The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 8

8 Thursday September 11 1986 Smarter than Spectrum Atari hogged the limelight at a major exhibition last week with the launch of two new versions off the ST. And there was a supporting cast off 40 frying to get in on the act. Jack Schof ield reports Tift vmv fflfo stem torn chip piggy-backs into the board on top of the cpu. It produces a dramatic improvement in moving graphics images, speeding them up by at least a factor of six. The Blitter upgrade will nnt-t CRIi whifh is Atari's world at Olympia's Personal Computer World Show PAL encoding and genlock options are available.

Computer Concepts' Fast Basic will appeal both to schools and upgrading Acorn BBC owners, since it is obviously BBC-influenced. It has a built-in 68000 assembler and comes on a cartridge, which means it leaves almost all your RAM from 512K to 4Mbytes free for programs. (No more struggling in 7.5K!) As might be imagined, the GEM-orientat-ed, windowing 128K FastBasic represents a considerable advance on the BBC's excellent, but now somewhat outdated, 16K Basic. The other advantage of FastBasic is that it is very, very fast It runs the eight KilobaudPCW Basic benchmarks in an average of 1.9 seconds, compared with 3.4 for an Apricot Xen-i, 6.8 for an IBM PCAT, 16.8 for an IBM PC, 40 for a Commodore 64 or 55 for a Sinclair Spectrum. It costs 89.90 including VAT and postage.

The ST's built-in MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) ports have already encouraged lots of music software, but according to Sound on Sound magazine the Pro- nies would run on a box. Naturally the VME-Atari doesn't use the standard operating system (TOS) but the VME-dos version 10.2 multi-user os. The advantage is that VME offers about 1,500 professional business programs including all the usual accounting and office systems plus packages for solicitors, estate agents, insurance brokers. According to managing director, Mr R. D.

Marcon, the software started life running on PDP-ll23's and larger DEC minicomputers, moved to Alpha Micros running under AMOS in 1977, ana reached the Motorola 68000 chip at the end of 1982. Moving it from AMOSL to the Atari was pretty simple, and of course, provides a dramatic cost saving. You can't buy dos (pronounced "dee or the software, but VME leases systems for 30 per week, including software support and hardware maintenance. There are 12 UK and 40 US dealers. The Atari ST version is limited to three users, but can be expanded to a 320-user network.

Now the Atari ST can run a whole mass of software reasonable for seven chips, including the new operating system ROMs which are also required. A downgrade box with an Intel 8088 chip and 512K of memory was also shown. This enables standard IBM PC software to be run where superior ST programs are not already available. A price of about $300 was mentioned, with delivery before Christmas. K-MAX, the Inmos Trans- Suter add-on from Tim oore's Kuma Computing, provides one T414 32-bit Transputer with 256K of RAM which connects directly to any ST via the ROM port The box includes space for a second T414 with associated RAM, and further boards could be added to build up an enormously powerful parallel-processing super com- Jtuter.

Programming is in nmos mnemonics via the K-XPA assembler with fullscreen editor, both written in 68000 assembler, so alas you don't get the Transputer's high-level language, OCCAM. But the K-MAX kit does deliver 7.5 MIPS (millions of instructions per second) of processing power for only 1,450 plus VAT, which is a fraction of the price of the Transputer development board for an IBM PC. Accord' ing to Pedder Associates, the mainframe industry is paying an average of 204,000 per MIP, so an ST owner could claim to. have 1.5 million-worth for his 2,000 investment At 200 per MIP, the better-off home user could afford a 20 MIPS system. MacCartridge also tits into any ST via the ROM slot, and in this case it allows the ST to run Apple Macintosh software.

It's very odd to see an ST boot-up a disc and give the message "Welcome to the Apple Macintosh." The major drawback with the Ultra 68K Macintosh-emu- BBC Basic commands. Even the screen editor works in the same way as the BBC one, and it copes with tokenised code as well ASCII programs. The speed is about the same as a standard 2MHz BBC though character printing of BBC-type fonts is much slower. Of course most of the hardware calls don't work, since the Atari ST hardware is not the same as the Acorn hardware. However, the Mode 7 graphics and some of the serial chip facilities are emulated, as are all the OSWORD calls documented in the Advanced User Guide.

