Byte Power December 1986 – January 1987

Tape-based magazine. The December 1986 – January 1987 issue (Issue 5) of Byte Power, the TS2068 tape magazine of Eric and Kristian Boisvert. The editors explain that the cover reads December/January because of the Christmas break and the change of format (the previous month’s magazine had been on paper); it is not a double issue, and subscriptions simply run a month longer. The magazine program carries the editors’ note, chapter 5 of the “Better Programming!” sound-effects series, a review of the Apache helicopter simulator Tomahawk (Digital Integration, sold for the TS2068 by Knighted Computers), the classified ads, a call for program submissions and instructions for every program on the tape. The editors also note that Lost in 3D, promised for this issue, was held over to the next.

The “Better Programming!” chapter, by Kristian Boisvert, shows how to make a “real echo”: the same MUSIcomp note data is played on two AY channels, the second one starting a rest later and at a lower volume, with a counter per voice so that notes of different lengths can run side by side. The same loop plays duets and trios when each voice gets its own data. The first two programs on the tape are the examples for the article.

Programs on the Tape

• REAL ECHO: Real Echo Example, the article’s BASIC echo player, playing a Toccata by Leonardo Leo from 895 bytes of MUSIcomp data (E. & K. Boisvert) (also #63227 Real Echo Example)
• EXAMPLE 2: Duet Example 2, the same loop playing two independent voices, an evening song by Schumann (E. & K. Boisvert) (also #63228 Duet Example 2)
• GHOST HUNT: Ghost Hunters, a four-part arcade game: stop ghosts in a city maze, vacuum them up from your car, trap Slimers between two beams at the haunted building, and finally cross the screen past the Marshmallow Man (Kristian Boisvert) (also #63229 Ghost Hunters)
• GRAFIX: six screens of patterns drawn with SIN and COS (Kristian Boisvert) (also #63230 Grafix)
• Q*ber: a Q*bert-style game; jump on the cubes of the pyramid to change their shade while avoiding the meanies, with joystick or redefinable keys (Eric Boisvert) (also #63231 Qber)
• THE DESK: an organiser with 100 appointments, a 39-entry phone and address book and a 10-page note pad, saved together to tape and printable on the TS2040 (Kristian Boisvert) (also #63232 The Desk)
• CLASSIC: Classic Moments of Music, six classical pieces played one at a time or in a loop (Kristian Boisvert) (also #63233 Classic Moments Of Music)
• NAVY: Battleship against the computer on two 10×10 boards (Kristian Boisvert) (also #63234 Navy)
• ISLAND: a text adventure; shipwrecked on an island, survive the night (Eric, Isabelle and Kristian Boisvert) (also #63235 Island)
• AMAZIMUSIC: Amazi-Music, a 450-byte interrupt routine that plays MUSIcomp data in the background, even while you program, with POKEs for tempo, volume and the voice mask, plus 3,443 bytes of demo music (Eric Boisvert) (also #63236 Amazi-Music)
• CLOCK: an interrupt-driven clock shown in the top right corner, set from the keyboard, with POKEs for colour, position and 60 Hz (TS2068) or 50 Hz (Spectrum) timing (Eric Boisvert) (also #63237 Clock)
• 64 PRINT: 64 Column Print, a machine code routine in a REM at line 0 that prints a string in 4×8 characters, 64 to a line (Eric Boisvert) (also #63238 64 Column Print)
• The End: closing program

The download has a TAP and a TZX file for each item, numbered in tape order, a WAV of the whole tape, and issue5.txt, the magazine’s text extracted from the first program.