The Welcome utilities

The CHARACTERS program allows you to re-define the characters the

computer displays on the screen to produce effects similar to the TEXT

program mentioned above.

ENVELOPE is a program which demonstrates the versatility of the sound

generating circuitry. You can use the keyboard like a piano keyboard by

referring to the diagram below.

PATTERN EDITOR allows you to design your own fill patterns for use with the

PLOT commands discussed with BASIC later in this guide.

DISC UTILS leads to a menu of four disc utilities which are only of real

relevance to advanced users.

Your Master computer contains some memory known as Electrically Erasable

Programmable Read-Only Memory (or EEPROM for short) which retains its

contents even after the mains power is turned off. The EEPROM is used to

store information on your preferred configuration of various options relevant to

the computer's operation. NOTE that the EEPROM has a limited life of about

10,000 programming operations. The chip can, however, be replaced when

necessary.

The PANEL utility is a program which pictorially shows the current settings of

these configuration options and allows you to change them. The effects that the

Panel program produces are exactly equivalent to those of the MOS command

*CONFIGURE, and advanced users may wish to refer to the MOS Commands

appendix for more information. You may find that some of the information that

follows assumes an understanding of features of the computer which have not

yet been discussed; you should not be unduly concerned by this, as all should

become clear as you read through this guide.

When you select 'Control Panel' from the Utilities menu you will see the

program build up a series of illustrations on the screen and fill in various pieces

of information in appropriate places. Once this has taken place you may move

the pointer around the screen and change the configuration options by

selecting within the ruled boxes. Notice however that these changes will not

actually come into effect until they have been stored explicitly; this process is

detailed below.

B 10