Speedfile

ZX Computing

FOUR FOR THE FILES Here at ZXC we try not to take anything at face value (unless it's free) and this set of software made us glad we don't. When it arrived it didn't create much of a stir; four computer tapes with typewritten labels on them plus four small 'booklets' consisting of dot matrix printed sheets stapled together and a brief letter inviting our "honest opinion". The four programs are all filing programs and are essentially all based around the same screen format, search and menu displays. Three of them are intended as specific programs for filing details of Magazines, Films and Discs (the musical variety) and the fourth, Speedfile, is intended to be an all purpose file system. All four are well laid out and easy to use, the menus are clearly displayed and as many single key inputs as possible are used. Colour is used to good effect and record display for the first three programs follows the same pattern, 'film' and disc' displaying three records per page and 'magazine' two. These three are very similar and all feature the following options: I - Input a new record. L - List all records, with the facility to delete a record or send a page to printer. Option for 80 col. printer is included. S - Search for series of characters. F - File Status. C - Save/Load options (Microdrive is supported). T - Sort by selected field (Magazine and Disc only). The individual differences are as follows, numbers in brackets are the characters allowed for each field: MAGAZINE. This has six fields labelled Magazine Article (27). Magazine (24), Volume (3), Number (2), Date (8), Page (3). DISC: There are only three fields, Title (27), Artist (20) and Ref, No (6). FILM consists of four fields, Film Title (27), Medium (10), Year (4) and rating (2). The search option works on all fields except for Magazine and Medium. These are slightly different as they are selected and entered from an option menu, magazine allows you to keep up to 20 operator-selected magazine names on file and a separate search is provided for it. Each of these programs is around 5K in length and they are pure machine code which makes the search and sort operations very fast and efficient. There is enough room on each program for approximately 1000 records which is a respectable number for home use, and some small businesses could also consider them. My only criticism is that the formats are unalterable, but in most cases there is enough room provided - you may have to abbreviate "Frankie Goes To Hollywood" though! Also I would have liked to have had a facility for making notes. SPEEDFILE This is the master program of the set but it is the one which I found most disappointing. All the same options provided for the other files are provided except that there is only one field which may be up to 250 characters long. There is no option to set the number of fields, length, position or headings. The only provision is the use of ! as a new line indicator. With a bit of fiddling some screen formatting is feasible, but it isn't easy. Probably if you want to keep a simple list or perhaps an address book on your computer then this would provide an acceptable means of doing so However, if you are after the flexibility that a program of this type should provide then perhaps a more expensive program such as Masterfile by Campbell Systems would be better. For ease of use and the options available I was reasonably impressed. If you want a program to keep simple details of your Magazine or Disc or Film collection on your Spectrum without too much fuss then they can be highly recommended. However if you want to keep three or more different types of file then I think you would be better off buying an all purpose program such as Masterfile or Sinclair's own VU-File and taking the time to learn to set it up yourself. One very good feature was the way in which the program operated my printer - via a ZX Lprint Interface - in both screen copy and 80 characters per line list mode. As long as I initialised it before loading a program it worked perfectly, and if I forgot then I simply went into the SAVE option, broke out of the program, initialised the printer and restarted the program without any difficulty. Because the program Saves and Loads from within the machine code, it is difficult to customise it to work with other storage media, the Wafadrive for example. I was able to use them on the Technology Research Disk drive due to the RAM save feature but otherwise you'll have to keep the data on tape. My daughter has adopted the Disc program, my son has borrowed the Film one and I have started getting all those articles in back issues of ZXC (and other) magazines organised with the Magazine program. The programs are marketed by DGF Software, [redacted] and sell at £5.90 each including P&P.