STOS CANADA NEWSLETTER #7 ON DISK


(Sorry for the delay I was in a bad car accident which kept STOS CANADA
 at a standstill for several months, we are now back on track and have
now resumed to our normal functions. Look for the next newsletter to
explain more of these commands and write me if you prefer to have a disk
or a newsletter hardcopy. Thanks for your strong support!)

     This disk contains the information required to use the STOS CANADA goodies
disk  with 100 new commands for STOS. To install the various extensions simply
insert the (.ec?) extensions into your compiler folder and the (.ex?) into your
STOS folder by using the Install.prg. Several of the compiler extensions are
not supplied on this disk (Blitter,Midi,TOME, and 512 Extensions).
     The STOS Tracker extension is a little different to install
because it is 180K large. It had to be squashed to fit on the disk. To
unsquash and install the extension use the trackin.bas program in the
Tracker folder. More documentation of the STOS Tracker is included in the
Tracker folder along with the STOS command usage for the Tracker. The 512
colour extension has a program demo in the OTHER folder on this disk. Simply
load the VIEW512.BAS program and run to see how good it looks in STOS!
     To quickly jump in and try many of these new commands in STOS simply
load and run all the basic programs in the folders on this Disk. Not all the
commands will be covered on this disk but the following will be a short
description of some of the available interpreter commands.

 X= STE     This function returns a 1 if you own an STE or 0 if it isnt an STE.

 X= LSTICK(J) Returns the current status of the joysticks left position. The
value x holds either -1 if the joystick is in the left position or zero if it
isnt. You can access up to six joysticks where j holds the number of the stick
you want from one to six. The following work the same way for other directions
 X= RSTICK(J) right , X= USTICK(J) up, X= DSTICK(J) down, X= FSTICK(J) fire.

 To access the joysticks you need to use the Function STICKS ON. This command
activates the interrupt routine for the joysticks and disables the mouse.
STICKS OFF deactivates the interrupt routine and reactivates the mouse. For
compatability the X=STICK1 and X=STICK2 commands still exist where bit
0=up if set, 1=down if set, 2=left if set, 3=right if set, 4,5,6 unused and
7=fire if set. Be sure to include STICKS ON and OFF in your programs!

 The STE can also support a light gun or pen. To use the commands try
X= LIGHT X and Y=LIGHT Y. which returns the co-ordinates of the light
gun/pen at the last time the fire button was pressed. To check for the
light gun fire button use FSTICK(3) function.

 The extended colour palette on an STE has 4096 colours to choose from.
STOS uses the E PALETTE $RGB,$RGB,...(up to 16 colors) page 122 in STOS manual.
Also E COLOUR colour,$RGB is used the same way as the colour command is STOS
but uses the hex values to access the 4096 colours. X= E COLOR (colour) is
used to return an RGB value of the colour number from 0-15.

 STE DAC is one of the best things added to the STE. This brilliant Digital
to Analog converter plays the raw sample sound in stereo, and with the
microwire interface you can set left and right volume controls as well as
treble and bass. DAC CONVERT start address of sample, end address of sample.
Because the STE DAC plays raw sampled sound, you need to convert your STOS
MAESTRO samples. DAC CONVERT does the job very quickly. DAC SPEED where
0=6khz, 1=12.5khz, 2=25khz and 4 =50khz. DAC RAW start address,end address.
plays yoru raw sampled DAC sounds. DAC MONO and DAC STEREO are straight
forward commands. DAC LOOP ON and DAC LOOP OFF plays your sample endlessly.
DAC M VOLUME volume, DAC L VOLUME volume, DAC R Volume volume,DAC TREBLE volume
and DAC BASS volume, are used to set left and right volume treble and bass
where (volume) is anywhere from 0-12. (EX. DAC BASS 12, or DAC R VOLUME 12)
Also DAC MIX ON and DAC MIX OFF which enables the mix og the PSG sound chip
with the STE's DAC chip. DAC STOP of course stops all DAC processing.

 Hardware scrolling in the STE is built into ROM. STE hardware scrolling
enables the screen data to be shifted in bytes rather than words using
hardware. The command HARD SCREEN SIZE w,h,mode is used to set the screens
logical size and w=width of screen, h=height of screen ready for scrolling.
HARD SCREEN OFFSET x,y tells the STE where to start displaying the screen.
X= HARD PHYSIC (screen address) tells the STE where the screen is stored.
Finally HARD INTER ON and HARD INTER OFF turns on and off the hardware
scrolling.

 The Midi Extension has four main commands. MIDI ON buffstart,bufend,start,
filter,end., X=MIDI IN, MIDI OUT X, and MIDI OFF. The MIDI ON command
parameters are buffstart= the start address of the bank you will be using
as your Midi buffer(normally 256bytes). Buffend is the end address of the
buffstart address bank. Start is usually set to 0, but is the start
accepting code data value in a midi sequence. The filter code if not set to 0
can be any occurence of this value will be filtered out by a Midi routine.
(handy for getting rid of the $FE active annoyance messages from some synths)
The end code as with the start code if not set to zero will stop receiving data
once this code is received. Now look to the Midicom.bas and the Miditest.bas
files for further Midi command usage. An example program using MIDI ON is
 10 Reserve as work 5,4096: rem sys ex messages are usually quite long
 20 MIDI ON start(5),start(5)+length(5), $F0,0,$F7
This may help you in the design of your midi extension programs.

 The STOS squasher extension gives you two new STOS commands;
 X=Squash(start,end) and Unsquash source,destination
 You should use the .ppc extender for your stos squashed files.

 The Blitter,Useful and TOME commands have been left out here but you can guess
their usage by trying the programs supplied in the TOME package. Next
Newsletter Issue 8 and 9 will describe these functions in greater detail.

 I hope you enjoy many of these new commands and feel free to write or
call the Hotline for further information.

                                  STOS CANADA President