G.U.S.: graphic utility system

Developed in 1987, G.U.S., aka Graphic Utility System,  was accepted for publication on the Italian tape magazine "Load & Run" but eventually never released.The time has come to make it freely available to all Spectrum users!

The programme is a package of different utilities, all inspired by a common principle of user-friendliness. This approach is achieved by a graphic simplicity made possible by top-down menus and icons, clearly inspired by the Macintosh environment, and by a mouse pointer that can be controlled using the arrow keys (5-6-7-8; 0 to confirm) or an AGF/Protek joystick interface. Once loaded, G.U.S. allows access to the tools section by pressing 0 and selecting "Graphic Utility System". The initial screen guides you to the three main utilities:

A) TAPE.These are utilities related to the tape system. It is possible to analyse the tape headers (type, length, name, start address, special characters in the filename, length of the variable area). It is also possible to load and save memory blocks (from address 50000, max length 5 kb) or to examine the memory from any address. For each address it is possible to POKE a desired value.

B) DESK. This is a collection of different utilities. Apart for a few authentic desk-utilities, such as address book (available fields: name, address, phone number, city) and note book (data can be freely loaded and saved), there is a useful cross-conversion utility of numbers in binary, decimal, or hexadecimal format).

C) SYSTEM. This area provides information on the current used machine, the memory usage (RAM, ROM, MDV area, Basic area, free memory, and so on) and allows to save/load at once all the G.U.S. data (address book, note pad, and so on).

G.U.S. was developed entirely in Basic (21304 bytes; starting at address 23552), with an additional 5400 bytes of code, including the mouse pointer ASM code, the 42-column PRINT, 2 additional fonts, the icon data, and the on-error/on-break routines. There are a few other small ASM code programs, including a partial CLS routine, a vertical scroll utility, loading and saving the headers, and so on.