The Rainbow Vol. 09 No. 01 - August 1989 - TRS-80 Color ...

looks at two spec ial moves. castlin g and en
passam capture.
The nex t lesson is somewhat more cletai
led. covering chess notati on (fo r record
keeping). demonstrated with ac tual onscreen
moves.
The desired resul t. winning. is the aim of
the game as presented in Lesson 4.
An aside: Chess is ve ry often referred to
as a battl e. the board as a batt leground and
the pieces as so ldiers in an army. Hi story
shows that many famous mili tary commanders
and tac ti cians were av id chess
players. The development of the game spans
several ce nturies .
Back to the lesson at hand. Lessons 5. 6
and 7 disc uss in some detail. aga in with
grap hi c examp les, va ri ous moves in what
may be descri bed as the openin g, mi cl clle
and clos ing phases of th e ga me. In each
case. we ll -known ploys are give n. Learn to
try out the Sicili an Defense. the Skewe r
Attack and ways to check mate or to at least
sta lemate if yo u are. peri sh the thought,
los ing.
By the time you have studied these
lessons. maybe with a reference manu al
and chessboard at yo ur side. yo u shoul d be
ab le to play yo ur first ga me with either a
hum an opponent or an electroni c one.
Program operation is simple and straightfo
rward . There is no manu al to cling to
becau se th e program is all menu -d ri ven
with onscree n tex t in large. easy-to- read
characters. regardless of monitor type.
I have viewed Chess Made Easy with a·
TV and a Hi-Res monitor capab le of composite.
RGB and monochrome green modes.
It looks good in all modes. even with the
arti fac ts fo und on the telev ision, th ough the
hi gh resolu tion te nds to crowd the graphics
close to the left side of the TV.
A little "quirk" was noted in operati on.
however. that depends on what viewing
mode yo u are in . When you choose a lesson
nu mber. yo u are prompted fo r the type of
monitor. to press C fo r compos ite moni to r/
TV orR fo r RGB.
When C is selected and a lesson is
finished. the program loo ps back to the
main menu; no problem. However. when R
is selected and the lesson compl eted. the
program seems to start a retu rn to the main
menu . bu t then locks up on a bl ank sc reen.
No real problem here either if yo u don't
mind enterin g RUN " CHESS . BAS " aga in .
Also, yo u ca n sim ply type and enter any
des ired lessons such as LOAD " LESSON2 " ,
then run , without go ing through the me nu s.
I fo un d CoCo Chess/Ware's program
infom1ati ve, helpful' and quite user-friendly
with a very nominal cos t.
It defi nitely has to improve my standing
in the chess world , wh ich is th at of an
unknown with ranking somewhere between
94 THE RAINBOW August 1989
never hav ing beaten my sons-in-law and
gloatin g over a coupl e of easy-level computer
chess game win s. Chess Made Easy,
where were yo u when I needed you?
(A ftamonow Soft wa re, 46 Howe St., Milford,
CT 06460, 203-878-3602; $20)
-Jim Franklin
'-s-' coco 1. 2 & 3 I
u 01-t-w-a-re----'------'
Disk Doctor­
Blocking Out
the Bad Sectors
Disk Docror is a disk repair utili ty that
run s with Hyper-I/O on yo ur CoCo I, 2 or
3. requiring at least 64 K of RAM . It is
wri tten in BAS IC and mac hine language and
run s with th e co mm and RU N " DO CT OR " after
Hvper-110 has been loaded. Disk DoC/or is
used to locate and block out defecti ve sectors
on your hard dri ve as we ll as on your
fl oppy disks. We all have experi enced
defec ti ve disks and I/0 errors. Disk Doctor
serves as an effective too l to prevent such
errors. and it is easy to use.
The program starts by presenting a colorful
titl e page and then prompting the user
to enter the dev ice name of the di sk to be
checked. If yo u wa nted to check one of
Hyper-I/O's Mass Storage Areas, you would
enter I HOI A. where A is one of the MSAs to
be checked. To check a floppy. yo u wo uld
just enter /DO . The computerbeginschecking
all of the sec tors of the spec ified dev ice,
displ ay ing the current track num ber so yo u
know at a glance what the computer is
do ing. lf it finds a defecti ve sector, the
track. sector and granul e are shown onsc
reen.
Because Disk Doctor onl y read s the disk
when checking fo r sector errors. it can be
used on any disks- including th ose with
data on them - but it ca nnot check a disk
that has not been fo rm atted. Once the disk
test is compl ete, yo u are given the option of
blocking out any defecti ve sectors fo un d.
This is clone by mak ing the granul es that
relate to the defective secto rs in the GAT
(Granul e All ocation Ta ble) appear to be
full. Thi s meth od prevents bl ocked-out
secto rs from be ing wri tten to in the future,
and so prevents disk cras hes and flO errors.
As eac h sector is processed yo u wi II see
the granul e num ber followed by one of
three messages:
I. Blocked Out - thi s means that the
program has successfull y blocked out the
defec ti ve sector as we ll as its related granule
on the di sk.
2. Already in Use- thi s means th at the
granul e containing the defective sector
already has data wri tte n in it and, as a result.
cann ot be blocked out.
3. Directory Error - thi s means that
Track 17 has a bad sector and th e compute r
can't block it out. Some salvage proced ures
are desc ri bed in Disk Doctor' s three-page
manu al.
If you I ike, yo u can even generate a hard
copy of the test res ults for each disk checked.
Thi s printout includes the defec ti ve track ,
sector and granule as well as the elate checked
and th e disk name- a handy record that
can be kept fo r reference.
Disk Doctor is a we lcome utility, especiall
y for hard dri ve users with Hyper-I/O.
It does its job quick ly and eas il y and is very
reasonabl y pri ced. Besides, anyone who
li ves in Cocoa Beach must know what he's
doing.
(KB Enterprises, 435 Brightwa ters Dri ve,
Cocoa Beach, FL 32931 , 407-799-3253; $17.95
plus $ 1.50 S/1-1)
- Robert Gray
LHa-fdwa-re------'
HD-1-
Feature-Packed
Hard Drive
Howard Med ical has a package deal for
you if yo u're in the market fo r a hard drive
for yo ur CoCo. Wi th the pri ce of hard
dri ves continuall y com ing clow n, it's a good
time to evalu ate the possibili ty of add ing a
hard dri ve to your CoCo setu p. The package
I received consisted of a Seagate ST-
225 20-Meg half-height hard dri ve housed
in a case with power suppl y and fan.
Also included was the XT-RTC hard
dri ve interface made by Burke & Burke.
"RTC" refers to an on- board, quartz crystal,
controlled real- ti me lithium battery
back up clock, whi ch is optiona l. The term
"XT" refers to the PC compatibility of the
hard dri ve as we ll as the in terface board.
This fea ture alone, in my opini on, makes
the package an attrac ti ve deal. If yo u were
ever to purchase an MS -DOS compatible
such as a Tandy I 000, you wo uld already
ow n a hard dri ve and interface card th at
plugs directly into it.
The XT board plugs in to the CoCo interface
board, and these two boards are housed