There are some extra ones too like VDU 19 provides access to the ST's full 512 colours, while 'DISABLE enables auto-boot software to be completely protected from small children. BBAS wili be supplied with software for the BBC to enable programs to be transferred via a serial cable from 5.25in discs to the ST's 3.5in floppies a one-time operation. This must make it appealing to schools, as the ST is much cheaper than Acorn's micros while also including GEM, a mouse and Digital Research's You also get a sophisticated 68000 system with languages such as Pascal, Modula-2, BCPL, Lisp, Cobol, Fortran, MicroAPL, Forth and Pilot available, among other things. Schools may also be interested in the ST-Pluto unit from Tregarthen System Services, which links the ST cartridge port to the IO Research range of graphics controllers. Frame grabbing, WHILE the Amstrad PC1512 stole the pre-launch publicity, the largest (1000 square metres) and most interesting stand at last week's Personal World Computer show was devoted to the Atari ST micro.

It wasn't a stand so much as a "village" with representatives from 40 companies a concept not seen since the Sinclair Spectrum was the dominant home micro. New 2-megabyte and 4-megabyte versions of the ST were the most obvious new products. Others included a cheap "Blitter" enhancement, an Inmos Transputer add-on, the MacCartridge, a BBC-type software emulator, a super-fast Basic, two professional music systems, and a multi-terminal minicomputer type set up built around the 399 512K ST Laser printers, video digitisers and masses of new software were also on show. Atari's own major launches were two additional versions of the ST, the 2080STF And 4160STF, with the 68000 processor directly addressing two and four megabytes of memory respectively. Each also includes a high-resolution monochrome monitor, 720K 3.5in floppy disc, mouse and software just like the 1040STF.

Ex-VAT prices are 1,149 for 2-Mbytes and 1,459 for 4-Mbytes. Colour systems cost 200 more. For comparison, the IBM PC addresses only 64K of memory directly. It is possible to add a 4-Mbyte expansion card to a 4,000 IBM PC AT, but at an extra cost of 1,049 (Qubie) or 2,306 (Inter Quadram), and neither of these works with the IBM PC or PCXT Atari also responded to the superior graphics of the Commodore Amiga. The Amiga has a special graphics chip called a Blitter; the Atari ST hasn't.

However, Atari demonstrated a Blitter upgrade which can be fitted to any ST micro, since the cus- Take One FOR some reason, computer experts like linking their science with cookery. Abortive attempts to get families to store recipes on disc were followed by other inspired links between the computer and culinary worlds. On the technical side there was computer expert Brian Reed's attempt to create a fourmet robot to prepare ulia Child's recipe for Beef Wellington (he gave up after 60 pages of programming). On the more philosophical side there is the ubiquitous recipe-algorithm metaphor which appears in nearly every work of introductory computer literature. lation cartridge from Robtek is that it will run real Apple software for the very good reason that it must contain two real Macintosh ROM chips.

You have to acquire these yourself, eg as a spare part, to fill two empty sockets inside the 150 cartridge. Also, the ST cannot read the non-standard variable-speed Macintosh format 3.5in disc, so software has to be copied from a real Mac into the Atari disc, though putting a board in a Cumana drive would enable it to cope with both systems (Cumana already supplies a dual 3.55.25in disc system for the ST). However, there are some advantages for those who persevere. First, the Atari is claimed to run Mac software much faster than Apple's own micro. Second, you can use a screen that's as big as you can afford, instead of the small one in the Mac.

Third, an Atari ST is far cheaper than a real Macintosh. Fourth, the Atari ST is data-compatible with the IBM PC. Bad news for Acorn is Atari's BBAS BBC-type software environment emulator, which enables the ST to run a significant number of programs written for the BBC -micro. Booting up the 89 BBAS (pronounced "Beeb disc puts you in an environment which is hard to distinguish from a real BBC micro, except you have no 6502 assembler (yet) and have 62K free to Basic. Again it is very strange to be able to type Mode 3 or VDU or star commands and have these executed on an alien micro.

