AN A.N.N. REVIEW BY that Wizard from the Wild West 
Joe Waters (Falcon@Federation.hack.com) 
Albuquerque, NM 87111 
 
Joe Waters who will be doing articles, reviews, etc. on a regular basis for A.N.N. has been programming since he was in the 7th grade and he brings much experience with him.
 
 
TITLE:  Multi-Cart Backup 2.0 
PRICE:  $8.95 U.S. 
MEDIA:  Disk/Flippy DDP 
SOURCE:  Practical Programs

     Multi-cart Backup is a copy utility written in SmartBASIC 
that allows the user to copy multiple Colecovision game 
cartridges onto one disk.  The advertisement in Practical 
Programs' catalog states that "up to 16" cartridges can be placed 
on one disk/ddp.  This is possible, assuming that we are talking 
about a 256K DDP and no cartridge is longer than 16K bytes 
(though most of the more recent cartridges are 24 or 32K). 
However, for a disk, you can not expect to get more than 8 
cartridges (more likely 6 or so) on a disk.  The program is 
loaded by means of a FastSaved BASIC 1.0 file.  You will have to 
initialize a fresh DDP or disk, because, as with nearly all of 
the other cart copiers on the market, this one has a unique 
directory format.  Nothing against Practical Programs (or anybody 
else for that matter) but it would be nice if everybody got 
together and decided on a universal directory format for game 
cartridges.  It would also be nice if IBM would become the 
subject of a hostile business takeover by Coleco, and 
subsequently Coleco would go out of business.  However, that's 
not likely to happen either.  Too bad.  Anyway, the cartridge 
saving routine is simple and self-explanatory.  It works quickly 
and efficiently, saving only those blocks off of the disk that 
are actually used by the cartridge.  The BASIC program also 
allows one to replace existing carts on the media, or rename 
existing cartridges in the directory, as well as printing a hard 
copy of the directory on either the standard ADAM printer or 
through the parallel port.
     I do have one major qualm with the program, however.  It 
lies with the boot block loader.  While in most respects the 
loader is nice (it comes up with the title screen, displays the 
contents of the directory with file sizes for each file [a 
feature found in no other copy programs that I know of], and asks 
you to select with the joystick), the method of joystick entry is 
tricky and awkward to use.  There is a window at the bottom of 
the screen that contains the currently selected file, and you can 
move up and down the list by moving the joystick up or down.  The 
problem is that the program does not watch for the joystick to be 
moved, change the title, and then wait for the joystick to be 
returned to the center.  Instead, if you press down on the 
joystick and hold it for more than the merest fraction of a 
second, the names scroll by ("at machine language speed!").  This 
makes accurate selection when you have 12 or 13 carts on a DDP 
extremely difficult and tedious.  However, this is also an error 
which can be easily corrected, and hopefully Practical Progams 
will do so with their next revision.
     Other than that one slight difficulty, this program is a 
fine cartridge copier.  There is a slight drawback since you must 
first load SmartBASIC before running the program, but this is 
overshadowed by the fact that Practical Programs includes a FREE 
copy of their SmartBASIC 1.5, Multi-loader, Pro-Load, and Pro- 
Copy software with Multi-Cart Backup.  Thus, while you are forced 
to boot SmartBASIC in order to copy a file, you have a BRAND 
SPANKIN' NEW version of BASIC to boot, so it's not so bad...
 
 
moved, change the title, and then wait for the joystick to be 
ret
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