Producer: Simtron
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £9.95
Language: BASIC & Machine code
Author: G.S. Harber M.I.M.I.

Do you ever get bored waiting for your Spectrum to load? are you tired of listening to the hums, beeps and squeaks that emanate from the recorder? You do? You are? Well Simtron have a cure (please don't get too excited), instead of having to watch a highly coloured, well drawn picture you are given a very complicated maze to solve while you wait for Car Cure to load. Nice idea but the problem is that the maze repeats itself after seven billion, five hundred and ninety seven million, three hundred and fifty thousand two hundred and eighty four times (that's 7,597,356,284), so sooner or later you'll get bored with it.

Car Cure is a serious application (we don't just review games you know, we are able to come to terms with real life situations as well as anybody, at least we like to think that we can). It's just as well that this is an expert system since its aim is to turn an idiot into a potential genius in whatever subject the system is concerned with. In this case it's rather obvious, this package deals with the field of automotive electro-mechanical malfunctions - or duff cars. The first thing that one has to consider when dealing with an expert system is the enormous amount of information that they hold. Car Cure has a 'knowledge' base of over 900 faults and 300 symptoms, so the possible combinations of results are mindblowing. Bearing in mind the complexity, I am not exactly sure how one can evaluate an expert system when one is anything but an expert. So I hit on the idea of rushing out to the car park, opening the bonnet of Sophia, my car, and ripping out a small but vital part. Pretty neat eh? But the really clever bit is I'm not going to tell myself what I've done, I will rely entirely on Car Cure to sort it all out.

After failing to solve the maze I was confronted with a page that offered options to ask for 'help' or started tracing problems relating to 'symptoms' or 'parts '. One would use the 'parts' option if the faulty part was known. It wasn't so I chose 'symptoms'. The background turned yellow and I noticed in the user guide that the colours have been selected to help a user follow the program. The book says' ...you set out from the safe house through a cornfield of symptoms (yellow), across a river of parts (blue) into a forest of faults (green) where there is a battlefield of action (red)'. That sounds rather silly but when you come to use the program it is an aid, it also goes to show how well the program has been thought out.

Back to my problem; on the first symptom page I am given a number of options, from 'starting the engine' to 'instruments and warning lights'. Since Sophia will not start I select the first. Another yellow page giving more symptoms: 'starter won't operate'; yes it does: 'engine won't fire'; correct, so select that and yet another cornfield. I select the option that says 'spark not at spark plug HT lead' because it isn't, suddenly I'm in the river (blue for parts). This time I am offered 5 options all concerned with the ignition system. I can choose to examine the system as a whole or look at the distributor, contact breaker, HT leads or coil and wiring. I decide to go for 'HT leads' since there is no spark there. Now I enter the forest and I am asked to check if the leads are damp, perished, loose or disconnected, hang on...............No, they seem to be fine, so back to the river and this time I select distributor because that's the bit connected to the HT leads. Again' I am in the forest (sounds a bit like Dragontorc).

I am now offered a bewildering selection of options some, I can barely pronounce let alone understand, take 'rotor arm centrifugal rev-limiter defective' for example. I notice one option suggests that the 'distributor rotor arm is badly worn', it must be because there's nothing there! I ask the system what to do and the screen turns red, bearing the message 'replace with new' and 'you can handle this'. It just happens that I have a rotor arm in my pocket, what a bit of luck.

Now for the serious user there is a mode called 'extended commands'. This allows the use of more features. 'Mark' allows items on a list to be marked so that the user can keep track of items. Also if you have a a problem that has a number of symptoms one could mark the listed faults for each symptom, this would eventually leave you with a list of common faults. The 'OK' function allows the user to remove faults that have already been checked, thereby simplifying the presentation. Once a fault has been 'OK'-ed then it will not appear again in any list for any other symptom thus avoiding confusion. A trace facility allows the user to mark a fault that is suspected and then the program will trace back through the symptoms to help confirm the fault. Any fault diagnosis session can be saved to tape for use at a later date. Most of the input for the system simply entails the use of the cursor keys or simply answering yes or no.

My own example did little to demonstrate the depth of problems that are dealt with. Car Cure is better suited to complex problems such as one would find with the gearbox, clutch or brakes. These are the problems where mortals and idiots are left floundering.

