printer interface, you must make sure it will work with the rest of your system before you part with any cash. Try it out, or get a guarantee. ADDED VALUE In theory, a simple routine loaded into the Multiprint's internal RAM would turn the unit into a tape-backup interface. This extra feature would make it better value, but Romantic Robot is unlikely to want the Multiprint cutting into the market for its Multiface - especially as the Multiprint, with its Centronics cable, has higher manufacturing costs than its predecessor. Both should be able to run add-on packages such as Genie and The Gamester. The Multiprint scores on its Centronics port and COPY routines. But the Multiface has the advantages of a through-port at no extra cost, built-in copying software and a joystick port. CROWDED MARKET The Multiprint costs £40, or £45 with the unique option of an edge connector at the back for other peripherals. It works very well with both the Spectrum 128 and 48K model, and the magic button marks it out from the competition. This interface has a good pedigree, coming from the makers of the Multiface and the designer of EuroElectronics's ZX LPRINT 3 and Kempston's E printer interfaces. Those old products have fewer functions at the same price as the Multiprint, but Romantic Robot may face stiff competition from RAM Electronics's £35 RamPrint interface, reviewed in CRASH issue 35, with its built in text editor and joystick port.

...but on the 'large' setting every point is printed black.

...though the 'normal' setting is quicker.

And in the black box, Romantic Robot's Multiprint interface.

The Multiprint 'shaded' screen dump gives some sense of colour...