
Ahoy! Magazine put out 59 issues from January 1984 to January 1989 and contributed a lot of great information and software to the Commodore community. 

Knowing that the users would not enjoy typing in programs every month some authors offered a way to avoid that drudgery. First appearing with Night Attack for the Vic-20 in the Feb 1984 issue was an offer to send a blank cassette, self-addresed mailer, and $5 to the author to receive that one program on tape.

Another issue with all magazines was dealing with bugs or misprints. The May (Pg 7), June (Pg 4), July (Pg 4), and August (Pg 6) AHOY! issues all printed corrections for programs that had appeared in previous issues. Many of these programs appeared complete and corrected when offered on disk.

One exception to the regular corrections to program errors is the program Base Conversions from the September 1984 magazine. As listed, the program is missing a colon in line 1206 and has an odd-looking up-arrow in line 1330. Neither of these issues were ever addressed in a future issue and a copy of Ahoy!'s Best Utilities disk that has been available is present with the colon missing from line 1206. Perhaps these were mentioned on the Ahoy! BBS that was advertised as having program and article corrections.

Also in the Sept 84 issue (Pgs 4 & 78) was the announcement of a monthly disk/cassette containing all of the programs in each issue (including back to the Jan 84 Premiere issue although none prior to Jan 1985 seem to exist).

A proper Errata column began appearing with the January 1985 magazine issue. Despite having a regular place for corrections a reader letter in the March 1985 Flotsam column (Pg 6) presented changes to Midprint (Jan 85) to get it to properly work on the Vic-20. Errors did still happen such as the BASIC portion of Telelink (Feb 85) had appeared on the monthly disk but had not been included in the magazine - it was printed in the March 1985 magazine.

On Page 65 of the July 1985 magazine the now standard monthly disk ad included an announcement of the Best of 84 disk. No content listing was provided.

On Page 38 of the December 1985 issue the monthly disk ad included the Best of 84, Best Utilities, and Best Games disks, all with listings of their content.

Page 35 of the July 1986 magazine added the Best of 85 disk to the previous three anthology disks available.

Finally, on Page 41 of the May 1987 magazine, the Ahoy!DISK ad featured eight special disks including the Best of 84, Best of 85, Best of 86, Best Utilities, Best Utilities II, Best Games, Best Games II, and Best C-128 and allindicated the issue they had been in.

This listing would not change for the rest of the magazine's existence, which is a shame. The latest programs included in the collections are for the 128 and come from the April 1987 magazine. During the remainder of the production run to January 1989 more disks could have been made as people like Cleve Blakemore, Tony Brantner (who else could cram such great graphics into such small amounts of code?), plus others contributed a lot of fine programs.

But, maybe, these disks weren't very popular as all the programs were already available on Monthly Disks (why else would I have had to create them?!?)

The ad mentions that in order to use these programs the original magazine articles will be necessary and they can now all be found online. One documentation exception is Lightning Loader (Nov 85 magazine) on the Best of 85 disk. The article on Page 74 provides details on entering the Machine Language code with Flankspeed along with the SYS command to execute the program. The printed Program listing is in Flankspeed format. The program on the Nov 85 Monthly Disk is a BASIC Loader that installs the code and activates it with the appropriate SYS call. Just Load and RUN.

Also of RTFM importance is the Vic 40-Column Operating System from the October 1984 magazine. This program REQUIRES at least 8K RAM so setup your emulator or real Vic-20 in that manner before trying to run the program.

NOTE: the ad in the May 1987 and onward magazine lists the month and year that each program appeared in the magazine.  One notable exception is Syntax Patrol on the Best of 86 disk which is listed as being in the September 86 issue whereas it is actually in the November 86 issue.
ALSO: the article and code for Disk Check-Up appeared in the October 1986 print magazine but the program didn't show up until the December 1986 Monthly Disk.

While compiling these disks I went through the magazines and located Errata columns or notices  with corrections and made the changes to the programs. In some cases, not all, the programs on disk were presented with the corrections. Below is a table of the programs that had Errata listed and the actions taken. Post Time for the Vic-20 (June 84) had numerous errors in it that were never mentioned in the magazine as far as I could tell (it also requires at least 4K RAM).

There is a lot of software on these disks and, amazingly, only a few programs, Alpiner, Construction Company, Emerald Elephant, Lawn Job, Name That Star, Post Time, Salvage Diver, and Space Patrol, appear in more than one collection (Best of 84 and Best Games), plus Tile Time (Best of 85, Best Games), Micro Minder (Best of 84, Best Utilities) and 128 to 64 Autoboot (Best Utilities II, Best C-128).

Hopefully you get some enjoyment out of these disks that contain the best software from 40 issues of Ahoy! Magazine. I haven't tested all of these programs but, if you have problems, you know in which Magazines/disks to look for them.

RBT
October 2024



Disk		Issue	Prog		Errata	Page		
Best of 84	Oct 84	Vic 40 OS	Jan 85	60	corrected   needs at least 8K RAM
Best of 84	May 84	I got Biorhythm	Jul 84	4	corrected	
Best 84 / Games	Jun 84	Post Time	Aug 84	4	corrected 
Best of 85	Jan 85	Midprint Vic	Mar 85	6	corrected	
Best of 85	Mar 85	Home Budget	May 85	84	Disk version Good	
Best Games	Jun 85	Duck Shoot	Sep 85	46	corrected	
Best Utils	Jul 85	Lucky Lotto	Sep 85	46	corrected	
Best Utils	Aug 85	Formatter	Oct 85	44	corrected	
Best Games	Aug 85	Gators & Snakes	Dec 85	118	corrected	
Best Utils	Sep 85	Fastnew		Nov 85	113	corrected	
Best of 85	Sep 85	Ahoy Dock	Nov 85	113	corrected	
Best Utils	Sep 85	Start & End	Nov 85	113	Good	
Best of 85	Nov 85	Lightnin Loder	Jan 86	45	Works fine.
			Prog on disk is BASIC loader NOT ML code requiring SYS to start	
Best Games 2	Feb 86	Crabfight	Apr 86	52	Print error – disk version good	
Best C128	Mar 86	Ahoy Term!	Apr 86	52	Disk version Good	
Best Util 2	Apr 86	Chrono Wedge	Jul 86	72	corrected	
Best Util 2	May 86	BigPrint	Jul 86	72	corrected	
Best Games 2	May 86	Star Search	Jul 86	72	corrected	
Best of 86	June 86	Star Strike	Aug 86	72	Disk version Good	