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursor keys
Use of colour: informative
Graphics: none

There is no intention that Car Cure should replace the workshop manual, it cannot hope to present the detail required to actually carry out repairs. However it will prove valuable in the first stages of fault diagnosis, often the hardest part. Once the fault has been located a manual should be used in order to carry out the necessary work. The package works extremely well, a great deal of effort has gone into making it user friendly as well as functional. If I had to make a criticism it would be this; sooner or later the program is going to leave you with a lot of possible options to follow and no clear indication as to how they should be selected. For example if I know that the engine runs badly I am eventually presented with a parts menu that allows me to select between routine maintenance for the fuel system, carburettor, fuel pump, fuel lines and tank or fuel injection. It would have been a great help if some small indication could have been given to help me isolate the search to one of those options otherwise I will have to check for each fault under each part. Of course the fault can be isolated much more quickly if a fault has more than one symptom because complementary faults have fewer symptoms in common. On the whole I would say this was a very worthwhile package if you are one of those who can only manage to lift the bonnet and stare with awe into the engine. I shall recommend Car Cure to Lloyd, God knows he needs it!

Publisher: Simtron
Memory: 48K
Price: £9.95

Some software houses persist in believing that loading up illegible text on a flickery screen is preferable to turning the pages of a book.

Car Cure is one such absurd program. It attempts to do the job already done adequately by car maintainance manuals, but unlike those cannot be stored in the glove compartment nor consulted when you break down on the Honiton bypass. Neither does it have any detailed illustrations of the funny oily things located in bewildering abundance under the bonnet.

A manual can be accessed in seconds. Car Cure takes four minutes to load, during which time you are invited to solve a maze displayed on the loading screen.

Fault diagnosis is a matter of pinpointing symptom areas such as 'instruments and warning lights', and then narrowing that to a specific problem - for instance, 'ignition warning light won't go off correctly'. All that is done through menus over which you move little arrows.

Having found the best description of your problem, you then move to a further menu listing possible faults. If you're a mechanical novice like me, then you'll give up at this point. After all, if I knew what 'alternator regulator defective' meant then I'd have whipped out my spanner long ago. Assuming, however, that you hazard a guess, you will eventually be rewarded with the comforting screen display: 'competent home mechanics can handle this.' Exactly. I'll have to take it down the garage after all.

Competent home mechanics will have no use for this program. They already own libraries of service manuals and don't need to get oil all over their Spectrum keyboards. Incompetent home mechanics will be totally baffled. Software like this gives computers a bad name.

Simtron
£???

This is a database of 800 car faults (sounds like the car I drive). If you're a Sunday mechanic, then this could be a great help to you.

The program is designed to assist you in recognising the faults in your car, give you the symptoms and show the appropriate action to cure it. Speaking as an ex-mechanic (yet another job), I think this tape is well produced and would be a worthwhile addition to your toolkit.

The database holds 800 faults and 300 symptoms. The whole program is menu-driven and is very easy to use. The tape is written to cover any vehicle with a 'infernal' combustion engine and doesn't specify particular makes or models (that would take a mainframe).

USER-DEFINED POSSIBILITIES

John Gilbert says: Why not stop playing games and do something useful instead?

The definition of a utility in computer parlance has widened in the past year. In the early days of the industry it meant a program which aided the machine code programmer to accomplish a task. Now it can have five meanings.

The first category takes in the graphics and sound toolkits. Those expand the Basic command set, adding instructions which create shapes, fill them in, and save pictures to tape or microdrive. The sound generators sometimes included within those packages can make music or even create a voice for your computer.

Machine code utilities include assemblers, disassemblers and monitors, all of which are designed to help you write your own machine code routines. If you are not up to that sort of exercise you may like to acquire a new operating system or high level language such as Pascal, Forth or C.

General utilities which will teach you the highway code, help you with car maintenance or show you how to diet efficiently are also available.

Graphics packages have the most visible effect on a Spectrum or QL, and they have proved popular this year even with people who would not normally program a computer. Light Magic, from New Generation, started the interest in all things graphical during 1985. It carried on where Melbourne Draw, from Melbourne House, and Paintbox, from Print 'n' Plotter, left off.

