BBC Master Welcome disk

[wemb]

Hello All

I recently got a BBC master and have spent a surprisingly enjoyable week desoldering the keyboard to individually clean easy keyswitch - it was very crusty. Now that's done and while I wait for a cable I need to flash the gotek I purchased I thought about playing with some master specific software to eventually get working on it.

I've tried to take a look at the BBC Master Welcome disk - but am not having any luck getting it to work. Possibly I'm using the wrong image, but I can get it to boot in both Beebem and B-em - and get a GUI-type UI suggesting I just teh cursor (arrow) keys to move the pointer.

This doesn't work. In both emulators, the arrow keys do not move the cursor pointer. Obviously I must be missing something obvious - perhaps i'm using the disk the wrong flavour of master. Not sure. Anyone got any ideas? Thanks
Dave

[BeebMaster]

It sounds like you are using the Master Compact Welcome Disc, which does give you a GUI with pointer. This doesn't work on a Master 128 for reasons I can't quite remember and haven't quite fixed yet, but I think I have nearly fixed it.

Hopefully from the same source you will have an image of the Master 128 version.

[BeebMaster]

Been playing around with it a bit. I've nearly fixed it. The reason the pointer doesn't move is that it's expecting a joystick or mouse to be connected so I previously added "*KEYS" to the loader to allow the cursor keys to move the pointer. But it's almost unusable still as it selects any menu item as soon as you hover over it, instead of waiting for RETURN to be pressed like it says in the box on the screen. I don't know how to fix that yet.

[wemb]

It sounds like you are using the Master Compact Welcome Disc, which does give you a GUI with pointer. This doesn't work on a Master 128 for reasons I can't quite remember and haven't quite fixed yet, but I think I have nearly fixed it.

Hopefully from the same source you will have an image of the Master 128 version.

Yes - look like it - I did a fair bit of googling - and tried several downloads from various threads here - but either got the Master 512 disc, or ones that just produced 'bad program' hen I loaded anything from them.

Good news was though, found an old folder of disc images from a beebem installation on an old laptop which included a working adf of the welcome disk - included here since I couldn't remember where I got, couldn't find it anywhere else and, knowing me, will lose it any day now.
Dave

[wemb]

Oh - also - one of the disc images I did try was one you provided from this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=8017

M128Welc80.rar from, err, some time ago.

That's the one that produced 'Bad program' on both emulators I tried it on. Not sure why. It uncompresses properly, so the rar file can't have been corrupted.

Dave

[BeebMaster]

It's very likely to be a non-interleaved disc, whereas the emulator may be expecting it to be interleaved. I don't know if there will be an option to set the disc layout in the emulator somewhere.

I've got the pointer working with the cursor keys on screen now outside the Compact Welcome Disc. It's very smooth movement, when it moves, but sluggish using the keys. But this is in contrast to the Welcome disc desktop where the pointer flickers constantly as soon as it has been moved. It's almost as if it's being manually updated on screen by the program instead of letting the ROM software do it.

[BeebMaster]

Well it works with the Domesday Machine trackerball (as long as VFS is unplugged, as it contains conflicting pointer software) and the Tube is turned off, as the Tube prevents the pokes to initialise the ROM images just loaded into sideways RAM from working. The flickering is because it is processing keypresses. When the keyboard buffer empties, the pointer stops flickering. With the trackerball enabled, the pointer movement is smooth and a button press is required to select anything. But changing back to Joystick/Keys doesn't re-enable the cursor keys! Weird.

[Rich Talbot-Watkins]

Here's the 80 track version of the Master 128 Welcome Disk that I remember and love. The 80 track version has some extras on it, like the Acorn Sprite ROM (in the LIBRARY directory).

[vela025]

Here's the 80 track version of the Master 128 Welcome Disk that I remember and love. The 80 track version has some extras on it, like the Acorn Sprite ROM (in the LIBRARY directory).

What are the commands to use this sprite rom from the welcome disk? I can't find a manual online, I've tried *sprite, *editsprite, *nsprite, *newsprite etc. *help is as helpful as usual

[BeebMaster]

Well, famously, even Acorn didn't have any instructions for the Welcome Disc Sprite ROM:

https://www.beebmaster.co.uk/AcornLette ... 01992.html

But the commands are very similar to the sprite commands in the Graphics Extension ROM (SGET, SCHOOSE, SNEW etc.).

[vela025]

But the commands are very similar to the sprite commands in the Graphics Extension ROM (SGET, SCHOOSE, SNEW etc.).

Excellent thank you!

[Coeus]

But the commands are very similar to the sprite commands in the Graphics Extension ROM (SGET, SCHOOSE, SNEW etc.).

Ah, so is this actually the bit of the graphics extension ROM that didn't get integrated into the normal VDU drivers on the Master?

[Rich Talbot-Watkins]

Yep! It uses the rest of itself when softloaded in Sideways RAM as sprite storage space, instead of claiming private workspace. Which means it's not ROMable. But the code is more or less the same as the GXR sprite code.

[Rich Talbot-Watkins]

I used to use it for designing game sprites back then. With a BASIC program to generate the raw sprite data by plotting sprites to the screen (PLOT &ED,0,1023-height*4) and reading the bytes out.

[james]

Well, famously, even Acorn didn't have any instructions for the Welcome Disc Sprite ROM:

"and Pointer"? What pointer's that, then?

There's no mention of Pointers in the GXR manual (except in the EDITOR program).

NB: "*HELP SPRITE." does give some help and "*SPRITE ON" seems to get some memory allocated.

[BeebMaster]

I'm not sure the Sprite ROM is actually used by the Master 128 Welcome disc. Maybe Tim Paint uses it. It's used by the Master Compact Welcome Disc, along with the Pointer ROM, which provides the mouse movement and pointer for the Desktop menu on the Compact.

Given the problems I've been having trying to get the Compact Welcome Disc Desktop to work on a Master 128, does it in fact work on a Compact without a mouse or trackerball? To work on the Master 128, it needs *KEYS setting beforehand to allow the cursor keys to move the pointer. Does that just "happen" on the Compact, or were Compacts sold with a mouse?

[james]

Does that just "happen" on the Compact, or were Compacts sold with a mouse?

Does it work with the Compact’s digital joystick?