User`s Column, January 1982, BYTE Magazine
Contents
1. See How Can We Stop Soft Pi by Chris M M continuous fool BYTE page 6 Taima that Thad What did think of it business forms for Didn t r e x lot E You should It s dead wrong Mac Lean said Look small com puter Your ton Che Nise says that ices ach is a major problem systems And it really Ta for users I mused Well it s sure going to be Mac Lean said Because look what they re doing Making programs complicated Send today for our NEW full color 32 and uncopyable to protect the publishers What that page catalog with programming guides really does is make the user s life impossible Disks are prices and order forms for continuous fragile things I ve got to have copies of them Suppose I checks invoices statements envelopes have a brownout Ever have that happen to you stock paper and labels I nodded Once we had a power failure while I was e Quality products at low prices copying a disk It took Mac Lean and a program called j a SPAT and a lot of work to recover most of what was on e Available in small quantities aiher dik e Fast Service And it s worse than that Mac Lean said They worry Money Back Guarantee about pirates and the result is that the programs are e Convenient TOLL FREE ordering fragile They can t recover from mistakes because in stead of error traps they ve put in some kind of security And he s right The more I think about2. Operating Systems Languages Statistics Pirates and the Lone Wolf Jerry Pournelle c o BYTE Publications POB 372 Hancock NH 03449 People do strange things said my mad friend Mac Lean They invent things like this new operating system OS 1 You mean it doesn t work No it works fine he said And it s about as useful as a chocolate covered wristwatch Or maybe a triple her nia If you like to play with operating systems and God knows I do OS 1 will give you hours of delight But if you want to use it you get hours of tedium Why Isn t it like Unix Well yes it is sort of But then why isn t OS 1 useful Everyone likes Unix Do they Well maybe a lot of programmers do as they ought to I m not so sure other users are going to like Unix all that much but maybe they will Besides OS 1 isn t quite Unix OS 1 has a tree structured directory system but there s no mechanism for finding a file in there unless you ve kept lists And you can t make lists Although the SET TTY command will set the screen width it won t set the printer width so you can t even list for hard copy unless you ve got a 132 wide printout device If you don t remember what s in those directories you ll never find the files What never I asked Well hardly ever The idea is that you can have multi ple directories so a lot of different users can each have their own
3. e UNAFFECTED BY DUST e VERY HIGH RELIABILITY e OPERATES IN VERY HARSH ENVIRONMENTS e COMPLETELY MANUFACTURED IN THE U S e IDEALLY SUITED FOR PORTABLE AND PROCESS CONTROL APPLICATIONS The Teleram S 100 Bubble Memory System can provide the opportunity for new design concepts For a free data sheet call or write TELERAM COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION 2 CORPORATE PARK DRIVE WHITE PLAINS N Y 10604 914 694 9270 TELERAM COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION 2 Corporate Park Drive White Plains NY 10604 914 694 9270 TELEX 646658 142 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc User s Column A major feature is that files created with LDOS can be transferred from a TRS 80 Model I to a Model III and they say you can get from a Model I to a Model II also although I m not sure how LDOS is superficially similar to TRSDOS It has all the inanities about passwords and protection levels and such that TRSDOS sticks us with Fortunately though with LDOS you can get rid of all that stuff as you should Anyone who trusts those password and protection systems should get his head examined Any of those systems can be defeated by any _half competent programmer You get all kinds of utilities with LDOS a debugger a job control language and a patch to Microsoft Tandy BASIC that aliows you to renumber selectively use random access files step through a BASIC program one statement at a time and cross refer
4. 16 bit machines I asked Such as the 8086 Where we ve got plenty of RAM to play with and hard disks and fast access and He shrugged Who knows But I suspect that if you want a Unix like system you might as well have Unix and be done with it Why compromise with something else And on reflection I have to agree OS 1 is a heroic effort but it somehow just doesn t make it Future Operating Systems So what will be the operating system for future micros Will we as Chris Morgan wrote in his recent editorial The New 16 Bit Operating Systems or The Search for Beniitzerfreundlichkeit June 1981 BYTE page 6 get it right the second time Or are we stuck with CP M forever and aye Well first what does stuck mean For all its prob lems and Lord knows it has plenty CP M isn t all that bad for users Programming hackers really hate it but true hackers hate almost anything they didn t grow up with Users don t know some of the inconveniences of CP M Worse most users don t know all its nifty features because of the wretched documentation for which Digital Research is notorious but CP M is fairly easy to learn and use even for beginners It gets the job done And now that Xerox has adopted CP M for its much 134 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc FOUR TIMES THE BYTE The ZVX4 MEGABYTER is for the APPLE II user who wants to DOUBLE file size expand the capability o
5. VISA or C O D Freight Prepaid On Orders of 100 or more units NATIONAL DATA PRODUCTS INC 8510 SUNSTATE ST TAMPA FLORIDA 33614 TO ORDER OR FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION JAE eN 800 237 3875 148 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc Circle 266 on inquiry card User s Column What are the alternatives To preserve those 500 price tags by making the programs unstable Doggone it that s precisely what some outfits have done In an attempt to thwart pirates they ve made their software fragile One database outfit has sent me four separate copies of its widely advertised program each supposedly configured just for me We have yet to make one work I ve given up on them Then there s what Mac Lean calls Levitical Program ming the first half of the manual is filled with Thou Shalt Not statements and the licensing agreement is such that you have to be insane to give them your right name This is professionalism Then too if the software houses did decent documents they d make their pile selling those Adam Osborne got rich giving away programs and selling books So can anyone else You just won t convince me that I ought to feel sorry for an outfit that can palm off some wretched document at 30 and sell hundreds of copies of it at dis counts that would set a major publisher s eyes gleaming with greed And that s the answer to the systems house pirate who if the truth be known isn t all that gre