The program is totally menu driven and can be operated either under keyboard or joystick control. There are five modes of display. The first is pen mode in which, you can draw on the screen using an electronic nib.

Circle and Fill mode will allow you to produce circles and arcs which can then be filled in with colour. Brush mode is similar to Pen mode but you can use 10 types of brush.

The block mode operates in parts, or blocks, of the screen. It allows you to rotate and mirror blocks on pictures, saving time if you need to draw an object which is symmetrical.

Finally, the Text mode enables you to write on the screen. User-defined graphics can also be produced as a UDG generator is included in the package.

If Light Magic does not impress you then The Artist, from Softechnics surely will. It is one of the most powerful packages on the market.

The Artist can be used to take one section of a picture and reproduce it on another part of the screen, where it can be enlarged or reduced. The package will also allow you to produce UDGs and a animator utility is included within the program. Not satisfied with that the author has also included a simple routine which will take a screen display and reduce the number of RAM bytes required to store it.

Art Studio, from OCP outperforms The Artist in almost every way. It has superior speed to the Softechnics package and the pull down menus are easy to use. It can be used with disc, tape or microdrive and contains a printer driver which handles most Spectrum compatible printers. It should be of use to professional artists and designers as well as to the home user.

A similar package came onto the market for the QL. GraphiQL marked the entry of quality software house Talent onto the QL scene. Not only can the package produce every conceivable type of line, circle, are and angle, but it can also be used to define textures, using form and colour. Those can then be used with Fill routines.

The program allows you to enlarge shapes on the screen. That facility enables you to ensure that Fill texture does not leak out of a shape which has a hole in its border.

QL Art, from Eidersoft, has the same sort of facilities as GraphiQL but does not have the same professional edge to it. Unlike the Talent package it is fully menu driven. One of the faults with GraphiQL is that you must rely on the instruction manual or special help option for information about user commands.

Illustrator, from Gilsoft, is the long awaited adventure graphics designer for the Spectrum. It is no ordinary package as it produces graphic screens which can be put into adventures designed by Gilsoft's adventure design program The Quill. Although the routine can only produce static screen pictures it brightens up the adventures written by its sister program and gives adventure programmers more scope for invention.

White Lightning, from Ocean, is one of the most exciting advances in graphics design packages for the Spectrum that I have seen in the last year. Its aim is to allow you to produce high standard arcade game graphics and, in order to do that, you must use its special Forth-type language. The package combines a sprite generator with a screen layout designer. It is great fun to use and its limitations are only in the mind of the beholder.

A similar package has been produced for the QL, although Super Sprite Generator, from Digital Integration, will produce and animate only sprites and not full screen game backdrops.

The program adds extensions to SuperBasic and is run in two parts. The first is the generator and the second the animation routine. It is an excellent package which has been used by professional programmers to produce arcade games. Night Nurse from Shadow Games is one example of its use.

Only one good example of a sound toolkit came onto the market last year. Varitalk produces speech through the Spectrum Beep unit. Its performance can be enhanced using a loudspeaker or by putting the sound through a tape recorded output channel.

A large number of phonetic sounds are included in the package. Those can be accessed by using a code made up of the first letter of the type of sound required and the number of that sound from a list which has been provided on the cassette inlay. There are no parameters within the program to allow you to set emotion or inflection into the speech. You cannot even get the package to ask a question properly.

Machine code utilities may only appeal to assembly language programmers but that audience has grown larger during the past year, especially within the ranks of those who own a QL.

No less than four QL assemblers arrived on the market during 1985. The most powerful was from Metacomco. The QL Assembler Development Kit comprises a full screen editor, together with a three-pass compiler.

The editor can input ASCII code files and so can be used with code Basic programs and even word processor files. Once your assembly code listing has been entered you must save it to microdrive, or disc, and then load it into the assembler program. The package takes approximately two minutes - and three code overlays - to convert the code file into a machine code format.

Also included with the assembler is a library of QDOS calls. Those can be named within you programs. A linker was put into the second version of the assembler package at which time Metacomco dropped the price.