BBAS is claimed to be 100 per cent compatible with artistic and social informa tion yet to be investigated thoroughly. "There is a lot to be learned from this field," she continues. "Court cuisine says as much, if not more, about court life than painting and music. Also the passing down of recipes from mother to daughter, or master to disciple, and the various dietary laws of different cultures represent untapped details of social history." Unlike literary or artistic computer analysis, which requires some sort of subjective criteria, standard culinary information, in the form of the recipe, makes an ideal data file. Recipes usually THE new Amstrad version of the Spectrum 128K micro, the Plus Two, is a great improvement on the old model.

It has a built-in cassette recorder, a roper keyboard that could used for typing, and two joystick ports all of which might be blindingly obvious features, but represent radical new departures for Sinclair micros. The Plus Two looks smarter than the old model, and feels more robust As the circuit board is basically the same, the machine should be no less Spectrum-compatible than the old 128 version. At 150 the price is also competitive with the Atari 130XE and Amstrad CPC-464. In fact, it might give the 64K CPC-464 a very hard time, so presumably Amstrad will concentrate on the more serious CPC-6128 with its built-in disc drive. It is interesting to speculate that had Sinclair Research only corrected the appalling faults of the old Spectrum, as Amstrad has done, then the original CPC-464 might not have got off the ground.

A defeated Amstrad would then not have been likely to produce the PCW word processor and its new IBM-beater, the PC-1512. life would have been different Certainly the old Sinclair company would not have been picked up for a mere 5 million by Alan Sugar, whose personal share of Amstrad is now worth around 400 millions. Intel flood LAST week the flood of micros based on the Intel 80386 began. First off the block were Rair, in the UK, and Corvus, in the US. This week's model is a new Compaq.

Still one stop behind is IBM. Last week the company finally installed an Intel 80286 processor as used in its very expensive AT model in its standard PC, which is now the PCXT Previously most IBM PC users have had to make do with the Intel 8088, which has its performance slugged by its 8-bit data bus. Gold booms WHILE PRESTEL struggles to improve, the Telecom Gold electronic mail service continues to boom. Latest figure for the number of UK users is 53,000 which leaves the competing email services looking very sick indeed out of Dialcom's 200,000 spread across 17 countries from Mexico to Singapore to Japan. Latest additions to Gold include three new databases and three significant user groups.

The new databases include Infocheck and JordanWatch, which provide credit checking and company data. The existing World Reporter service has been expanded to include the Magic database of marketing publications. The new user groups are Network for Law, EX and World of Lotus. Network for Law is for lawyers, solicitors and other legal types; it includes a Law Society noticeboard. BEX is the Business Expansion and Exchange group of over 30 professional firms.

Trialists include Arthur Andersen and accountancy group Neville Russell. World of Lotus provides a hotline help service, database and on-line user group for users of Lotus 1-2-3 and allied business micro programs. For newcomers the second cheapest way into Telecom Gold is still via the Microlink group run by Database Publications, or via the Times Network Systems for educational users. Among its many extra services. Microlink now includes downloadable satellite weather pictures for owners of IBM, BBC and 8-bit Atari micros, as well as more conventional Telex and Telemessage services, rail and theatre bookings, Interflora etc etc.

(For the cheapest way in you have to be a member of the Labour party). Rubbished EASTENDERS has a com- luter game on the way trom ffaneon haflnro Phrintmnfi Rut haini haopH nn a TV serien does not guarantee payability, as Computer Trade Weekly's anonymous games reviewer knows well. He or she has just taken the most unusual step of rating Ocean's Knight Rider zero for value: "Avoid it like the plague it's rubbish." Phrases like "badly presented," "utterly tedious1' and "an absolute waste of time" suggest extra care is required If thinking of buying Knight Rider. They come from someone who reckons 3D Starstrike 2 is challenging, addictive and "very pretty" too. Sun spot AFTER the solar-powered calculator comes the solar powered computer.

The Earthlife Foundation recently adopted the solar approach witn an IBM-corn- fiatible Osborne Encore ransportable used for gathering data in the tropical rain forests of Papua New Guinea. The 9-volt 12-watt 80 solar panel came from Chronar, which has a factory in Bridgend, South Wales. database and Stuff it Wjth reCipeS Jon Haber investigates culinary 24 "blows away just about anyining eise on ioe marseu This 24-track sequencer program from Steinberg Research in Germany is similar to the same com- Sany's Pro-16 for the Commo-ore 64, but much more powerful. Steinberg also markets the Pro-Creator voice synthesiser (for musical voices); both are available from the Oxford Synthesiser Company. A rival from Hybrid Arts offers 16-bit sam will give culinary historians a tool for comparing source material as a means for fol lowing up theories." The database is being written in dBase III on Wheaton's IBM PC.

