The following are what I consider to be solutions to reader's questions:
PC can't read BBC/ADFS disks
Frank Jones highlighted this last time. Indeed, they can't. If you have certain disk controllers, you can use BEEBDOS to read them, but it is not 100% reliable. Some disk editors can read non-DOS disks, but these are hit and miss too.
If you've got a Master 128, or BBC with 1770 upgrade (or Archimedes or RISC PC) then why not show off to the PC world by writing in their format?
My Master can read and write ADFS, DFS and DOS disks (although the hardware will only support up to 720k media).
DOS support is afforded either by starting up the 512 board and using DR-DOS to save out to them, or using the DOSFS ROM image available from Dimitri at the Russian ARM User Group.
Both work well, and the use of the ROM image version from Russia has the advantage that you can save transparently to them just as you would with ADFS or DFS and no extra hardware is required.
If you bypass the disks altogether and use a serial link the PC can read BBC files no problem. I think the serial link issue has been done to death in past years so I won't repeat.
If you do require information on serial links and its driving software or indeed with anything else I've said - contact me if you want.
The End of the World
The year 2000 is upon us and, as Roy Warner pointed out, the BBC series can't handle dates > 1999 as the "19" is hard-coded into the OS. I'll tell you how to fix this next time...
AMX CLIPART <-> Sprite files
I have the layout of Sprite files (as used on the Archimedes and RISC PC or BBC with Acornsoft's GXR) available, but have no examples of AMX clipart to hand.
Hence John Crane, the guy who wanted a converter widget between the two, can you or anyone else supply me with some samples and I'll look into the software? If it's RISC OS and it's desktop that you intend to use the utility in, then I would recommend using WimpWorks (Windows, icons, menus, pointer) which bridges the gap between BASIC and RISC OS's User Interface.
See http://www.warwick.ac.ukcsube/ for details (the "" is a tilde)
My homepage on the internet has a BBC-related section with a bang up to date For Sale list on:
http://www.york.ac.ukrps102/bbc/bbc.htm
That's all one string and, as Mode 7 doesn't have a tilde, that's what "" is
1st December 1996