6. database to find records that had BILL DATE older than October 31 1979 and for those records to replace the value of the variable COST by the current value plus ten percent Other forms of magic are possible You have to study dBASE II it can do things you wouldn t think of But it s well worth the study I m using it to organize my files by subject type date date of last access and drawer number and also adding keywords eventually I ll have this place organized and this time for sure The last time I got this ambitious I was using VULCAN and the documentation drove me to quit in disgust but this time things seem to be going much better And my time wasn t wasted last year since dBASE II can read the old Ra _ e PA AVR o te ae wr LOS Aoa 4 3 Gly MX80 469 APPLE GRAPHICS PARALLEL INTERFACE 89 Full Hi Res Graphics for Epson Okidata etc APPLERN VULCAN files and then reshape them into the new system I ve designed What happens is that dBASE II copies the old records into new ones ignoring any in the old database that aren t in the new structure while if it finds variables in the new structure that weren t in the old records it fills them with blanks leaving room for you to enter the data at your leisure dBASE II I m pleased to say makes no attempt to pre vent you from making backup copies Far from it all through the documentation you re urged to make a safety copy of both d
7. dic tionary of up to 20 000 words nce you ve used any Peachtree Software Package you ll find it amaz ingly simple to add others Our easy to use manuals enable you to quickly make the transition from word processing to our general accounting programs Peachtree Software reflects years of development refinement and user test ing That s why there are more than 20 000 Peachtree Software packages in use To get yours see your nearest dealer or call 800 835 2245 ext 35 in Kansas 800 362 2421 ext 35 PEACHTREE SOFTWARE 3 Corporate Square Suite 700 Aclanta Georgia 30329 404 325 8533 Telex 11 810 751 0273 PEACHTREE ATL Peachtree Software Magic Wand Magic Spell and Sales Trackers are trademarks of Peachtree Software Incorporated 140 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc Circle 297 on inquiry card Circle 359 on inquiry card The TELERAM 100 Bubble Memory System A whole lot more at 25 less Now there is a bubble memory system that is fully compatible with IEEE S100 And it s available from Teleram at 25 less cost compared to other bubble memory systems currently available plus it requires only 25 of the physical space Each board has a capacity of 128K or 256K bytes of non volatile storage and can be daisy chained to provide one megabyte FEATURES e DATA IS RETAINED AFTER POWER OFF e 40 MILLISECOND ACCESS TIME e CORRECTION FOR UP TO 5 BIT BURST ERRORS e CP M COMPATIBLE
8. magazines and one of them rates running shoes It gave a fairly low rating to the shoes I like and I got interested in why It shouldn t have one of the measures was shoe weight rank ordered to a tenth of a gram I doubt the magazine has balances that sensitive and a few drops of sweat would change the ratings The magazine published its data more or less as well as its ratings so I decided to do a fairly complete statistical analysis to see just how much confidence you could put in those ratings Not a lot I concluded Many of the measures are highly correlated and not sufficiently thought out I didn t have a decent stat program so I had to write my own based mostly on Paul Horst s matrix algebra routines I learned way back when My routine will do a couple of things Microstat doesn t do such as generate a new data file with the data entries transformed 5 or 10 Mbyte Storage for Heath Zenith TRS 80 SuperBrain S 100 microcomputers Now 5 hard disk add on storage for your computer at a price you can afford Available for a surprisingly low 3495 for the 5 Mbyte hard disk 4350 for the 10 Mbyte disk Disk drives and controller cards also available Substantial OEM amp Dealer discounts From the leaders CMC International A Division of Computer Marketing Corporation 11058 Main Suite 125 Bellevue WA 98004 Telephone 206 453 9777 Telex 152556 SEA 158 January 1982 BYTE Public
9. on the telephone when the doorbell rang Here at Chaos Manor that s a big deal Dogs bark and madly skid on rugs to the door followed by shouting boys trying to restrain the dogs Anyone who waits for the door to open is determined Eventually I got off the phone to find Eliot Lane Lobo s product engineering manager He had a van outside I ve come to fix up your TRS 80 he said And fix it up he did The first step was to replace my Percom disk drives with two new Lobo drives That turns out to be easy Lobo drives have the cable connector on the back where you can get at it without taking out Circle 190 on inquiry card TEXAS COMPUTER SYSTEMS Offers Lowest Prices on Model ll 64K 3288 An excellent computer for your business needs Easy expandability amp compatibility No formal operator training needed All ac cessories available disk expansions printers software at our low discount prices Our fast fully insured air freight a can assure most ue within d Epson Printers Call MX 70 Tractor Feed MX 80 FT Fric amp Trac MX 80 Tractor Feed MX 100 FT Fric amp Trac radio Shack Printers Epson Interfaces Radio Shack Printers Daisy Wheel Il 1 695 Graphtrax option for MX 80 only 79 Model exp int Model Ill cable 35 Line Printer V 1599 Model keyboard card amp cable 85 Line Printer VI 995 Apple interface card amp cable 89 Line Printer VII 325 Pet 1EEE i
10. right But floppy disks are too small for that kind of structure Look your utilities occupy most of one disk and your operating system and its directories take up another disk On top of that the OS is so big that you ve only got about 32 K bytes of RAM left over That s not enough to work in The PL I compiler can t do much in that Whitesmiths C compiler won t even start to work Leor Zolman s excellent BDS C compiler hasn t got room to breathe What use is a Unix like system that won t let you compile C programs I still wasn t convinced Look I said OS 1 is sup posed to have all kinds of nifty features taken from Unix x 2 It almost does my mad friend said The notion 132 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc behind the Unix system with pipelines and all that groovy stuff is great Unix treats everything like a file and you can build pipelines from your directory to the device you want the file to go to or between programs But OS 1 doesn t do that Instead it has pseudopipelines with intermediate file structures Why do that Better to use CP M and a submit program than that With OS 1 you just don t have enough RAM and you have trouble keeping track of where you are and the command strings are long and tedious if you want to look at other direc tories They really tried hard and you ought to give them an A for effort but only about a C for usefulness And if we go to
