Camera Work : Linda Harrington
                         Paul Song
                         Wayne Belling
                         
Editing : Paul Song
             Wayne Belling

Titles : Justin Williams (using JJ's Scrolltext)

Technician : Colin Cameron
                    Vince Vesey
                    
Video Consultants : E. F. Hervol

Actors : B Mawhinney
             M Brand
             R Gerry
             D Nes Harvey
             A Lotte
             J Hilbers

Producer : James Milner-Smyth


A JJW Production for NRC TV

(C) J. Williams 1992

This is just a little message to say that we own this little
program and in no way will be held responsible for
anybody deciding to live their lives in a manner which
copies this program and later decides to sue us for
copying their life.

Cheers for now!

Archimedes in Use

This section will discuss original uses of the
Archimedes in South Africa. It's life will depend on you,
our readers, as without your input it will be short lived.

This is an anything goes section. How do you use your
Arc? Anything from printing birthday cards to forging
R50 notes will be accepted with pleasure (especially
forging R50 notes!). Seriously though, we want to know
what you are using your Archimedes for. Please share
your experiences with all of us.

To kick off this time I will tell you how the Archimedes
is used in Natal horseracing.

At each of the three racing clubs in Natal, there is a
closed circuit TV system. These tv's are situated in
most parts of the course, and the races are shown as
they happen. There is also a need for quite a bit of
textual information to be shown on these screens. For
this an Archimedes 310 with 1meg RAM is used. The
machine has a Wildvision genlock card. For those of
you who have been to racing I am sure that you will
have noticed the race name, stakes, date etc on the
bottom 3 lines of the screen. On the top left of the
screen are a sequence of up to four numbers, showing
the current position of the horses in the race. At 
Greyville you will see the course time. All this was done
with the Archimedes. 

The Archimedes is linked to the tote computer at
Greyville to provide the race time, and soon the same
will be available at Clairwood Park. 

That is the internal tv section taken care of. There is a
second Archimedes. This one is used for production
graphics. At Greyville there is an internal TV show,
which provide the punters with interviews, shows
previous form races etc. This show also keeps the
punters up to date with betting, press selections, 
unofficial and offical results, a list of runners in the 
fields along with the jockeys, showing the changes,
scratchings etc.

All this, along with any other relevant information,  is
provided by an Archimedes. I watch the betting board, 
type any changes in,the computer sorts out the order 
and displays it using outline fonts.

This system is far more effective than that provided by 
the SABC or MNET using there specialised character 
generators. There systems are just far too slow. Many 
times in the past they have said that they will use there systems, only to request the use of the Archimedes 
halfway through the broadcast. 

Next time there is a race on TV from one of the Natal 
Racing Clubs, take a closer look at the betting or 
unofficial results. You will most probably be looking at 
the handywork of an Archie just like yours. Not bad 
for a cheap little home computer. Well, cheap when 
compared to the equiptment used in its company.

That's it for now!

This is all part of a demo of an unfinished program.

Unfortunately I do not have the time to finish this prog
myself, which is why I have posted it to some FTP's.

I would like to see somebody clean it up a little, add a
front-end and a few more features, like the ability to
have sprite files, different fonts etc in a scroll text.

If you haven't noticed, you can change the speed of
the scroll by using the + and - keys. If you make it too
fast it will not be able to keep up and you will get to see
the update on screen. With ARM 3 you should be able
to get quite a speed.

This program was written on a 2 Meg A3000 and tested
on a 1 Meg A310. 

That is all. But please, if you do use my code, or my
ideas, please send me a copy of the final product.

Anybody using my code or ideas must place their
product into PD, shareware, or sell it for less than 10.

Write to me :
williamj@shrike.und.ac.za
or
Justin Williams
PO Box 1051
Wandsbeck
3631
Natal
South Africa

