
The Professional Adventure Writer for the Microdrive

PAW on Microdrive is almost identical to the version described in the Introduction and Technical manuals supplied.
The following notes detail the differences that do exist.

A short message

PAW for the Microdrive has taken a fair amount of extra programming to provide you with a powerful system.
Do not abuse the laws of the land and the laws of common sense: Piracy is illegal and will prevent future
support for your drive.

Making a working copy

Due to the unreliability of Microdrive we have supplied PAW on cassette with a transfer program.

The program can be loaded using LOAD "". When loaded you have the option to save both PAW and the
overlays on the same cartridge, or on two separate cartridges. The second option is recommended as the initial
loading and subsequent overlay loading time is significantly reduced. This is because the transfer program
uses the multiple save facility of the Microdrive to put as many copies of the files as it can on each cartridge.
Full onscreen prompts are provided (albeit, slightly terse due to a lack of memory!). You will be required to
stop and start the tape several times, so fingers on the PAUSE...

You may make several copies for your own use if required, but please don't give (or sell!) copies to your friends.

Loading

PAW is set up as a 'run' file and may be loaded automatically after power on, reset or NEW by typing RUN and ENTER.

If you wish to load PAW after executing commands (e.g. after opening a printer channel) then you should use the
standard loading command to load the run file:

    LOAD *"m";1;"run"     followed of course by ENTER!

the program will then load to the start up screen as described in the Getting Started section of the introduction manual.
The only difference here is that the version number is followed by a letter M to indicate Microdrive! If you have saved
the overlays on a separate cartridge, you should now insert that cartridge in drive 1.

Using the drive

Whenever a filename is requested (except for Save and Verify Adventure) you may use the drive by preceeding the
filename with a colon (":"). The database/screen/character set will then be loaded/saved/verified, to/from drive 1, Phew!
Note that the filename will actually contain the colon as well as the name.

128K Owners note: When you start to use other ram pages, the save and load database option will wait for a key to
be pressed before saving the other pages. This allows you to put Page 0 of the database on one cartridge and all the
other pages on a separate cartridge. This is only of use when the database becomes too large to fit on a single cartridge.
Most of the time you should save all parts of the database on the same cartridge.

Catalogue

If you type a colon and give no name (i.e. ":" as the filename), a catalogue of drive 1 will be displayed followed by the prompt
for the filename again.

Overlays

These are now loaded from the drive whenever required (as detailed on page 55 of the introduction manual). This means
that you must remember to replace the PAW cartridge (or the overlay cartridge if they are separate) after saving/loading
etc, or the "File not found" error will occur when PAW attempts to find the required overlay.

In addition the Bytes Spare option on the main menu is now included in the Compressor Overlay (PAWOVR 2) to make
room for the Microdrive handling code.

Printers

You must open the printer channel before loading PAW using the command:

    OPEN #3;"t"    followed by ENTER

(You can not then use the RUN option - see the section on loading PAW, above.)
