The WROCC Vol 41 Issue 6 & Wakefield Back Catalogue 13 Out Now

The September 2023 issue of The WROCC – the newsletter of the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club – is on its way out to members across the UK and beyond this week.

In this issue, we report on our August meeting, when Andy Marks from RISCOSbits demonstrated a number of products in the RISC OS FAST range. Chris Hall continues his ‘hatstand’ project for the Compute Module 4 by using RiscPCB to design a dedicated interface board, and we also look at accessing files stored in X-Files on a RISC OS 5 system. Consideration is given to the question of whether the A3000 could have been the games machine of the early 1990s, and we have an update on progress towards the switch-off of analogue phone lines in the UK.

See https://www.wrocc.org.uk/newsletter for more details of recent issues, and to download samples of older issues.

Able to trace its roots directly back to the first Wakefield Club newsletter in April 1983, these days The WROCC is produced in an A5 booklet layout and copies are delivered free to WROCC members in PDF format. Membership of the Club costs £7.50 per year… and despite our name, there are no geographical restrictions.

Updated for 2023: The Wakefield Back Catalogue Issue 13

Relaunched following the completion of Volume 40 of The WROCC in April 2023, the thirteenth edition of The Wakefield Back Catalogue contains PDF copies of the Club’s monthly newsletters going from The WROCC and Awake right back to the very first “hints & tips” sheet handed out at the April 1983 meeting.

The new compilation contains around 440 issues and is available as a download in these more ‘virtual’ times. It costs £7.50 for non-members, whilst members can buy it for the discounted price of £5.00. See https://www.wrocc.org.uk/newsletter for more details.

the A5000 could have been the games machine of the early 1990s,

Knock off a zero and have the A stand for Amiga, and yeah…
Back then, loads of the things around. And some pretty impressive trickery as well. A friend had a box that plugged into the side that if you pressed a button the system would freeze so you could fiddle around with memory. Got five lives left? Just scan memory for that value. It would do some fancy work to indicate which were likely data (and not parts of instructions), and it would remember the list. Then back to the game, lose a life, it’ll highlight if any of the values are now four. Usually only the one, so you can set it to some bigger number and go back to gaming with loads of lives.

… the A5000 …

…the one bit of The WROCC’s production process which isn’t extensively proof-read is the announcement text…

Knock off a zero and have the A stand for Amiga, and yeah…

Unfortunately, I’m afraid we’re actually asking the question about the A3000, so the maths doesn’t work so well!

The A500 might feature in the analysis, however. But you’ll have to get a copy of the newsletter to find out if our contributor agrees with your analysis or not, I’m afraid…

:-)

PS. I’ve gone back and corrected the original announcement now.