11. uncopyable Fast Service by mail or PHONE TOLL FREE programs the more I hate the idea I wouldn t bet any 1 800 225 9550 part of my income on an uncopyable program and I m Mass residents 1 800 922 8560 unlikely ever to recommend one in this column 8 30 a m to 5 00 p m Eastern Time Monday Friday But then how do we protect the rights of program eee eee mers Pass rush a new computer forms catalog to CODE 22460 Rights to what If you mean the right to several hun dred bucks for a program why should we protect that I mean if people can get that for a program more power ne a ee to them but why is it my concern to help publishers get that much I want the price of software to come down But I mused if the price comes down will we still get good software My mad friend chortled Ever meet a true hacker who didn t write software True they won t do adequate documentation they never do no matter what you re LE Nebs m paying but try to stop them from writing programs ss Computer Forms And of course he has a point There s another argu 78 Hollis Street Groton Mass 01471 ment that software takes a long time to write maybe A division of New Engtand Business Service Inc 144 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc Circle 117 on inquiry card Circle 66 on inquiry card software with ots of technical support CALICO 213 641 5456 ORDERS months and months or even
12. I and then take the same data and reorganize it by subject matter to make bibliographies What dBASE II preserves are the relationships among the mass of data entered the exact structure of the data can be changed at any time This makes for a very powerful tool one whose capabilities aren t entirely realized just yet And dBASE II is now well documented What they did was keep the old documentation which was a really complete reference manual but sans examples or sane organization and add up front where it belongs a com plete new program user s guide done by someone just learning to use the VULCAN system Thus you can go through the first set of documents and learn how to use dBASE II after which you can use the second chunk as a handbook which once you actually understand dBASE II isn t all that bad It remains however the most frustratingly miserable excuse for a way to learn a system that I ve ever seen Second the bugs have been fixed Not that there ever were many VULCAN was always excellent even if in furiating And finally the program remains very powerful dBASE II isn t just a means of storing and retrieving data It contains what amounts to a whole data handling lan guage with the ability to do sorts and restructures to copy data from one place to another and to do condi tional arithmetic For example REPLACE ALL FOR BILL DATE lt 791031 COST WITH COST 1 1 would be a command to search the
13. NITORS APPLE XTRAS APF 125 SANYO BW 159 Memory 16K 200ns 19 95 DISKETTES Sanyo Green 249 Color 425 Game Paddle Extension 14 95 Scotch 2 50 Dysan 3 50 Amdek Green 159 Color 350 Protyping P C Board 19 95 EPSON MPI C IOTH MX80FT 599 MX100 739 88G 575 99G 675 25CPS P 1379 45CPS P 1699 HAZELTINE NEC ZENITH 1500 995 Esprit 675 5510 2540 5520 2900 219 775 Z89 2195 DISCOUNT LINE M gt Keli Core si aele INTERNATIONAL ARIZONA 1 602 246 1783 1 800 528 8960 We TAIE An iE aas eh Are M dallal rAr EXPORT TWX 910 950 1194 Circle 152 on inquiry card 120 729 135 799 SOFTWARE All Major Brands CALL 730 600 737 750 DATASOUTH DS120 595 DS180 1269 DIABLO 630 2095 1640 2575 156 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc User s Column you which of its many features you want to use On the other hand you can make up your data files rather easily then manipulate the daylights out of them with Microstat s various routines so you don t have to know in advance that youll want to employ the Kolmogorov Smirnov Two Group Test whatever that is in order to use it later I wish I d had Microstat last fall About a year ago I quit smoking and took up running and yes I m still at running and it s a year today since last smoked Like many new converts I began reading the various running
14. Now there s LDOS Lobo s disk operating system for the TRS 80 Model I Although I still think it s needlessly complex LDOS is now the best TRS 80 operating system going It s a lot better than TRSDOS Although it was designed to work with the LX 80 LDOS will work fine with a TRS 80 Model I and a Radio Shack expansion interface With LDOS you can run 40 tracks per drive if your disks can do that TRSDOS is limited to 35 tracks no matter what your disks are LDOS will also work with the Percom doubler and data separator LDOS knows whether your disks are format ted for single or double density and stores the files accordingly You don t need to keep track of that or to use special commands Peachtree Software Word Processing Is A MAGIC WAND A if by magic word processing from Peachtree Software transforms your busi ness most time consuming typing proj ects into computerized ease You ll be amazed how easily Magic Wand glides you through cut and paste tasks The system includes a full screen text editor and extraordinary memory capabilities You can save all or part of your output on a disk even print one file while editing another The user s manual written in simple non technical English includes a step by step instructional pro gram And Magic Spell M one of a whole new series of Magic packages will add to your productivity It checks your spelling against an internal
15. YSIS MODELING SYSTEMS Jan approaching the book buying market CalcStar MicroPro 229 45 213 641 5456 4 But pleads the software developer book publishers Milestone Organic Softwr 269 TO ORDER CALL TOLL FREE 82 don t have to maintain their books they don t have muMATH muSIMPMicrosoft 225 i Supercalc Sorcim 3275 59 800 854 2003 ext 75 people telephoning with questions Worksheet Soho Group _ 185 800 522 1500 ext 75 in Calif Two answers to that First if you make sure the soft APPLE I1 ware and its documents are right the first time you shouldn t be getting those complaints Book publishers U S PEACHTREE r i h Datadex 258 G L 019 don t depend on their customers to be an unpaid quality Easy Writer 40 col 88 AIR 219 control department Second why the pirates cant call Easy Mailer 40 col 61 A P 219 Forth 123 oie te in with questions Pro Easy Mailer 149 cei 219 So my heart doesn t bleed for the publishers After all aout a Mail List 219 who steals software Business people Nonsense Try MICROPRO selling a computer system to your local architect and then Sori ae tell him you re furnishing him with stolen programs Oh Word Star 260 PERSONAL SOFTWARE boy No there are two categories of thieves hobbyists Word Star Mail Merger 349 Desktop Plan Il 159 and shad h Let s look h es y systems houses Lets look at them MICROSOFT ae ate First the hobbyist This poor j