Data will be stored on the high-capacity Iomega Bernouli box cartridge system described recently in Computer Guardian. Portions of the program can be downloaded on to floppy discs and sent out to people researching a particular field. "To start with, the database will be an analytical index of western European recipes for the period between the Middle Ages and the end of the 18th century There have been a few cookbook programs, notably Microcookbook from Virtual Combinations of Massachusetts. However, very little computer cookery has had anything more than novelty value. The most serious marriage of machine and cuisine comes not from the computer world, but from the cooks themselves; or more exactly the "culinary historians" who are working on a new database for computer assisted study of the history of cuisine.

"Culinary historians study cooking as an art form," says American culinary historian Anita Klaid. "It is a source of consist of lists of ingredients and sets of instructions both of which share a close resemblance to computer programming. The only impediments to the creation of this research tool are the usual difficulties of putting together a database from scratch. Barbra Wheaton of Concord, Massachusetts, has begun work on this project "Everyone in the field has had the frustrating experience of spending hours poring over medieval and modern cookbooks," says Wheaton. "A properly designed database will not only solve these indexing problems but pling and 60-track operation.

New software at the show included three Sidekick-type RAM-resident programs Cornerman from Microdeal, Back Pack from Computer Concepts and ST Macro Manager from Robtek. Microdeal and Kyle launched low-cost payroll programs, while Cashlink added Hotelier to ST Accounts. Timeworks showed Word Writer, Data Manager and Swiftcalc from the US. Mirrorsoft launched two amazing graphics programs, Art Director and Film Director, both written by Andromeda in Hungary. Atari launched a 99 dBase III clone called dBMAN (there's already a Lotus 1-2-3 clone VIP Professional), Ter-minalST (70) to emulate Dec VT100 and Tektronix 4010 graphics terminals, and FastCom, a 49 version of the Apple MacintoshIBM comms program, Vicom.

For the more adult games player, "Wild Bill" Stealey, president of Microprose, enthusiastically demonstrated a complex submarine-war simulator, Silent Service. Rain-bird also showed a superb game, Starglider, though Anco pulled a bigger crowd with a high-resolution Strip Poker aimed at the less adult However the most amusing display at the show for computer buffs, at any rate was put on by the VME Trade Organisation. They had the Atari Mini Computer an ordinary 399 520K ST running a printer, communications, a 20Mbyte hard disc and three standard Wyse terminals. In other words, this was a standard multi-user system, which most compa with the idea of expanding it later, ootn geographically and in time," says Wheaton. Each entry will have to be carefully constructed to include original and standardised recipe name, author, ingredient list and instructions as well as nationality of origin and social history classification so that the computer can carry out comparisons with other entries answering questions on a variety of subjects.

"It will be open ended so that people doing research on other books can send us their listings to be uploaded from floppy discs into our database. where the sequence 142857 keeps repeating ad infinitum. The amazing thing about this is what happens when you multiply by any of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to obtain the decimal expansions of Vi, Vi, Vi, Vi, Vi, respectively. In each case, the result is exactly the same pattern of digits shifted along one or more places. For example Vr 0.42857 142857 142857.

Seven is the first number with this property. The next is 17, where you get an infinite repeating pattern of 16 digits which simply shifts along when you multiply by any of the numbers from to 16. Other examples are 11), 23, 29, and 47. There are many more such numbers and it is not hard to write a computer program to find them, though it has not been proved that there are infinitely many such. All you need to do is write a routine to perform long division of any whole number into 1 (There are various tricks to help the search, all described in my book Micro-Maths published by Hacmillan in 1084).

A number of readers sent in solutions to my problem of four weeks ago to find the only ten digit number whose first digits tells the total number of zeros in the number, whose second digit gives the number of ones, and so on up to the tenth digit which gives the number of nines. The answer is 6,210,001,000. There is a fairly easy way to discover this number. (Dave Healey of Faringdon in Oxfordshire, writes that his nine-year-old son used the method successfully. Keith Devlin thinks off a number and finds a pattern Come in number seven Cont0iPer including its own native TOS or GEMDOS.

