ware device. But I also want to apologize that it is
taking longer than a commercial project would take. But hey, relax, it's
all just a hobby, right? ;-)



*************************************
GROWING PAINS PART SIV
Where I Learned To Code In Style
By Lenard R. Roach
*************************************

Out of all the things we can do with our Commodore brand of computers,
nothing seems to be more important to me than word processing and
budgeting, and out of those two I put budgeting on top. Usually a good
rule of thumb when it comes to budgeting on the Commodore is having a very
good to excellent budgeting piece of software, and I found that piece of software in "Run" magazine's type in program, "Money Manager With E-Z
Budget" coded by Rex Day and published around 1989. This Commodore Redneck owes a great deal of his coding knowledge to Mr. Day when it comes to my making the packages I did for helping users to budget on the Commodore via various software aforementioned in previous articles. With the exception
of my best friend and Commodore guru, Carl, Mr. Day has taught me the most about programming on the Commodore. The funny part about this whole educational department for me is that Mr. Day and I have never met. In
fact, Mr. Day doesn't even know I exist, but his coding of "Money Manager" deserves to be read by every serious Commodore coder who wants to learn a
near perfect balance of BASIC, BASIC machine, and algebraic expressions.
I've been using Mr. Day's "Money Manager" program for over 25 years and it
has kept a great eye on my spending habits and has shown me in more than
one instance "leaks" in my spending that needed to be "plugged." But, even great pieces of software have flaws and "Money Manager" was no exception.

It was February 2000, when I sat down at my Commodore 128 and started to
work on the first of the month bills. Usually, "Money Manager" asked if
this is a new month, and upon pressing "Y" the computer transposes the data from the previous month (like check book balances and etc.) to the new
month, Not so this time! The program asked, "Is this the first input to
the program?" Odd. That's a beginning of the year function. Upon pressing
"N" the program balked and demanded a valid month then sent me back to
start up. I entered the same screen again and, to make a long story short,
I had to set up for February like I did January inputting data all over
again. Upon investigation of the program text, it seemed that "Money
Manager" was suffering from a "Y2K" malady and needed to be fixed. I must admit I was a little nervous to go into the BASIC of the program and start working on the problem. Mr. Day had the maximum amount of functions
settled into a minimal amount of code. Any tinkering of that code may set
an unbalance and cause the program to crash upon every boot with possibly
no hope of recovery. I studied every line of the 71 block long program
before zeroing in on the first 25 lines and deciphering that the date stamp lives in these lines. It took me a couple of hours of trial and error and several reboots before I finally got "Money Manager" to cooperate with the
new date stamp I installed. What I did in short was change the "mm/yy"
stamp into a "mm/yyyy" stamp, then going through the program and change any GOTO or GOSUB references to the old date stamp to agree with my changes.
There was a numerical expression of "100" which told the program to stop working in a year stamp past 99 to "10000" so the program would totally
agree with years starting from 2000 and beyond.

After making a program like "Money Manager," written by a great master of Commodore code like Rex Day to work beyond it's intended life expectancy, I wanted some cussing credit for my effort. At the beginning of "Money
Manager" is the introduction screen which was coded at the beginning of the program (stands to reason). Before I put in the necessary PRINT statements
I thought it best to write in Mr. Day as the primary coder and myself for
just adding the "Y2K" updates. Also, for anything I wrote or was a
contributor to, I included the name of my local Commodore user group, and
yet, when all this was done, the intro screen still lacked the necessary information I felt was necessary, so I changed the name of the work from
"Money Manager" to "Money Manager 2K," signifying that this work was now compatible with the year 2000 and beyond. Also, as a side bar, I added
that "Run" magazine published the original code.

"Money Manager" itself is a great tool with features like an electric checkbook, checkbook analyzer, and department keeper. In the "E-Z Budget"
half there is a budget calculator, a future forecaster (you input the
numbers and "E-Z Budget" calculates them down), and a break down by
department. The setup is simple: At first input you create your own department heads where each input into the electric checkbook *must* go
under a heading. As the year progresses you can add departments as you go
up to 16 extra inputs, or you can change a department head that is inert
into a new active department. The computer saves all your departments to
disk and will access all your departments and load them into your
Commodore. In "Budget Analysis" all your departments are calculated for
the month thus far and printed onto screen or printer. "E-Z Budget" also
does an analysis from projected (your guess) to actual (what really went
down) to give you an idea on where yours was planned to go and where it actually went. Mr. Day also added handy "Help" messages that refer to the screen currently displayed. Simply go to the screen in question and press
"H" and a box in reverse field will appear at the bottom guiding the user
as to what to do.

