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TMQ Vol III.i - tim

1. III ER bt T ue EEN DATASHIELD 3400 AND 5700 SPECIFICATIONS INPUT VOLTAGE This new SS Series is in a class by itself 135 VAC to 90 VAC INPUT FREQUENCY 60 Hz SURGE PROTECTION 200 Joules INRUSH CURRENT 300 of maximum output utilizes Soft Start technique to bring up fully configured IBM AT OUTPUT VOLTAGE 120 VAC 13 regulated OUTPUT POWER SS700 7OOVA SS400 400VA OUTPUT FREQUENCY 60 Hz 30 1 Crystal controlled OVERLOAD PROTECTION Current limiting electronics TRANSFER TIME NONE OPERATING EFFICIENCY Greater than 90 NOISE ATTENUATION Greater than 80 dB normal mode Greater than 40 db common mode AUDIBLE NOISE Less than 50 dBA BATTERY industrial grade sealed lead acid BACKUP TIME Minimum 5 minutes full load 20 minutes average load RECHARGE TIME One hour to 90 charge Two hours to 100 charge STATUS INDICATORS Normal AC AC line less than 104V Overload excessive Output load Power Boost low line supplemented Battery battery condition LED amp audible alarm OPERATING TEMPERATURE 09 40 OPERATING HUMIDITY 95 maximum relative humidity without condensation 25 c WEIGHT Model SS700 39 Ibs Model SS400 32 Ibs SIZE Height 3 x width 18 x depth 17 DataShield WH PTI Industries e 269 Mt Hermon Rd Scotts Valley CA 95066 e Telex 176841 e Fax 408 438 0967 A Pentron Company XT300 So ae EI az ec
2. MC C Compiler MC DOS 6 x M 21 064 LDOS 5 x M 20 064 If you are looking for a full C compiler look no further If you are looking for a well stocked UNIX System V standard library look no further MC reviewed in the January 1987 issue of 80 MICROCOMPUTING is a complete C compiler which adheres to the standards established by Kemighan and Ritchie The library of functions is extensive and System V compatible The compiler generates Z80 relocatable macro assembler code M80 or our MRAS The libraries are files of relocatable object modules MC is a full featured compiler for the discriminating programmer MC supports command line 1 0 redirection for compiled programs wild card file specifications parsing for UNIX extensions in file specifications overlay support requires MRAS a full pre processor lots of options and is designed for the programmer wishing the ultimate in C compilers The package is supplied with the compiler pre processor an optimizer assembler macro files C libraries a Job Control Language file the header files and a 400 page user manual MC requires the use of either M 80 or MRAS available separately 2 disk drives and upper lower case BAD BLOCK errors in MC Fm Masa aki Kitajima I am enjoying writing programs with PRO MC Since I recently installed XLR8er board to my 4P the 256k RAM disk greatly helped me operating the large PRO MC compiler system Unfortunately I found a proble
3. Now for some good news I came across an interesting article in Computer Reseller News dated June 20 1988 The article Computer Execs Portfolios Rebound covered the Microcomputer executives stock holdings and their current value for the top 165 executives The micro computer industry is not that old yet it has made multi millions in paper profits for some folks and even one billionaire It s interesting that Jon Shirley an exec at Tandy a few years back who moved over to Microsoft now has stock holdings worth 45 507 774 Here s the list of the top 10 Software stockholders 1 296 620 942 153 599 909 133 255 237 75 000 000 70 847 700 66 554 019 45 507 774 32 553 585 29 268 000 18 625 840 1 William Gates Microsoft 2 Lawrence Ellison Oracle 3 Charles Wang Comp Assoc 4 Paul Brainerd Aldus 5 Anthony Wang Comp Assoc 6 John Walker Autodesk 7 Jon Shirley Microsoft 8 Jim Manzi Lotus 9 Edward Esber Ashton Tate 10 John Warnock Adobe I came across an article in Government Computer News June 24 1988 headlined 1999 Could well be a bonanza year for consultants The thrust of the article was you guessed it all of the software programs from micros to mainframes which can t deal with dating past 1999 Personally I would like to be apprised of any computer in use after 1999 which is currently being used today My next comments are directed to Jim Whitaker
4. The way to port data from one hard drive to another since you can really have only one connected to the I O bus at a time would be to back up all files to floppies then restore the floppy files to the new hard drive The software we would be providing would include such an archive and restore facility Fm R H Hollenbeck Just received your Required Reading publication Great stuff I would like to offer a couple of ideas regarding your request for input about developing an external hard drive package for the Model UL Before I do I want you to know that I think of Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor Volume IIli MISOSYS its officers and employees as friends I only wish that we had met earlier As an accountant I must question the advisability of spending time and money to develop anything for the TRS 80 It is doubtful that you will be able to amortize the R amp D costs under the new tax laws No doubt you have definitive information regarding the number of TRS 80 s that are out there But do you have any feel for how many owners of those machines either already have a hard drive or have one full boat on floppys and are therefor probably not interested in acquiring a hard drive No doubt this is the reason for your request for input I am running a 128K Smeg Model 4 and probably wouldn t be interested in acquiring another hard drive If most of the TRS 80 owners are like me 1 will keep using my
5. Adding right to left 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0C 1 0 C 0C 1 0 C 0C 0 0 C 1 One of the finer points about adding and overflow is that we never can have a double carry from a single position addition regardless of the number system base Similarly if we want to construct a mechanical adder it needs only three inputs one for the augend one for the addend and one for the carry in It also has two outputs the sum and the carry out I cannot overemphasize the necessity of understanding this simple binary addition Spend some time in practicing it with other numbers before you tackle the next topic How can I subtract when all I can do is ADD One of the assumptions I must now make is that the reader understands the concept of negativity No that has nothing to do with the theory of relativity so you non physics folks have no excuse Is there any distinction in calculating the difference 5 3 versus calculating the summation 5 3 The result is the same but the technique may be different Let s think of a world where there is no operation called subtraction In this obscure world there is only addition This world does have negative numbers but it doesn t have a minus sign This world which happens to use a decimal number system has never had to count higher than 499 thus they represent negative values by the numbers 500 899 Now in any number system it is important that the addition of two numbers ha
6. EQU POP DE POP IY RET LAST EQU pR KK KKK KKK KK KK KKK KKK KK KK KK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KK KKK END MAIN get regs back XMODEM CCC by David B Lamkins Fm MISOSYS Inc David wrote me a letter complaining about MC s automatic expansion of the tab character to multiple spaces Luckily I had him on that one as that particular operation is covered in the MC manual Of course an index to the manual would have provided the ability to find the reference In any event after informing David that the ioctl function could be used to alter tab expansion David sent me the following See what happens when I m right I get a TMQ article Now with David s work there s no excuse for not having an XMODEM file transfer utility An XMODEM program is used to facilitate the transfer of files from one computer system to another through a communications channel typically the serial port of a TRS 80 With both the transmitting and receiving ends equipped with an XMODEM program a file can be sent with a modest amount of error checking This is one means of transferring files to from an MS DOS based computer Fm David B Lamkins Thank you for your response to my problems in using the ioctlQ function from MC I went back and tried it again and was able to get it to work as expected I suspect that my original problem was due to lack of diligence and or sleep Next time I won t be so quick to send a letter In a
7. NEWDOS CMD is confined to single sided double density disks It is also capable of reading either Model I or Model III NEWDOSS8O0 version 2 0 disks I do not know if those Model I owners who have their NEWDOS80 1 0 systems patched for double density can use this It will also work with PERCOM s DBLDOS disks To use NEWDOS CMD type the program listing into BASIC on your 1 111 4 and RUN it It will create a program called NEWDOS CMD This program you must use from DOS The syntax for usage is NEWDOS d 1 3 Y where d is the desired drive number which must NOT be 0 1 indicates Model I NEWDOS80 format 3 represents the Model HI version Y will yank remove the filter from the drive and memory If you wish to change between disk formats you must first yank the previous filter unless you are using a different drive Notice that while the filter is installed that you can only use the specified disk format in it Also note that you can only READ from the disk and not WRITE to it NEWDOS CMD is based upon a program concept created by Roy Soltoff in Issue If of Notes from MISOSYS p 59 The program listed there was written for the Model I and IH versions of LDOS I took it further by streamlining the initialization and adding the capability to also operate under LS DOS Enjoy 10 NEWDOS CMD NEWDOS BAS WRITTEN 1988 BY DAVID GOBEN 20 CLS PRINT BUILDING NEWDOS CMD RESTORE 30 OPEN O 1 NEWDOS CMD L 90 HX 01
8. Pseudo Sine Buzzer 4 Light 4 AMP Fuse 375 179 7 ng IBAI 1 2 199283343 1 000 000 Wem 100 Joules Transverse A Common 206d Minimum 100KHZ to SOOMHZ 200V 120W IIN 220 2400 PC200 15 to 25 minutes 200 Watts 104 VAC 187 VAC 204 VAC 60 HZ 50 HZ 10 12 Hours 4 Mitisec 10 Miltisec Pseudo Sine Buzzer A Ligm 3 AMP Fuse 24 109 7 14 4 114013 1 2 184x10 8x34 3 1 000 000 Watts 100 Joules Transverse A Common 100KHZ to SOOMHZ 200V 120V IIN 220 240V Volume UI The Hardware Corner International Keyboards Fm Bob Hyde Yes Lynn Sherman there are French keyboards and Lescript caters for them One types after the command and all is well well nearly well the dictionary is a bit bizarre I never knew my English spelling was so bad The keyboard takes some using I sometimes transpose on the fly as you say Chorus For A is a Q and Q is an A We do things the AZERTY way As for the directory we have funny words such as FOR QT RENQ E E DISK E ORY HERTW JCL Hoz zould you like to hqve to zrite like this A ericqn Finally I do think that a 3000 Franc hardisk system is a bargain I have started to save up Le TRSDOS 6 1 1 F est un systeme d Exploitation de Disques a 8 bit qui vous permet d utiliser votre Modele 4p avec un clavier AZERTY If you need the addendum to the manuel for version internationale just say It is in French Fm
9. 67 5 9 LS 30 103 103 103 103 15 103 104 65 Volume II CORRESPONDENCE DDET DED86 DED86 DESCRIBE DIR DISK NOTES DISK NOTES DISK NOTES diskDISK DOS DOS DOSPLUS DOUBLE PRECIS N Drive Drive Drive DSM DSM ED ASM 86 ED ASM 86 EDAS EDAS EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp EnhComp Family News FastBack FDC 1793 FED II FILTER FM FORMAT FORMAT FORMS FORTH FORTRAN FORTRAN FORTRAN GOBBLING BOX GW BASIC Hard Drive Hard Drive Index to Volume I THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 How it s dealt with Problem when LS diskDISK is installed as well a disk file memory editor MS DOS based disk editor Product Highlights DIRectory command defaults Cannot be ordered for shipping together with TMO Contents of DISK NOTES 8 What they are all about Difference to ADE Am 1 at DOS Ready Notes from our Compuserve SIG Incompatibility Note The case of ACCURACY vs PRECISION 2 sided drives FDC 1793 disk controller from Western Digital Info TEAC FD 55BV 06 drives for IBM PC Disk Sort and Merge Product Highlight 80x86 assembler MS DOS assembler Assembly Language EDAS amp MRAS EDAS and PRO CREATE BASIC Line s in 280 MODE Bits amp Pieces Brief description of BASIC compiler Data Table length values issued during a compile Disabling RMARGIN in EnhComp Incompatibility with MS BASIC interpreter not set
10. I hope that Misosys will continue to produce software since I m running out of things to purchase from you I already have purchased just about all you have for TRSDOS and LDOS except the BASIC compiler since I don t use BASIC and just about everything for MSDOS as well Utilities are probably the best prospect MSDOS is a very kludgy DOS and TRSDOS users come to it rather spoiled Things that are easily done under TRSDOS and with the use of your utilities are often a virtual impossibility under MSDOS The blurb that you are working on a version of Diskdisk for MSDOS was good news indeed MSDOS is profligate with space on hard drives I ve already had to move from 20meg to 40meg and the end is nowhere in sight The MSDOS path statements are clumsy and subdirectories waste disk space not to mention fragmenting the hard disk Diskdisk86 would be a genuine blessing I m also glad to see that you are getting adverts from other vendors which still provide support for the Model 4 The demise of 80 Micro is no real loss I suspect that PC View will go next since it cannot hold a candle to PC World for general info or Dr Dobbs Journal for programmers Remind your readers regularly that when contacting a vendor who advertises in TMQ they should always include the information that the advert was seen in TMQ Many readers will forget if not reminded and advertisers need and deserve that kind of feedback I have been enjoying
11. INIT service call used to create or open a file must first search all drives to see if the file exists There s another drive search Under MS DOS the file would be created in the current directory The environment file is then written with data which is later used to indicate a start up activity that LB has been invoked from DOS The file is then closed 3 The LBO overlay is loaded and invoked Under LS DOS this causes a drive search The primary LB processing loop is executed This loop takes control after the completion of each LB overlay Thus when you complete a print or edit update or screen definition etc the LBO module takes control and re executes this loop Assuming that the current mode is the initial startup of LB the following takes place in this loop a The LB environment file is opened Again this causes a drive search b The first 16 bit word is read This contains a code which indicates the last overlay which was executing c A new entry code indicating LBO is written to the environment file and then the file is closed d Recognizing that the LBO entry was made from the startup module the command line is checked for parameters such as data base name and password MISOSYS Products Tidbits 57 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume UI So we have a number of processes at the startup of LB which cause a global drive search At least one of those search procedures is guaranteed to examine
12. Send code Zkkkkkkkkkkkkk dosend s char s int tries resp blknum char data if fi fopen s r leave NOFILBE if swaitfor NAK NOTIMEOUT CHECKABORT leave INTERRUPTED puts STARTED blknum 1 while data getblock tries TRYLIMIT do sendblock data blknum MODULUS resp swaitfor ACK TIMECONST chatter blknum resp while resp CHECKBAD amp amp tries if resp CHECKABORT tries break olknum if data amp amp resp como CAN if resp CHECKBAD leave GIVEUP else leave INTERRUPTED else como BOT leave SUCCESS char getblock static char block XBLKSIZE int i c fill block XBLKSIZE NULL for i 0 i lt XBLKSIZE amp amp c getc fi EOF i block i c return i NULL block sendblock data blknum char data int blknum 37 Applications for the User Volume IIli int i csum como SOH como blknum como blknum MODMASK for i 0 csum 0 i lt XBLKSIZE i como data i csum data i como csum amp MODMASK swaitfor c secs char int secs int rxch long expire extern long time expire secs time NULL 1 while secs time NULL lt expire if checke cl Switch rxch getc cl case CAN return CHECKABORT case NAK return CHECKBAD default if c rxch return CHECKOK
13. TMQ Schedule Our target for mailing the THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY is the last week of the respective month as follows Winter issue in February Spring issue in May Summer issue in August and Fall issue in November This schedule may place your TMQ late in the season based on the cover date however it follows from the mailing of issue I i on August 19th 1986 Because of our vacation from August 6th to the 14th this issue was prepared early it was off to our printer on August 4th As I write this I expect to place this issue in the mail by Wednesday August 17th That pulls up the mailing date about 1 5 weeks We hope to continue to pull up the mailing date of succeeding issues until the target delivery is close to the beginning of the season The TMQ coupon has a field for entering your receipt date If you are returning the coupon please note the receipt date on the coupon and get it back to us Unfortunately for the last issue a few folks recorded yes instead of the date of receipt If you send me back the coupon I certainly know that you got the issue Boy I really have to make things simple the DATE OF RECEIPT folks I have not had the time to analyze the date of receipt recorded by those readers who returned their coupon As noted I ve been swamped with work I am considering applying for a Second Class mailing permit for THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY If I do pursue that avenue it will actually make the distribution far easier fo
14. The RLL encoding requires a greater degree of precision on the hard drive platter heads and electronics and a higher degree of quality of the plated material making up the magnetic surface Just any old drive won t cut it A drive must be designed to work with an RLL controller A stock ST 225 won t cut it But many folks have tried to use that drive with an RLL controller then complain about losing data Letters to the Editor Volume Hli I do expect to explore some means of data archiving on other than floppies But that will not take place right away I think that there may be two solutions One is a FloppyTape device which works off of a regular floppy controller That would require access to the external floppy connector One would have to be added for a 4P The other is a removable half height hard drive as the second drive of the package After I get the hard drive package out DU be in a better position to investigate these two facilities Fm Charles A Ainsworth Roy You ask for suggestions regarding other products readers would like you to offer Here are some ideas Note that I neither ask or expect a personal reply to this letter which I am writing in the spirit of helpfulness for you to pool my ideas with those you may get from others One idea is the possibility of offering a ribbon reinker Admittedly its a product with a relatively low price in proportion to weight and volume but if shown around a bit might gener
