ROM Manager has been designed to help those who use Sideways ROM software on their Beeb, whether or not they have one of the many expansion boards available. For ROM development work, user RAM can be set up to act as if it were a ROM, thus saving the extra cost of sideways RAM. Also provided is a help text for the first few *FX commands.

The chip requires only five bytes of user memory (which appear to be unused by the OS) so no problems should arise.

On to the commands. *CHECKSUM generates a standard checksum, as used by the tape system. If you think a ROM may be faulty, this can be used to check the data.

DIRECT and VECTOR are equivalent commands which are used to send the given command to a certain ROM. This alleviates the problems associated with ROMs wihch may have the same command names. There are two names in case one clashes with itself!

*EXAMINE is next. This produces a colourful Mode 7 dump of the contents of the required ROM, displaying the bytes in hex and ASCII, plus full instructions for use.

*EXPLAINFX is a help text for the first 22 FX commands. Although it can prove very useful, it looks rather like a space-filler.

*FILE is provided to pass commands to the active filing system (not to tape). This is in case a sideways ROM intercepts the command that should go to the filing system for action.

*INCLUDE is the command to allow the use of normal user RAM as a sideways ROM emulator. *REMOVE stops this action; *RAM sends commands directly to it.

A memory editor, invoked by *MODIFY, is similar to *EXAMINE in format, displaying in hex and ASCII. *NAMES provides a list of the different ROM software you have available, along with its socket number, and whether it is enabled (*START/*STOP are used for enable/disable).

*STATUS will let you have information about a given ROM in more detail - where and what it is, its length, status, and which entries it has (language or service). *VALUES will tell you what may affect ROM Manager, as well as displaying the active filing system, and whether the RAM option is being used.

Finally, you can specify a default ROM, to which *DEFAULT will send commands.

All this may sound a little confusing at first, but a reading of the manual, which is good, will have you talking to ROM Manager like an old friend, which it may soon become. If you have a lot of ROMs (or a large sideways RAM unit) you will have to consider ROM Manager, because of the features it provides. Some of the contents are provided elsewhere but at £25.30, it is fairly good value.