After using "Money Manager With E-Z Budget" for over two decades I've found only two quirks in the work that I personally blame on the publisher of the code text and not on Mr. Day himself: One is that the computer will
syntax and crash at one of the "Help" messages, but I don't use the help messages anymore so this is not a cumbersome issue, but for the beginning
user of the program it can be a problem. When this happens just type in
RUN at the flashing cursor and the program will restart, but any unsaved
input will be lost. This brings me to the second problem: If too much
data is entered in one sitting without an occasional dump to disk, "Money Manager" will lock up and not even the pressing of RUN/STOP-RESTORE will
break the program loop. Here the user must turn off, then turn on the
computer and reboot the program. All unsaved data is definitely lost.
I've found a way around this is to SAVE after every third or fourth input.
It's tedious, it's long, but it is a big headache saver in the end.

As you probably guessed, I would like to call my programs for Commodore the "best written works" available, but with such great Commodore programmers
like Mr. Day, Carl, and others past and present, I will have to take a
seat in the back of the room.

If you would like a copy of "Money Manager With E-Z Budget" I'm sure an
image of it can be found on many Commodore archive websites for free
download, but those copies will not have my "Y2K" updates. Then again, we
are well past the first decade of the new century so Mr. Day's original
code should work fine; but if you want the program with my updates then
please send me a self addressed stamped envelope big enough to hold a 5
1/4" disk to the address found on my website elomaster.wix.com/lenardroach along with $1 USD (to cover the cost of the disk) and I will get a copy to
you. There's no way I can give "Money Manager" due justice in one short article, but if you've been looking for a great, affordable financial piece
of Commodore software then Rex Day's "Money Manager With E-Z Budget" should
be what you've been seeking.



*************************************
REVIEW: DUBCRT
Commodore 64 Limited Cartridge
(PAL only)
*************************************

Stand aside X factor wannabies, droning on and on with the same old vocals
as last year's entrants, singing the same songs looking all alike and auto tuned to death, surely it's time for a change isn't it?

Could this be the future of electronic music? Certainly in this format the device is unique! I used to play Jeff Minter's psycadellia to death with various albums on and the lights powered off. Just me and the C64 and a
visual light show, flickering and dancing around my bedroom, I mean the
lights - not my good self.

DUBCRT is released as a music album interactive light synthesizer and remix gadget, the device is for PAL only Commodore 64 and comes in the form of a cartridge. On the cartridge we have music and visuals from (as the website states) "some of the most prolific experimentalists of the 8-bit scenes",
If you're a "throbbing gristle www.throbbing-gristle.com/ or industrial
music fan this is definitely the device for you" Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
says that you don't need talent or instruments but you do have to create something new and not reproduce what has been done before, hundreds of
people can sing but it takes a special magic to create something that
hasn't been done before. (not taking anything away from the music on this,
its unique and pushes the Commodore in a different direction than just chiptunes)

If your expecting Rob hubbard riffs you will be surprised/disappointed depending on your outlook, the websites links have the music you can listen
to and get an idea of the music styles.

DUBCRT features are :

* Eight songs ranging from ambient to IDM and drum n' bass

* Visualisers that react to the music, and that are user-controllable

* A secret remix module that allows you to re-interpret all the music
on the cartridge

With the Commodore 64 standard cartridges only holding 64 kilobytes - which
the website says is the "equivalent to 1.5 seconds of MP3-audio". making
all the graphics in PETSCII art certainly make colourful and quirky variant
on the Commodore 64.

The box and cartridge really look the part, the dub cart logo is truly a
work of art and I would definitely love a poster of this in my man cave.
The lights on the cartridge and the clear case add to the low-tech retro
feel. If you love the Commodore 64 you can't fail to want one of these devices.

The basic idea is this: you boot your machine and select what I call
Element. This is a number from 1 to 8 that will play music and feed back a visiual effect of petscii art. You can use various keys as outlined in the manual to manipulate the art in different ways. Changing the colour and
the way the art moves are just two such elements. Pressing <space> takes
you back to the main menu. If you watch/listen to the tunes in a specific
way you can enter a remix section of the cartridge.

The final musical element is a petscii game where you control a ball using
the joystick - it's all very interesting stuff and the music is very
evolving. Some may call it non-music but it all depends on your view of
art.

There is also an audio version of the Commodore64 cartridge will all of the tracks that have been recorded from an actual MOS 6581 and MOS 8580 SID
chips from authentic hardware - This has a stereo mix combining both of the
SID models into one waveform. Also included in the audio version are
eleven remixes from artists such as Datasette, Julien Mier and Mesak.

SCORES

Hardware design: 10/10
Sounds: 10/10
Graphics: 10/10
Features: 10/10
Packaging: 10/10
Overall: 10/10

SUMMARY

I don't have any comments how could you make comments on perfection, other
than we need another batch of these and a follow up concept! Maybe more control over the music and effects?

NOTES

Goto80 (audio, Sweden) was one of three nominees for best C64-composer at Commodore's 25 year anniversary, the band regularly perform live around the world. They also do academic research on text mode graphics

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