You'd be forgiven for thinking that there are not enough unimplemented utilities for the Beeb to fill yet another ROM. However, Software Services don't agree. Floppywise is a collection of some 14 utilities, mostly concerned with discs, and is claimed to work with any Acorn compatible DFS.

Some of the utilities have a familiar sound - FORMAT and VERIFY - and others are variations on a well-known theme - MCOPY will copy more than one file from disc to disc and RCOPY will rename and copy a file all in one operation.

There are some novel ideas too. CONVERT will change a 40 track disc to 80 tracks, retaining all the data. AUTOSAVE will automatically save your program every four minutes as a backup. ASCII will display the codes for all the characters available on the Beeb. Several commands are involved with protecting. You can use Floppywise to create protected discs and to backup commercial protected software.

Floppywise is fully tube compatible and also adopts Beebug's letter prefix option to avoid *command conflict.

Floppywise is useful but not indispensable. At nearly £30 it is also pretty expensive. However, if you feel you need this sort of ROM, Software Services are offering it for £26.95 (plus £1 p&p) to Beebug members.