Spectrum Microcase

Personal Computer Games

Tony Harrington

BOOSTERS Peripheral can boost your micro's powers and your fun. Tony Harrington has scoured the shops for you. There seems to be a new microcomputer on the market every week. But that is as nothing compared to the rich growth now taking place of computer peripherals of all kinds. You may want the freedom of a joystick for reflex-type games. Or you may want additional memory or processing power. In every case, there is bound to be at least half a dozen suppliers eager to offer their wares. The ideal way of doing a peripherals round-up is to group what is available for each brand of home computer. But many suppliers offer add-ons for more than one kind of micro, so the list becomes repetitive. In the first of our series of peripherals, therefore, we have listed the suppliers. The names of the micros are highlighted when the peripheral concerned is specific to a particular machine. First in our list is Flight Link, which is based in Alton. It makes three ranges of joystick, suitable for a wide range of micros. The first model in the range is the J1. This has dual axis carbon track controls and comes with or without cases, switches and cables. The second, JS2, has high-quality, all-metal dual controls. At the top end of the range, which will be outside the pocket of most micro-enthusiasts, is the JS4. It has inductively coupled contact less joysticks. This firm takes the business of making joysticks very seriously. It pays a lot of attention to unique demands, such as the control of puppets or the movement of vessels under water. Its products range in price from £3 to a staggering £1,000. Akhter Instruments, based in Harlow, also has a range of peripherals. In particular, there are three types of green monitors: the Hitachi MM1216 at £102.35; the SM12H 18MHZ monitor at the same price, and the cheaper,if less powerful SM12N 15MHZ at £79.35. All prices include VAT. The company also offers 14-inch colour monitors whose prices range from £239 plus VAT for the normal resolution of 400 dots up to £499 plus VAT for the high-resolution 800 dots screen. SIR Computers, from Cardiff, supplies a Z80 disk pack for the BBC Micro at £895. That sounds steep, but the system aims to be a sophisticated development of the machine's potential. It connects to the BBC micro in the same way as a normal disk drive. It then opens up the whole range of CP/M software for business and dataprocessing as well as games. This is because the firmware supplied with the machine allows you to switch between Basic and CPN, an operating system developed from CP/M 2.2. The disk pack also, of course, provides a dual 2 x 400K disk drive for use with the standard BBC Basic. The machine is able to run CP/M because it includes a Z80A processing card with its own 64K RAM card, which communicates with the 6502A in the BBC computer. The supplier claims that, in most cases, the speed of execution of programs is improved by up to 50% compared to conventional single processor computers. Computer Concepts has had considerable coverage for its Wordwise ROM-based word processor for the BBC micro. The price is £39 plus £1.50 for postage and packing; VAT is on top of that. The 'chip' plugs into one of the empty sockets inside the machine. It is supplied with a spiral-bound manual and a cassette which contains an example document and a free Typing Tutor program. Basingstoke supplier Fox Electronics offers the Vixen RAM cartridge for the Vic 20. This cartridge is switchable between 16K or 8K and 3K. It plugs into the rear expansion port and should be fully compatible with all motherboards and modules. No readdressing of existing Basic programs is needed. The price is £39.95. The same supplier also offers a 42-key travel keyboard for the Spectrum. You are supposed to be able to remove the ZX printed circuit board from your Spectrum and simply screw it down into the keyboard case. The supplier promises that no soldering is required. This costs £39.95, including postage and packing. There is also a ZX-Panda 16K RAM pack for the ZX81. This is expandable to 32K with a plug-in module from the same supplier. It includes a LED power indicator and is designed to connect without risk of the wobble that plagued the early Sinclair RAM packs. Prices range from £19.95 to £46.00 including postage and packing. For users who don't like the standard ZX81 keyboard there is a replacement keyboard with a calculator-type design. This is a stick-on replacement and is priced at £9.95 from Filesixty. Those of you who are being slowly blinded by the glare from your TV set being used as a monitor might like to try out the effects of antiglare screens. Merseyside firm Datatel Business Products offers a range of antiglare screens which give a sharper, clearer image and cut down eyestrain. The price is £19.95 plus £1.80 for postage and packing. Datatel Business Products also makes a multi-purpose computer stand which has an all-steel construction. This comes as a self-assembly kit and there are two sizes: two foot and two-and-a-half feet in height. KK Electronics, of London, has a range of colour monitors compatible with the BBC, Lynx, Oric, Acorn and all other computers with RGB. The monitors have a 16-colour display plus a brightness control. There is also a quality sound amplifier with loudspeaker control. Prices start at £239.95, plus VAT. A speaker which plugs into the microphone socket