16. a positive ac tion switch There s a good pilot light The LX 80 comes with documents that explain what s going on It connects to your TRS 80 with a single cable and with no booster box You don t need the various kludges that Radio Shack threw in to keep its Model I working The LX 80 will reformat and run both 5 and 8 inch disks at either single or double density It will let you transfer files from single density to double density It has an external data separator which separates data signals from timing signals so that you don t get the disk errors for which TRS 80s are notorious The TRS 80 system uses the data separator internal to the disk controller chip even Western Digital which makes the chip recommends that you don t do that In other words I like the Lobo LX 80 The problem is that it s expensive the model I tested would probably retail for just under 1000 It s really bet User s Column ter than the computer it supports Lobo was a bit late get ting the LX 80 on the market Most of the people who need one may already have a Radio Shack expansion in terface and now Percom will sell you a doubler to allow double density operations and an external data separator to add to your Radio Shack interface If you re using the TRS 80 Model I and you re thinking about an expansion interface and disk drives the LX 80 won t cost much more than the Radio Shack plus Percom s separator and doubler And if you
17. a year so doesn t the pro SYSTEMS 800 854 2003 ext 75 grammer deserve high prices 800 522 1500 ext 75 in Calif Well it takes me a year or so to write a book and I CP M Specify format don t notice anyone getting 400 per copy And as for Most disk formats available piracy I even pay taxes to support public institutions User s Column disk LANGUAGES manua nly DATA BASE MANAGEMENT whose purpose is to lend my books free Yet I m not star Basi Mi ft 3 i 22 anpe eit r En Asie seo ving and neither are my publishers The average paper C Basic Dig Research 110 20 DBMS 2 Condor 889 50 back book sells about 40 000 copies at perhaps 2 25 CB 80 Dig Research 437 37 Data Star MicroPro 245 60 i i COBOL80 Microsoft 574 FMS 80 Systems Plus 698 55 and makes a little money for the P ublisher the C Compiler Supersoft 169 distributor and the author Nobody gets rich on that the Forth Supersoft 169 45 ACCOUNTING money is in best sellers which sell a million and more Fortran Supersoft 209 30 GRAHAM DORIAN i n ai n ie Fortran80 Microsoft 375 TOPS Interactive copies ine ae Pa ne we Or there s the textbook situation Take Kernigan and i Pascal Z Ith Intersys 349 30 AIR 739 35 Plauger s excellent Software Tools Addison Wesley ATS oe a pele ks 1976 or Grogono s Programming in Pascal Addison ortran Basic Micro AP 269 25 k Wesley 1978 as examples They sell for around 15 Tin
18. at a threat either True he does soak up legitimate profits I know a writer who bought a system from a fly by night company and found that his WordStar and CP M were pirated But when he went back to demand satisfaction the sys tems house was gone as indeed such houses usually will be If they re successful they have to go legitimate eventually there s just no way to keep their pirate acts secret forever And if they re not successful they just can t have stolen that much Oh true at the hideously inflated prices software publishers charge the total dollar value is high but in fact we re talking about fewer than a hundred copies at most and many of those wouldn t have been sold but could only be given away Not every one who takes low priced software will pay a high price for it But if the documentation were useful well written had lots of examples and was professionally printed which coming with something that sells for hundreds of bucks darn well ought to be the case even though very few pro gramming documents meet any of those criteria then even the pirate software houses would have to buy the books The answer to software piracy it seems to me is about the same as the answer to book piracy sell decent prod ucts at reasonable prices and write decent documentation for sale at prices competitive with the price of photocopy ing the book And stop worrying so much about protect ing 500 and 600 pric
19. ata and program just in case That advice is worth taking given the relative costs of data entry labor as opposed to floppy disks I expect people will try to rip off the dBASE II software given the price but I guarantee theyll get zero use of it without a com plete set of documents Statistical Analysis with Microstat Microstat by Ecosoft I don t care much for the house name I m growing weary of ecology names for soft ware companies since they make me think their products may contain significant portions of natural organic waste but I can recommend the program with warn ings First warning you or someone you work with better know quite a lot about statistics Microstat will do some very sophisticated statistical analyses but it will not tell M83A 749 TRS8O BIDIRECTIONAL 1 0 PORT Cascadable with Selectable Addressing SOROC 39 ADDS INTERFACES Viewpoint 559 SSM AIO 160 CPS CARD 199 ALTOS NORTHSTAR ACS 8000 15 4750 HR64DD 2875 HR64QD 3150 ANADEX LOBO TELEVIDEO 9500 1225 9501 1225 Apple Drive Card 390 90 912 669 950 930 ATARI TRS80 Drive Interface 390 80 Ti 400 16K 349 800 16K 740 Apple DD Drive 2740 810 1275 820 1795 CENTRONICS MODEMS OKIDATA 3 HAYS MICROMODEM 285 M80 369 SL125 3150 Novation Cat 155 M82A 489 SL250 4200 Penril 300 1200 212A 795 M83A 739 M84 1099 MO
20. ations Inc Circle 78 on inquiry card to Z scores in which the mean is O and the standard deviation is 1 and my system preserves a name and comment string field associated with each data case But I d still have been far better off using Microstat with its much more complete statistical analyses The Microstat package has a data entry routine with some elementary error correction procedures including an EDIT routine I could have used that Microstat does what you d expect means variances correlation matrices etc It also does auto correlation a variable correlated with itself It does analysis of variance Student s T test the F test and various non parametric tests such as chi square It tries different distributions and checks goodness of fit About the only thing missing that I d like to see is Chebyshev s criterion But note this well if this paragraph is meaningless to you you will not understand Microstat s documentation This is not a program intended for the casual cookbook stat user It has everything the cookbook experimenter would need but in a fairly intimidating context In fact Ecosoft which seems to be some professors at a Midwestern university would do well to write a simple minded cookbook to accompany its programs On the other hand if you do know a bit about statistics if you ve mastered something beyond the elementary textbooks then Microstat can help you It has a surp