15. buttoned it up again That was a couple of years ago Recently I became aware of the software and instructions to add the SmartWatch to a Model 4 so I decided to take another look at PAL U3 This time I ran a little BASIC for next loop test before and after I bent up pin 7 of U3 The following is the routine DEFINT A Z CLS PRINT 10 35 TIMES FOR I 1 TOn FOR J 1 TO 10000 NEXT J NEXT I PRINT 13 35 TIMES END Iran this routine with a value of 5 10 amp 20 for n the results were as follows Diff Improve n Before After 10 0 51 40 41 0 10 20 20 1 43 So far I have only found two small problems 1 I have some software with timing and or blinking routines and now they re The Hardware Corner Volume 111 1 too fast I had to increase the loop counters and 2 A couple of applications have sound beeps and the durations were shortened and pitch made higher and 1 have trouble hearing them The BASIC statement SOUND 0 4 is now SOUND 0 2 for about the same beep The following is the original article FAST FIX FOR MODEL 4 SLOWS By Dave Owen CCS Tech Specialist Reprinted from the Micro Info Exchange newsletter of the Cabrillo Computer Society The Radio Shack Model 4 Computer is advertised to operate at a two or four megahertz clock rate Our investigation has revealed the truth of this claim the Tandy specifications do not however state the fact that the master clock does not always t
16. else byte column 0 while buft byte if buf byte t tab stop column loopute tabsp tab stop tabsp SP column else biputc buf byte column byte line if line gt lines nextpage amp line line strip count for eof line nextpage amp line fclose fpi fclose fpo puts end of listing fetchprm argc argv int argc char argv int parmc 0 int i 0 char parmv char alloc fetch parameters parmv parmc alloc 10 while argv 2 if argv 2l parmv parmc i 0 parmc i 0 parmv parmc alloc 10 else parmv parmc i argv 2 i parmv parmc i 0 parmctt set parameters while parmc gt 0 switch parmv parmc case f case F rmv parmc break setparm page pa MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 54 Volume UI case l case fi armv parmc break case Toi case P parmv parmc break case Tei case S setparm amp left p setparm amp lines pnum TRUE break case t case T setparm amp tabsp parmv parmc break case ni case N lnum TRUE break default abort parameter error setparm param arg int param char arg int i 2 parameter format test if arg 1 _abort parameter format error while arg i if isdigit arg i ab
17. is 3FA3 ROM check C should be 3BE7 or 10A6 It is 4022 Alternate character test is OK Query Is this all bad Please don t suggest asking TANDY they hadn t heard of TRSDOS last week They recently changed staff Fm MISOSYS Inc It sounds like you have a gate array 4P it s the A suffix which gives me that clue In any event the XLR8er should work with any version of the 4P even with the hires graphics The XLR8er mounts in the modem slot thus you can t use an internal modem in that arrangement As far as the ROM checksums I doubt that you have cause for alarm For one thing there is no BASIC ROM in your computer only a boot ROM The simulated BASIC ROM is actually the MODEL M image file you load during the Model IM mode startup procedure Since you have an international version of the MODEL IM file I would really doubt that the checksums would correlate with the numbers you are comparing against The TRSDOS 1 3 MEMTEST probably uses checksum values that match up with a standard ROM from a Model 4 The Hardware Corner Volume UI XLR8er Speedup Fm John Cerul Roy Pro Enhcomp has been received and I am checking it out Please ship me a copy of your MS DOS catalog No I haven t jumped on the bandwagon one of my sons lost a wrestling match with a lawn mower and lost parts of two toes so he has decided to go back to school He wants to study programming so I bought him a 1000SX to study with T
18. some even willing to put their money down now Thus I am going forward with the engineering To tell you the truth there really isn t much to deal with Most of the components of a nard drive package are off the shelf components A package consists of case amp power supply drive controller host adaptor software and cabling Out of the five components the first three are standard The host adaptor is a minimal part of the overall package its the only THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 10 Volume UI component which needs designing As I have already done a few software drivers which talk to the type of controller DI be using I only have to make small modifications to my existing software package In order to manufacture connecting cables for the XLR8er board I have already acquired a small cable maker device Replaceable jigs allow it to support various kinds of Insulation Displacement Connectors IDC used in cable making The only cable I need to manufacture is the cable which connects the 50 pin I O edge card connector on the Model III 4 to the hard drive So it s not a lot of work In fact the entry into this area of hardware has other advantages The Seagate ST 225 hard drive is one of the most popular hard drives around We expect to also offer the drive by itself or as a hard drive upgrade to a floppy based PC Since we have to buy the drives in quantity to support our OEM package it makes sense to broaden
19. sounds in Misosys office of shirt buttons popping off due to swelling with pride lt grin gt So I feel it would be interesting if you addressed some of these matters If you Satisfied me on them you could probably count on me for a pair of drives with all the works for somewhere around the last Quarter of 1988 or the first of 1989 Fm MISOSYS Inc Charles The questions you raised are all good ones Rather than wait until the next TMQ to see the answers in print let me address them now and re use this letter later Pl address your questions point by point to make it easier to follow The Tandy ad which references a 20 Meg cartridge drive which eliminates head crashes is referencing the Bernoulli flexible cartridge drive This is essentially a precision floppy drive which uses a Bernoulli effect read write head rather than one which touches the surface The Bernoulli effect is entrenched in a column of air which maintains the head some small finite distance from the media The result is similar to a Winchester hard drive which uses the wings on the head to maintain the flying distance above the media Whether or not the Bernoulli drives are safer than hard drives is not the issue For some years now I have found hard drives sufficiently reliable to eliminate any personal fear over their use I have used many drives for many years and have never experienced any difficulty whatsoever once the drive was working to begin with You
20. 021 BEGIN LD line char 022 CP CR 023 Z NOLIB 024 FAPPS 3 A Get command Set possible libnum 025 into fspec and 026 check validity 027 NC BADLIB The fourth character of the file specification contains the library number either established by default or altered by a comman line parameter This value is saved for later use in building up the member specification 028 NOLIB LD LIBnum for later 029 LD LIB A A FAPP 3 The library file is opened A branch is taken if an error is returned from the OPEN function 030 LD DE FAPPS Open the library file 031 LD HL BUFFER 032 LD B O0 The Programmers Corner 43 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IIli SVC QOPEN JP NZ NOFIND Go on error The seventh byte of the file control block contains the number of the drive in binary containing the opened file This value is recovered and converted to ASCII whereby it is saved for later use in building up the member specification A FAPP 6 Get drive Dr where found DRIVES A save in ASCII The first sector which contains the directory is read If an error occurs an appropriate branch is taken Otherwise the file is then closed and the welcome message is displayed READ Read the dir NZ TOERR CLOSE Close the file WELCOME Screen heading I am using a 32 byte array CODES to store the single character code letter assigne
21. 10 and 14 for drive 1 the double sided PC XT drive Of course if I ever replace drive 0 with a double sided unit I will have to replace that pin 32 to get full use from it I want to thank Aerocomp for their help in getting this system up and running and if I do buy a new drive 0 it is obvious where I will go to get it The Hardware Corner Volume III THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 3 5 Drive 80 MICRO 80 MICRO CMNDR QEXMEM QEXMEM ADE ADE AlphaTech AlphaTech AlphaTech AlphaTech AlphaTech AlphaTech ANSI ANSI ASSEMBLER ASSEMBLER ASSEMBLY AUTO BANKER BANKER BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC BINCALC BREF BSORT BSORT CATALOG CATALOG CIS COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE COMPUSERVE CONVCPM Index to Volume I No plans to write driver for Model 4 General Comments Letter by Gary Phillips A new DOS service call Extended Memory Management New EXMEM SVC etc Difference to diskDISK Product Highlight More on AT patch Notes on the AlphaTech memory board Problems with DOS x 3 RAMDRV LQR Driver for AlphaTech boards SET2RAM and MEMDISK driver SYSATFIX and AlphaTech board ANSI Standards Where to get them What is it Q amp A RELOCATABLE ASSEMBLERS by Roy Soltoff 8086 Assembly Language for Z80 programmers How to AUTO with hard drive Line 00052 of listing in I ii p 34 is incorrect The BANKER by
22. 4MHz may have problems in recognizing that a diskette is in a floppy There are three similar patches because the CKDRV code is present in three system files Incidentally machine speed has nothing to do with control of the RS 232 hardware timing of baud rates XLR8S12 FIX Patch to SYS12 SYS Apply via PATCH SYS12 SYS LSIDOS XLR8S12 D03 7C 12 F03 7C 09 D03 86 40 F03 86 20 D03 9C 40 F03 9C 20 XLR8S2 FIX Patch to SYS2 SYS Apply via PATCH SYS2 SYS LSIDOS XLR8S2 D00 E4 12 F00 E4 09 D00 EE 40 F00 EE 20 D01 04 40 F01 04 20 The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 68 Volume IIT i XLR8BU FIX Patch to BACKUP CMD Apply via PATCH BACKUP UTILITY XLR8BU D17 22 12 F17 22 09 D17 28 40 F17 28 20 D17 3C 40 F17 3C 20 Now on the issue of the revised HIBANKS I had it installed with ALLWRITE sitting at that filespec prompt for 24 hours left the machine on all night and day I didn t have any adverse behavior the whole time So I am at a loss to understand the problem you are experiencing Keep me posted as to the results of file access with these patches installed Where s the RAM Fm W J Russell Thank you for the XLR8er chip which I ordered on the 8th April and finally arrived from Philadelphia via my friend two weeks ago With some trepidation I opened the lid on my model 4 26 1069A and read the manual s 1 0 w 1 y I then followed the instructions and put the 7
23. A4 forms and 5 line top and bottom margin LB s printer parameters were also set to these numbers I suspect both LB and in tum FORMS generated their own TOF code i e 2 TOF codes were sent to the printer thus skipping a form with each page The cure proved to be to set FOR MS PAGE 70 LINES 70 so FORMS won t generate its own TOF Just scanned the index to find the reference which explained it not under LB but under Model 4 IV iii p 58 so what can t win em all Another curious thing happened while FORMS and LB had the same number of lines From page 2 onwards on each line No 28 the first character of the first field was not printed and the rest of the line appeared shifted left by one character position except for the Rec in the most L H column which was properly aligned I checked out some other printouts I had from my stocklistings and the same thing happened but on some listings the error occurred on line 29 on other listings on line 30 but consistent within the record Sometimes the fingers are too quick to hit the lt F3 gt Save key while adding new records to LB files I just wonder if Options 2 Add and 3 Update Delete could be combined Alternatively is there an automatic way to initialize new records as empty but accessible records I can do it manually by just saving a lot of records without any data being entered in the Add mode and then Add or Edit in the Upgrade Mode Unfortunately this method produce
24. DOS Assembly I iii 84 MS DOS HEX Listings for MS DOS 1 241 31 MS DOS SIG I iii 32 MS DOS ANSI What is it I iv 47 MS DOS Editor kudos I iv 48 MS DOS HELP with EXE files I iv 49 MS DOS LDOS MS DOS Utility I iv 48 MS DOS PC DOS vs MS DOS I iv 48 ORDERING How to go about it via Compuserve Iiii 31 PaDS Partitioned Data Set Utility I iv 95 PaDS Product Highlights I ii 78 PaDS Product Highlights I i 70 PaDS Q amp A I iii 97 PARMDIR Product Highlight I i 75 Patch Means of getting patches I iii 26 Patch Procedure how to install I iii 58 PIRACY 1 111 22 PIRACY Analysis of the problem Li ii 2 Index to Volume I 78 Index to Volume I eieiei EE A AAA A A a A a a en A a EE en Volume III i PIRACY POKEDO POKEPR POKEPR PRCTRL APP PRICE LIST PRO CREATE PRO CREATE PRO ESP PRO ESP PRO ESP PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM PRO WAM Profile 4 Public Domain RADIO SHACK RAMDRIVE RAMDRV LOR RATFOR RATFOR 86 RATFOR M4 RS NATIONAL PTS RS 232 RSCC RSHARD RSHARD RSHARD SAID SAID SAID SAID SCRIPSIT SET2RAM SETBAUD SIDEWAYS SIG Index to Volume I THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Responses to TMQ I ii Blurb Adaptation of POKEPR by Roy Soltoff Poke values to printer DOS Rdy Correction of mistake in original listing PRO WAM Appl customisable to ANY printer effec
25. Fred Pieters Dear Mr Soltoff First of all I would like to thank you for sending my letter to Mr Michel Houde Compiegne France who changed my LDOS 5 3 for my French keyboard Model IV I also would like to order LS HOST TERM L 35 201 for handling my Kantronics KAM Radio Modem with my Model IV in Mod 4 mode Kantfonics has no terminal program available unless Pacterm which works in the Model HI mode The ordering card is included The only condition is that the Host term program uses the DOS keyboard and video drivers and not its own I am always delighted to receive your excellent TMQ but receiving Vol Dn I was rather puzzled by the fact that no The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 63 Volume UI subscription form for the new Vol III was included Is TMQ discontinued If not I want to subscribe to this next Volume In different volumes of TMQ I read about the Keyboard confusion in the minds of different US users of the TRS8O computers Ill try to enlighten your readers on this matter if you are interested The Model I had only one version the American Keyboard which we will call the QWERTY keyboard The Models HI and 4 are available in Europe with three keyboards the QWERTY AZERTY French and the QWERTZU German Keyboards The names are as you have noticed related to top row of the letters Tandy changed the space compression codes for the international character set Included are the Model
26. Il iv which was mailed May 27th There is also a revised HIBANKS on Disk Notes 2 4 which fixes the bug and adds code to switch bank 0 in on interrupts In the MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume III i interim I suggest you install the FIXALL filter and see if your problems disappear Also were such problems evident before you installed the XLR8er I wouldn t make a statement that the XLR8er is not compatible with MC If you are experiencing problems in general perhaps the XLR 8er may not be compatible with your particular Model 4 We have found some cases where it just doesn t work in a particular Model 4 I have no explanation at present But try to determine if your problems are specific to C or random problems with everything Does this help Beware of pointers Fm Masa aki Kitajima Roy Thank you for your response to my question about PRO MC s BAD BLOCK errors I think I have understood what BAD BLOCK error is Because I was running the XLR8er without FIXALL FLT I installed the filter according to your suggestion Fortunately the BAD BLOCK error has not appeared since the installation of the filter However I encountered another error message even after I installed the FIXALL filter When I ran my program which was compiled with PRO MC the error 07H appeared I read the TRSDOS manual s error message section to get the explanation about the error 07H and my understanding about the error was that the erro
27. One character device names I iv 40 Patches T iii 65 Patches to upgrade to LSDOS 6 3 0 Level I or J I iv 45 Program revisions for LSDOS 6 3 I iii 56 Q amp A I iii 61 OS A I iii 56 RamDrive driver LSDOS 6 3 I iii 110 76 Index to Volume I Volume IT i a Volume IIl i LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSI LSI LSI LSI Column LSI Column MACH2 MACHINE SENSING MACRO l MARK III COLL MARK IV COLL MAX 80 MAX 80 MAXIMUL MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MC MEMDISK MISOSYS MISOSYS MISOSYS OY OY OF OV OY OD am sw SW NW Lu Index to Volume I THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Special Characters BASIC s EOF Problem FORMS questions IBM PC diskettes Keyboard Filters Writing FILTERS for LSDOS 6 x by Roy Soltoff More on the aquisition of LSI Mutual funds Policy on revisions Suggested utility to place files in desired sector by Jeffrey R Brenton Macros by Timothy Adye 2 disk collection of documented software 2 disk collection of documented software MAXIMUL is the user group for MAX 80 users Moving a Hard Drive s directory Usergroup for MAX 80 users A CC for MC by Mike Bedore Accross the C C compiler changes for x 3 CC CCC on Disk Notes 6 Clarification of difference to LC Compiling separate fields Getchar and the ROM keyboard driver Initialisation of autom
28. UI I ili I ii Te dl Taai I ii I iii I iv I iii I iv I iii I 3 po pe H H p e He He He H po po p HHHHHAHHHHAHHHHHAHHHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHARAR AREA p H 12 3 45 3 81 9 78 93 78 97 75 77 79 80 81 103 104 100 9 103 101 104 102 103 12 79 81 81 96 96 96 98 29 81 29 87 16 6 6 86 39 14 23 23 7 36 98 81 7 62 21 7 88 6 Index to Volume I Volume II THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume UI SOFTWARE Economic factors dictating pricing and continuity I iii 11 STRIP BAS by James Beard Ph D Strip last byte of a file I iv 59 TANDON Bigger bubbles for your 5 megger I i 86 TANDY 1000 EX SX HL I iii 105 TANDY 2000 HS A I iv 47 THE GUIDE Mistake on page A 183 La 1 di THE GUIDE The Programmers Guide to LDOS TRSDOS VERSION 6 I iv 2 THE GUIDE What happened to THE GUIDE Lu 2 THE SOURCE I iv 16 THE SOURCE No reprint I ii 3 THE SOURCE THE SOURCE to TRSDOS 6 2 I iii 98 TMQ TMQ kudos I iv 15 TRSDOS Accessing the RS232 port from BASIC I iv 39 TRSDOS Caution for Directory Tinkerers I i 14 TRSDOS DEBUG Help I iv 39 TRSDOS 6 ECI s Hints and Kinks Ey E 12 TRSDOS 6 Q amp A I ii 24 TRSDOS 6 2 Add VDPRT SVC to TRSDOS 6 2 I wd 15 TRSDOS 6 2 Caution about using unauthorised patches from BBSs I iv 45 TRSDOS 6 2 Problem with reverse video when exiting HELP I ii 67 TYPEIN LS Utility Q amp A I ii 82 TYPEIN TYPEIN amp Profile 4 I iii 98 UNDATE by Lu
