RWAP

[RWAP]

I ought to introduce myself really for some of those who have not come across me before.

I learnt to program on the ZX81, when I purchased the computer from my elder brother in 1982 (he upgraded to a Spectrum) and was soon up to my armpits learning the basics of Z80 assembly language (my brother had taught me a bit about ZX BASIC, as he was the one doing computer studies at school).

There are a few fond memories from this time, including not being able to afford an editor or an assembler, so I had to write out the Z80 assembly language by hand and convert it all to hexadecimal machine code to enter into a basic program, then normally the 16K RAM pack wobble meaning that I lost everything at the crucial moment. No wonder I ended up fitting it into a big case which protected everything and made typing easier.

The other fond memory was writing my first game, and someone pulling up outside with a CB radio which blasted through my TV speakers, so I had to turn off the TV until he had gone!

I then bought a QL in 1984, it went back to the high street store I purchased it from just before the end of the 12 month warranty and was duly lost, so I got a brand new replacement (both JM ROM QLs).
I had started writing various programs and short machine code routines.

I officially started up in business in 1986 when I went to University - this is where I formed an alliance with Richard Alexander of CGH Services - he would send me software to test and review for either QL Adventurer's Forum or Sinclair QL World (look for the name Rich Mellor) and invariably, I would find bugs or make suggestions for improvements and send them back to Richard, sometimes even with a patched version of the program. I also attended a lot of trade shows on his behalf - no mean feat as I had no car and normally had to catch an early train on a Sunday (I learnt my lesson though about believing staff at Chester station that there was a 5.30am train on a Sunday to get me to a show down south somewhere!).

He then got me started on fixing some of the older software which was no longer supported (but still sold by Sharps and TK Computerware), such as D-Day, War in the East and Nemesis. We released patches or updated versions where we could reach agreement and these sold pretty well. D-Day was probably the most interesting - written completely in BASIC, with no PROCedures or FuNctions, it was full of code which had been abandoned and only partly written - I was able to finish off some of this code, adding ships and trucks to move heavy equipment around the playing field, and improving the computer intelligence. Turbo came in very useful to compile the code and make the game play a lot better (plus help from Steve Sutton who helped write Lightning, to improve the screen handling).

From there, a chance meeting with Roy Wood (of QBranch) got us discussing the SBASIC/SuperBASIC Reference Manual and got me interested in completing this major project and this then moved into the launch of the RWAP Software website.

Since then we have branched out to support more retro computers and taken over the stock of Tony Firshman (numerous shed-fulls collected and brought up to me and countless QLs sent to landfill unfortunately).

In 2008, we realised that we were spending over £100pm on ebay fees and needed to address this - we therefore took the decision to program and launch www.sellmyretro.com - an auction site devoted to retro computers, where we now sell the vast majority of our stock. We have also arranged for new supplies of keyboard membranes to secure the future for various computers, including the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum and QL (plus the lesser known Enterprise computer and Sam Coupé).

Hope this has been of interest to some people, wondering what makes RWAP Software tick!

[vanpeebles]

That was a great read, I'd love to get my hands on those QL Adventurers Forum magazines. Although I did get to read your review of ACT!

And just to add, I remember the speaker was broke on my old speccy so I had to swop the ear to mic for the tape recorder and press play with no tape in for the sound to come out. It would often pick up police messages and stuff like that!

[RWAP]

QL Adventurer's Forum was a great magazine with plenty of good adventures coming out of the CGH stable as a result (Alan Pemberton, Oliver Neef and Jean-Yves Rouffiac were great authors). Unfortunately, there were just not enough adventures produced for the QL at the time to keep the interest alive.

Alan used to get a little upset, as he would send me an adventure, and I would solve it in a day, sending it back with bugs and suggested fixes - think he liked the challenge of trying to outwit me though!

[Sparrowhawk]

Hello again Rich

QL Adventurer's Forum was a great magazine with plenty of good adventures coming out of the CGH stable as a result (Alan Pemberton, Oliver Neef and Jean-Yves Rouffiac were great authors).

That's very kind of you, but I only authored the one, so I'm not really in the same league as the others. And you of course churned out more code than I care to think about. I did translate a couple and fix a few public domains one though, so maybe that counts as a half point

Funnily enough, I was playing DD Mk2 just the other day. Great fun.

[RWAP]

D-Day MKII remains a firm favourite - even I enjoyed playing it despite having coded large portions of it. I have even heard from some of the people that used to work for Dagenham Design Cell who did the original coding over the years.

It's a shame no-one ever really got involved in playing it two players - I thought it was funny when I made it so you could hide units underneath trees to ambush the other player!!