Byte Power August 1986

The first issue of Byte Power, a monthly tape magazine for the TS2068 created by Eric and Kristian Boisvert of Pickering, Ontario, in May 1986. The magazine itself is a program, “BYTE POWER 1st Class Magazine”, that pages through its articles on screen and can print them; the programs follow it on the tape, ready to run. This issue holds the editors’ welcome, a note on how to make personal backup copies (POKE 23681,0 before loading stops a program so that line 9999 can save it), the first chapter of the “Better Programming!” series on sound effects (metallic sounds on two AY channels), a preview of the next issue and a review of the Wafadrive used with the Rainbow Plus interface.

The editors wrote that most of the programs were in machine code, and offered single issues at $5.50 and a year of 12 issues at $49.99 (U.S.).

Programs on the Tape

• SOUND: the metallic sound example from the sound-effects article, a single SOUND statement (K. Boisvert) (also #59152 Sound)
• MUSIC: the same effect turned into an 18-note tune read from DATA (also #59148 Music)
• GRAPHIC: the sound effect with a moving line pattern (also #59140 Graphic)
• GRAND PRIX: 3D race against the clock on four tracks, watching engine heat and tyre wear, with a demo mode (Kristian and Eric Boisvert) (also #59139 Grand Prix)
• HANG-MAN: hangman with five words per game drawn from a dictionary of over 1,000, with a demo mode (Eric Boisvert) (also #59145 Hang Man)
• KNIGHTS: Knight’s Tour, visit all 64 squares with knight’s moves; a demo mode shows a solution from your starting square (Eric Boisvert) (also #59146 Knight’s Tour)
• MINOTAUR: The Minotaur, a 3D maze adventure with monsters, treasure and swords; kill the Minotaur to find the real exit (Kristian Boisvert) (also #59147 Minotaur)
• ROBOT: defend the Earth against waves of ever faster robots (Eric Boisvert) (also #59150 Robot)
• SHOOTER!: shoot down the 100 ships of the Zortron fleet, then Zortron himself; keyboard or joystick, redefinable keys (Kristian Boisvert) (also #59226 Shooter)
• Paranoid: repeat the computer’s sequence on keys 1–4, aimed at young players (Eric Boisvert) (also #59149 Paranoid)
• EASYtype: word processor with centring, tabs, paragraphs and word wrap, printing sideways on the TS2040 at up to 128 columns (Eric Boisvert) (also #59109 EASYtype)
• EASYtype F: a 5,189-byte sample file for EASYtype; printed at width 50, its four pages are meant to be laid one above the other
• RENUM63000: 2,122-byte machine-code BASIC renumberer, started with RANDOMIZE USR 63000; line numbers in GO TO and similar statements must be written as four digits (Eric Boisvert) (also #59151 RENUM63000)
• GRAPH SHOW: Graphic Show, a display of the TS2068’s graphics (Eric Boisvert) (also #59143 Graphic Show)
• FEAST: Feast of Classics, seven pieces of music chosen by letter, or all of them in a loop (Eric Boisvert) (also #59111 Feast Of Classics)
• The End: closing animation (also #59153 The End)

The download has a TAP and a TZX file for each item, numbered in tape order, plus issue1.txt, the magazine’s text extracted from the first program. RENUM63000 is there as a TAP only, and the TZX named for the EASYtype file also carries the three programs after it.