Computer One was also quick to produce an assembler for the QL. The difference between it and the Metacomco program is that it can be loaded into the machine complete with the source editor. You can, therefore, write your assembly program and then convert it to machine code without having to load any overlays from microdrive.

The Sinclair Research assembler is similar to that from Metacomco, but it is not as powerful. Incidentally, the full screen editor in the package was written for Metacomco. GST, the company which wrote the Sinclair assembler, just does not seem to have the knack of producing editors.

Adder Publishing was not as quick to produce an assembler package as Metacomco and Computer One but it did release one after the launch of its classic QL Advanced User Guide.

The program was similar in structure to the other products on the market but adheres closely to the notation in the User Guide Book.

It was some time before anyone realised that what the QL market was missing was a debugging tool such as a monitor or disassembler. That was soon put right, however, as four companies put monitors onto the market almost simultaneously.

The first program came from Digita1 Integration. QL Super Monitor is an economical package, put out in a cassette format box. It performs its task well and allows to view and alter code in a hexadecimal format.

Computer One was again quick on the scene with a monitor which followed, and was compatible with, its assembler package.

Not to be outdone Hi-Soft also decided that it should bring out a token QL product and opted for Andrew Pennel's QL MON. Unlike the Computer One program it is not automatically invoked when the machine is powered-up. Pennel's monitor is a QDOS job and can be called simply by typing a new SuperBasic command, MON. As it is easy to break out of the package back into SuperBasic the monitor can reside in RAM, be called at any time, and not disrupt any of the other tasks being performed by the QL.

The same technique is used in Tony Tebby's QL Monitor which is produced by Sinclair Research. The package has all the usual debugging facilities, a one line disassembler, and routines which displays the values of the registers or a block of memory in hexadecimal.

Another good feature of the package is that you can set it to run on any channel or in any window. That means that you could set up several versions of the program within the machine, each of which work on different sections of code.

You may prefer, however, not to get tangled up in the web of machine code. That does not mean, however, that you have to stick to SuperBasic, or to buying packages off the shelf. You can still experiment with QDOS and machine code by buying one of the toolkits or SuperBasic extension packages which have just become available.

The most famous toolkit, of course, was written by Tony Tebby and can be obtained for the QL from Sinclair Research. It provides a whole spectrum of new SuperBasic commands and run-alone programs which show the power of the QL multi-tasking operating system.

The main body of QL Toolkit comprises SuperBasic extensions which control jobs, allocate or clear memory, and display the status of the system.

A series of separate programs, some in SuperBasic, some machine code, are also included in the package. They provide a user-defined graphics generator, an exceptionally fast back-up utility, and a multi-tasked digital clock which can be run while the package is in operation.

One task which the toolkit will not do is to check microdrives for errors or repair files which have become corrupt. Those sort of occurrences may be well known to you. They are unfortunate but fairly regular and if you do not have a back-up copy of a file you will usually be in trouble.

The Cartridge Doctor, from Talent, does away with many of the problems posed by the microdrives. It checks every sector on a cartridge to see it any errors have occurred and informs you if files have been corrupted.

Once you know about an error you can set up the Cartridge Doctor to deal with it. The most usual way is to read the file in and display it in ASCII format. A cursor is then provided by the program and you can rewrite any parts of the file which have been damaged. You can even repair the headers of files if necessary.

Machine code is a low level language because you cannot understand it but the computer finds it easy to understand. A high level language, such as Basic, is easy to understand from your point of view - as a user - but needs some translation before the computer can understand it. There are several types of high level language for both the Spectrum and QL.

Although Sinclair Basic, for the Spectrum, is highly respected it does have some faults and one software house, Betasoft has brought out a new version of structured Basic. Many of the additions provided by Beta Basic can also be found on machines such as the BBC Microcomputer, Amstrad and QL. They include WHEN and WHILE loops, a real time clock, new graphics commands and instructions to make Interface 1 and microdrives easier to use.

The Betasoft version of Basic is one of the best on the market for any machine. It has undergone several transformations during its relatively short three-year life span.

Pascal is another popular language and can often be found in schools. Indeed it is on the curriculum of some O and A level examination boards.

The first company onto the market with a full version of the language was Hi-Soft. Although it does not have an ISO standard of certification, which most full versions of the language have, it does run many times faster than Sinclair Basic and includes Logo turtle graphics.