21. ber when we had to use F DOS And then there are the CP M utilities You don t have to understand CP M as long as someone else does I ve mentioned the CP M User s Group CPMUG before it s an outfit that distributes all kinds of nifty utilities like COPY routines and FAST which speeds up CP M 1 4 and the like The problems with CPMUG are selectivity and updating there are more than 50 disks in the Items Reviewed Workman amp Associates 112 Marion Ave Pasadena CA 91106 CP M Disk Utilities 8 inch single density DiskI 27 50 disk Disk II 27 50 Ecosoft POB 68602 Indianapolis IN 46268 Microstat 8 inch CP M or 250 5 inch North Star disk Software Labs Inc 735 Loma Verde Palo Alto CA 94303 OS 1 price information unavailable Ashton Tate Suite 1510 3600 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles CA 90010 dBASE II 8 inch CP M 700 Lobo Drives International 354 South Fairview Ave Goleta CA 93117 LX 80 expansion price under 1000 interface for TRS 80 as tested LDOS operating systern for TRS 80 169 Digital Research POB 579 Pacific Grove CA 93950 PL I 80 with LINK 80 linker 600 Book Reviewed Winston P H and B K P Horn LISP Reading MA Addison Wesley Publishing Company 1976 11 95 CPMUG library most filled with junk useless games or obsolete versions of programs since updated There are other sources of utilities Various user net works distribute all kinds of nifty progra
22. e made the MM 103 America s most popular modem PMMI was the first to gain FCC approval and meet JEEE 696 S 100 standards You won t find another modem for the S 100 bus with a wider range of Baud rates more extensive and controllable software and such an unbeatable warranty And since PMMI has eliminated the need for an acoustic coupler or an RS 232 adapter your connection is more reliable and you buy no unnecessary hardware SO DON T DELAY GO WITH THE MODEM WITH EXPERIENCE COMMUNICATIONS POTOMAC MICRO MAGIC INC For further information cafl or write Three Skyline Place 5201 Leesburg Pike Suite 604 Falls Church VA 22041 703 379 9660 Or dia into our 24 hour a day Modem Test Center 7031 379 0303 1300 Baud AFTER ALL ALL MODEMS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL 136 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc for him I do not rewrite it but I do smooth out some of the ambiguities Workman s Utility Disk Two has Ward Christenson s disassembler some comments on how disassemblers work and instructions It also has some other utilities probably more useful to programmers than users although again Workman has tried to keep things simple and provide what he thinks will be most useful I can t list exactly what s on each of the disks because that changes according to what Barry thinks is the most useful selection he can put together each month He does try to send out the latest versions of the various utilities as he ge
23. e tags because it isn t in the interest of the user community for software prices to stay that high Very few programs are worth that much PL I 80 What is a program worth Well there s a legal maxim the value of a thing is what that thing will bring which is to say that something s worth what people are willing Circle 189 on inquiry card 4 Rese PE ER J aeg Eh x 3 Meee 4 RNS PA P Wy Vhs Ui Astonishing The EP12 interface card for the Apple II and Apple Computers and Epson MX70 MX80 and MX100 Printers is astonishing All the features you ve ever seen in printers for the Apple plus some new features you d never expect from a low cost printing system All in firmware for the first time so no more disk juggling to do a graphics print All features are simple built in commands 3 Varieties of Screen Dumps e Hires Graphics 24 different formats e Lores Graphics level gray scale Text Prints exactly what s on the screen Special Graphics Features e Dot plotting 960x2160 points on a page e Special Characters you define in Software e 16 level gray scale print mode Versatile Line and Page Control e Variable line spacing and page length e Variable line length e Tabs for indentation and column printing Built in convenient human features e Indication on the screen if paper runs out e All functions are short mnemonic commands e Manual is written for the Apple ow
24. ence programs There s also a spooler to allow printouts while you work on other programs The system is easier to use than TRSDOS but you do have to learn it The LDOS documentation is fairly clear but dense in places you really have to read through most of the document then go back and start over The usual hacker s way of plunging in and doing this and that while thumbing through the manual probably won t work at least it didn t for me _ On the other hand LDOS comes with a toll free number that you can call to get help I called it several times and found myself speaking to systems program mers who really know LDOS They tended to think I was nuts the answers to almost all the questions I had were right there in the manual and if I d read through the manual instead of jumping right in like any hacker I d have known that They also tended to expect me to know more than I d expect a typical user to know but then I had an early copy of LDOS and they hadn t had a lot of experience with naive questioners yet By now I bet they know better The documentation is nothing to brag about but it s adequate provided that the reader is patient and will go through it twice There are plenty of examples most of them informative It needs a good index and an analytical table of contents and a better introduction to the philosophy behind LDOS but you can with patience learn the LDOS system from the manual That beats the dayl
