| ENGLISH SOFTWARE CO. |
| 4K CASS. |
If you write programs or type in listings from magazines and use a
cassette, BUY THIS PROGRAM before you buy another piece of software.
Your £7.95 will be the best investment you made since you bought your
Atari.
What? You want to know why? Well, of prime consideration, A.C.E.
verifies programs saved to tape, that is, you can save a program and
then check to see if the recording is good without losing the program
from memory. That's not all it does, A.C.E. has a host of other
features. The program is in three sections which need not all be
loaded if you do not require the facilities of a particular section.
Option A gives you the facilities of saving and loading named
programs, verifying, searching a tape for a specific program, getting
a catalog of all programs on a tape and flashing the cursor. This
section will take 2298 bytes of memory. Option B will give, in
addition, a list of all variables and their current values at any
stage, automatic line numbering and renumbering. This will take 3496
bytes in all. Finally, Option C gives you the ability to save and load
binary files and hex/dec/binary conversions. This will bring memory
usage up to 4148 bytes. As I said, you only need to load Option A if
you want but you can't get the other options without having the
previous one.
When you start a program session, boot in A.C.E. first and just
leave it there. A.C.E. will remain resident until power-off and can be
called at any time by preceding a command with C, (above the figure 8
on the keyboard). When you want to save your program you can name it
as you would with a disk drive by typing CSAVE "Program Narne"
and then ask A.C.E. to verify that the SAVE was good by typing @
VERIFY "Program Narne". Your original program will remain in
memory so if the save was bad, try again. No more lost programs. When
you want to load a program, there is no need to know where it is on
tape, just wind the tape back to the beginning and type @ CLOAD
"Program Narne" or @ CRUN
"Program Narne" and A.C.E. will go through the tape until
it finds the program and will then load or load and RUN it
automatically. No more problems in positioning the tape exactly.
The Option B facilities work just as well. Automatic line numbering
may seem a luxury but can be quite a time saver when you get used to
it, but the real power of this section is in the DUMP and RENUMBER
routines. Renumber is so fast that you have to double check that it
has been done. It can't change variables if they are used as line
numbers but a REPORT facility allows you to identify all such
variables in the program and change them manually. The DUMP routine
will give you a full list of all variables with their current values
to enable you to tidy up or keep track of your programs.
The Option C facilities are perhaps the least useful as you are
most likely to have a disk drive if your programming is advanced
enough to use binary files.
Taking into account that the majority of users, in this country at
least, will not have disk drives, this is without doubt the finest
Atari utility yet produced. It cannot be recommended too highly. Buy
one now before English Software realise that they have a real gem they
are selling at a ridiculous price!
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