29. Z ien La ar Se SE Sa G t e eae d EM S EH teg Designed to work with all personal computers with internal or external hard disks Provides 300 watts of power Four plugs provide for any equipment that needs protection SPECIFICATION MOOEL Back up Time Average Load Output Rating Transter Points Nominal 120 VAC Nomunai 220 VAC 1 Nominai 240 VAC 1 InpuvOutput Frequency 120 VAC Units 220 240 VAC Units 1 Typicai Recharge Time Transter Time Typical Maximum Wave Form Low Voitage Alarm Overioad Protection Weight Pounds Kilograms Siz inches Centimeters Surge and Noise Protection Power Dissipation 100 Microseconds Energy Dissipation Mode Noise Protection Aftenustion Frequency Clamping Voltage Levei Peak NOTE 1 220 240 VAC Units end with suffix E ae ATBOOE Technical Data Back Up Power Sources AT1500 15 to 25 minutes 1500 Watts 104 VAC 187 VAC 204 VAC 60 HZ 50 HZ 10 12 Hours 4 Millisec 10 Millisec Sine Buzzer 4 Ligm Current Limiting Inverter Circuit and breaker 139 8 62 4 12 8x8 3x16 5 32 0x215x42 9 1 000 000 Warts 100 Joules Transverse 4 Common 4006 Minimum 100KHZ to 300MHZ 200V 120V INON 220 240V NOTE 2 Under Ma Zenith Emulation AT1200 15 to 25 minutes 1200 Watts 104 VAC 187 VAC 204 VAC 60 HZ 50 HZ 10 12 Hours 4 Millisec 10 Millisec Sine Buzzer 4 Light Currere Limiting Inverter Ci
30. a longer break dl Ce Ge A Ups NJ eg Z But next week we rest up for when we return this issue of Lan e k Ae Wer TMQ will be back ready to be labeled posted sealed Dee bundled and trekked to the post office gt A Jess The Blurb 7 The Blurb Volume I11 i Letters to the Editor PRO WAM TMO delivery et al Fm Clifton Duval Just a note to say Thank You for your programming efforts and support of my computers I am enjoying PRO WAM and Mister ED I have a Model I and a Model 4 PRO WAM is replacing many of the uses of my Mod I which I bought in 1979 shortly after retirement It is still satisfying to use TMQ Vol Im arrived here Star Lake NY April 6th If it arrives on the West Coast accordingly the subscribers there should get it by next Christmas My next subscription will be first class just to find out what difference it will make Note TMQ Um was mailed at Sterling VA on 2 29 88 ed I would like to know how to choose between EDAS and MRAS Pm not yet an assembly language programmer Mostly need it for typing magazine listing and learning I am also interested in knowing how few of us there were who were interested in a Model I LDOS 5 3 Perhaps these questions would be of enough interest to address in TMQ Fm MISOSYS Inc As far as the Model I update requests we probably had less than 100 when we decided to stop taking inquiries In the case of beginners I think that EDAS wou
31. all drives that s the initial creation of the environment file unless one is hanging around from some earlier LB invocation which was prematurely terminated by some external influence power failure reboot etc Now one way to speed up the process would be to force LB to always use a particular drive for the environment file I think that is too severe a restriction I recollect such restrictions in some commercial software packages which hard coded a drive specification Perhaps in the next release of LB I could make that an option PRO WAM PRO WAM 2 0 M 51 025 This desktop manager gives keystroke access to 4 memory resident pop up applications and disk access of others A Function Key lets you invoke DOS library commands PRO WAM tums your TRS 80 into a powerful machine because it comes with many useful and powerful time savers and desk organizers Here s some of what you get 4 An ADDRESS file data base prints cards and mailing labels Throw away that black book and your Rolodex file 4 HEAD pipes formatted address data into your letters 4 BRINGUP tickler file schedules up to 12 items per day by time New print module Remember those appointments 4 CALendar gives you a month at a glance covers 4000 years Flags days with BRINGUP items 4 A 3x5 CARD filer for a free form scratch pad of 40 columns by 12 rows Or use the new CARDX with forms capabilities It s great for small data base 4 PHRASE is a KSM from disk
32. an interrupt task where fast timing is critical 163 164 Routines to tab 8 or 4 spaces 165 x 166 TAB8 LD 167 SVC DSP 168 CALL TAB4 then 4 spaces 169 TAB4 PUSH 170 LD B 4 171 TAB4A LD 172 SVC DSP 173 DJNZ TAB4A 174 POP BC 175 RET C CR let a CR Tab 4 spaces Tab 4 spaces Here s a classic routine to convert characters in the range a z to their upper case counterparts A Z Any character value outside the lower case range is untouched 176 X 177 zs Routine to convert char in A to upper Case if lower 178 179 TOUPPER 180 RET 181 CP 182 RET 183 SUB 184 RET I usually put my data last Some folks put it first If you write code for MS DOS you ll make every effort to put your data The Programmers Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 AG Volume III i first Note that I have EQUated LIB to MSPEC This allows me to use a discrete name for the library number yet store it as the first character of the member specification string I could have referred to it solely by MSPEC but this way it allows the three different implementations of PAW to use similar variable names where possible 185 MSPECS IT OWNAPPNAME d CR 186 LIB MSPEC 187 DRIVES 0 number 188 LETTER AT 189 CODES 32 0 190 HELLOS Popup application window APL drive Code for APP for PRO WAM applications CR 191 SELECTS DB lt BREAK
33. and the motherboard version as soon as I do I will be able to transfer some of my Profile 4 programs over to Little Brother but some I won t be able to at this time since I use the data in some basic programs and don t know the fine art of blocking and deblocking as required by Little Brother Letters to the Editor Volume III i data files The program appears to be a very good one and I think I will enjoy using it I have to delete some of my boot up utilities to use it but I knew that before I purchased it The more I use Prowam the more I appreciate the program and its possibilities I boot up with it as part of my configuration Of course when I use Profile 4 I have to reboot afterwards I am still recovering from my total hip replacement and haven t kept up with my computer dabbling too well but I might as well get started with another phase Please send me EhnComp M 20 072 for the Model 3 My check and notice are enclosed Fm MISOSYS Inc I suppose you could add two half height hard drives internal to a Model 4 if you add another power supply and a fan We ll start on an external first You may find Daniel Srebnick s article in this issue of some help in addressing a BASIC access of an LB database Finally if you remove PRO WAM before you invoke PROFILE you probably wouldn t have to re BOOT Fm Harry G Maurer Roy In response to your query on whether or not I would buy an external Hard Disk the answer
34. back I don t remember I think you get the idea I m sure that most readers of TMQ do not fall into this category But you may know of others who do Advise them to produce detailed trouble reports I have a hard time helping anyone who cannot explain their problem Turning now to the FORMS filter report I had a report from a 6 3 user who was using the FORMS filter for some massaging of data By ROUTING a device to a file then filtering that device copying a file to the filtered device would produce a filtered file Unfortunately the filter was doing one thing unexpected If two 13D characters appeared in a row the filter would change them to the sequence 13 10 In other words a CR CR sequence was converted to a CR LF sequence So I dug into the filter code to investigate that report On page 211 of THE SOURCE there is some code starting at the label DOWN1 This code handles the case of a return output as the first character on a line i e a text stream which consists of a blank line Old time TRS 80 users may recollect that back in the old days there were some printers which would not do a line feed if a RETURN was sent and the print head was at the first column There are probably still some of those printers in use Why did thousands of BASIC programmers code PRINT when a simple PRINT was supposed to do a line feed Why because some printers wouldn t advance to a new line under that circumstance That s why the FO
35. becoming the rallying point around which all TRS owners can get info To support this group of TRS diehards would it be possible to have the 10 companies you Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 14 Volume III i mentioned in the recent release of REQUIRED READING supply you with patch data new version release info and reported problems to be included in the QUARTERLY I understand that to keep the noise level down for you it would be necessary to put a disclaimer in the section to contact the company supplying the info and not MISOSYS for clarification or help To help support an effort like this I would assume that the supplier would pay for the insertion of his info and data The only alternate would be to raise the subscription rates to 40 00 for first class mailings Another thought would be to split the costs between a rate increase and the supplier of the data You are probably aware of this but Pll include it anyway There is another totally dedicated TRS80 support publication called TRSTimes Their first issue was put out in January 1988 and have published a March issue and a May issue TRSTimes is published bi monthly by TRSTimes publications 20311 Sherman Way 221 Canoga Park California 91306 Maybe another company to add to the 10 you have already rounded up Just a few parting words about mailing the QUARTERLY The postmark on the postage meter stamp was May 27 and I received in my mailb
36. check of the keyboard The other is the WINDOW service call which gets entered by those programs requesting WINDOW services The PRO WAM release 2 interface added further complexity with the addition of the WEXEC facility which supports the invocation of a PRO WAM application under program control rather than explicit keyboard depression That s the facility 1 used in the CAL to BRINGUP interface Now when PRO WAM first activates with the lt CTRL P gt request it has to do some significant setup It first modifies some resident code so further filtering of keystrokes bypass the startup code It then passes control to code which processes entry into the PRO WAM environment That code needs to determine if PRO WAM has just been activated and no window is open recursion level of 0 Under that circumstance other setup code needs to be executed The program stack has to be switched to the high memory stack the network flag has to be saved and the file open bit set to network operation and the number of the current DOS overlay needs to be saved I also had previously coded the management of the video mode to this process with the WAM22 fix When these things are done an environment flag is set There are also some things which need to be done prior to and subsequent to the execution of a PRO WAM appli cation One is to save the current state of inverse video When an application completes the window recursion level is tested If no windo
37. does it only apply to PRO WAM with ALLWRITE and the SPOOLER DOS Subjects Volume II Another Question do you know of a fairly decent bookkeeping system that will run on the Model 4 either mode I tried The Home Accountant and found it to be VERY slow at the time I was running my Model III with TRSDOS 1 3 I hadn t seen the light I don t know whether that was because it was written in BASIC or because it was running under TRSDOS but boy did I get tired of waiting In that vein do you know anything about the CASH PROFESSIONAL by Microdex For that matter what accounting system did you use before you switched to MS DOS Keep up the good work on LDOS and TMQ I m sold on them Fm MISOSYS Inc Patrick LSI has provided me the input for Level K to Level L changes But the input was in the LSI Column printed in TMQ ILiv which was mailed on May 27th As an aside the very latest release of LS DOS 6 3 is termed Level L It has been that way since February of 1988 LSI released 6 3 on January 2nd 1987 It was then at Level H On February 2 1987 LSI applied patches 1 9 and re assembled BREF That release was designated Level J I really don t know what happened to I maybe they omitted that to avoid confusing it with a 1 The applications of patches 10 16 brought it to Level K patch 16 was dated 7 1 87 Apparently when LSI redid their master at this point they posted it as Level L They did this to dis
38. fact you will see some of those prices in this issue I also have plans to think about an internal drive after our external package is available and purchases are underway Just give me time I also may make the entire package available as a kit of parts Guess what that would be for Fm Marc A Williams Roy I got your consolidated advertising mailer today and I just wanted to give you some feedback on it and on your hard disk marketing plans Letters to the Editor ne THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IILi First off congratulations on the smashing idea of the mailer I have been pulling together old 80 Micros 1 guess they re ALL old now tee hee to see if there are any last toys I want before the vendors turn to vapor Your mailer provided some nice reassurance in that regard I currently own a Radio Shack 5MB hard drive to which I have added a 20MB secondary built up from surplus parts drive case cables amp power supply Nonetheless I would still be interested in a 495 20MB system plus software Although I don t know of any at 20MB I would suggest you stay away from RLL controllers however Friends of mine who have used them on pcs have often had data reliability problems probably because the RLL system was trying too hard to squeeze storage from the platters 20MB drive pushed to 30MB etc As for other products I would absolutely die for a reasonably priced archival backup system I don t k
39. for FORTH files to be used in other language application programs and vice versa Enhancements have been built into the kernal in the form of functions to call the operating system file handling routines so that other files may be created or accessed HartFORTH supports double length integers string handling cursor manipulation graphics random numbers and floating point Take any ONE language product at 40 off y AR Ae am E LAA o a o EA AAA e es o TS EE A _ e SE TEE EE O A AA O A e re A A AAA AAA q A A AAA AA E AA A AA OA A D THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Volume IL o Summer 1988 Table of Contents The Bie v2 ace Sege ark hie RAKE A CEASE a eS 2 New Product Announcements o es 6 Pam y Update 2 a a al a ed Be 6 Letters to the Editor ar la A ee E 8 DOS Subjects 3 20 Gi ad AA a a Pe OS 21 LDOS and Model 3 Information a a 21 LS DOS and Model 4 Information 22 MS DOS Information lt 0 25 Roy s Technical Corner A e 27 Getting into computer math 27 Applications for the User 31 Reading NEWDOS 80 disks by David Goben 31 XMODEM in C by David B LamkinS 35 An LB Archival utility by Daniel Srebnick S5 The Programmer s Corner o 41 P
40. function library revised for MC and an assembler source code file for the PHRASE application to better illustrate how to write a PRO WAM application Order M 51 225 at 29 95 2S amp H US Mister ED Revised I have made a minor change to the TED module of Mister ED This fixes up the screen buffer handling problem that was corrected in LS DOS 6 3 s TED CMD about 18 months ago This required re assembling the file as it couldn t be patched in I had to work hard to compress the TED APP code to allow room for the code revision DU make this a free disk refresh but please include a return address label when you send in your disk I have also revised the Mister ED documentation to 5 5 x 8 5 format If you have a PRO WAM Release 2 half size binder and want to get a Mister ED manual which fits into it return the Table of Contents page of your existing full size Mister ED manual with 5 and UU send you the new manual Hard Disk Drive COmponents Because of our pending development of an external hard drive package MISOSYS is now stocking components for its assembly We want to make these available separately Here s what we have along with your cost 1 Seagate ST 225 hard drive 20 Megabyte formatted 225 5 lbs 7 50 10 50 S amp H 2 Western Digital WD XTGEN drive controller 75 1 Ib 4 00 6 00 S amp H 3 External hard drive case e w 60 Wt ps for 1 full or 2 hf ht 125 10 Ibs 13 00 18 00 S amp H 4 Items 1 a
41. go to where they got MACs Having worked on their WP package she doesn t mind at all our good old NBI In 1985 1 was approached by an elder of our Lutheran congregation to become treasurer After checking what was involved with the previous treasurer I accepted and took that as a good enough reason to get my own computer A friend of mine is the local Tandy dealer and he recommended the 4P I believe it was the last one he sold Never mind he threw in Visicalc too so 1 was quite happy and soon had the ledger and various other reports organized to keep track of our congregations financial affairs Then I heard about Multiplan so I bought it and set up my business ledger with it At first I thought it was my non familiarity with the product but after two years of battling with its slowness and single key command structure I ve come to loathe it If it weren t for the sort capability I would have discarded it long ago I still do the church work with Visicalc and antique as it is it is a breeze compared to the supposedly superior Multiplan Then I wrote my own BASIC programs to record edit and list stock records however it was a rather laborious task as nearly every report required a separate program LB has come in very handy there and all my stock records are now converted to LB files Gee that sort works like a breeze Thank you That leaves this contraption of a wordproccessing package SuperScripsit 1 01 00 It does silly thi
42. head movement instead of a stepper motor When the power is cut the voice coil retracts and positions the head to the landing area Some drives also use a mechanical arm to ensure that the head never touches the surface These special techniques are prime contenders for portable computers which are subject to external movement Now an UPS is more important when you want to ensure that the program you are running must not be interrupted Pm more concerned with that than any worry over the hard drive And yes I still don t have an UPS installed here yet Take that back I now have two 450VA UPS systems installed one on Brenda s AT compatible and one supporting my PC and 4P Here s my opinion about repairing a drive which has malfunctioned To begin with when a drive breaks you cannot automatically attribute it to a crash Sure if you can afford to attempt a re format and all tracks on a single surface are bad that probably is a head crash Its probably simpler and cheaper to just throw the drive away and replace it rather than fixing it Far too much today is more costly to repair than to fix Also when you attempt to repair you still wind up with the un repaired portion being old and subject to breakage earlier than a new unit The worry about a hard drive breaking is minimized with adequate protection of the files which are stored on it The normal maintenance on a hard drive package is to clean the muffin fan s air filter i