The big Pascal launch of the year, however, was for the QL, from Metacomco. The QL Pascal Development Kit did receive ISO standard certification - an award which is to Pascal what a BSA certificate is to car safety seats.

The Metacomco package provides a full version of the language with extensions for QL graphics and sound. The source code is taken from a full screen editor and compiled into true 68000 code.

It was the first QL product to receive a Sinclair User Classic and, indeed, it was the first utility to receive that award for software excellence.

Computer One brought out a version of Pascal which while not up to the standard of the compiler from Metacomco comes a very close second. The first version of the package compiles the source into P-code which, although faster than SuperBasic, requires the Pascal operating system to be in memory. Computer One later amended the program so that code could either be translated into P-code or compiled to form a job which would run without the operating system being present.

The compiler is more user friendly than the Metacomco package - all sections of the screen editor and compiler can be accessed through a menu based program - but the QL Pascal Development Kit wins hands down in the features race.

Metacomco and Computer One both brought out versions of the popular artificial intelligence list processing language LISP. The Computer One program is less expensive than the one from Metacomco. Both versions can deal with the QL graphics commands and both are interpreted.

The medium level language C also proved popular with QL software houses during 1985. The first company to bring out a version was GST, which is famous for the 68K/OS alternative QL operating system. Unfortunately the product is a version of public domain RATC, a scaled down version of the original with additions to allow the use of QL graphics and QDOS traps. It is, of course, a compiler but the source must first be typed into a screen editor, run through a compiler which produces assembly language source, and put through an assembler to produce 68008 code. It is an unnecessarily complex operation and the code could be compiled in one go if GST had produced a machine code compiler.

GST also ranks among the companies which brought out QL operating systems in 1985. Its 68K/OS was originally intended to be the QL operating system. The package consists of as ROM board, slotted into the expansion slot at the side of the QL, and several microdrive cartridges.

As operating systems are usually judged on the amount of software available for them 68K/OS is a dismal failure. So far GST has only produced an assembler and word processor for its baby. One wonders what would have happened if Sir Clive had decided to use the GST operating system.

The C/PM-68K operating system from disc drive manufacturer Quest Automation did little better than the GST product. A few business packages are available for it but, despite the fact that it uses discs or microdrives, few software houses have taken up the challenge to produce anything of note for it.

A large variety of DIY utilities came onto the market in 1985. They teach everything from garden design to touch typing and computer athletics.

Sinclair Research wins our first Most Useless Utility Award for 1985 with QL Gardener. While it is obvious to see the benefits of a plant dictionary and garden design package for those who like gardening, and own a QL, with the dearth of QL software the company must be green behind the ears to bring out such a product. Where are all the fantastic business and educational programs which will show off the true power of the 16-bit - or is it 32-bit - machine?

Our second MUU of 1985 award goes to Car Cure, a program which aims to diagnose the problems which you may encounter with your car. All you have to do is type in the symptoms of your vehicle's illness and the program will come up with an answer to your problems - maybe. Most of the time it just recommends that you contact a qualified mechanic immediately.

Another car-orientated program which is marginally more useful than Car Cure is Highway Code. Through a series of multi-choice questions it will teach you about the signs and situations which you may encounter on the road. The graphics are simple, but effective, and the program has been checked by a qualified driving instructor.

If you want to stay fit then Microfitness from VO2 is for you. It will take you through a series of carefully graded exercises culminating in - I hope for your sake - physical fitness. When it was reviewed early in 1985 our own Clare Edgeley found out how unfit she was!

Finally, touch typing programs for beginners came from QL software houses during the past year. Two were produced, one from Computer One and the other four months later, from Sinclair Research. Touch 'n' Go from Sinclair Research provides more in the way of graded exercises and a more complex results table.

The utility market is the area in which the QL has done best. There are many languages available for it and a host of machine code utilities which allow the use of the power of the 68008 processor and QDOS.

It is a pity that the same cannot be said of the Spectrum. Very few utilities were produced for the machine and most software houses have moved to other machines. That is unfortunate as the Spectrum still has a lot of power within it which lies untapped because people like you cannot get at it.