25. f existing business software and make other SERIOUS applications more viable Now you can have compatibility with IBM INTEL CP M Z80 Softcard UCSD Pascal and others Look what the MEGABYTER dual density 8 floppy disk controller with its LSI circuitry and reliable industry standard IBM 3740 format means to you INCREASED STORAGE e Increase online storage to 2 Mega bytes e Double your maximum accounts and file size e Add nigh capacity efficient hard disk backup e Control up to 4 Shugart SA800 SA850 drives IMPROVED COMPATIBILITY e Operate APPLE DOS 3 1 3 2 3 3 mini disks e Preserve existing software investment e Interchange data with other computers SIMPLIFIED OPERATION e Reduce disk handling and I O slot usage e Gain automatic single double density operation e Change to double sided drives with one switch Available at your Apple dealer Call or write today SORRENTO VALLEY ASSOCIATES SV A 11722 SORRENTO VALLEY ROAD SAN DIEGO CA 92121 1084 714 452 0101 TWX 910 335 2047 CP M trademark of Digital Research Inc Z80 Softcard trademark of Microsoft Inc User s Column Circle 340 on inquiry card advertised systems one conclusion is plain any popular system of the future will have to be upward compatible with CP M because there s just so much good software running under CP M Digital Research did us all a good turn by coming up with something approaching a stan dard in this field I remem
26. g the keyboard to the expansion interface there s also a round cable which makes it pretty crowded and hard to get at the RESET button There s no connection for anything like that on Lobo s LX 80 Just ignore it Eliot said He proceeded to connect the LX 80 It didn t work so we took apart the TRS 80 keyboard and lo there was a broken wire in the ribbon cable connecting the two halves of the system Eliot soldered jumpers around the broken parts and tried again and all worked fine It still does We re now running the Lobo LX 80 with LDOS operating system and both work splendidly The disk drives are a pair of Lobo 5 inch and another pair of Lobo 8 inch all four are running at double density and doing fine and with this system you can move every thing from small disks to big ones and back again giving you a lot of storage Now about the LX 80 this is an excellent product It s well made in a metal case with precisely located com ponents The insides look professional as opposed to the _TRS 80 expansion interface with its jumpers and cut traces and soft plastics and such The one I ve got is the full blown model with two serial ports and a parallel port and cable outlets for both 51 4 and 8 inch drives and 32 K bytes of memory There s an on board PROM programmable read only memory that brings the system up into LDOS It supplies power for all the ports from a single wall plug that works through
27. ights out of some system manuals I know of One reason LDOS is complex is that it really is an operating system not just for the disks but for the whole TRS 80 It has the ability to set logical devices and trace programs and do lots of neat things you don t associate with the TRS 80 LDOS with the LX 80 gives you a fairly powerful system with a real monitor just like regular computers and even with the Tandy interface you still get a lot more control over your machine than you get with either NEWDOS or TRSDOS As far as I can tell you can run any programs under LDOS that you can run under TRSDOS except for those Circle 269 on inquiry card programs that are artificially protected with goofy sector ing and other strange tricks to keep you from copying them And anyone who uses such programs is in my Computer judgment not doing the profession much of a favor to begin with On that more later The bottom line on LDOS is that I like it It s kind to the user and it s a fairly complete operating system I still prefer to convert my TRS 80 Model I to CP M but I ll keep LDOS around to use when I m running it as a TRS 80 since it will work on Omikron s Mapper if you get an LDOS patch from Omikron Code and Swash Do you read BYTE my mad friend asked Stupid question I write for BYTE with 32 pages of What s that got to do with reading it Anyway did you read the editorial on software piracy
28. k we can safely add Digital s PL I to the armory of good stuff programs that work properly and are useful PL I does have difficulties There s no CASE SWITCH statement which means youll have far too many if then else statements but everything necessary for rigidly structured code is in the language The error reports are excellent PL I is not as fussy about declarations as Pascal The language doesn t come out as compact as Pascal and the programs don t run as fast but they re easier to write PL I forgives quite a few errors There are other problems The input output is confus ing and worse that s the part that you have to rely on Digital to tell you about But you can learn it and having done that you re safe in programming with PL I because Digital is committed to support PL I compilers for all its operating systems You ll be able to transport your programs from your present micro to whatever machine 8086 Z8000 whatever you eventually replace it with Thus I ll stick my neck out this far it s worth the time investment a couple of weeks to become mildly profi cient in PL I always assuming that you re going to do some programming of your own of course If you re strictly a user though you re still safe in investing in PL I programs since you re probably guaranteed they1l be useful on the next generation of machines Digital PL I also comes with a really groovy linker and library manageme
29. ms modem emulators catalog programs library routines you name it And these get revised all the time So how could you tell which ones to use The answer is you couldn t until Barry Workman of Workman amp Associates came along Barry sifts through the CPMUG and other public domain sources and puts together disks of utilities which he ll sell for 27 50 a disk Right now he s got two such disks Utility Disk One will always be the most useful CP M utilities I can find Workmansays The latest and fastest copy routines command line processors directory pro grams a good modem program to use with The Source or Micronet or whatever Comparators and filters stuff like that Ward Christenson s disk catalog utility which is by itself worth more than the disk if you don t have it How do you select the programs Mostly I ask people like you what you d like to have The documentation on the Workman disks is ade quate generally better than what was on the CPMUG disks At least it had better be Barry by supplying quan tities of a wonderful liquor called slivovitz which he finds in some unknown place gets me to go over the stuff ATTENTION S 100 USERS OEMs amp ISOs MM 103 IS THE ONLY MODEM FOR YOUR NEEDS In previous issues we listed more than 50 reasons why PMM MM 103 modems are superior along with a list of satisfied users that is now too long to print Quality integrity and low cost hav
30. n the subject and tells a lot about LISP m
