PAWING SAM! By A.F.Olivera To convert PAW to Sam you need PAW and Sam (naturally!), Specmaker, and a Spectrum tape header reader (or a tape copier program such as those advertized by Lerm). The PAW version must be the cassette one; the +D and microdrive versions will not work. If the version you have is one of these latter ones, all is not lost. I had both these versions (which is why I know they don't work) and Gilsoft very kindly provided me with the latest cassette version (Version A17C) for a couple of pounds. As readers will no doubt know, PAW uses a system of overlays which it loads from tape as and when needed. Specmaker uses a Spectrum ROM so modified that tape save and load commands are directed to a ramdisk instead of to the cassette. Accordingly, the procedure consists of installing in the Specmaker ramdisk a snapshot of PAW itself plus copies of the overlays. The first step is to make a snapshot of PAW. This can be done MORE >>>> from a +D system if such is available or, alternatively, using Specmaker. For this, select option 5 from the menu and load any +D snapshot (as explained in the Specmaker manual this is necessary for the SAVING of snapshots to work properly). After the +D snapshot is loaded press the NMI button, then "X" to get into Sam basic. You are then offered the option of loading another snapshot; just press RETURN and you will be dropped into an "empty" Spectrum. You then load PAW from tape as normal and if it loads properly you will be presented with the initial screen displaying the version number and the EXTVEC and PRNTADD addresses. Without pressing any other key (so as not to lose this screen) press the NMI button and then "4" to save a snapshot - this will be saved as "SNAP something-or-other". At this stage it would be prudent to rename this snapshot to something more informative, such as "PAW". Now reload Specmaker and select option 4 (which allows for snapshots to be saved to ramdisk) and when offered the option of saving the ramdisk, save it. Reject the option of a "Superfile" and instead save the snap file as a single file. MORE >>>> At this stage we already have PAW running on Sam; load Specmaker, select option 2 (ramdisk load) at the menu, select specrom 2 (tape load, ramdisk save) and when asked for the file to load enter "PAW". The Spectrum start-up screen will be displayed and pressing CAT (Extended "9") will show the ramdisk directory with "PAW" as the only entry at present. Now enter LOAD "" (ie "J" + "") and RETURN and PAW will be loaded. You can now use most PAW commands, like Vocabulary, Test adventure, Locations, etc. If you try a command which requires an overlay (eg "K" for Compress) a message "RAMDISK ERROR" is returned - not surprising since there are no overlays in the ramdisk as yet. We are now ready for the next step. This involves the transfer to ramdisk of the overlays, the font sets, and the sample adventure TEWK. This is where the copier program or the tape header reader is required. You will recall that the specrom currently in the machine allows loading from tape (see previous paragraph). Pressing the NMI button will take you to the Spectrum start-up screen. If you have a tape copier program load it and transfer the overlays, font sets and MORE >>>> TEWK to the ramdisc; you should note that when the copier program prompts you to change cassettes ignore it as the save will be to the ramdisk. Once finished check with CAT that everything has been properly saved. If you do not have a copier program you will require a tape header reader. This will reveal the start address and length of the individual overlays, font sets and TEWk files, which are all machine code programs. Different versions of PAW have different addresses and lengths; the relevant data for Version A17C, which is the one I have, is as follows: PAWOVR 1 : start 29632 length 4585 " 4 : " " " 2875 " 5 : " " " 2147 " 2 : " " " 1186 " 3 : " " " 3679 " H : " " " 955 Font sets (all the same) " 64768 " 768 MORE >>>> TEWK A : " 37632 " 10270 TEWK B : " 57573 " 7963 The following program may be useful in transferring the files: 10 CLEAR 29631 20 LOAD "" CODE: SAVE "PAWOVR 1" CODE 29632,4585 30 LOAD "" CODE: SAVE "PAWOVR 4" CODE 29632,2875 40-70 are the same as lines 20 and 30 except that the overlay number is changed to 5,2,3 or H, and the length to the corresponding length as above. You can similarly change the program to cater for the 22 font sets and the two parts of TEWK - these are on side B of the cassette. If you have the PTM User Overlays, these can also be transferred without problems using the same procedure as above. Now that everything has been transferred to the ramdisk you can MORE >>>> test that everything works as it should. If everything is satisfactory then exit to SAM Basic by typing MOVE 2 from the Spectrum environment, and you will be presented wth the Specmaker menu. Select option 1 (save ramdisk) - this is very important, as if you do not save the ramdisk everything will have to be done anew! - and save the lot as a superfile. You can, at your leisure, subsequently split the superfile so as to have the font sets, which are infrequently used, as separate files (but not a superfile - you can only load one superfile at a time, though you can add single files to an already-loaded superfile). And that just about sums it up. I would advise you to include the Specmaker utility "rdutil" to the main PAW superfile, as it becomes invaluable when tidying up the ramdisk once it becomes cluttered up with recurrent saves of games under development. Also, one word of warning. Specmaker inserts a "%" or a "&" as the last (10th) character of the name when a Specmaker file is saved. As PAW also uses the 10th character to insert the letter "A" or "B" when saving the adventure database, these letters MORE >>>> will be lost if the database file is saved from the ramdisk as a single file. You can either customize Specmaker to cater for this (which is what I did), or else always save databases as a superfile. *** --- ***