43. here The most significant digit is the leftmost or leading digit Conversely the least significant digit is the rightmost or trailing digit The terms arise from the fact that digits which are coefficients in positions where the base is raised to a power greater than other positions have more significance they are more important to the effect of the number so to speak For instance If I say I just won 10 001 in the sweepstakes that leftmost 1 represents 10 000 while the rightmost 1 represents 1 certainly the 10 000 has more importance to me than the 1 Roy s Technical Corner Volume IIli hexadecimal is properly termed sexadecimal Other systems commonly in use are binary base 2 octal which some say should be termed octonary or octonal base 8 duodecimal base 12 hexadecimal which experts say is properly termed sexadecimal base 16 and sexagesimal base 60 commonly used for calculations in geodetics degrees minutes seconds If we confine ourselves to a three place decimal number say 473 for no particular reason and apply the general formula we have a result like this 4 x 102 7 x 101 3 100 4 100 7 10 3 1 473 473 I have used a symbol to denote multiplication One of the restrictions on a number system is that no digit can be of a value which exceeds the base Thus we have the class of symbols 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 representing the ten digits making up
44. is YES if the price range does not exceed the target price of 495 00 A price of 500 00 or over would be to much for me and I would not buy it There is one other factor that would enter in my decision The unit should be designed so that it can be a direct replacement for an existing floppy drive On other products One suggested item is a reliable and economical external MODEM that supports the Hayes modem command set As an example a 300 to 1200 baud modem in the price range of 100 00 to 175 00 a 300 to 2400 baud modem in the price range of 150 00 to 250 00 and for the luxury minded customer a 1200 to 4800 modem in the price range of 275 00 to 400 00 Just for your own information there is a 300 to 2400 baud modem called EMEX that is used by a few bulletin board systems and is sold for 225 00 however the big sales pitch with this modem is that it is designed to be upgraded to 4800 9600 or even 19200 baud by sending the modem in and getting it upgraded for a price around 100 00 The catch is that as of this date these upgraded boards are not available If you are interested I can give you the name of the SYSOP and board number that you can contact for more info On the distaff side I would strongly recommend that you totally disregard any temptations to add printers to your business The printer market is a real boondoggle and will cause nothing but grief Other ramblings from a weary soul It would appear that MISOSYS is
45. is installed a snap shot of your computer is taken and if you try to run on a different configuration or boot a different computer the operating system will hang up Please advise me on this issue because this will help me make up my mind about dropping 6 3 and going back to TRSDOS 6 2 My copy is LS DOS63 LEVEL J SERIAL B740106264 Fm MISOSYS Inc Norman PRO WAM Release 2 was announced over a year ago in our Spring 1987 issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY The name was changed from PRO NTO to PRO WAM back in mid 1986 When did you purchase your copy And who did you purchase it from When announced we offered a trade in program good through the end of March 1988 If you had purchased PRO WAM 1 0 since April 1 1987 you could have traded up to Release 2 for 20 5 S amp H Purchased prior to April 1 1987 the cost was 24 95 5 S amp H We are still accepting Release 1 disks for trading up to the Release 2 for 39 95 5 S amp H If you care to take advantage of this tradein just send your master disk back with the appropriate fee As far as your questions concerning LS DOS 6 3 do not be alarmed over rumors Changing your configuration will not affect the operation of the DOS Finally a TMO Index Fm Elmar von Muralt Roy In my letter of the 30th January 1988 I suggested to you to provide an index to TMQ While I was browsing through all my TMQs looking for any bits and pieces on LB and PRO WAM it just struck me again how ha
46. is rather straightforward Versions of PAW are programmed in ASSEMBLER using the PRO CREATE or PRO MRAS assemblers C using the PRO MC compiler and BASIC using the PRO EnhComp compiler Each implementation follows more or less the same algorithm Because of this it would be proper to present the algorithm first However I need to at least note a few peculiarities of the PRO WAM environment A PRO WAM library file say WAMO APL has a directory which is used by the resident PRO WAM application loader module to locate the name and position of each application contained in the library When I implemented the directory scheme its design had to be extremely simplified It was important to minimize the high memory used by the loader thus the shortest possible code should be written to load a member That necessitates a simplified scheme The Programmers Corner 41 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume DI An application has up to eight characters for its file name 1 limited the library directory to one 256 byte sector thus a library can contain at most 32 applications members a member name appears every eight character positions Therefore a single READ can obtain the directory I further simplified the access by using a single member size fixed for all applications Each application is at most nine sectors long that s 8 for the code and 1 for the header This means that the library file position of a member is k
47. issue Ili David Hall on the 64180 Gary Phillips on XLR8 amp 4P Doug Tittle on sorting PRO WAM data WORD with DW II Hu Extended DATES of Model I LDOS 5 1 4 Input SUBroutine for QuickBASIC BASIC Interface to EXMEM HIRES Graphics for MC Focus on speed Uu Headline driver for 1 MI LDOS XLR8er installation CTL255 filter for PRO W AM FIXBANKS red SH XLR8er 4P boot ROM disassembled C bit ields Dr Tapes Disks and CMD files Searching with DSM4 EXMEM lt gt BASIC interfacing Testing printer ready Revision to HIBANKS WAMDUMP convert a PRO WAM APP file to CMD file SYSDRV A system drive other than 0 DISK NOTES 3 1 Each issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY contains program listings patch listings and other references to files we have placed onto a disk DISK NOTES 3 1 corresponds to this issue of TMQ If you want to obtain all of the patches and all of the listings you may conveniently purchase a copy DISK NOTES is priced at 10 Plus S amp H The S amp H charges are 2 for US Canada and Mexico 3 elsewhere If you purchase DISK NOTES 3 1 with the coupon which accompanies this TMQ issue you can save 2 50 the cost then being only 7 50 S amp H Fixes in this issue I did away with The Patch Corner last issue because the number of patches had dwindled to a handful This issue again has only a handful but here s a reference to them The Blurb ibe THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume Ili
48. memory space via the allocQ function or its derivatives it maintains information on the allocation in a data space which is attached to the space allocated Each block of allocated memory is linked to another by a chain of pointers in this extra data space Another linked list maintains data on blocks which have been freed When you invoke the free function it checks on the validity of the block being pointed to in the argument to free If it determines it to be correct then the block is freed But if it determines that the attached data space is erroneous it issues the BAD BLOCK error If you get such errors during compilation then it could be a bug in MC We have found one case where bad source code introduced a BAD BLOCK error during compilation when the compiler s fixup code was bad That has been fixed and you probably read that in TMQ On the other hand frequent unexplainable random BAD BLOCK errors during compilation may be caused by memory problems You state that you are running the XLR8er without FIXALL FLT That may be the culprit 1 have recently found that FIXALL is absolutely required in all cases not because of what H I Tech said it was for but because of what else it does FIXALL also resets to bank 0 on every interrupt which is required If you are using Rex Basham s HIBANKS program from TMQ it also has a minor bug and also does not switch in bank 0 during interrupts This whole thing is mentioned in TMQ
49. not accept the year 2000 This is incorrect for it will accept dates of up to 2099 Instead of typing 00 zero zero as he demonstrated type in 2000 MS DOS will accept full year entries unlike the TRS 80 systems which will only accept the last 2 digits The date field reserves 7 bits for the year relative to 1980 Although this allows for 128 years for some reason MS DOS allows only 0 119 providing for 1980 to 2099 The SmartWatch in my 1200 will only display correct dates up to December 31 1999 however After that even though it will show a fluky date in the year field when you invoke the SmartWatch it will still install it correctly in the system storage area so that if you typed DATE afterward DOS will show the correct year information Hope that this information can be of use DOS Subjects Volume UI Roy s Technical Corner Getting into computer math by Roy Soltoff For quite some time now I have dealt with reports about inaccurate calculations in computer programs The reports generally relate to the use of single or even double precision floating point numbers Try as I could in a few brief statements or even paragraphs I had a hard time expressing the fact that computer processed floating point mathematics was inherently imprecise and that a computer could do wonderful calculations for you once you knew and understood its limitations and dealt with them That of course is a most difficult
50. of SYDTRUG down in N S W Australia Yes Jim I read your blurb in the July issue of SYDTRUG News I do expect to totally unbundle the components of our proposed hard drive package Thus anyone will be able to purchase the drive controller cable drive case host adaptor with software etc individually or all together I also double checked the power supply in the drive case and it does have an internal switchover for 115V 230V AC power It comes with the The Blurb 3 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume UI typical removable power cord with the standard American type three prong plug If that helps our off shore customers you folks may only need to revise the AC power cable with a different plug I cover a little more detail on that hard drive package later My final comments are directed to Gordon Collins of NATGUG a user group over in England No Gordon I won t shoot you at dawn for reprinting some brief excerpts of TMO in the NATGUG NEWS Certainly informational items are free to reprint in any club newsletter if it helps the cause of communicating valuable information among TRS 80 users I just don t want wholesale re printing of articles I thoroughly enjoyed reading John Coyne s article on Moving Superlog 4 into the XLR8 Board in your August 1988 issue as Gordon uncovered the problem of using simultaneously both Superlog and PRO WAM That problem was reported to me quite some time ago but not
51. of LS DOS 6 3 June 1st during most of June I was The Blurb THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 9 Volume IIli able to nothing but just take care of orders My desk previously backlogged with work now looks like a mountain I am probably two or more months behind in handling correspondence I am now back to the position where some mail will not get answered So if you sent in a letter is an immediate reply it just won t happen I had expected in July to release a serial driver package for the XLR8er however that project is behind schedule I actually started on it In fact I felt that I would start out by adapting my disassembler and my MRAS assembler to support the 64180 or Z180 OP codes I have completed the disassembler but I have yet to test out the Model 3 version So I will hold off from making any formal announcement until next issue I then modified MRAS to support the 64180 OP codes as well via a switch option Before I released a new version of MRAS I wanted to enhance the MLINK linker to support the chain address special link item required to enable it to link Microsoft FORTRAN generated REL modules That s where I ran into a small snag Handling the link item was very easy the chain address is just a subset of the chain external link item which was already supported by MLINK Unfortunately since the FORTRAN compiler is a one pass compiler it doesn t generate the size of each segment code data com
52. of sensitive information which has to be recorded frequently So after say a total of five saves I end up with five files of the same name on disk A similar problem was reported in TMQ by someone who figured that by setting the floppies at DELAY 1 sec the problem would be cured That s how I am running Yes I know how to overcome that by renaming all those files removing the unwanted ones and keeping the wanted one the one with the latest time stamp and then renaming it back to what it should be However that s totally unacceptable as a modus operandi it s far from practical requires constant vigilance uses a lot of disk space and I couldn t possibly expect the typist who sometimes helps me to take care of such an arrangement Besides if one powers down unaware of the multiple file situation and then later powers up to resume work on the same file one has no idea which version one is working on No it s hopeless I just can t work that way I may be involved in a writeup on the operation of nuclear power plants or on how certain delicate surgery should be performed Can you imagine getting a writeup like that messed up SO right now my three computers are taboo for any serious word processing but I fear they can t stay that way for long The Hardware Corner Volume IIT i I have experimented with different settings of SETISO but the faults are sneaky and elusive to pin down and reproduce so I have been
53. reason to have shifted over to a Laser printer which takes no more than 15 minutes to print the entire issue I normally would have had the issue ready for the printer by the 19th or 22nd thus I have pulled up the deadline by two weeks That did not allow me the time to spend a week browsing through all of the archived messages captured from the MISOSYS forum on Compuserve PCS49 I usually extract dialog which I feel is of importance to TMQ readers That content usually represents about 15 20 pages of material for TMQ So this issue will be a little slimmer it in no way is a trend It gave me the opportunity of inserting the index to TMQ Volume I which was prepared by Elmar Von Muralt You ll find that index at the tail end of this TMQ I expect to insert the index to Volume II in a later issue Both Brenda and I have been extremely busy over the past few months You recollect from the last issue that Brenda broke her ankle some months back That put a crimp on what I was able to get accomplished since she was off work for two three weeks With the birth of Benjamin in June see Brenda s Family Corner at the end of The Blurb Brenda was again away from MISOSYS for almost a month Believe me she was really anxious to get back to work Since MISOSYS sent out an 11 000 piece mailing in Mid May sent out 850 Quarterlies at the end of May sent out over 400 TMQ renewal notices at the beginning of June and took over the sale and support
54. registration data Store up to 65 534 records per data base Up to 1 024 characters per record Up to 64 fields per record Up to 254 characters per field Nine field types for flexibility Select and sort on up to 8 fields Keep 5 different indexes for data access 10 input update screens per data base 10 printout formats per data base Extensive on line help always available LB86 L 86 510 74 95 5 S amp H DED86 A utility disk that won t leave you puzzled A powerful sector oriented disk file editor and a page oriented memory editor Search your entire disk while you tag sectors or clusters to be kept direct DED86 to write the sec tors as a disk file Great for file re covery without fussing over FATs DED86 gives you important features Position by cylinder head sector Position by logical sector or cluster Jump about subdirectories Keep sector eluistersimemory Edit bytes in hexadecimal or ASCH Search Strings in ASCII or hexadecimal DOS subshell available for your use DED86 M 86 020 59 95 5 S amp H MISOSYS Inc PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 703 450 4181 MC VISA CHOICE VA residents add 4 2 sales tax S amp H Canada add 1 S amp H Canada add 1 Foreign use S amp H times 3 Foreian use S amp H times 3 AA AA AS SS SS ee n SES
55. the base of potential sales by offering the drive separately to those who want to purchase a separate drive I also recognize the fact that the major portion of MISOSYS revenue still comes from the TRS 80 market By adding a reasonably inexpensive hard drive package to that product line I also add an incremental amount of revenue and profit this makes us healthier as a company and extends the time which we can stay in this business Fm Gary Lee Phillips Roy Just received your sale flyer full of interesting news Can t say DU miss LSI as long as you ll be supporting 6 3 but I am surprised that they gave up quite this soon Does that mean you will now be in control of piracy protection policy and site licensing Policy etc All model 4 users owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude and I hope they will continue to support you as much as they can Just making the effort to pull this flyer together for us is a fine example of your continuing contributions It was interesting to see who was included and who was not have Powersoft and Aerocomp now abandoned us officially With respect to your hard disk project YES I want at least one if you can come in near that 495 price estimate If it works with a Model 3 and LDOS 5 3 I might even he able to buy two but in any case I can promise to take one of what I m sure will be the best documented and most solidly designed hard disk for the TRS 80 If possible please include the write prot
56. transferred or until the limiting number of characters have been transferred The building up of the spec is straightforward The application is invoked via the wexec function and the break statement escapes the for loop only to pass control to the beginning of the while loop O88 while 1 089 if letter getchar EOF 090 break 091 letter toupper letter 092 for 1 0 i lt 323 itt 093 094 if code i letter 095 pmspec mspec 096 pmspect lib The Programmers Corner Volume I i 097 if pmspec memccpy pmspec buffer i name 8 098 pmspec mspec 9 099 pmspec 100 pmspec drive 101 pmspec 0 102 wexec mspec 103 break 104 105 106 A BREAK key depression generates the EOF which escapes from the while loop Here the screen is cleared and the program ends The remaining functions support main and do not merit further attention 1072 cls 108 109 welcome 110 cls 111 cursor 15 0 112 puts Popup Application Window for PRO WAM Applications 1135 114 cls 115 A puts xle xlf PAW BAS EnhComp BASIC version This BASIC version of PAW was written for the PRO EnhComp compiler I at first questioned myself about writing a BASIC version then thought that it would shed a little more light on the use of EnhComp Besides I started wondering how I would capture some of the data ref