of the Spectrum and boosts the sound output is sold by Alan White, of Poole. The speaker comes complete with volume control and needs no soldering. It costs £5.50 inclusive of postage and packing. If you are worried about thieves making off with your home computer, you can at least ensure that they have to go to the trouble of taking the table with them, thanks to a little device from Ofco Ltd. Called Securit, the locking device fixes to the desk top without the need for any holes being drilled. It costs £29.95 plus VAT. More and more games designers are adding complex sound routines to their offerings. But for those Dragon owners who reckon that the sound of their machines still lacks a little, JCB Microsystems offers the Sound Extension Model for the Dragon 32. The price is £34.95 including VAT. The sound extension model looks much like an ordinary games cartridge and plugs into the Dragon's expansion port. Based on the AY-3-8910 sound chip, the module adds an extra command called music to Basic. The range of possible sounds is specified as numbers and characters. A sound synthesiser as used by professional musicians this is not. For the price, you wouldn't expect it to be. But it will produce a creditable set of tunes and a variety of games noises from wailing sirens to bomb blasts. The novice computer user will probably not have his (or her) machine long - and will run only a few programs - before the need for more memory becomes apparent. The BBC Model B, for example, has excellent ROM facilities, but has used up quite a bit of its RAM space accordingly. BBC Micro users after more storage will find the quaintly named Hobbit tape system worth a look. Made by Ikon Computer Products, the device operates as a sort of half-way house between cassette and disk-drive storage media. It comes in two parts: a cassette unit and an integrated circuit which contains the tape operating system to drive the Hobbit. This last comes as a ROM card which has to be inserted in one of the three sockets in the BBC before the cassette unit can be used. It represents a faster, more efficient and effective way of storing data and programs than conventional cassette recorders. And it has a number of commands which deal with the saving and loading of data. The Hobbit cassette unit is about three and a half inches wide, roughly the same in height, and four inches deep. It weighs two pounds. Four large rubber pads on the base ensure that the equipment stays on the table instead of skittering off onto the floor. The device has a data transfer speed of 750 bytes of data a second, five times faster than ordinary cassettes. The price is £135 plus VAT. Kempston Micro Electronics has a joystick named the Competition-Pro for the ZX Spectrum. It is a nylon and steel construction, with a self-centering stick and two fire buttons. It plugs into the Spectrum expansion port. You can buy it at WH Smith branches for £25 including VAT. The same supplier has joysticks for the VIC 20 and the Atari 400 and 800. They come at the somewhat cheaper price of £16.50 including VAT. Microcell Computer Systems, based in Leeds, advertises the Sinclair ZX 16K RAM pack at £28.50. The company also has a range of monitors including the BMC BM12E green monitor and the Sanyo SCM12H green monitor, both for £100. Cheetah Marketing, London, has an even cheaper ZX81 compatible RAM pack at £19.75 and the 64K RAM pack at £44.75. Both prices include VAT and postage and packing. Warrington firm Micro Aids has bought up a way of allowing keen Spectrum users to take their machines with them wherever they go. The Spectrum/ZX81 microcase is designed to hold the computer, power supply, printer and rampack, with space left over for a cassette recorder or the fabled Sinclair micro drives. The supplier advises that the shallow tray which contains the case can be used as an attractive desktop console. And the detachable top of the case could be used as a TV stand. The price starts at £29.95, including VAT. The Harrow-based firm, Home Entertainment Centre, has a number of add-ons for the Atari 400 and 800. In addition to joysticks at £14.95, there is a keyboard at £79.95, a 48K expansion at £99.95 and a disk drive at £289.99. If you have wanted to make your micro talk back, the Namal Supertalker is a useful extra. It comes from Namal Associates in Cambridge. Priced at £89.95, it has an extensive built-in ROM/RAM dictionary and a standard RS232 interface. It will run on a number of different micros. And as it is a phoneme synthesiser, it is not limited to particular words. It has been designed around the Votrax SC-01A phoneme speech synthesiser chip. You create words by using a sequence of codes to build words out of component sounds. Up to 200 to 250 new words can be dumped into the device's RAM to add to the 550 high-usage words already stored in ROM. Special versions are available for the ZX81 and the Spectrum. These versions are memory mapped. In compensation. the price for these two models is £49.95, including VAT.

Key. 1: ZX81 keyboard. 2: Atari disk drive. 3: Flight Link joystick 4: Sinclair 16K RAM pack. 5: Dragon 32 sound module. 6: BBC Hobbit storage unit. 7: BBC disk pack. 8: Kempston joystick. 9: Spectrum microcase. 10: Securit anti-theft device.

The Cheetah RAM pack.

The Flight Link joystick.

The Hobbit is a memory storage device for the BBC.

The Kempston joystick.

The Micro Aid case.

The Securit anti-theft device.