Spend Time, Save Money!

B. J. Deemer

For those of us who spent their last dime to purchase their micro, a couple of hints for hand entry of printed listings. As my micro is a PET, the procedure is described as done on that unit. But it is compatible with any micro.

First find a blank Cassette, a c-30 size is what I use. Next dig out that 200 line listing that you want to put on tape. I will use "HAT IN THE RING" from VOL. I, ISSUE 6, to explain the hints. For those of you who use this listing, a small change to make that program more interesting will be at the end of the article.

First hint, of course, everyone knows that you are supposed to save material every 20-25 lines in case of some malfunction...Right? Next hint, follow the computer through the program, and do the listing as the computer would. This means, when you come to a GOTO, GOSUB, READ, or any other statement that will cause the computer to jump elsewhere in the program, go to that point and enter what is necessary for the computer to do that branch.

Now lets start on the listing. First, find the highest numbered statement in the listing, and if it is not an end statement, add a statement that will end your program. In this case 19030END. Get your micro all set with the tape positioned properly to SAVE and start your entry with the end statement, then do lines 9-120. That is to the first branch, GOSUB19000. Go to line 19000 and enter until you encounter a RETURN. THIS is a good place to SAVE. On the PET SAVE "1", rewind the tape and VERIFY "1". Now if you get OK you have a portion of the listing that can be RUN. So enter RUN and see what your computer does. If you get any errors correct them now, and then do another SAVE and verify. Use progressive numbers and make pencil notations on the listing. You can also get the graphics centered at this time. Now go to line 130, where the computer was returning to and enter it. Here you will find two READ statements. They require DATA statements; so find the Data and enter it them. In this case lines 7000-7210. Do the save routine again. Don't rewind your tape to the beginning, start it right where it stopped. Now you can run again and check the Data statements...note if you get a syntax error it is not in the data but in the READ or DIM statements.

Proceed through the listing, doing the SAVE, VERIFY, and RUN routine, correcting as you go. In this listing, I recommend this order: 150-285,: 4000-4060,: 290-360,: 365, 1000-1070,: 370, 2000-2050,: 375, 3000-3050,: 380, 4000-4060,: 385, 5000-5010,: 390, 6000-6750..... Now if you have made all your corrections as you went along you have a running program, with no more errors.

Now the last hint. Rewind your tape and set it to the beginning of the usable tape or end of the leader. Now do as many saves as it takes to fill one side of the tape, then rewind and do all of the verifys. Now you have a tape that doesn't need rewinding every time you want to load this program, just load from where it stopped, unless that was the last one. Now take the cassette out and look at the back edge, you will find a breakout tab near each corner, remove these and you will not accidentally erase your hard work. If you ever want to make a change you can put a small piece of tape over the hole and remove it afterwards.

For those of you who did enter "HAT IN THE RING": in lines 2050, 3050, 4060, and 5010—Delete the GOTO 150 and substitute this: PRINT "drhome": GOTO 320...... This change will allow a player to see the statistics, and then make a move, before his turn is over.

Now while I have put these on paper for your use I do not claim to be the originator of them, but do not recall seeing them in print recently, if ever, or if I just picked them up in conversations with other users. Happy computing!