57. unable to relate things to the SETISO parameters However in general I get the impression that running SETISO at the slowest parameters things may be slightly better But the lowest settings are probably giving me a slower performance than the native 4D with the 4 MHz CPU Another point 1 mentioned by phone 1 played around casually with the latest HIBANKS I got from disk notes 1 had also played around with the original one in the previous TMQ and disk notes With the latter the original version I noted when I invoked ALLWRITE and the logo came on screen with the filename prompt if nothing was entered for several seconds the logo would sort of fly to pieces and the screen would fill with garbage sometimes the logo would stay but the garbage would be generated opposite the filename prompt so I put HIBANKS aside Now the latest revised version does something very similar so I have also discarded that I don t get this particular problem with FIXALL and FIXBANK Fm MISOSYS Inc Charles This confirms our telephone call of the 21st I wanted to pass along hard copy for the three patches associated with the XLR8er speedup To confirm the reason for these patches LSI changed the CKDRY service call starting with TRSDOS 6 2 so that it became machine speed dependent It previously had used an algorithm based on the RTC interrupt timer which was machine speed independent Therefore it is possible that a machine running much faster than
58. your RATFOR which I purchased both for TRSDOS and for MSDOS Release 4 1 of MS Fortran for MSDOS just arrived and works splendidly with Ratfor in addition to generating nicely optimized code The RATFOR Manuals introduction listed a User Group in California which supports Ratfor as a language I have written to them twice both times sending postpaid envelopes but I get no response at all letters don t come back so they are being delivered Any ideas on where interested users can go for additional RATFOR help and code Our central VAX system is literally loaded with libraries of public Fortran subroutines many of which I have converted to both MS Fortran and Model 4 Fortran and there is a RATFOR preprocessor for VAX Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 16 Volume III i Fortran also BUT almost no subroutine libraries I usually rely on subroutine libraries a great deal since I never like to reinvent the wheel Fm Ken Strickler This letter is to thank you and all the others who have supported the TRS 80 class Z 80 based of machines over the passed ten years Even the notorious 80 MICRO covered the machine quite well until they went blind This list wouldn t be complete without mentioning LSI POWERSOFT PROSOFT COMPUTRONICS MICRO SYSTEMS just to name a few The software contributed by these groups is mind boggling if one just stops and considers the complexity I wish to extend my thank
59. 0 42 55 1014 490 DATA 54 20 43 41 AE 4E 4F 54 20 52 45 43 AC 41 49 1031 500 DATA 4D 20 48 49 47 48 20 4D 45 4D 4F 52 59 20 53 1017 510 DATA 50 41 43 45 0D 00 C3 CF 52 EB 23 23 5E 23 56 1298 520 DATA l EB CD FD 54 CD C0 54 46 49 4C 54 45 52 20 59 1833 530 DATA 41 4E 4B 45 44 20 46 52 4F 4D 20 00 C3 5A 53 1095 540 DATA E5 21 00 00 7E 47 2F 77 BE 70 28 0E 3A 25 01 1077 550 DATA FE 49 3E 02 28 01 AF 3C 32 91 54 E1 C9 C5 47 1640 560 DATA 3E 00 B7 28 02 FE 02 78 C1 C9 FD 66 02 FD 6E 177 570 DATA 01 23 23 23 23 11 15 55 1A BE C0 47 13 23 1A 823 580 DATA BE C0 10 F9 C9 CD C0 54 44 52 49 56 45 20 3A 1797 590 DATA 30 20 00 E3 7E 23 B7 28 05 CD CD 54 18 F6 E3 1687 600 DATA C9 CD 8E 54 C2 33 00 C5 4F 3E 02 EF C1 C9 CD 2055 610 DATA 8E 54 C2 8F 47 3E 51 EF C9 CD 8E 54 28 0A 38 1754 620 DATA 04 2A 11 44 C9 2A 49 40 C9 C5 01 5C F4 54 21 1363 630 DATA 00 00 44 3E 64 EF C1 C9 CD 8E 54 28 0A 38 04 1404 640 DATA 22 11 44 C9 22 49 40 C9 C5 06 00 18 E7 18 0A 1184 650 DATA 00 00 07 24 4E 45 57 44 4F 53 78 FE 0B 3E 0F 969 660 DATA DO FD E5 D5 FD 21 4E 55 E5 D5 6A 26 00 54 5D 2115 670 DATA 29 29 19 29 D1 16 00 19 1E 12 AF 3C ED 52 30 1054 680 DATA FB 19 3D 3C 57 5D E1 CD 4E 55 D1 FD E1 C9 02 2060 690 DATA 02 00 52 84 END For those interested in the assembler source code for this program the following is the assembler source NEWDOS 80 2 0 DISK FILTER FOR MODEL 1 3 4 LDOS LS DOS COPYRIGHT C 1
60. 1 exit Indicate error 134 RET This routine processes any error code returned from DOS when opening the application library I specifically test for the File not found error to display my own error message Why No particular reason but it shows you how to do it The Programmers Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 AB Volume IIIi 135 NOFIND CP 24 found 136 JR 137 LD HL NOFIND 138 SVC DSPLY 139 JR ERREXIT File not NZ LOERR This is a standard error handling routine which uses the DOS error service call to post the appropriate message Most folks tend to force the abbreviated error message which just displays short strings Sometimes the message is insufficient to get at the root of the problem because the exact file names or drives where appropriate aren t displayed Ever get a Parity error during read during a BACKUP Think it was on the SOURCE disk Think again During a BACKUP operation reading is done on both the SOURCE and DESTINATION On a backup by class or reconstruct you will be hard pressed to note which drive was being read when that message gets displayed You can always override any forced abbreviation by setting bit 6 of the system flag That can be done from DOS Ready simply by invoking the command MEMORY A S B 64 Of course any other bits will be reset by this so you may want to check the value first and then add 64 to it 140 IOERR no ab
61. 128K of RAM or hard disk 64K and one floppy disk drive LB s startup drive access Fm Tony Sowers There s a lot of drive access that goes on during loading of LB I have several drives and even with MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume II no disks in the drives the lights come on multiple times eating a noticeable amount of time Since a simple LB loads with no data files it would seem that the actions are unnecessary seem I said Fm MISOSYS Inc Yes Tony I would suspect that you would feel the multiple drive search would be unnecessary when you don t even enter a data base name on the command line However due to LB s operating environment these accesses are necessary Let me explain what happens LB operates as a set of overlays There are one or more overlay modules which support each menu command There s also a root or main module which oversees the menu processing Communication among the various overlays is achieved via an environment data file which is created and updated at various stages of LB processing When you invoke LB the following sequence of events occurs 1 The LB CMD file is searched for and loaded by the DOS This causes a drive search for LB CMD Under MS DOS that would be the LB EXE file MS DOS would search the current directory and any PATH designated in the environment LS DOS searches all drives 2 LB invokes and creates the environment file LB ENV Under LS DOS the
62. 151 280 DATA 4E 4F 54 20 41 43 54 49 01 FE FC 52 56 45 0D 1319 290 DATA 00 C3 CF 52 TE 23 FE 20 28 FA FE 28 C2 BB 52 1978 300 DATA 46 23 7E FE 0D 28 05 FE 29 C2 BB 52 78 FE 59 1764 310 DATA CA D1 53 FE 79 CA D1 53 FE 31 28 08 D6 33 C2 2173 320 DATA BB 92 32 43 55 CD 9A 54 20 2C CD C0 54 46 49 1614 330 DATA 4 54 45 52 20 41 4C 52 45 41 44 59 20 49 AER 1040 340 DATA 53 41 54 4C 4C 45 44 00 CD C0 54 20 AP AR 20 1223 350 DATA 00 CD B3 54 0D 00 C3 CF 52 FD E5 E1 11 4E 55 1852 360 DATA 01 0A 00 ED B0 DD 21 4E 55 DD 7E 03 E6 07 F6 1674 370 DATA C0 DD 77 03 DD 7E 04 E6 DE EG 40 DD 77 04 CD 1990 380 DATA E4 54 22 13 55 E5 1B D5 A7 ED 52 EB 2A 28 55 1807 390 DATA 19 22 28 55 2A 48 55 19 22 48 55 E1 D1 01 47 1105 400 DATA 00 ED B8 EB CD FD 54 23 FD 74 02 FD 75 01 FD 2228 410 DATA 36 07 09 FD 36 08 24 CD C0 54 46 49 AC 54 45 1274 420 DATA 92 20 49 4E 53 54 41 4C 4C 45 44 00 C3 52 53 1146 Applications for the User THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 32 430 DATA CD 94 54 28 19 CD C0 54 46 49 4C 54 45 52 20 1475 440 DATA 4E 4F 54 20 50 52 45 53 45 4E 54 00 C3 52 53 1178 450 DATA FD 66 02 FD 6E 01 E5 01 3D 01 FE F8 53 00 09 1607 460 DATA E5 DD E1 DD 46 02 DD 4E 01 FD 70 02 FD 71 01 2002 470 DATA CD E4 54 23 D1 A7 ED 52 28 3B CD C0 54 46 49 1970 480 DATA 4c 54 45 52 20 59 41 AE 4B 45 44 2C 2
63. 20 5 ON ERROR GOTO 6000 10 CLS 15 DEFINT 1 A L D S P 20 INPUT Input filespec IN FILES 30 INPUT Output filespec O0UT FILE 40 INPUT Read which index 1 5 INDEX NUMBER 45 INDEX NUMBER INDEX NUMBER 1 50 OPEN R 1 1N FILES sl RIGHTS STRS INDEX NUMBER 1 2 60 FIELD 1 2 AS IN RECS 70 OPEN R 2 OUT FILES def 71 OPEN R 5 IN FILES def 80 FIELD 2 26 AS DUMMY2AS 2 AS ALLOC RECS 2 AS LAST REC 2 AS LRL 2 AS DEL PTRS 55 AS DUMMY2B 2 AS DEL COUNTS 165 AS DUMMY2C 81 FIELD 5 26 AS DUMMY5AS 2 AS IN ALLOC REC 2 AS IN LAST REC 2 AS IN LRL 2 AS IN DEL PTRS 55 AS DUMMY5B 2 AS IN DEL COUNTS 165 AS DUMMYSCS 90 GET 2 100 ALLOC REC CVI ALLOC RECS 110 LAST REC CVI LAST REC 120 LRL CVI LRLS 130 DEL PTR CVI DEL PTR 135 DEL COUNT CVI DEL COUNTS 136 GET 5 137 IN DEL PTR CVI IN DEL PTR 138 IN DEL COUNT CVI IN DEL COUNT 140 IF LRL 256 THEN OPEN R 3 IN FILES 1b ELSE OPEN R 3 IN FILE S 1b LRL 150 IF LRL 256 THEN OPEN pn 4 OUT FILES 1b ELSE OPEN R 4 OUT FILES 1b LRL 151 IF LOF 3 gt 32767 OR LOF 4 gt 32767 THEN SOUND 7 O PRINT PRINT This program does not support files in excess of 32767 records CLOSE END 160 DIM IN BUFFS LRL OUT BUFFS LRL 170 FOR SETUP 1 TO LRL 180 FIELD 3 SETUP 1 AS DUMMY 1 AS IN BUFFS SETUP 190 FIELD 4 SETUP 1 AS DUMMYS 1 AS OUT BUFFS SETUP 200 NEXT SETUP 205 GET 1 210 INDEX NUM CVI IN RECS number of records to be moved 215 GET 1 3 posit
64. 23456789ABCDEF 40 CS 0 L L 10 50 READ AS IF A END THEN CLOSE END ELSE IF LEFTS A 1 THEN 80 Applications for the User Volume IIli 60 A INSTR HXS LEFTS A 1 16 INSTR HX RIGHTS A 1 17 70 PRINT 1 CHRS A CS CS A GOTO 50 80 IF VAL MIDS AS 2 CS THEN 40 ELSE PRINT CHECKSUM ERROR IN LINE L END 90 DATA AREA 7 100 DATA 05 09 00 00 00 4E 45 57 44 4F 53 05 09 00 00 492 110 DATA 92 20 20 20 20 20 20 01 FE 00 52 CD 72 54 CD 1219 120 DATA CH D AR Ai DI 44 4F 53 2F 38 30 20 32 2E 30 1067 130 DATA 20 44 49 53 4B 20 46 49 4C 54 45 52 20 46 4F 998 140 DATA 52 20 4D 4F 44 45 4C 20 31 2F 33 2F 34 20 4C 869 150 DATA 44 4F 53 2F 4C 53 2D 44 4F 53 2E 0D 43 4F 50 996 160 DATA 59 52 49 47 48 54 20 28 43 29 20 31 39 38 38 901 170 DATA 20 42 59 20 44 41 56 49 44 20 47 4F 42 45 4E 974 180 DATA 2E 20 41 4C 4C 20 52 49 47 48 54 53 20 52 45 975 190 DATA 53 45 52 56 45 44 0D 52 45 4C 45 41 53 45 44 1051 200 DATA 20 49 4E 54 4F 20 54 48 45 20 50 55 42 4C 49 1015 210 DATA 43 20 44 4F 4D 41 49 4E 20 46 4F 52 20 46 52 986 220 DATA 45 45 20 44 49 53 54 52 49 42 55 54 49 4F 4E 1098 230 DATA 2E 0D OD 00 7E 23 FE 20 28 FA FE 3A 28 F6 FE 1661 240 DATA 0D 20 1D CD C0 54 50 41 52 41 4D 45 54 45 52 1228 250 DATA 20 43 52 52 4F 52 0D 00 CD 8E 54 C2 2D 40 3E 1235 260 DATA 16 EF 32 BD 54 D6 30 38 DC FE 08 30 D8 B7 28 1871 270 DATA D5 4F CD DA 54 FD 7E 00 FE C9 20 12 CD B3 54 2
65. 3 FIX 07 11 88 Patch to PROWAM Revises set to 80CPL mode when activating PRO WAM aS patched with WAM22 FIX D01 61 73 47 F01 61 22 3D DOA DB 53 F0A DB 72 DOA E9 CD 72 47 F0A E9 32 00 00 D14 42 32 00 00 F14 42 CD 53 47 D16 4C 22 3D F16 4C 73 47 MISOSYS Products Tidbits t E i S SE EE Ka rg gt A l ES dE E UE oe Pore EE SI S TRN EE E w ST ES ES ORR NE CSS Si ene ae E Sec Sot ES SC i D NE Ech SEH ES SES Bye eg ES SE BEE EE Es SE SEET e Z E EE Ste SE E S A e p s x de MO E d E ra EE overload protection Protected switches keep unit a ie from accidently being turned on PTI continues its technological leadership in the introduction of a new concept in UPS design Previous design criteria required large costly transformers Our engineers have reduced the size weight and expense with this revolutionary solid state design The benefit to you is an affordable UPS that does not take a fork lift to move The solid state design and quality engineering insures a level of reliability not achievable in other UPS products A PEER SESS LTT O o ue ue A ven KR La wa g pro Del eg em W rou K mw w Pris yum zt rd EPPS SES ES TT aaa Compare the 55400 and 55700 to other UPS currently on the market E Compare price E Compare size MW Compare weight E Compare quality engineering
66. 4 Keyboard layout and the Model II AZERTY ASCII Character set Of course the keyboard drivers of LDOS and TRSDOS differ from the QWERTY DOS It is therefore that some programs who use their own keyboard driver like SuperUtility and Powertool or excellent wordprocessors cannot be used and we are confined to the bugged Superscripsit who loses text after five pages There is no Belgian Keyboard as there is no Belgian language In Belgium about ten million inhabitants people in the northern part of the country are called Flemings and speak Dutch like in the Netherlands people in the southern part of the country are called Walloons and speak French and in a small eastern part of the country German is spoken LSDOS 6 3 has been released by Tandy in a French and a German version in October 1987 but Tandy saw no point in making a LDOS 5 3 French and or German Version I can assure yOu that the job Mr M Houde did on the DOS is excellent If you are interested you Could always ask him for his keyboard driver I saw no harm in sending you a copy of the Tandy LSDOS 6 3 version and I would be very interested if you had any comments on the matter or if you would find any bugs and report on them Well I think this clarifies the exotic keyboard matter I am available if you would want more information on this matter Fm MISOSYS Ine Thank you Fred for the lesson on keyboards Actually although I was aware of the three international ver
67. 402DH 7exit to dos on 1 3 svc 22 exit on A MAIN2 LD MSG A save code SUB dk Scheck JR C PERR range CP 8 JR NC PERR OR A JR Z PERR set drive number to C LD C A get its drive code table CALL GETDCT LD A IY 0 active CP OCSH JR NZ MAIN3 yes display drive message Applications for the User 33 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume II CALL DRIVE DB NOT ACTIVE DB CR 0 JP EXIT MAIN3 LD A HL tina ZA INC HL CP fe skip spaces JR Z MAIN3 CP B JP NZ PERR LD B HL Save parameter INC HL find end LD A HL of data CP CR JR Z MAIN4 CP de E JP NZ PERR MAIN4 LD A B get parm CP e ds yank JP 2 YANK CP dde y JP Ae YANK CP r17 Model 1 JR Z MAIN5 SUB r3 JP NZ PERR LD BUMP A turn off INC A see if driver already installed MAINS CALL CKDRVR JR NZ MAING6 not so OK CALL PRINT DB FILTER ALREADY INSTALLED DB 0 DSPON CALL PRINT DB l IT ON DB 0 DSPDRV CALL DRIVE DB CR 0 e JP EXIT MAING PUSH IY set DCT to HL POP HL LD DE LAST zappend DCT LD BC 10 to filter LDIR LD IX LAST Set up filter s LD A IX 3 S DCT Save time delay and step rate AND 7 set WP bit and indicate DDEN OR OCOH LD IX 3 A LD A IX 4 save drive AND OFH select OR 40H 7set DDEN LD IX 4 A 2 Dit CALL GETMEM get high LD NEWDOS 2 HL into filter PUSH HL Save value set to top of program DEC DE PUSH DE 7Save addr reset carry flag AN
68. 4LS245 replacement in My chip had a N termination and then assembled the board The only problem was that I could not identify the memory chips I am pretty Sure they are not 150 nsec as I could see no appended mark but all has gone well so far Perhaps a diagram to show where to look would be an advantage Having read the instructions carefully I made sure the copper side of the support board was outwards Incidentally as another outside USA Tandy there was no RF Shield installed around the board However with two boards the screen and the circuit board there remains two ways to install even aligning the screw holes On the third try I got it right but could not insert the bottom right corner two of the six screws as the holes were very slightly out of alignment However it is working and the speedup is impressive The only problem I have encountered so far is that Lescript Key Macros seem to dislike it even when FIXALL and the filter are added Some of the triple keys such as CLEAR SHIFT 0 to exit have played up putting graphic characters on the screen instead of exiting Another small point which puzzled me at first was that the new chip seems only to have drive 0 and 1 available as the default unlike LDOS which recognizes all three of my floppy drives without specification Now I seem to have to do a SYSTEM DRIVE 2 DRIVER FLOPPY DCT to get the third drive My SYSGEN and AUTO DO START are now quite busy I have not tried to ge
69. 80 ROM image Miscellaneous Problems MISOSYS sole authorised vendor of upgrade kit Model 4 Hardware Interface Kit Model III Cursor and CTL key in LDOS NEWCLOCK and x 3 Old Passwords 75 HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH H Volume IIli Li IL lv ap le El ii 11d As les Eb LIA iii lii SE 111 ii ALA 1i1 ii iii iv iv iv iv iv lv ii LLE lv ud EE LiL EE iv LLL 111 Lii L a LLL TY ii Lil 111 iv eH Ee iii 1ii ore Be E Lii 132 Lii iv 85 108 44 95 79 33 56 67 95 68 69 66 96 96 4 68 33 25 14 18 41 26 25 19 24 21 21 24 13 40 20 48 47 45 93 31 37 51 38 36 39 47 6 48 40 28 35 38 50 3 6 42 39 20 Index to Volume I LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LEAP LEAP LED LED LIB LISP LISP LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS LSDOS dv 90 YN 90 90 YN YN 9 Y GA 0 0 mn Om mn mn 09 Y mn ooo Y Y Y 0 01 Y Ho Volume UI DANN Lo ou au La a L La La ww yu ww w Lu w La lv Lo La On On On AAP OO On Oo OO OO OO On On cd w w w GO L L La L La L Loo a La NN N N 1 O Index to Volume I THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 PRELT FIX e
70. 988 BY DAVID GOBEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RELEASED INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION A ee Set ee ee ee gg om om ee ee ee ee ee ee ae ee ee ee ee ee ae ee es mm ee ee ee ee ee ee e USAGE Applications for the User Volume UI Volume II E NEWDOS d 1 31 Y WHERE d is the disk to use rf is optional Drive 0 is illegal parameter 1 Model I Double Density NEWDOS 80 2 0 Disk parameter 3 Model III NEWDOS 80 2 0 disk parameter Y YANK remove Filter from system PRK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KK KEKE k kk k k KKK NOTE ON IMPLEMENTATION To change to ALDS format delete the SVC MACRO defined below change the 7 ORG to PSECT and change all Die in front of message lines to DEEN AAA RAR RARA LSC SC CSCS RARA RRA k k k k kkk k k kk k CR EQU 13 ts me N Carriage return svc MACRO OPR LD A OPR RST 28H ENDM 7 start of program ORG 5200H set computer model MAIN CALL SETMDL print a message CALL PRINT DB NEWDOS 80 2 0 DISK FILTER FOR MODEL 1 3 4 LDOS LS DOS DB CR DB COPYRIGHT C 1988 BY DAVID GOBEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DB CR DB RELEASED INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION DB CR CR 0 Skip over spaces and drive leader CHK LD A HL INC HL CP JR Z CHK CP e D JR 2 CHK carriage return CP CR JR NZ MAIN2 PERR CALL PRINT DB PARAMETER ERROR DB CR 0 EXIT CALL MODEL JP NZ
