When I purchased my Rombox and fitted it with Sideways RAM, I thought it would be useful to set up a ROM image which could be loaded into SWRAM to enable the printer to be set up simply by using a series of three letter * commands.

With the help of the Advanced User Guide and some ROM images I had already got, I have made up this ROM image and have found it very useful. It is fairly easy to vary the commands or add others if necessary though I have included all the types of printing and other commands to make it fairly comprehensive. Particularly useful are the column printing commands for printing listings. One problem with this is that you cannot change the column until the printer is cleared so that you need to know how many lines you can fit into each column and print out each separately.

When I had my Rombox problems, I could not use this and also I realised that not all members have SWRAM. I then thought of the possibility of writing the program as a normal m/code program.

I have included the source programs (suffixed src) so that you may alter them if you wish. I will help anyone to do this if necessary.

Both the original ROM version and the m/code version give the same range of commands but need to be used in a slightly different way so I shall describe the operation separately.

ROM Version

After loading this into SWRAM in the usual way, the commands available can be listed by using the command *HELP PCODES. This is a little larger than the screen and so will need to be scrolled by pressing SHIFT.

The commands are simply entered in the usual way and any number can be entered to set up the printer as you wish. If the ROM is set up, it is also possible to use the codes in a BASIC program.

M/Code Version

This is written to &5800 so that it is out of the way of the most used part of the memory.

On running the program by giving the command *PCS, the codes will be displayed. Then, after pressing SPACE, the note on column printing is shown and the cue given for entering the codes.

These are the same as for the ROM version but I have arranged that the commands will be accepted with or without the *. After entering the codes, it is necessary to break out of the program. This can be done simply by pressing RETURN without entering a code. You can also press ESCAPE or BREAK. If you enter a wrong code, the program will stop with the message "Bad command".

Richard Dimond, EUG #25

Richard Dimond