THIS LIGHT PEN ISN'T MEANT FOR DOODLING
THIS is the best light pen for the BBC Micro that I've seen
so far. It is very well made and comes with a comprehensive 13
page manual.
The pen is metal with a red LED indicator to the rear. It is
linked to an interface box via a screened cable which is in turn
plugged into the analogue socket of the computer.
The cassette supplied contains a machine code driver, procedures
to set the light pen up for your particular TV or monitor, and
three demonstration programs.
One of these demonstrates how the pen hardware can operate in
user-defined modes selected by software.
The only reservation I have about light pens using the 6845
CRTC is that only character resolution (in Mode 1) is possible.
This means that a light pen of this type is not really a drawing
aid, but merely a way of interacting with a program without the
keyboard.
To their credit, RH Electronics do point this out on page 1
of the manual, something that other light pen manufacturers do
not do.
Alan Plume
