Re. Hisoft Pascal

I read with interest the review of the Hisoft Pascasl compiler in the May/​September issue of INMC80.

It is indeed a very nice piece of software but unfortunately the writer of the compiler has done certain things which are not mentioned in the documentation but which are nevertheless extremely important when using the compiler for anything more than playing about. For example, the compiler workspace is quite different from that stated in the documentation and this has lead us in wasting approximately two weeks of precious time, and this is only part of the story. However Hisoft have been very careful not to publish their telephone number and, not surprisingly, they are not listed in the telephone directory and their telephone number is not available from directly enquiries. This and the fact that they tend not to answer letters makes such a complex piece of software as a compiler rather useless for applications where questions have to be asked which are not answered by the documentation.

I would be very grateful if you can prompt them to telephone me during office hours so that I can ask Hisoft a few questions.

Finally, I would like to say that your magazine is very good indeed and hope that you keep up the good work.

P.Holy, Ringdale Engineering Co. Ltd. (_____-_____)

BITS & P.C.’S TOOLKIT

If you want to change the speed of the keyboard repeat on the Bits and P.C’s toolkit this can be done by poking the location 3120 (0C30) with the value for the speed of repeat, and locations 3118-3119 (0C2E-0C2F) for the delay before repeating starts. The original values are 50H in 3120 and 0280H in 0C2E-0C2F. When the toolkit is reset the original values are placed in these locations. It seems that this keyboard repeat is similar to the one Richard Beal published in INMC issue 6.

A. Sircombe, Tewkesbury, Gloucester.

ERROR IN LIFE

I am delighted to see myself in print (conversion of Life from Nasbug to Nas-Sys) but I have noticed a small error; the patch at 0E64 should not be there at all. Oops sorry.

May I comment on Stephen Prince’s letter on Transparent Video. I have just added the Snowdinger from the first issue of Micropower. This has not only given me (and my Nascom 1) a snowfree screen without black flashes but also where my screen previously was obviously made up of a number of distinct squares, now it is a uniform colour. I hope this is of some help and I am sure that Program Power will be only too pleased to provide back issues.

P.S. I am making progress with Robots, although this has been interrupted by my own “Tiny Adventure” and housing my Nascom and a Supermum in a case instead of spreading it across the floor.

W.H.T., New Malden, Surrey