31. ner see your Apple Dealer today Interactive Structures Inc 112 Bala Avenue P O Box 404 Bala Cynwyd PA 19004 A5 667 1713 Apple Computer Inc Epson America Inc 150 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc User s Column oc to pay for it And you can bet that a program worth 600 had better work and do so with minimum effort and have decent instructions that can be read by a human being And just how many of those are around There are a few My mad friend is ecstatic about Digital Research s PL I compiler PL I 80 No bugs It runs It does what it says it will do How did you learn the language I asked Well you need Digital s documents of course he said And two or three standard references on PL I one of them certainly being the Joan Hughes book PL I Pro gramming A Structured Approach John Wiley and Sons 1979 that you mentioned last time You do need other reference works then Oh yeah As usual Digital has encrypted its documents But they re up to Digital s usual standards of clarity meaning that you ll need a Swahili interpreter Well Mac Lean tends to exaggerate They re not that bad Not quite It is true that Digital is a company that seems determined never to hire any writers but its documents are complete if confusing And Mac Lean remains as enamored of PL I now as he was six weeks ago which for him is quite a long time I thin
32. nt routine allowing you to build up a raft of software tools that you can stick into other routines The method for calling in outside procedures and passing them variables is straightforward and again Circle 171 on inquiry card gt Circle 402 on Inquiry card gt You are ready for MICRO if you want to O Go beyond canned software O Use your computer for more than games O Learn advanced programming techniques O Understand the inner workings of your computer O Get the most out of your 6502 6809 system Month after month MICRO gives readers sophisticated software applications detailed discussions of programming languages and in depth hardware tutorials To get the most out of your machine say YES to MICRO today We accept VISA or Mastercard 24 00 per year in the U S 27 00 elsewhere Use Our 24 hour Toll free Service 800 227 161 Zax 54 In California 800 772 3545 Ext 546 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc 34 Se mote Street P O Box 6 Bane Ga ae 01824 User s Column preserves maximum portability from machine to machine PL I is a good language for learning structured pro gram concepts and the Digital implementation is much better than acceptable Recommended Bilge and Circumstance Now we come to dBASE II versus the bilge pumps First dBASE II is what used to be called VULCAN The original VULCAN programmer formed a partnership with Messrs Ashton and Tate and no
33. nterface amp cable 79 Serial RS 232 unbuffered card 65 Line Printer VIII 6998 S ine Printer Vill 6905 2K buffered serial RS 232 card ese Model Ill 16K 835 With TCS Memory Model III 32K 979 Model Ill 32K 909 Model Ill 48K 1089 Model III 48K 969 Model III 48K 2 Disk RS232 2075 Color Computer With TCS Memory 4K Level 1 319 16K Level 369 16K Level 1 439 16K Extended Basic 449 16K Extended Basic 469 32K Extended Basic 529 32K Ex Basic 569 32K Upgrade Kits 79 TCS EXCLUSIVE Epson to Color Computer card amp cable 59 Model Ill 48K 2 Disks 1895 TCS We use quality fiberglass disk controller boards amp gold plated con tacts No soldering or modification to existing RS circuitry For RS 232 add 105 80 160 track drives Call TCS limited warranty Model Ill Disk Kits high quality disk controller board uses gold plated contacts on double sided glass epoxy board for long life reliability Kit 1 Controller power supply hardware Kit 2 Also includes 1 drive 40 track 0 0000 e ue Kit 3 Also includes 2 drives 40 track No soldering or modifications to existing circuits Corvus Hard Disks SCall 5 10 or 20 megabytes of storage for the Model I II or Ill We can configure a system for you with either TRSDOS NEWDOS 80 or CP M for one orseveralcomputers sharing a single hard drive simultaneously For example trom 1 to 8 Model 1l s may share a single large data base with the Cor
34. oker is typically broke aerate re VisiFile 199 The computer industry gets every nickel he has Since he Fortran 80 175 VisiPlot 149 couldnt pay for what he steals he wouldn t have bought AT ee nea Pia A the stolen program anyway Furthermore he ll spend the saved money on something else that s computer related MASTER CHARGE ee Nobody is losing that much money even in the case of CALICO 8921 Sepulveda Blvd Suite 202 the clubs where members line up and make copy after Ee V eT r RAA ce Los Angeles C A 90045 copy b darn f f th ld b y because darn tew or those present would ever buy SYSTEMS 213 641 5456 P P 500 programs These people want programs to play Add 2 50 item for shipping handling Overseas add 10 California residents add 6 sales tax with not to sell and probably not even to use Allow time for checks to clear Prices subject to change without notice Registered trademark 146 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc DISKETTES 521 79 per box of ten MAJOR BRANDS AT LOW PRICES PRICE PER BOX OF TEN 5 4 Soft Sectorea 54 HardSeciored 544 Soft Sectored Sing e Sided Single Sided Double Sided Single Density Double Density Double Density National Data Private Label 21 75 23 50 31 50 Memorex 24 25 27 00 34 50 Wabash 29 95 2 95 35 50 Verbatim Data Life 26 60 26 60 37 80 3 M 28 75 N A N A Maxell 39 50 40 50 47 50 Dysan 39 50 40 50 47 50 For Hub Rings Add 70c Per Box Hub Ring Included Master Charge
35. rising number of features and if you know what statistics you want or can find someone to advise you on the math theory the Microstat documentation is more than adequate to tell you how to use the program Given that caveat I recommend Microstat but do be warned that the book is written with graduate level ex perimental statistics students in mind Soothing the Savage LISPer And finally we have a good book on LISP I confess I m slowly beginning to appreciate just how powerful the LISP programming language is and I will now concede that anyone intending to make a career in computer science should become aware of the language I m still not convinced LISP can be learned without tutorial help but certainly LISP by Patrick Henry Winston and Berthold Klaus Paul Horn will help The book is intelligently writ ten There are a lot of examples the most useful are given as exercises which made me furious until realized there were answers in the back of the book It has a good table of contents I m still not at all convinced that LISP programs will ever be comprehensible to anyone who doesn t spend a lot of time working with the language The claims that they re easy to read and don t require comments are in my view just wrong and would only be made by a maniacal LISPer and a lot of LISP users do tend to be maniacs as witness the hate mail I get for not sufficiently praising the language Anyway the book is the best I ve seen o
