If you feel that you are not getting the most out of your printer, or you can't cope with the multitude of printer codes, you might find one of the two ROMs reviewed by Geoff Bains quite useful.

The skill required to master the Escape codes used to get the most out of your dot-matrix printer is quite rightly held by many people to be on a par with quantum theory. These two ROMs go some way towards making life with your printer easier.

PrintROM is available in ROM or on disc ready for sideways RAM, and in ten different versions for different printers. Most of the printers beloved by Beeb owners are catered for - Taxan KP810, Epson LX/RX/FX/MX, Canon PW1080, Centronics GLP, Brother M1009, Panasonic KXP1080/1, Shinwa CP-80, Juki 5500, MP165 and Star SG-10. However, the newer 24-pin machines are particularly noticeable by their absence from this list.

PrintROM is essentially a memory aid. With a series of star commands of obvious and memorable names, the most commonly used (and forgotten) printer code sequences can be easily sent to your printer. Like all star commands, these can be issued either in immediate mode, from within Basic programs or from Wordwise Plus, Interword and some other word processing software - either from the menu or embedded in the text.

The common printing effects are covered. Some commands are followed with ON or OFF to select the effect, and others require numbers. The *CHARSET command used to select the international character set presents the user with a mode 7 menu of the nine possibilities selectable with the cursor keys. The *CMENU command presents a menu of all the other commands - handy for leaving any decision about a document's presentation until the last minute. However, this menu is somewhat ruined by not accepting lower case letters to select the effects. To have to switch to upper case (mentally or on the keyboard) in a menu which supposedly saves keypresses is just silly. In addition, a very useful *LPRINT command is provided, which prints the characters following it, and a graphics screen dump is provided for good measure (the Taxan dump is a good one but printer dumps are two a penny these days).

If you are totally baffled by your printer then PrintROM will help. It has the great advantage of being model-specific and so requires no setting up, and for the most part is pretty self-explanatory. However, a hefty £16 for what amounts to simple code substitution is not good value. For my part, I would prefer to invest a few pence in a list of codes to stick on the wall above the monitor.

Hyperdriver is an altogether different story. This is a cleverly thought out package that doesn't just substitute for your own mastery of your printer but augments it. It is of course much harder in itself to master but is ultimately worth the time taken. Hyperdriver is for Epson compatible printers. However, as the vast majority of printers around today are (at least) Epson compatible this shouldn't pose too many problems.

Like PrintROM, Hyperdriver is based on star commands which substitute for the hard-to-remember printer Escape codes. Many more printing effects are also controllable. There is little your printer can do which isn't covered by this ROM. The Hyperdriver commands are all two letter mnemonics. Although this makes the commands convenient to type, it doesn't help their memorability. True, they all follow a logical pattern - UL for underline, XU to cancel underline. IT for italics, XI to cancel italics - but the pattern is the author's and not your own. I would have prefered to see full commands which could be abbreviated. However, this is a minor gripe. This command set, like all others, is soon learnt.

Hyperdriver does not just stop at code substitution. For a start, the software is much more 'intelligent' than PrintROM. If something is dangerous or impossible it says so. The error messages are always clear and appropriate. This ROM has the unusual habit of requiring acknowledgement of all error checks. After each error message you must press Return to continue. This does have the advantage that you cannot miss the error. However, it just gets tedious after a while. It would be nice to be able to switch this feature off!

A more useful feature is that Hyperdriver commands can be strung together into 'macros'. This both saves on memory space and is very convenient. The macros can be saved to disc and loaded back in with simple commands. By using different sets of macro definitions, a single document, liberally embedded with macro calls, can easily be printed in any number of different ways just by loading up the required macro definitions first.

All this is fine for users of Wordwise Plus or Interword, but View and View Professional users cannot embed commands in their documents. For them, Hyperdriver includes a complete View printer driver. The commands are embedded between the View highlights, and the driver interprets them to give the correct control codes to the printer when the document is printed. Of course that removes the WYSIWYG nature of View. Wordwise Plus is not a WYSIWYG word processor to start with.

But Hyperdriver can even fix this for you. First the Beeb is switched to 'test print' mode. Now all attempts to print are redirected to the screen without the usual reams of wasted paper trying to get the layout right. Now switch on the 'screen effects' and the common printer effects such as enlarged text, italics, underlined, bold, superscript and subscript can all be produced on the screen - true WYSIWYG.

Of course, none of this is as convenient as using a word processor which provides true WYSIWYG in the first place but for View or Wordwise Plus users it's a boon.

Not only can Hyperdriver simulate the printer on the screen, but it can also print screen characters (including user defined ones) on the printer. 'Graphics print' produces a sort of continuous text printer dump of characters on paper. All the same printing effects are there but in a new font and at different sizes depending on the screen mode you are in. It's a nice touch and can be quite useful.

What is certainly useful for owners of older printers is the NLQ mode. This produces NLQ print on printers without an NLQ facility with three passes of the printhead over the paper. The result is not as fine nor as fast as some NLQ printers' output and is only available proportionally spaced. Nevertheless, it is a useful addition and quite adequate for most needs.

In many ways Hyperdriver and PrintROM are just two of kind with the higher price of Hyperdriver just serving as a deterrent. However, looking beneath the surface and considering the way the ROMs treat errors, the thought that's gone into the way Hyperdriver is used with word processors and a million other good design features of Hyperdriver, the far greater value of this ROM stands out.

Many Beeb users can live in peace with their printer without assistance from anyone. However, if you are one of those who feel there is more to a printer than wading through lists of Escape codes, Hyperdriver will prove an ingenious blessing.