71. AM The Hardware Corner Volume IIli However from what little I know about it there must be times when it becomes necessary for one reason or another to backup a HD to floppies What sort of job is that what would be typical times for backing up and then for restoring data from floppies to HD 12 I have my present four floppy drives all outside the computer I don t use the internal drives native to the computer at times either due to computer failure or any other reason it may be necessary to disconnect the drives and move them over to another computer With my setup all that requires is unplugging from one machine and plugging into the other and away I go Would it be as easy as that with HD s I suspect certain special precautions have to be taken when moving HD S to avoid head thrashing Roy hard drives have for years tempted me and I could well use them But then the fear of hardware reliability problems has always scared the socks off me and made me chicken out every time and repeating what I said above neither I or my friends have ever found an answer to these questions that could be trusted In addition TMQ has also scared me off with all those endless problems with drivers from firms like Aerocomp Montezuma et al where purchasers went through very hard times getting it all lined up in all probability there would be no such thing with your kit but it would be nice to have it confirmed But I do trust you
72. B and you can get a MISOSYS binder I do still have some of the MISOSYS 75 binders 3 4 imprinted with our old address If you want some of them we used to sell them for 5 95 S amp H A single binder weighs a little over a pound but packaged for shipping would probably be about 2 pounds I have probably about 40 of them Letters to the Editor Volume II More printer woes Em Carol L Welcomb 11161 Edgerton NE Rockford MI 49341 After reading Mark Reeds letter TMQ Um with all his problems with Okidata I m beginning to think I will have to fix this problem by myself I m hoping you or any of your readers will be able to help I have a Tandy 4P and DWP 220 daisy wheel printer A friend gave us an Okidata Okimate 10 with a Plug n Print module for Commodore 64 This is a round six pin male socket Radio Shack Linda Ebrahiem Customer Relations in Ft Worth said if I had a Centronics parallel port the Okimate 10 would work The problem is the Plug n Print module I wrote Okidata two months ago requesting a price for the proper Plug n Print module to work with my 4P I do have a Centronics port The Okimate 10 is a quiet color printer which will do graphics and I would really like to be able to use it I could bypass the Plug n Print module altogether and create my own printer cable but Okidata ought to support its systems Do you have any ideas Help On the price of DRAM Fm Ken S
73. BC54 FIX For EnhComp s BC CMD BC64 FIX For PRO EnhComp s BC CMD LDOS53 FIX For NEWCLOCK80 for LDOS RDS51 FIX For XLR8er s Mod 3 RAMDISK CMD WAM23 FIX For PRO WAM XLR8S12 FIX For SYS12 SYS 6 3 XLR8S1 FIX For SYS1 SYS 6 3 XLR8BU FIX For BACKUP CMD 6 3 TMO Index Elmar Von Muralt came through with an index to TMQ back issues Oddly Elmar used the exact tool 1 would have done for the job our LB Data Manager The index to TMQ Volume 1 is included in this issue The format is topics sorted alphabetically title sorted with topic issue and page number 1 want to acknowledge Elmar s efforts and thank him for that needed input Market Research Finally here s some feedback on our external hard drive market research request We were swamped with requests for this package The level of interest was far in excess of what we had expected it to be What may have helped is the query went out to over 11 000 folks The response level was 1 2 some of those looking for more than one package Obviously our proposed package was considered acceptable and 1 now have an expert individual exploring the design and engi neering of the host adaptor our own Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Other than this I have no news of a proposed availability but anyone providing written or aural feedback will get a mailed announcement in addition to any posting in TMQ To recap the proposed hard drive package here are the tentati
74. C points to the beginning of the ee TS command line An EnhComp compiled program stores the A ER value of BC into a 16 bit word named BCSV This is O used by one of hte subroutine support librqry functions Since ENDFUNC this label is accessible to only Z80 MODE code I first switch to that mode to pick up the pointer value then store it in a BASIC variable named ADDR and switch back to HIGH MODE Although it would have been far easier and quicker for me to perform the command line scanning in assembler I chose to S EE e do it in BASIC because that may be easier for the non ASM fe programmer to follow Recognize though how easily it is to switch back and forth between Z80 and BASIC modes The REPEAT UNTIL loop continues to examine command line characters until either a SPACE or RETURN character is found If a RETURN is found a null string is returned this indicates no command line parameter was found The presence of a SPACE causes the inner REPEAT UNTIL loop to skip over SPACE characters until the next non SPACE character is detected If that has a value greater than or equal to a 0 it is assumed to be a parameter The routine then sets the test character to a RETURN so the outer REPEAT loop can terminate ae Vag t Ki a ry R D 3 IN E Ms cc 4 ko P e E Y ADA 4 toa Hoth wh 4 The Programmers Corner 51 The Programmers Corner Volume III i MISOSYS Products Tidbits
75. CTS status line uses a voltage level for a logic high which is of opposite sense to that normally used in the TRS 80 Furthermore in order to be of use as a serial port the 64180 Asynchronous Serial Communication Interface ASCI needs to be operated in a mode which at least uses the receive character interrupt Since the internal interrupt controller for 64180 enhanced functions operates similar to standard Z80 interrupt mode 2 it is more difficult to simultaneously support The Blurb er _ a o _______oo_Q0O0OQOQ5p o e E er A A aaa Volume UI the ASCI interrupts as well as the standard mode 1 interrupts of the model 4 under the current architecture of the DOS without some very tricky code The internal interrupt handler must be coded to reside in low memory must include a 32 byte region at a 32 byte boundary for internal interrupt vectors and must support memory management to switch in memory bank 0 in order to handle a serial driver anywhere in the 64K address space I need to do some more research and soul searching to decide on the final plan of attack The simplified driver I have written which doesn t use interrupts is just not effective for general work I expect to thoroughly digest the HIBANKS FIXBANKS and FIXALL modules to explore a method of integrating the internal interrupt handling within the XLR8er interfacing software So the serial driver is on the back burner until other matters are first dealt with
76. D A compute SBC HL DE offset EX DE HL RK to DE LD HL REL1 apply offset to ADD HL DE filter LD REL1 HL addresses LD HL REL2 ADD HL DE Applications for the User Volume UI THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 LD REL2 HL LD B A get top of filter CPL POP HL LD HL A POP DE get himem CP HL set length of file LD BL B LD BC LAST NEWDOS 10 is ram so ignore more tests move it to high memory JR Z MDLX LDDR else test for Model III EX DE HL set new LD A 1258 CALL SETMEM himem CP CES INC HL set driver LD A 3 1 LD IY 2 H address JR Z 3 LD IY 1 L 7 into DCT XOR A set sector highname fake it INC A LD IY 7 9 LD MOD 1 A set fake allocation MDLX POP HL LD IY 8 24H RET CALL PRINT aa DB FILTER INSTALLED set Z for Model 4 DB 0 NZ NC for Model III JP DSPON and NZ C for Model I re e e me tee a ees ane ter oe cs ne MODEL PUSH BC YANK FILTER FROM DRIVE LD B A YANK CALL CKDRVR driver MOD LD A OU JR Z YANK2 present OR A CALL PRINT JR Z 4 DB FILTER NOT PRESENT CP 2 DB 0 LD A B JP DSPON POP BC YANK2 LD H IY 2 get driver RET LD L IY 1 address j PUSH HL Save copy see if driver present point HL to end of filter CKDRVR LD H IY 2 LD BC LAST NEWDOS LD L IY 1 ADD HL BC INC HL LD IX HL into IX INC HL LD B IX 2 driver to INC HL LD C IX 1 reg BC INC HL LD IY 2 B put
77. DOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS ul mm oo Om om Oo om om Oo Om mm Om o mo o Im Ya Y mm Im Om D Un WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWP H LSDOS KA e Va d Index to Volume I THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 HD Contrpllers HD64180 Information Model 4 Emulator for PC compatible machines Control Characters acceptable through KEYIN LCOMM problem Problems with Ending JCL files Provision of KILL command under LSDOS 6 3 SYSGEN KSMPlus Conversion of PowerMAIL to LB Converting MailFile to Little Brother FORMS Filter Conversion of BASIC files LB and LSDOS 6 3 LB and MS DOS Question re backup Upgrading Little Brother to LSDOS 6 3 Problem when invoked by JCL Backup problems with doublesided drives Caution for Directory Tinkerers Obscure overlay problem SYSTEM FAST and the Ap MODELA III 300 rpm keyboards and other matters KSM bug for years LDOS Literary Section LDOS on Model 4 and cursor speed SET2RAM and MEMDISK driver What s the version Problem with single drive Model I SYSGEN the CLOCK Update Documentation 80 MICRO Review of LDOS 5 3 ADODIR BERT documentation error Abbreviated README TXT re renaming LBASIC to BASIC BSORT51 and IDOS 5 3 Creating a NULL length file Date not current flag Defaulting FORMAT to SIDES 2 DIR A N patch DOCONFIG CMD Double sided boot disk DUAL and other LINKs Expectations FEDing the DIR SYS file Future Installing LDOS 5 3 on hard drives KILL Command MAX
78. ISOSYS Inc Yes the UI issue version of HIBANKS would effect the EnhComp PLOT statement since it uses the alternate registers for speed That HIBANKS also used the alternate registers during interrupt processing The Div version should fix that up The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 70 Volume IIli Thanks for the article reprint See the following topic for that Model 4 Speedup Fm MISOSYS Inc Coincidentally three different people recently sent me copies of the following article Perhaps because some of the TRS 80 computer clubs are beginning to reprint it In any event because of this exceptional circumstance I thought that TMQ readers should also be aware of it Fm Dave Krebs Roy The following is a little info on some of the early Model 4 s I have one of em relating to their true CPU speed You probably are aware of it but I thought it may be of some interest to some of the TMQ readers Pitch it if you think it isn t suitable for TMQ Quite some time ago read years an article appeared in the Micro Info Exchange the newsletter of the Cabrillo Computer Society It was written by Dave Owen CSS Tech Specialist Since my Model 4 had a date on the case of FEB 83 I was interested in the subject of speeding up my CPU I had noticed that mine didn t seem as fast a friend s 4P I removed the cover to check out the part number of U3 and not finding a matching number
79. If you are interested in reaching a dedicated TRS 80 audience consider THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY If you have a TRS 80 Model 3 or 4 related product to sell you can reach these buyers by placing your advertisement in our publication TMQ is read world wide Our subscribers are predominantly in the United States however we do have a significant number in Canada Europe and Australia Space rates are as follows Full page Half page Quarter page We accept only black amp white ads however ads for our inside covers are printed in the same color as the cover TMQ alternates between PMS colors green 354 purple 266 blue 293 and red 199 If you would like to place your ad in THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY give me a call PD Software Librarian Vic McClung has volunteered to be the librarian for the collection of TRS 80 public domain diskettes Henceforth all requests and contributions be directed directly to him at Vic McClung 914 Crescent Sikeston MO 63801 USA The Blurb Volume Di Out of print TMQ s available For out of print issues we are providing back issues of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY via copier reprint The price is 12 50 plus 2 75 S amp H in the U S and CANADA For foreign zone D the S amp H rate is 5 50 zone E is 6 50 The price for regular back issues still in print is 10 S amp H We are currently out of print on all issues except Um Here s a synopsis of past issues Volumel See the index in this
80. Let s examine this in an example Convert 247D to binary UU use the notation dividend divisor quotient remainder Roy s Technical Corner A PP A A A A Gemeend Volume IL i 247 2 123 1 123 2 61 1 61 2 30 1 30 2 15 0 15 2 7 1 1 2 3 1 A 2 l 2 0 1 Taking the remainder digits in reverse sequence we have 247D equals 11110111B Another way would be to subtract off powers of two starting from the highest power of two not exceeding the value of the number and showing a 1 in the position representing each power of two subtracted An understanding of the binary number system is basic to understanding the concepts which follow Therefore if you are confused by any of this spend some time with pencil and paper to practice some conversions to and from decimal Before 1 get to far astray let me return to the subject of calculation Now you have all heard the statement that computers are dumb It s quite true We may think that computers can do all sorts of things In BASIC all you have to do to tell the computer to calculate the square root of 9876 is write PRINT SQR 9876 But computers really only know how to ADD All other mathematical operations are built up from the lowly ADD operation Because of this its important for us to get a firm grasp in adding before I go on to more complicated Operations But computers really only know how to ADD Everyone knows how to add don t they Probably so Bu
81. MBLR EDAS EnhComp HartFORTH MC MRAS Specify Model Sale S amp H 34 95 20 98 2 44 98 4 59 98 4 35 98 3 74 98 5 53 98 4 RATFOR 59 98 5 UNREL 4995 29 98 2 Sale price is continued through 12 31 88 You must include TMQ coupon U S Add S amp H Canada use U S 1 Foreign S amp H use U S 3 M C amp VISA accepted No COD s for this sale 30 day refund on product if not acceptable MISOSYS Inc PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 TRS 80 Model I III 4 Language Software from MISOSYS RATFOR Compiler RATFOR M4 M 21 073 RATFOR compiles to FORTRAN is fully structured facilitating modification and debugging comments are sim pler and more versatile than in FORTRAN simplifying self documentation This allows changes without the subsequent debugging tolerated when modifying FORTRAN RATFOR compiles source code to an object of FORTRAN use your existing FORTRAN compiler to convert this to executable RATFOR is an excellent language for general purpose use but it is vastly superior to FORTRAN when working with a large number of modules without documentation as is necessary when producing very large programs Extensions supported include the arith macro to perform binary arithmetic operations read and print macros for short form READ and PRINT and support of any valid FORTRAN expression for switch and case operands This package includes the language transl
82. MISOSYS Inc The MC stream and block file I O functions will always use an LRL of 256 It will ignore LRL Fault errors on opens and will always create a file with an LRL of 256 If you need to create a file with a record length of other than 256 to be used for some external processing than you can easily change the LRL in the directory by using the gattrib and sattrib functions which are part of the MC 1 6 upgrade That pair of functions can also be used to change flag attributes and password s EnhComp BASIC compiler EnhComp DOS 6 M 21 072 LDOS 5 M 20 072 This is an enhanced BASIC compiler released in 1986 and reviewed in the March 1987 issue of 80 Microcomputing and October 1987 issue of COMPUTER SHOPPER This compiler has lots of great features It handles the bulk of Model II Microsoft BASIC and supports additional commands and functions Standard is floating point with both single and double precision functions random file access X mode for reclens to 32767 turtle graphics pixel graphics keyed array sort multi lined functions user commands IF THEN ELSE REPEAT UNTIL printer control sequential file positioning line labels and more A supervisor program automates the edit compile test phases inherent when using compilers this makes using EnhComp almost as easy to use as your BASIC interpreter You also get CED a line editor with string search change partial load save renumber copy and move Enhcomp has a b
83. Model 4 products Fm Walter Royal Jones Jr Friends I can t tell you how pleased I am to get your latest mailing Enclosed in a check 30 for MISOSYS Quarterly Since I started out with Model II later adding a Model 4 128K I have a few programs Homeacct Profile I that currently run very well in Model III mode but which I would dearly like to run in LS DOS instead for its faster speed and other features Does anyone have anything which can facilitate such a program upgrade Failing that Is there anything for Model 4 comparable to Homeacct And would records be transferable How does LB compare with Profile IV assuming that is still available Can you create your own menus Can you scan records in both directions Can you transfer data to Scripsit Pro Is there an internal math package Would it function with Tandy s Double Duty program or would the demands on RAM exceed 128K The XLR8er sounds alluring but as a soldering iron sub bungler who might be capable of opening the case but that s about all I have misgivings Exactly what is meant by simple plug in installation Plug in to what Does the Model 4 have room for cards And what effect would such accessories have on the Tandy service contract PRO WAM in its earlier incarnation used to include a function which would allow use of the printer like a typewriter I note that this is not mentioned in the current advertisement What happened I hop
84. Model 4 until it gives up the ghost but I can t justify spending significant amounts of money to up grade the system I will continue to maintain and repair it I may even add an inexpensive fun type peripheral or two I think that any major expenditure and 500 is major to me can be postponed and the money saved and put towards an MS DOS machine when the time comes Back to the old tight pockets accountant s wet blanket I would recommend that your break even analysis be reviewed and if you can t crack the nut with one half of projected sales leave it I realize that developing a new hard drive would probably be a lot of fun But friends can you make a buck doing it I don t think so I think that you can use your resources more profitable in making the transition to support of the de facto standard I will continue to subscribe to the TMQ as long as you publish it and make an occasional purchase I ve got most of your stuff None of the foregoing is intended to detract from what you folks have done it s just that I don t want to see good people get hurt Fm MISOSYS Inc I appreciate your concern it s great to have you folks looking out for my interests Actually I really wasn t too sure how receptive my hard drive idea would be that s exactly the reason for the inquiry I am overwhelmed by the response to my market survey And that only went out to about 12 000 folks I have more than an ample response