CPM 2.2 (software emulation, free), IBM- compauoie ms uus (witn an add-on processor), Macintosh (with an add-on cartridge), and the three multi-user multi-tasking business operating systems BOS, Microware OS9 and VME-d os. (Atari has no comment on reports that they already have UNIX running in Germany). computing 'Once our uroiect is com- glete, research which would ave meant years of scrutinising source material can be completed in a few hours using the computer. Major questions in our field such as 'What type of cooking survived French or the authenticity of certain famous works will not be nearly as daunting a task." So while computer experts continue to struggle to put a chefs hat on the PC, chefs will be using the computer for what it is best at, the storage and manipulation of data, leaving the preparation of Beef Wellington to Julia Child's more capable hand. Start with any good "guess" at the answer for example, the number 9,000,000,000.

This misses the required property only because there is one nine in the number and yet the last digit is zero, not a one. Starting with this number, go through it digit by digit, changing each digit to its This gives you the number 9,000,000,001. Now do the same with that number, to get 8,100,000,010. Then again, to get 7,210,000,100. The next step gives the answer.

Try this for yourself with other starting values, tor instance A related problem is to see if you can find any numbers with fewer than ten digits with similar properties, such as nine digit number using the digits from 0 to 8, and so on. All these problems lend themselves to computer investigation. (For instance, Dave Healey mentioned above who tells me that he is not a mathematician programmed his Amstrad to see now many steps it took to get the answer to the ten digit problem starting from different initial guesses. In many cases four or five steps are enough.) When you have sorted out the above, try looking for the nine digit number which, when multiplied by the number 123,456,789 gives an answer whose last nine digits consist of the number 987,654,321. For those of you who give up, I shall give the answer next time.

Computer Guardian lis edited by llaekSdMHeld SPONSORED BY IN ASSOCIATION WITH IBM COMPUTER TODAY COMPUTER TALK 12-13 September 1986 Novotel, Hammersmith, London 1350 vacancies for experienced DP and communications professionals Opening hours Fridav 12 September 1986 1030-1930 Saturdav 13 September 1986 1030-1700 Novotel is 3 minutes from Hammersmith tube station OrRunis'uil by INTRO UK Limilnil. Cravs PnrnJ House. Cravs Pniui. RiMKlinK. Berkshire KGR 7QC Meet the leading employers of DP and communications professionals face to face Discuss vacancies on the spot with the DP professionals responsible for recruitment Vacancies in all salary ranges The majority of vacancies are for staff with more than 2 years experience THE number seven is, without doubt, one of the most common numbers that occur outside of mathematics.

Seven days in the week, seven classical planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), seven notes on the musical scale, seventh sons of seventh sons, the seven deadly sins, the seven wonders of the world, seventh heaven, the seven Sacraments, the seven seas, and even the name of a popular soft drink. As a mathematician I cannot believe that there is thing to this other than wish fulfilment. Once word got around that it took seven days to make the Universe, trying to fit various phenomena into a framework involving the number seven was practically unavoidable. The Pythagoreans went to great lengths to find significance in the number, observing that a child could (only could, mind) be born seven months after conception, would cut its teeth seven months after birth, reach puberty after two periods of seven years, become an adult after seven more years, and so on. Even so, the number seven does have plenty of mathematical significance.

One of the most intriguing properties of the number occur when you look at reciprocals of whole numbers. In the case of 7, if you work out-Mr as a decimal you get the infinite repeating pattern Vi 0.142857 142857 142857 Exhibitors include Citibank Savings REDIFFUSION Simulation DIxons TRIAD ICL BISIIswKMsl 1 BAApic southern electricity -fonjederation CSC Information Tschnology ooMrvm acxjmcn Ml Thtv Morgan Bunk oomfuny looted 1 UUCIlUOl Eanpmiig Syslems unfed SESS FIREMMfS msm SYSTKMS Inform ton ITLw A National k7Bank PLC MANUFACTURERS HANOVER Onvkvwf wm norm btotwj tmnn.