EUG Not Printing

By John Woodhams

Originally published in EUG #23

I have been experiencing difficulty with printing the files from the disk. Errors bounce up all over the place and I'm sure this must be identical on all of the disks. Perhaps someone else has written in by now and the problems have been cleared up.

I thought Simon Pilley's pictures were excellent. Being a complete duffer where programming is concerned, I can't imagine how it's done, but jolly good show!

As you can't open a newspaper these days without being bombarded with ads for multimedia PCs, I wonder how many Elk users are finding themselves sorely tempted...? Probably some members have PCs as well as an old Electron. Or maybe some people use a PC at work? What are their reactions? Do they find they are increasingly frustrated with the Elk's limitations or do they actually prefer it to the modern marvels? And if you don't own a PC and someone asks you if you have a computer at home, what do you tell them? "Erm, yes, an Electron actually." ("A what?!")

Admitting that your computer has only a basic 32K, no hard drive and won't run WINDOWS 95 is rather like saying that your preferred mode of travel is an ox-cart or that you keep a stegosaurus in the cellar.

I know I will only keep my Elk a little longer. Perhaps getting up at 5am every day might leave me a few minutes to use it! Perhaps I shall try my hand at writing fiction. On second thoughts though, I'm hopeless at plotting so maybe I'd better try something else. The Machiavellian attempts of my employers to impoverish the workforce might prompt an article on how to survive 'Re-structuring'...always providing I could think of any way to frustrate my bosses' evil plans. Of course, if it comes to the crunch and I'm forced to take early retirement, I'll have a lot more time to tap that old keyboard, won't I?

Cheerio and best wishes.

John Woodhams

Sorry about the printouts. I must confess that I don't print EUG here as I see everything about a dozen times. Each disk contains a slightly different 'One Pass Printing' routine and sometimes I forget to update it, hence the 'Not found' errors present on recent EUG disks.

It's a shame Simon Pilley's pictures cannot be printed out but their code overwrites the EUG code. Although Richard Dimond has made a number of improvements to the original printing code, I'm not really sure how to print out graphics just now.

I hope readers will reply to your query about PCs. For my part, I have one and have said before that, for me, it is a case of the emperor's new clothes. I have much more fun with my Elk and Master 128!

Gus Donnachaidh, EUG #23