F1-Minibase for Commodore VIC-20 and C 64
© by Thomas Klein
 

The goal when writing F1-Minibase was to create a program that can do ("almost") the same job as Formula 1-Database, i. e. manage the results of the formula one drivers' championship, but fits into the memory of an unexpanded Commodore VIC-20 (for those who are not familiar with the VIC-20: the free program memory is 3.5 KB). The size of the current version is less than 1.5 KB (the coloured version with the border text is a few bytes larger), but is still fully functional, including a simple user interface, fast calculation of table/points and statistics of the drivers' results.

On the disk you find the following versions of the program (the VIC-versions only differ in the start address):
F1-MINIBASE 20/0: For VIC-20 without memory expansion
F1-MINIBASE 20/3: For VIC-20 with a 3K-memory expansion
F1-MINIBASE 20/8: For VIC-20 with 8K- or larger memory expansions
F1-MINIBASE 64: C 64-version
The disk also contains "F1-CONVERTER 64", a C64-program to convert Formula 1-Database files into F1-Minibase files.

When running F1-Minibase, you see the following parts on the screen:

F1-Minibase 20
Screenshot VIC-20

The active field is displayed in reverse text. You can select it by pressing cursor up/down. To change its content press return. If the current field is the name of the grand prix or one of the drivers in the second half of the screen a cursor appears and you can change the text (press return when finished). If you have chosen one of the eight classification fields, a second reverse bar appears in the list of the drivers and you can select the driver who finished at this place by entering return. If you press the delete key instead of return, the current driver in the finishing list is deleted.

After any change the table is updated immediately. If two drivers have the same points, the number of first places, second places, ... decides who is first in the table. You can scroll the table up/down with F1/F3, F7 toggles the table mode between names, names with points and a list containing the points and the number of victories.

F1-Minibase64
Screenshot C 64

You get a more detailed statistic of each driver by moving the selection bar into the list of the drivers. The status line which normally shows the number of the grand prix and the "point scheme" (see below) then changes into a row of 9 numbers. The first shows the points of this driver, the following are the numbers of the first places, second places, ...
By pressing 1 or 2 the point scheme can be changed. In mode 1 the points for the places 1 to 6 are 10, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 which is the way they were calculated from 1991 to 2002. In mode 2 this is changed to 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 for the first eight drivers according to the current rules which were introduced in 2003 (it is quite interesting to see how the different schemes affect the table).
To print the the current grand prix, the table and the statistics, press p.

Another grand prix can be selected with cursor left/right. r recalculates the table/statistics and updates the screen which is normally not necessary because it is usally done automatically (this is mainly for developing purposes).

To save/load data to/from disk, press s or l. After that you can enter the file name in the status line. When loading data the program first checks if the file is really a F1-Minibase-data file by looking for specific header bytes. It also checks the status of the drive so that it doesn't crash when there is a disk problem, but doesn't display an error message. Look if the drive led isn't flashing to be sure that everything went right. When saving at least three blocks must be free, even when replacing an existing file because the "@"-option of the disk drive is used which first saves the new file and deletes the old one afterwards.

The last two commands have to be entered as capital letters to avoid data loss: N (new) restarts the program, Q (quit) leaves it.

To convert Formula 1-Database files into F1-Minibase files run F1-Converter on the C 64 and enter the name of the data file without the two leading graphic characters. The output file will have the same name as the original file but without the graphic characters. Before saving the data file in Formula 1-Database you should calculate the table of the last race, because the list of the drivers in the created F1-Minibase file is sorted according to the points. This way only the drivers with the least (i. e. usually zero) points are omitted if there are more than 26 of them.

Changelog
V0.1 First version, size below 1.2 KB 17.08.06
V0.2 Added different point schemes, file format changed 02.09.06
V0.3 Coloured text (optional) 03.09.06
- F1-Converter included 17.09.06
V0.4 Additional table mode (names with points) 19.09.06
V0.5 Print routine added 30.12.06
V0.6 Improved print routine 29.01.07

Thomas Klein - 29.01.2007


F1-Minibase V0.6 and results of 1992-2006 as D64-file (.zip)
Sourcecode of F1-Minibase V0.6

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