85. NT 0 020 FOR I 0 TO 31 The Programmers Corner Volume IILi 021 IF MIDS BUFFER 8 I 1 1 lt gt 022 IF COUNT AND 3 0 023 PRINT PRINT TAB 8 024 ENDIF 025 PRINT ln CHR LETTER COUNT MIDS BUFFER 8 1 1 8 ne 026 CODES I CHR LETTER COUNT 027 INC COUNT 028 IF COUNT 25 THEN LETTER ASC 1 26 029 ENDIF 030 NEXT 1 031 PRINT PRINT PRINT TAB 8 Select your application lt BREAK gt to exit Bi With the directory sector scanned and displayed I need to establish a procedure for handling the exit escape Since I have used a BREAK in the other two versions for this Operation 1 will use that here as well This is a fine use for the ON BREAK GOTO facility of EnhComp How would you do that with interpretive BASIC 032 ON BREAK GOTO EXIT This loop is also a forever loop with the construct REPEAT expression UNTIL 1 lt gt 1 which rarely occurs The WINKEY function in EnhComp is similar to the repeated INKEY until a non null string results I used another multi line user defined function here to convert the entered code letter request to upper case The inner REPEAT UNTIL loop is used to calculate the length of the member name I could have used a FOR NEXT loop but they are kind of messy in compilers when you want to exit the loop prematurely Note how I set the loop index I to a value of 31 to cause a premature exit of the FOR NEXT loo
86. OF ioctl STDIN TIOCGETP sg sg sg control IO BREAK ioctl STDIN TIOCSETP amp sq welcome Headline message This loop examines the 32 directory slots C s modulo operator is used to help generate the RETURN TAB8 operations at every four member names displayed as well as prior to the first one In this implementation code letters will be skipped for vacant directory slots as the loop index is used to generate the code letter rather than the count of members displayed This also readjusts the range of codes to be A Z L After the directory has been scanned the selection query is posted 074 for i count 0 1 lt 32 i 075 076 if buffer i name 0 077 078 if count 4 079 fputs n t stdout start at column 8 080 printf c 8s letter i memcpy appname buffer i name 8 081 code i letterti 082 count 083 084 if i 25 085 letter 1 26 086 087 printf inin Select your application lt BREAK gt to exit The WHILE loop is forever since its conditional test is a constant TRUE The detection of EOF on the key request is the means of escape A simple for loop compares the requested Code letter against the list previously built I have used the memccpy routine to perform the transfer of the member name into the member specification That function will stop after the test character has been
87. Or cut off the power supply with no problems whatsoever from surges or spikes Compare with a friend of mine who operates an office nearby and has a PC hard drive laser printer etc without any surge protection A thunderstorm discharge blew the electronics of his expensive laser printer and it seems will cost him around 500 to repair Turning to another aspect Your piece in TMQ says you have dealer arrangements with a number of distributors so if a buyer isn t in a hurry you may be able to obtain a desired component at a reasonable price That sounds interesting and I can well believe that when you talk of a reasonable price you really mean it Also if I need something and you can make a buck in the process DU be glad to cooperate However the question immediately pops up in my mind Just what sort of items are you referring to There is a bewildering array of hardware out there all the way from complete computers and systems through small things like chips listed in hundreds of pages of advertising in computer magazines and in catalogs Perhaps some orientation for your readers may be in order otherwise I visualize your being deluged with numerous inquiries about items you cannot supply Fm MISOSYS Inc Ribbon re inkers work well I have two of them But I don t think Computer Friends is low key on advertising I see a card on them in practically every card deck I get There s also about two other outfits which make re i
88. Patrick H Larkin Roy Enclosed please find completed registration card for my second copy of the LDOS 5 3 upgrade kit I was pleased to note in your Required Reading cooperative Mailing effort that you are now supporting LS DOS 6 3 Will you be printing the patch es necessary to upgrade from Level K to Level L I always wondered why LSI never provided it to you or if they did why you never printed it Now I have a few questions do you know whether Model 4 VisiCalc will utilize additional RAM provided by the XLR8er board I called H I Technology several months ago and the gent I talked to didn t know but mentioned you would be discussing it in some detail in TMQ which you did and suggested I either ask you or send them a copy of the program I m trying to decide whether to upgrade my old B amp W video separated arrow keys upgraded from cassette only 1 believe Model 4 I bought it used I have found that many of my VC spreadsheets expand to utilize most of the memory and if I have SPOOLER active I sometimes don t have enough available memory If additional RAM available with the XLR8er will be utilized by Visicalc AND calculations will be sped up I would seriously consider upgrading with the board Also according to something I saw in 80 Micro if one happens to get too large a VC file with SPOOLER active it will can cause a system crash Does the SYS8 patch on page 96 TMQ Iii have some bearing on this or
89. RMS filter is coded to convert a CR to a LF if the character counter is zero If you want to deactivate that feature because you don t want CR CR sequences changed to CR LF just apply this little patch PATCH FORMS FLT FILTER D03 31 18 F03 31 20 MS DOS PageView Forget it Fm MISOSYS Inc Here s an open letter to Microsoft which addresses our frustrations over the limitations of their new Page View product Dear Microsoft Product Support DOS Subjects 25 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IIli This letter is in response to hours of frustration over your Pageview product which 1 purchased under the assumption that it was going to allow me to integrate graphics into my WORD processing What a false assumption Let me explain the problems I have experienced I m using an AST Premium 286 computer with MS DOS 3 3 The printer is a NEC LC 890 Postscript capable printer I m using Microsoft WORD version 4 0 and Microsoft WINDOWS version 2 03 Pageview is release 1 0 First since Pageview and WORD cannot both open the same document simultaneously the frustration which arises from having to clear the document when switching from one to another makes PageView practically unusable But that s the least of the problems I spent many hours trying to understand why what I saw on the PageView screen was not formatted anywhere like what was formatted by WORD I am set up using the POSTSCRP PRD in WORD an
90. RSDOS 6 2 for example the time required dropped from 8 minutes to just over 2 minutes Other operations also work more efficiently such as mathematical calculations We times FOR NEXT loops at 16 faster try it you ll like it and it s _ free Hardware Tips Fm John P Eich To THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Editor I submit the following tips 1 While installing an XLR8er board in my Model 4P I found that the board falls out of the modem slots I remedy this by stripping the insulation off of a piece of teflon insulated stranded wire 0 080 OD 16 gauge I believe I used 2 pieces each 3 5 long of the insulation Tucking a piece into each of the two plastic guides and centering each in the modem slots The XLR8er fits fine now won t fall out and the added strips stay firmly in place 2 While working up a program or reviewing data I ve often wished I could look back at a screen full of information I ve found a way In the 4P gate array system U82 is a 6116 static RAM which contains the information presented on the screen Pin 18 on that chip is the CE chip enable signal and is wired to ground such as to keep the chip always working I piggy backed another 6116 soldering all pins together except pin 18 lifting pin 18 of the original out of its socket I then mounted a SPDT a tiny one in the case just below the reset switch there is room enough but you must measure carefully after removing the computer face Two wi
91. Ritchie The library of functions is extensive and System V compatible The compiler generates Z80 relo catable macro assembler code M80 or our MRAS The libraries are files of relocatable object modules MC is a full featured compiler for the discriminating programmer MC supports command line VO redirection for compiled programs wild card file specifications parsing for UNIX 7 extensions in file specifications overlay support requires MRAS a full pre processor lots of options and is designed for the programmer wishing the ultimate in C compilers The package is supplied with the compiler pre processor an optimizer assembler macro files C libraries a Job Control Language file the header files and a 400 page user manual MC requires the use of either M 80 or MRAS available separately 2 disk drives and upper ower case BASIC Compiler EnhComp DOS 6 M 21 072 LDOS 5 M 20 072 Released in 1986 and reviewed in the March 1987 issue of 80 Microcomputing and October 1987 issue of COMPUTER SHOPPER EnhComp has lots of great features handles the bulk of Model Ill Microsoft BASIC and supports addi tional commands and functions Standard is floating point with both single and double precision functions random file access X mode for reclens to 32767 turtle graphics pixel graphics keyed array sort multi lined functions user commands REPEAT UNTIL line labels and
92. Roy Soltoff lt ENTER gt as equivalent to SYSTEM ENTER gt BASICSVC by Robert M Connors Cursor strangeness Data Indexing by Paul Wade Vic AUS Enhancements EnhComp brief description of some features Length of array names used to pass param to SVC MORSE Code from a Model 4 New version of BREF which handles Line Number 0 STRIP BAS by James Beard Ph D UNLOCK by Peter Lengsfeld Programmers Calculator by Bryan W Headley New version which can handle line number 0 Problems with 2 dimensional array Product Highlight GRPLIB LC superceded by MC SPLITLIB CCC by Rich Deglin The C Language MC announced Version 1 5 Provision of the CAT command under LDOS 5 3 Policy of supply Price List effective April 1 1987 and July 1 87 Requests for CIS files on disk Forum FORUM commands Forum policy on deleting messages Garbage messages Problems accessing a BBS Requests for CIS files on disk SIG paging Unsqueezing a file Product Highlight 73 Index to Volume I uHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH D Volume IILi iv SALL iv LL LES EL iv iv ER iv 11 iii 11 EL iv iv Li iv LV LLL Lv LLL ii ALL 11 ii iii 11 ILL lv e Es e iv lv iv iv lv iv iv i 44 23 18 14 75 17 60 64 109 86 28 87 21 108 15 47 85 52 71 28 27 33 58 50 40 62 17 22 44 60 60 59 45 81 60 61 64 22 68 39 25
93. S Apply via PATCH RAMDISK DCT RD51 X 7317 C3 46 78 X 7846 78 BI CA 3E 73 21 00 00 C3 1A 73 Bop M3BOOT amp MODELA of 6 3 Fm MISOSYS Inc In checking out the operation of my Revision C non gate array Model 4 and its Model 111 mode operation with the XLR8er I came across a problem with the M3BOOT utility provided with the H I Tech LDOS interfacing software The M3BOOT utility loads the MODELA III ROM image file It essentially performs the same operation as the Boot ROM M3BOOT uses the byte I O DOS file SVC GET but does no checking for error conditions It then continues to fetch characters from the MODELA III file until it finds the transfer address record a would work if there was never an error in reading that e Unfortunately the MODELA III file which is included on the LS DOS 6 3 master disk has an incorrect directory entry for the EOF OFFSET byte It has a value of X FO but the correct value should be X FB The ModelA III file was supplied by Tandy according to LSI Since the COPY routine would transfer the entire last sector the trailing end of the file was copied over to the LSI LS DOS 6 3 master The 4P boot ROM doesn t care about the offset since it used a full record READ Th Hardware Corner 67 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume 111 operation it uses its own floppy 1 O routines But that does cause a problem with the M3BOOT loader which uses GET after the X FO th
94. S 27 TS CHRS 27 is invalid 009 END 010 ENDIF 011 MIDS FAPP 4 1 T LIB T 012 ENDIF Here the application library file is opened and fielded Note that I can field the complete 256 byte sector into a single string of 256 byte length EnhComp supports strings up to 32767 characters long which is more than sufficient for a 64K machine You also see another user defined multiline function here GETDRVS is used to obtain as a one byte ASCII string the number of the drive which contains the library file just opened More on GETDRVS later Note that it does have an argument the file buffer number After the directory sector is read the file is closed and the welcome message is posted 013 100 OPEN R 1 FAPPS 014 FIELD 1 256 AS BUFFERS 015 110 GET 1 1 016 DRIVES GETDRVS 1 017 CLOSE 1 018 PRINT TAB 15 Popup Application Window for PRO WAM Applications This FOR NEXT loop scans the directory buffer builds up the array of code letters and displays the names of the library members In this example code letters are always assigned sequentially with no gaps because the variable used to count the number of displayed member names is used to generate the code letter 1t s just a different way of building code letters This block also uses the structured IF ENDIF It also uses the integer incrementing command INC which would be equivalent to the statement COUNT COUNT 1 019 COU
95. S completed GIVEUP failed FILE cl fo fi FAA Mainline code Zttkkttkkkkkkkk kk Main arge argv int argc char argv static struct sgttyb sg 0 0 puts BANNER if argc 4 leave USAGE if cl fopen argv r leave NOCHAN if ioctl fileno cl1 TIOCGETP sg leave IOCERR sg sg_control Se 10 TABSTOP IO BREAK if ioctl fileno cl TIOCSETP amp sq leave IOCERR if argv leave USAGE switch argv case r case HI dorecv argv break case s case S dosend argv break default leave USAGE leave s char s putchar n puts s exit chatter blk flg int blk flg static int col 0 char cvbuf 33 putchar flg CHECKOK 3 if col 32 puts itoa blk cvbuf col 0 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk Receive code A kkkkkkkkkkkkkxkk dorecv s char s 36 Applications for the User Volume II int blknum tries char data if fo fopen s w leave NOFILE como NAK puts STARTED blknum 1 tries TRYLIMIT while TRUE if data recvblock blknum 256 if data ACKSAME chatter blknum CHECKOK putblock data blknum como ACK tries 10 else chatter blknum CHECKBAD if tries 0 como CAN leave GIVEUP co
96. THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY In this issue t The Soltoffs have a 7 pound 12 ounce boy ts Reading NEWDOS 80 disks by David Goben es An LB Archival Utility by Daniel L Srebnick t Popup Application Window by Roy Soltoff re XMODEM in C by David B Lamkins FS Getting into computer math By Roy Soltoff e and An index to THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Volume lt I S SE a A a E e Y 97 _ LY AM A S ZU yy AGL kh e I za 5 E e a E es L Y Y L J2 N LA AN W E E Ge d li GE J Gj PR Dh ut E i A ANN a A M KE Zar VGU A WI Y YOU ma AH Yj fj Yip YIP Potty YLT Y f Ly Wy YY HY yyy YY Y WYA L h H Hy Y Y Y Wu y d 2 Y y d Yi Yi Ui d II h SS Y IN Y y E Y 7 AORA Y Y TL ETA Vy e yj SE P Z Ga Hz yy Ln Yj _ CG II HAN NEED AN U P S ae S AAA 7 YAA d Volume IIL 10 Summer 1988 Z80 RELocatable Assembler MRAS DOS 6 x M 21 083 LDOS 5 x M20 083 An advanced Z80 assembly package for the programmer who wants a powerful and flexible development system It includes a macro assembler which generates either relo catable object code modules or CMD files directly a linker a librarian a full screen text editor a utility for converting to from line numbered files and a cross reference tool for directly generated CMD files j MRAS generates M80 co
97. Y index register That was not supported by Zilog but nevertheless Z80 chips could execute such an instruction The 64180 does not TMQ had a patch a few issues back about that Now speaking of TMQ Issue Lon Fall 1986 advised of the update to SAID and its cost You could go that route but at this point the cost is 10 for a disk refresh plus S amp H 5 in your case Then the patches in TMQ for 5 3 s KI DVR would work It also shouldn t take you too long to find the appropriate patch locations in version 1 0 of SAID They really shouldn t be too far away from the locations in 1 1 release And finally on the issue of SAID the name was derived as a variation on the acronym of SED for Screen EDitor But SED is pronounced as said thus SAID On the issue of binders we got out of the large binder business for a number of reasons Binders do not travel well Theyre expensive to store They tie up capital as they have to be purchased in sufficient volume to justify a reasonable price for imprinted custom binders Freight costs are then magnified Shipping containers are larger You get the idea Now we have gotten back into the binder business in the MS DOS world But there we use a small sized 9x7 binder which conveniently holds 8 5 x5 5 stock We are also using that binder for LB and PRO WAM If I have the justification to reprint a Model 4 product then I would consider shifting that to the smaller binder So order PRO WAM or L
98. Zsoft This is a sampling Fm R M Doerr Gentlemen Thank you for the recent announcement folder My DOS 6 3 CS is 17888 the level iS L I have acquired another Mod 4 the DOS 6 3 CS for it is 17978 it is at level J May I send both master disks to have them upgraded to the latest level and keyed alike What is the latest level Is it significantly ahead of Level L You ask what software readers would like for the Mod 4 I would like 1 Comprehensive hardware diagnostic software 2 A powerful printer controller that operates from DOS and could be used as SYS13 to set up the Epson FX 80 printer I have one that does the job but only for a few settings as it is designed for the MX 80 It does the main job setting for condensed type 3 A good beginner s book on C After having help to learn FORTRAN in 1962 I taught myself PL I and BASIC so I think I could teach myself C 4 Upgrades for Scripsit Pro a to enable executing a wide range of LIB commands from within it b to formfeed rather than do a sequence of linefeeds at the end of each page and c means to convert Scripsit Pro documents to ASCII for communication in this world of MSDOS 5 Means to print a graphics file from BASIC and GBASIC for example to insert a line that is set in a fancy DOTWRITER font or to install a logo at the head of a page 6 an ASCII editor that would allow 132 character lines DOS commands condensed printing a
