To join AMPLINEX cost £5.00. For each issue members would send in a disk and a stamped, self-addressed envelope and the magazine would be copied on to this disk and returned to the member. To encourage participation, members were charged a nominal fee of £2.00 for each subsequent issue but this was waived if they sent in a submission on their disk (regardless of whether it was ever used in the magazine).

Receiving contributions

As each disk arrived, Roy and Jackie Follett (who managed the AMPLINEX distribution) would copy any contributions from the disk and add the details to a central database. Once the contributions deadline arrived, Roy would review all the contributions and send a consolidated set of all files received, along with the database, to Kevin Doyle (who edited the magazine) with suggestions for possible candidates for publication (especially for the music contributions which far outstripped the capacity for publication).

Editing the magazine

All text contributions were reviewed and edited into a consistent format for publication in one of the standard sections (eg, Questions and Answers or Hints and Tips) or as a separate article. Any programs would be checked to ensure they worked correctly, and music files (the most numerous type of contribution) would be selected for inclusion. The music selection was inevitably a personal one, but we endeavoured to include a variety of musical styles within each issue.

Publication dates

The first AMPLINEX issue was in September 1987 and it was planned to be published every two months. This allowed time for a member to receive a disk and respond to its contents in time to include any responses in the next issue. Instructions of how to contribute were included in each issue and, from issue 003 onwards, a simple feedback mechanism was built into the main AMPLINEX program. A contributions deadline was included on a simple covering note which was sent with each issue.

The disk format

The AMPLINEX magazine was distributed on 5.25” floppy disks. Each issue fitted on one side of a double-density (80-track) disk (or two sides of a 40-track disk). The content was accessed using a master program (initially called AMPLINX then, from issue 003, A.MPLINEX). All the music and text content was contained in the other files on the disk and either displayed (for text files) or run (for music and utility programs) from the main program’s menus.

The A.MPLINEX program

The master AMPLINEX program was designed to meet the challenge of creating a self-contained disk-based format – one that did not require instructions in a ‘read me’ file to explain the content, as well as to provide access to both text files and AMPLE music programs without the need for the user to switch between different operating environments.

Although the AMPLE language was designed to write and play music, it had some basic display and menu features which were used to package the magazine content. A master menu linked to submenus provided access to all the contents and to other utilities (like allowing text files to be sent to a printer as they were displayed). This approach also had the advantage that the main AMPLINEX program did not change greatly between issues (reducing the risk of a programming error), mostly just requiring an update to the menu definitions.

Text content was read from files and streamed into a window to keep the user within the master AMPLINEX program and to avoid reading the file content into the computer’s scarce memory. Music and utility files were loaded into the AMPLE environment, replacing the master program.

One challenge was how to return to the master program one the loaded program had been run and the user returned to AMPLE’s ‘%’ prompt. The solution was to add a word to the loaded program that would return to the AMPLINEX master program. We had to use a keyword unlikely to be used within other programs and decided to use ‘?’. Each time a new program was loaded (overwriting the AMPLINEX magazine program) a prompt would advise the user to type

? <return>

to get back to AMPLINEX.

One challenge was always memory space as the larger the magazine’s control program got the less space there was for content within it. The text streaming and loading of music as separate programs helped, but as the program got more sophisticated, we had to compress the source file to get it into memory.

Another challenge was how to display text files in a screen-readable way but also allow them to be printed. The original solution was to use the BBC’s built-in paging facility which would stop the display of a file at the end of each screenful and wait for the Shift key to be pressed to scroll on. One issue with this method is that it was not obvious to the user that this was being done, and another was that the user could not stop the display without escaping from the file, leaving them in an uncertain state in the context of the AMPLINEX control program. To get around these issues a text display facility was incorporated into the AMPLINEX program which used non-printing page break markers in the text files to control the output each screenful of text. Printing could be turned on or off before displaying the text and the user could escape at any point and be returned to the AMPLINEX menu.

Directories and filenames

The BBC DFS file system used for AMPLINEX disks allowed a single letter directory prefix (with a default value of $) and a seven-letter, case-insensitive filename – the two parts separated by a dot (eg, U.Testing). For issues 001 and 002, all AMPLE program files (including the master program and all music files) were given the default $ directory prefix, and text files were given the A directory prefix. The text file names indicated the section of the magazine in which they belonged, with a number suffix used to differentiate files – eg, A.Intro1, A.Intro2, A.News1 and A.Utils1. The AMPLINEX magazine could therefore be launched by typing:

“AMPLINX”LOAD RUN

From issue 003 onwards, this was changed so that the text files had a directory prefix to indicate the section of the magazine where they belonged (ie, A. for the Introduction and Adverts sections, F. for features, H. for Hints and Tips, N. for News, Q. for Questions and Answers, and U. for Utilities) and the filenames indicated the content (eg, A.Welcome, N.Reverb or F.NucIndex) or, for regular sections, the issue number (eg, H.ints003 or Q.uest007). The main program was now called A.MPLINEX and so the magazine could be launched with:

“A.MPLINEX”LOAD RUN

Disk capacity

At the time, both single-density (40 tracks, 100K capacity) and double-density (80 tracks, 200K capacity) formats were in common use and most disks were double-sided. Disk capacity was a constraint, especially for the 40-track version, and although each magazine was designed to fit on to a single side of an 80-track disk, it had to be split over two sides of a 40-track disk. Because of the different file sizes in each issue, the mix of files on each side of a 40-track disk varied and to work around the problem of missing files disrupting the AMPLINEX menu system, ‘stub’ files were added to the main disk to tell the user to access the file from the other side.

The DFS file system allowed a maximum of 31 files per disk (meaning each side of a double-sided disk) and this was often a limiting factor for the magazine. As the number of music contributions increased, the limit of 31 files per disk led to the production of supplementary disks containing only music files. Supplementary disks were also used when large files were distributed which would otherwise have limited other content on the disk. This supplementary content was provided on separate disks (provided by AMPLINEX) and added to the members’ disks as part of an issue.