Pssst! Wanna a ROM for Christmas? Geoff Bains has been trying out the latest utility ROMs for Beeb and Master.

BROM+ is a 16K ROM packed with over 35 commands. All the commands can be prefixed with a Z, in accordance with Beebug's system, to avoid conflict with commands in other ROMs. The commands are in three sections. The first covers Basic toolkit commands.

The expected 'Bad program' -cure, search and replace (FIND and CHANGE), line renumber, move, and copy are all there. Also included is a formatted lister that indents all lines, spaces keywords, and splits multi-statement lines.

BROM+ has both variable and cross reference listers to produce a listing of all real, integer, or string variables or array, procedure, or function names.

The most radical aspect of BROM+ is its Basic editor. This is a mode 7 editor with more than a passing resemblance to Wordwise. Program lines can be freely edited in either insert or overwrite mode. New lines can be created and complete lines deleted. An unusual but useful feature is the change case facility (Ctrl-S, just like Wordwise). The Basic editor is not as powerful as others around but it is fast and very easy to learn.

The second section of BROM+ is the disc utility section. This has the usual format and verify commands and a fairly standard disc sector editor. The editor uses mode 7 which means that only a small part of a sector can be displayed at a time. The data can be edited as hex numbers or ASCII characters, but there is no cursor in the ASCII section, so it can be unclear what you're editing.

A search routine for disc data is also provided, and this enters the sector editor when the string is found. Multiple file copy and delete commands offer a menu system for choosing which files are moved or removed.

An unusual feature is the two commands *DGET and *DPUT, to transfer chunks of data between memory and specified sectors of the disc. These can be particularly useful when rescuing 'lost' files, and the excellent BROM+ manual contains a whole section on rescuing files with the BROM+ commands.

BROM+ also has an automatic menu system similar to that published in Beebug (Vol. 4 Nos. 2 and 5). Only files in the '&' directory are listed, and information describing the program is stored separately in a special file and created with the *UPDATE command.

The final section of BROM+ is the general section. This has a function key lister, memory editor (similar to the disc sector editor) and a memory search command. ROM listing and enable/disable commands are also provided, as is a most useful *CASE command. This restricts input to upper, lower or mixed case, regardless of the Caps and Shift Lock keys.

There are many utility ROMs around. BROM+ offers little unavailable elsewhere, but if you require some or all of these features, then BROM+ is well thought out, well implemented and well worth it.