36. ts them The Workman utilities are public domain programs and almost all of them could be obtained by swapping with other people for that matter the only copyrighted materials on the Workman disks are some documentation files The price may be just a bit steep but Barry says he can t afford to produce the disks for less He s selling them as a service he won t get rich at 27 50 per disk If your time is valuable the utilities are worth the price The Workman utility programs are for 8 inch soft sectored single density CP M systems only the kind of stuff that my friend Ezekial who happens to be a Cromemco Z 2 likes But of course I have another com puRer Lobo to the Rescue It was at the West Coast Computer Faire I was talking to Roger Billings president of Lobo Drives International about their hard disks I m in big trouble I said Why Here I am at the Faire I ll be bringing home a lot of new software Automated Simulations has some great new games And when I get home my kids are going to kill me because Ezekial is running fine but their com puter isn t And my name is mud if I can t get that TRS 80 going again What happens Roger asked Won t boot Drives spin but the system won t come up Hmm Can we come see you next week Sure I said and promptly forgot the conversation there being so much to see and do at the Faire Precisely a week later I was talking
37. vus Constellation Multiplexer Color Disk 0 519 Color Disk 1 349 ee 8 we ee ee ee ee E For fast efficient service Heart Of we can air freight from Dallas TEXAS COMPUTER SYSTEMS P O Box 1327 Arlington Texas 76004 1327 Toll Free Number 800 433 5184 Texas Residents 817 274 5625 Dallas Metroplex 265 1524 e Payment Money Order Cashier s Check Certified e Prices subject to change any time Check Personal checks take 3 wks VISA MC e No tax out of state Texans add 5 add 3 e Delivery subject to availability Free shipping on all software and small items over 100 per order Other items shipping extra quoted by phone 138 January 1982 BYTE Publications Inc Circle 362 on inquiry card User s Column screws and I wish the Percoms were built that way it s bloody easy to have one of the power cables come loose inside the drive when you put it together after connecting the data cable But when we tried booting the system nothing happened At least we knew it wasn t the fault of the Percoms which had always worked well and still do except for the inconvenient placement of those cable connectors Next we installed Lobo s LX 80 expansion interface to replace my TRS 80 interface My TRS 80 Model I is one of the intermediate versions in addition to the ribbon cable with flat booster box connectin
38. w Ashton Tate markets it I m told my evaluation was crucial in the deci sion to rewrite and expand the documentation but to keep the program with some fixes My original evaluation of VULCAN was infuriatingly excellent it was potentially a very useful program but fatally flawed by the worst user instructions I d ever seen I m pleased to say that now it s not infuriating just ex cellent The flaws are almost all gone the program documents have been rewritten and expanded until almost anyone can learn to use dBASE II and VULCAN always was a darn good database program I think it s overpriced at 700 but apparently Ashton Tate gets away with it If any program is worth that price dBASE II is dBASE II is a relational database This is in contrast to tree structured databases Relational databases make a kind of matrix of data you can then structure the data any way you want examine relationships you hadn t realized were there and in general play about with the data Tree structured systems of the CODASYL variety require you to do the structuring in advance and woe to you if you get it wrong It s a bit hard to describe dBASE II because it s very versatile and powerful For instance you can build a full accounting system from dBASE II tailoring it to your needs and it really would work I think you d be better off buying an accounting system but that s for another article You can put up libraries in dBASE I
39. want quiet trouble free operation if you want to be sure your expansion interface isn t giving you trouble and you re willing to pay for that assurance then the LX 80 is a very good way to go Lobo builds quality products and it stands behind them There s one more problem with the LX 80 it won t work with George Gardener s Omikron Mapper The Mapper is a device for letting you run CP M with a TRS 80 Model I I reviewed the Mapper more than a year ago see Omikron TRS 80 Boards NEWDOS and Sundry Other Matters July 1980 BYTE page 198 and I m pleased to say ours has never given us any trouble True the broken wires in my TRS 80 probably came from the flexing during installation and removal of the Mapper but after all I did that about 20 times in order to put in other stuff for test so that hardly counts against Omikron There s no reason why the LX 80 and the Omikron Mapper can t work together it s just that the LX 80 s PROM is geared to disable certain parts of the TRS 80 and to readdress some of the system s ports A good software expert could make the two work together and I think Lobo ought to consider doing that The abil ity to convert the TRS 80 Model I for CP M and still run regular TRS 80 stuff as well adds greatly to the computer s value Lobo s Disk Operating System The TRS 80 used to drive me mad because of the operating system I always used NEWDOS instead of Tandy s standard TRSDOS
40. y Pascal Supersoft 79 25 SYSTEMS E ae and I suppose they sell 30 000 to 40 000 copies Maybe ASSEMBLERS UTILITIES AIP 375 more Does anyone seriously contend that it s harder to seal cel i TE aR n write a good program than to write a good book I ve espoo ig Researc ayro 5 Diagnostic Supersoft 84 20 Inventory 375 done both and programs are easier if a bit more tedious Marano Microsoft ae Sales m 375 there s more of the equivalent of reading galley proofs ig Researc 5 15 Point of Sale 375 P L 1 80 Dig Research 469 40 Purch Order 375 we call it galley slavery in programming than in SID Dig Research 70 15 writing But both are hard work ae Mig AeSSaICN SENS ai 6437 40 As to thefts look it s really in everyone s interest to WORD TEXT PROCESSING AIP 437 40 bring the price of software down The more good soft Edit80 Microsoft 90 A R 437 40 MagicWand Peachtree 280 45 Payroll 319 40 ware and by good 1 mean stuff that ordinary people Mail Merge MicroPro 108 25 Inventory 437 40 can use to do worthwhile things programs that are self AT viene eh A sales igvoi e S490 40 instructing and have really good documentation the w Dig Research 100 10 CP M more good software available at a reasonable price the Pae l Pea a a TRS 80 Mod II P amp T 169 more machines will be sold and the larger the software WordStar Mail Merge 4585 CALICO market will become and I believe its already ANAL
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