BUTTON-DOWN TRANSFERS

Interface III is a combined hardware and software package which allows you to transfer a program.

Once the program is loaded a button on the interface is pressed and a special copy is then put out to tape. After resetting, the interface software is loaded and the copy reloaded.

Interface III priced at £39.95 is awkward to use, requiring a lot of loading, saving and resetting.

Micro Centre, Bridge Street, Evesham, Worcestershire. Tel: 0386-49641.

Spectrum
Evesham Micro
£39.95

It had to come, the ultimate copier against which there seems little possibility of protection. But of course, you would only use it for copying your own software to Microdrive wouldn't you?

Hardly elegant, this unit uses the sledgehammer approach to cracking the nut of software protection. After you have loaded in the game, you simply hit a button on the unit, which plugs into the back of the Spectrum, and it simply dumps the entire contents of Ram out the cassette port.

It also gives you the option of loading the screen display (important if machine code has been hidden in the screen area). Skipping this will mean that the program will take up about 5 sectors, so you can get two games onto one cartridge. The obvious disadvantage is that no matter how short the program is it will take up about the same amount of spate.

BLACK MAGIC BOXES

If you're rarin' to go microdrivin' but you're havin' trouble convertin' your tapes, here are two black boxes that'll help you change your gear, Iolo Davidson takes a look at these drivin' movers.

The Mirage Microdriver and the Interface III from Evesham Micro Centre are hardware solutions to the problem of converting tape software to LOAD from microdrive. This is a development we've long been waiting for, and just like the number eleven bus, two have come along at once. Either model will enable you to convert your games tapes to fast loading microdrive versions, regardless of the tape protection method designed to prevent it - even fast loading systems.

These machines do work as advertised and their arrival will not be appreciated by the software publishers.

So, how do they do it? Well, both machines are small black boxes, about the size of a joystick interface, with a little red button that's pressed at any point during the running of a program to save the whole of the memory, plus the Z80 machine registers. What you get is a 'snapshot' of the whole computer at the microsecond that you pressed the button. When you load this instant frozen program later, it takes up exactly at the point it was stopped. You're advised to wait for a static frame like a score table to do the SAVE , so that the copied program doesn't subsequently LOAD straight into the action, but this is just for convenience. You can save it at any point you like, and even use the machine as an extended 'pause' feature, saving a half finished game overnight.

A TRUE CONVERT

Both units do the job, but I much preferred the Microdriver for speed and ease of use. However, hackers and disk users will find the copies produced by the Interface III easier to mess around with.

There are bound to be wails of anguish and all sorts of threats from software publishers over these two devices, but it's about time that long-suffering microdrive owners were allowed to make use of the things! Games programmers would be well advised to take Sir Clive's advice and put SAVE-to-Microdrive options into all their products. That would instantly remove the market for clever protection busting hardware before the stuff gets widespread. After all, most of us just want to be able to load programs faster, using the manufacturer's own upgrade, the microdrive, and we really oughtn't to be prevented from doing so. Until microdrive transfer is incorporated into all software, the makers of these two machines can claim a legitimate purpose for them.

INTERFACE III

Evesham Micro Centre £39.95

Opening, the case of this one reveals rows of 74 series TTL logic chips, one of which must be a small ROM. The box is plugged into the expansion connector on the Interface 1 or directly into the back of the Spectrum, which means that if you don't have microdrives, you can still use it, but only for tape copies, obviously. There is no through connector for attaching other add-ons, but that's not a problem as the unit need only be inserted during copying and not afterwards.

Operation is much the same as with the Microdriver at first. You load the tape which you wish to convert to microdrive, wait for a break in the program, like a 'press any key to start' frame, and press the red button instead. However, you don't get menu driven convenience with this one. First it saves a 'conversion' file to tape, and then you LOAD the supplied conversion software from tape. Now you get a menu, and you reload the conversion file from the tape and SAVE a stand-alone version of the game to tape or microdrive. Stand alone means you can LOAD and RUN the copied game without having to have the Interface III hardware connected.

That last feature makes this unit very attractive to the pirates. The worrying thing is that they can make a tape copy to be used by people who don't have an Interface III themselves, or even a microdrive. But I can't stress too much that it's illegal to make copies unless it's for your own private use.

The error trapping is definitely not up to much. Trying to SAVE a name twice to the same micro-cartridge dumps you out of the program with an invisible Sinclair error message, the ink and Paper have been POKEd to be the same colour over the whole screen. If this is for protection then it's not only useless, but rather inappropriate in a product of this sort.

Those of you with disks may be able to use Interface III to SAVE a tape copy that can be re-saved to these other media, provided you have a tape header reader to find out the code addresses and lengths. I doubt it'll work on Wafadrives though, as the Wafadrive system software requires more RAM work space than microdrives. It's possible to BREAK into the conversion software (do BORDER 1 and INK 7 so you can see. but you won't be able to see yourself do it). That'll give your some idea of what goes on, but the SAVEs are done by code routines, so it's not just a case of a simple rewrite.

I found this device much less easy to use than the Microdriver, and all that tape saving and loading takes a lot of time. A particularly dumb feature is the fact that the system goes into a lock-up when it's finished making the first 'conversion file' and then again after saving the final copy. That means you have to pull the plug, and if you do that without first yanking out the microdrive cartridge then you'll corrupt it.

GETTING IT ON MICRODRIVE

Interface 3
Supplier: Evesham Micro Centre
Retail Price: £39.95

By now you will have seen a few ads from the chaps at Evesham Micro Centre claiming that they can sell you a machine that transfers any program to microdrive. Well we wouldn't blame you if you took it with a bucket of salt: We did. I mean to say transfer any software, get past all protection? come on chaps.

Evesham Micro are not exaggerating, Interface 3 will load every game from tape to microdrive, with no exceptions. CRASH technospert Franco Frey tells me that the actual electronics in the box are pretty old hat, not to say cheap, but the way the thing has been worked out makes it a masterpiece. To transfer (please note fanatical avoidance of the word copy!) a program follow nine simple steps:

1. Attach interface 3 to Spectrum
2. Load game
3. Find place in game where it naturally pauses (eg stops to display score)
4. Push red button
5. Insert blank tape and hit any key
6. Watch file save
7. Take off interface and load the transfer software
8. Follow prompts to load the game file
9. Follow prompts to save file with new header to microdrive.

That's it. The whole operation can take less than fifteen minutes and what you get at the end is a perfect microdrive version of the game that starts from where you stopped it.

The device is totally passive until you press the button, so no game can detect its presence. None of those smart anti-hacking methods will work because you don't have to load the game from the start - so they may as well not be there.

The software supplied with the interface even checks through the loading screens for hidden machine code, if there isn't any then why waste space saving the pretty piccy? One other useful little trick the box can perform is to take a snapshot of whatever is on the screen. When you press the button, that screen is then saved as a SCREEN$.

At nearly £40 Interface 3 is a considerable investment but as it seems to beat all other transfer systems hands down it is a certain method of getting your favourite games onto microdrive and thus onto your computer in a much faster time. Since you have paid out so much for those anyway, and many software houses seem to do little to help you utilise them, it must be considered a worthwhile investment.