A couple of items provoked by the last issue of the EUG mag viz:-

Multiple View printouts were requested by Michael Harris of Southampton. This subject has been brought up many times over the years in various Acorn mags and the best solution I have found is as follows: Issue the following command in the Command Mode:

      *KEY 0 PRINT|M*FX138,0,128|M

or, if you want to repeatedly print a file:

      *KEY 0 PRINT filename|M*FX138,0,128|M

This only requires the page length and page feeds to be adjusted accordingly and bingo, stacks of Rainforests go churning thru!

A simple soldering iron job for the Derek Walker column. I use a cheapo TV with my setup, which has an audio and video phono socket on the back for line feeds. I take the phono black and white feed from the Electron's video socket and feed that into the TV. A colour feed can be extracted from this video socket if link 4 is made on the main circuit board. This link is situated just above IC13 in the bottom left-hand corner, next to Transistor Q7. A small "U" of SWG wire is all that is needed. The quality of this feed obviously doesn't compare with an RGB feed on a monitor, but it's better than the UHF feed.

The map supplied by Howard Guppy brought back memories of the heap I did when my nipped started geography and they were used as a basis for some simple lessons. If you wish to include them in future issues, be my guest.

D. E. Williams, Cardiff

In reply to one of the questions raised by Michael Harris, how to print thirty copies of a letter, the answer is to use the Macro facility of View. Define the letter as a Macro by typing at the top of the letter 'EDIT COMMAND' DM (RETURN) followed by a two character name e.g. MH.

At the bottom of the letter type 'EDIT COMMAND' MH. When the PRINT command is used, it will print the letter once. Now add as many 'EDIT COMMAND' MH's as letters you want printed (COPY BLOCK).

It will print the letter once for every line that has an edit command defined. The Macro facility can go one step beyond this and insert names and addresses. It is a bit more complicated to explain and it would be better to read the View User Guide for details. I could provide a copy of the chapter on the Macro facility from the BBC View manual if the Electron one is not very clear.

Re: D. E. Williams' letter on ROM compatibility contradicted my own with regard to the Printmaster ROM. On investigation I found that I was wrong in saying that it is incompatible, but on saying that, the ROM I tested was a CMOS ROM. These do not run in my system, something I have been caught out with before and should have picked up. Has anyone else found that CMOS RAMs do not work?

I transferred the image to a TTL ROM and it worked OK. At the time of testing I also tried the ROM image in Sideways RAM (not write protected) but this locked up the computer entirely and it had to be switched off to reset it. I will re-check both Discdoctor and Toolkit for ROM type and let you know.

Derek Walker, Glasgow

As a kind of segue between the Mailbag and the utilities directory, note that there is a third and final solution to the problem of how to get multiple printouts with View which was supplied by Thomas Boustead, Tom has been off the scene for a while due to a bout of illness at the start of the year (after which other commitments took up much of his time). But he's been keeping a watchful eye on matters Electron and the resulting articles he has produced appear in this issue.

When multiple printouts of a View file are needed, LOAD"U.NUMCOPY" into BASIC and LIST it. Edit line 220 to show the number of copies required after EQUB - the default as supplied here is 80.

RUN the program and the file COPIES will be saved automatically. Now go into View and load your text file. Type *COPIES on the command screen and press RETURN. Printing will commence and run for the number of copies you indicated in line 220.

Will Watts, EUG #6