Included on this disc are four short utilities to help you manage your AMPLE programs and Studio 5000 modules. The instructions for each of the utilities are given below.

'Saver' utility

David Westbrook

This little utility is designed to take the effort out of regularly saving your current masterpiece to disc. If you have a machine as old and cranky as mine, or even if you don't, it's a wise precaution to save your programs regularly during development. However, I'm always nervous about overwriting previous versions, so I tend to use version numbers: 'master1', 'master2' etc. What the 'Saver' utility does is to automate this process.

The program consists of 3 words ('initsv', 'sv' and 'vernum') and is in *EXEC format so that it can be added to any program. Having got it into a program, the first thing to do is get 'sv' into Notepad and edit the program name (currently shown as 'NEWONE') to whatever you want to call your program. The length of program name must be limited to 6 characters (leaving 1 character for a version number). Having done that, save the program. Your name will now be stored.

From now on you need to start each working session by typing 'initsv' at the command line. You will be asked for the first version number you want to use (if you already have some version numbers on disc, then you may not want to start again at 0). Enter a number (single digit if you've used 6 characters for the program name) and the program reminds you what the starting number will be.

Now whenever you want to save the program just type 'sv' at the command line. The current program will automatically be saved under the name you've given it, suffixed by a number which is increased by one for each save you make in a session. At the end of a session you've got all the versions saved in order and can tidy up by deleting any you don't want to keep.

Related files on this disc:

U.Saver - David Westbrook's version save utility (*EXEC into programs)

'Wipe' utility

By Quentin Frazer

This utility provides a quick and easy way to get rid of those redundant words which often remain once a program has been developed - for example those instruments that were tried but not, in the end, used.

The utility should be *EXECed into your program - and it will then run automatically. It will display all the words in your program and then prompt you for a word to be deleted. Enter any word (no quote characters are necessary) and it will try to delete it before starting again.

If the word to be deleted is still referred to in another word the error

! In use

will be displayed and the utility will finish. Similarly, if you enter a word name which does not exist the error

!No such word

will be displayed and the program will stop. Pressing Escape will also stop the utility.

Related files on this disc:

U.Wipe - Quentin Frazer's word deletion utility (*EXEC into programs)

'Save' utility

By Kevin Doyle

This utility was written after I accidentally deleted a music program by selecting 'SAVE' instead of 'LOAD' from the Studio 5000 Main Menu. It temporarily re-defines the AMPLE Nucleus word 'SAVE' and performs an OSFILE call to check whether the filename to be saved already exists. If it does, a warning message is displayed and you are asked to confirm that you wish to overwrite this file. Pressing 'Y' (or 'y') overwrites the file; any other key aborts the SAVE process.

This utility is designed to be *EXECed into existing programs and works equally well from the command line or the Main menu. It also complements David Westbrook's 'Saver' utility by providing a failsafe against a wrongly selected version number

Related files on this disc:

U.Save - Kevin Doyle's program save check utility (*EXEC into programs)

'Init' utility

By Quentin Frazer

'Init' is an AMPLE program. It provides a menu allowing you to install any modules you might require in addition to the defaults on your system.

Installed modules do, of course, take up space, but the advantages of not having to load from disk usually make it worthwhile, especially if you have shadow RAM. INSTALLed modules also take less memory than MLOADed ones.

To use init type:

"init" LOAD RUN

or better still, add it to your Studio 5000/4000 !BOOT file (this must be after "MENU" INSTALL).

Related files on this disc:

U.Init - Quentin Frazer's module installation utility

Note: BBC Model B users without Shadow RAM may find that trying this utility direct from the AMPLINEX menu and installing modules may not leave enough memory to re-load AMPLINEX via the '?' command.