99. al Records LAST REC LAST REC 1 pointer to next record to use IF LAST REC gt ALLOC REC THEN ERROR 63 ELSE GOSUB 3000 PUT 4 LAST REC RETURN REM Move input record to output record FOR SETUP 1 TO LRL LSET OUT BUFFS SETUP IN BUFFS SETUP NEXT SETUP RETURN REM Now delete the transferred record LSET IN BUFFS 1 CHR ASC IN BUFF 1 128 IF IN DEL PTR 0 THEN IN DEL PTR 1 LSET IN BUFFS 3 LEFTS MKI IN DEL PTR 1 LSET IN BUFFS 4 RIGHTS MKI IN DEL PTR 1 PUT 3 IN REC 1 IN DEL PTR IN RECt1 IN DEL COUNT IN DEL COUNT 1 RETURN IF ERR 63 AND ERL 2020 THEN LAST REC LAST REC 1 PRINT There are not enough records allocated in OUT FILES RESUME 300 PRINT Unexpected error ERR in line ERL END THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume Ili LB Data Pot els CH Counters All of the variables mentioned in this table exist as both integer variables and random access File field variables The field variables are differentiated by the suffix Variable Purpose and File Location ALLOC REC Contains the number of pre allocated records in a Little Brother Database may be found in sector 1 bytes 27 28 of DEF file and in the last sector bytes 1 2 of the LB file LAST REC Contains the highest numbered record in the LB file that has been used to store a database record may be found in sector 1 bytes 29 30 of DEF file and in the last sector bytes 3 4 of the LB file LRL Contains the num
100. ample of such a system In that system symbols are used to designate particular values The following table illustrates some of these values In this system a number is a string of Roman numerals The number value is figured by adding up the values of each symbol from left to right if a symbol has a smaller value than the symbol to its right then it is subtracted from that symbol s value and the result accumulated into the addition For example the Roman number MCMLXXX VIII represents the current year expressed as 1988 in decimal But let me get back to our number system especially since I just mentioned the term decimal In any positional number system any number can be represented by the general formula a421 0 4 12 2 23b3 a2b2 ajbl agb a jb 1 a 9b 2 In this notation the a s represent positional coefficients with the subscripts designating the position and b represents the radix or base The period which you see between the ag and a 1 1s called the radix point The term base may be more comfortable than the term radix but both are equally correct in fact radix may be the term mathematicians prefer In any event the base is the number which is raised to a power in order to arrive at the magnitude of the position The superscripts indicate the power to which the base is raised If the base is 10 the number system is termed decimal Two other terms can be introduced
101. andparents and show them the new baby After a short visit there it will be on to Miami for a couple of day before it is time to head home The Blurb Volume IIli THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IILi Speaking of the baby Roy has given me the pleasure of announcing the arrival of our son Benjamin Charles on June 9 1988 at 6 44 p m He weighed in at 7 Ibs 12 oz The girls are very happy with their new brother In fact they got to hear him cry over the phone when he was only about 30 minutes old Benjamin was born the day after Stacey s Sth birthday When it was getting close to June 8 I was just hoping that he wouldn t decide to make his appearance on her birthday Things couldn t have gone more smoothly I went to pick my mother up at the airport about 11 30 a m Later that afternoon we went to the hospital Within and hour and a half after arriving Benjamin was born We got the birthing room it has a more homey atmosphere and the nurse midwife that I had seen through all three of my pregnancies got there to do the honors Roy even got to take a more active part by cutting the cord Have you heard the r news The next day when Roy brought Stacey and Stefanie to the hospital the first thing they did was jump up on the bed to see Benjamin Stefanie about grabbed him out of my hands They Spent some time with us then Roy took my mother and the girls down to Georgetown for some lunch and a little shopping trip We we
102. andy doesn t like to bother with add ons The current PRO WAM still includes TYPER We just don t have the room in an ad to mention everything which comes with the Release 2 it is an extensive enhancement My philosophy on staying with the Model 4 or moving to MS DOS or other is simple If your 4 is serving your needs don t jump to some other architecture Move to higher power if you must acquire it to run some particular new application now For instance if you have a need for desktop publishing DTP you may have to resort to either a souped up Macintosh or an AT class PC or higher i e 386 Of course you need to evaluate additional investments to your current setup The best bet to consider is to add peripherals which are re usable in other environments That s why we are DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 94 Volume IIli designing our Hard Drive DES to be totally re usable under MS DOS Typical 6 3 Support Questions Fm MISOSYS Inc Since MISOSYS has taken over the complete and total sale and support of the LS DOS 6 3 product on June 1st I have begun to reckon with the users Bill spoke of some issues ago Knowing how some folks took offense at the words he used to describe these computer users I will refrain from making generalities On the other hand I would like to provide you readers with a sample of the kinds of support requests I have received of late some reasonable some no
103. are more apt to find a maintenance problem with older controllers than the drive given an adequately designed environment The Hardware Corner 65 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume III i Hard drives do spin at 3600 RPM Why should we consider that excessive Do you know the rotational speed of a dentists air turbine drill You trust your life to an airplane jet engine which has considerable rotational speed Believe me there is nothing to worry about that speed of rotation A hard drive is a precision instrument If you left a hard drive running continuously the bearings would probably last 3 5 years My hunch is that they would be the first to go Usually the drive will start getting a little noisy that s how you can tell the bearings are starting to go Of course I have yet to have that happen I guess I have never had any one drive operating continuously for that long I also have had a number of machines in use when the power fails What s the difference between you tuming off your power switch and the power company having a mishap Same difference If you are really concerned about that kind of failure you are a prime candidate for an Uninterruptable Power Supply UPS I also think the head will be still flying at 1800 RPM I m not sure at what speed it takes off but that s not really a big worry Another means of counteracting that is to use one of the very fast access drives which use a voice coil for
104. ate some sales I have one I got from Computer Friends 14250 NW Science Park Dr Portland Oregon 97229 503 626 2291 They had an ad in 80 Micro of June 1988 p65 About a year and a half ago 1 purchased a couple of Tandy DMP430 dot matrix printers nice job but the price of the ribbons A whole new ribbon costs 15 95 and the carton says it s good for 4 million characters Well maybe Anyhow I seemed to be changing ribbons quite often and it really irked me to throw away all that chunk of hardware when all the good I d got from it was a thimbleful of ink Then I discovered that Tandy has refills at 15 95 for 3 so I tried those But they involve opening up the cartridge and messing around with inked ribbons and getting oneself smeared with ink despite the plastic glove that comes with the refill Besides there again I still didn t feel a thimbleful of ink was worth over five dollars Finally I got one of Computer Friends reinkers Beautiful Now I can reink a ribbon for at a guess five cents or so The device works well but perhaps a bit slowly but that doesn t matter as I start it inking and go off to do something else A single run through a ribbon takes 21 minutes and I have found I prefer to run it through twice total of 42 minutes for a reinking The number of reinkings a ribbon can take before it starts to wear is as yet an unanswered question I have ribbons I have reinked some ten times and I can t detect a
105. atic variables MC and include variations MC and bug reports fixes MC and C variables MC and GREP speed MC and separate compilation New full C compiler released 07 10 86 Vers 1 5a On assigning character pointers Patch to fix Wildcard problem Pending MC bugs PRO MC and EOFs PRO MC and variable initialisation PRO MC and __ LINE Problem with WINDOW CCC part of PRO WAM Problems with MCOPT Q amp A Retrieving Date Time with MC SIDEWAYS with MC Speeding up MCP Preprocessor SPLITLIB CCC by Rich Deglin Structures and bit fields UNREL REL to ASM translator Update on MC libraries Using I O redirection with MC for debugging purp SET2RAM and MEMDISK driver Contributions to TM Letter of appreciation from France by Michel Houde Software Submissions oO Volume III I iv I iii I iv I iv I iv I iv Do I iv LL I iv I iii I ii Ll Le E I iii TILL bb pie pio e He pe He He pe p He He pe pie pe d KM HMH HMM HMM A AAA HAHAHA A HMH HM HA AAA AAA AAA A A HY A HAH AH A AH A A He be be be bh 32 53 37 34 42 64 2 45 58 44 57 27 55 44 8 8 3 13 3 30 23 83 4 88 88 90 90 92 92 89 83 84 25 88 87 92 89 85 88 96 91 68 87 88 91 39 91 11 92 64 21 5 19 5 Index to Volume I eebe II AA Volume IIli THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IIli MISOSYS Upgrading of MISOSYS Products I iv 15 MISOSYS Where s MISOSYS been I i 4 Model 4 BOOT a M
106. ator a batch file to automate compilation a language Reference Manual an Installation Manual application programs in source code on disk and our LED text editor for source code preparation REL Disassembler UNREL T80 M 30 054 CPM M 32 054 Decodes an MB80 type relocatable object module and outputs an MRAS M80 assembler source file We bundle in SPLITLIB to split a library into separate modules and DECODREL to display the bit stream of a REL file UNREL assumes anything in a code segment is code and anything in a data segment is data It supports special link items 0 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 UNREL should be the perfect professional assembler s tool for your bag of tricks FORTH Compiler HartFORTH pos 6 M 21 071 DOS 5 M 20 071 HartFORTH is a full FORTH that conforms to the 79 STANDARD The Model UI version is an indirect threaded version the DOS 6 version is a direct threaded implemen tation providing greater execution speed of 10 40 depending on the details of the actual program The kernal contains some additional useful words and utilities which turn HartFORTH into a full fledged development system HartFORTH is designed to run under an operating system which is totally transparent to the programmer or user The virtual Memory that it accesses for storage and retrieval purposes is a normal DOS file that is requested by the FORTH system when it is first entered Doing this has several advantages in that it provides
107. been and is a valuable tool in the development of both The above information is sent in reference to the survey or Market Research concerning the HD for the Model IV I don t know how much longer the Tax software people are going to continue to support the Model IV but with your proposed package and with it being reusable in a PC environment it has my interest Miscellaneous matters Fm lan Lange Roy Firstly let me say that I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the TMQ s from Li on as well as the Notes before that While I don t do an awful lot of serious stuff with my Model 1 and Model 3 I do get a lot of useful information out of the journals and I m glad and relieved that SOMEONE still cares about us TRS80 users I trust all has gone well with Soltoff Jr 3 which I trust will be in existence by the time this letter reaches you I have always enjoyed those little personal bits even when the baby throws up on you or similar unfortunate accidents Being a bachelor myself I am very glad to keep these details at one remove with only nieces and nephews to worry about Keep up all the good work Pity the photos in TMQ ILiv didn t come out a bit better but even from what I can see they re obviously a pair of charming devils Hope the third matches up the set I noticed in Iiv a note from Michael Rogers about bugs in Lescript 1 80 on a Model 1 thank God I had trouble with it too and was starting to suspect a dud cop
108. being a Superlog user or owner I never had the time or experience with Superlog to investigate that operating conflict John uncovered the conflict to be excessive use of the system stack Let me put a little into perspective When TRSDOS 6 0 was released the DOS had a 256 byte stack Release 6 0 1 eliminated the restriction on a program stack being below X F400 by adding stack management support code to the video and keyboard device handlers to utilize a second system stack if the current stack pointer was above that limit during a keyboard or video device I O request The limit by the way stems from the use of the X F400 X FFFF address range for imaging the keyboard and video memory maps Since the DOS had no unused low memory region for a second stack it split the then 256 byte stack into two 128 byte segments When 6 1 0 was released by LSI the low memory require ments for added DOS routines forced the system stack to be reduced to 128 bytes LSI originally only provided the sec ond stack to be 32 bytes below the first Unfortunately for some programs that wasn t adequate so a patch was applied to split the 128 byte stack region into two areas of 64 bytes each That s the famous FIXBOOT patch with PRO WAM John has now found that even 64 bytes of system stack are insufficient when both Superlog and PRO WAM are used simultaneously John prepared a patch to Superlog to aid in dealing with that problem Another s
109. ber of bytes in each LB data record may be found in sector 1 bytes 31 32 of DEF file and in the last sector bytes 5 6 of the LB file DEL PTR Contains the number of the last record that was deleted or zero if no records have been deleted found in sector 1 bytes 33 34 of LB file DEL COUNT Contains the count of delete records found in sector 1 bytes 90 91 of LB file IN REC Contains the number of records that were selected for the active index stored in bytes 1 2 of the SLx file Applications for the User 40 Applications for the User Volume 111 1 The Programmers Corner The following programs although shown in their respective source code language are nevertheless applications which may be directly usable by the non programming user All you need do is obtain the assembled compiled program from the DISK NOTES 3 1 diskette which is associated with this issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Popup Application Window by Roy Soltoff This utility which I have named PAW provides a single keystroke execution of any PRO WAM application directly from a PRO WAM library file Although the utility of the program is strictly for the PRO WAM user I have developed versions of the program in three different computer languages The actual implementation of the program versions should be informative in and of themselves therefore I will spend most of this article discussing the implementation the use
110. byte was read from the last sector the DOS would return an EOF error X 1C M3BOOT ignored this and accepted the value of 28D as a byte It essentially locked up I can t give an easy patch to M3BOOT to correct this rather I have re written M3BOOT to detect errors Unfortunately that still does not get you out of the problem you need to correct the EOF OFFSET of the MODELA II file in the directory Now since the use for that is with the Model ITI mode and the M3BOOT utility is for LDOS and LDOS comes with FED you can use FED to zap the directory Just boot up your LDOS without the XLR amp 8er and invoke FED Specify DIR SYS LSIDOS das the file to edit where d specifies the drive which contains your 6 3 disk The entry is in DIR SYS record 10H at offset 43H You ll find an X FO there change it to an X FB I have thousands of 6 3 disks already duplicated here which were provided by LSI Therefore it will be some time before a Level N disk gets into being For now those few folks who are troubled by this error the procedure I outlined can rectify the situation for you 5 files I disk Same name Fm Charles A Ainsworth Roy As I told you in a phone call on the 14th the latest is that when running ALLWRITE I sometimes get a new version of the same file on my floppy each time I give the Save command or that ALLWRITE does the same via the Autosave feature which I run at a low value of 50 inasmuch as I do a lot
111. ce The Hardware Corner a La PO AA Volume Ur I knew that LDOS 5 1 4 forced the 4Meg clock speed when it booted up LDOS 5 3 did not So I installed the DDT utility to get me a disassembly display with DEBUG and then hard zapped the resident 5 3 to simulate the way 5 1 4 starts up at 4Megs Sure enough when I installed RAMDISK it worked Well this had me going for weeks until I finally stumbled onto the reason for the crash Sometimes you can t see the forest for the trees It was a bug in RAMDISK When RAMDISK starts up it first examines high memory to see if it is already installed If so and inactive it re uses the already in RAM image Otherwise it relocates an image of the driver into high memory Seems like RAMDISK never tested for the condition of HIGH being at X FFFF Le nothing in high memory It proceeded to check 65535 bytes of memory starting at address 0 Guess what It found a copy But what it found was the copy just loaded It then proceeded to use that driver at that location That just won t work I completely missed it in all my original testing of John s reported problem just by happenstance When I booted up the LDOS 5 1 4 it was an old copy which had a configuration the keyboard driver was in high memory When I booted up the LDOS 5 3 it was a new copy without a configuration The following patch will correct the Model IIT mode RAMDISK RD51 FIX Patch to XLR8er RAMDISK for Model III LDO
112. ceived your REQUIRED READING article and wanted to write to subscribe to your The MISOSYS Quarterly You will find a check for 25 00 enclosed Please send my subscription to the address below Also advise me on how I may get a copy of your back issues Letters to the Editor Volume IIL i I wanted to tell you that Yes I would be interested in a hard drive system for the Model 3 and Model 4 4P computers The one described in your article for 495 sounds like a good price I purchased a copy of PRONTO and shortly after 1 received my copy I discovered that you had added enhancements and now call it PROWAM This left me with a bad taste in my mouth 1 know that enhancements are good and even expected but I would have preferred to have waited another month and received PROWAM than to have paid the same price for PRONTO The last thing I wanted to ask about was LS DOS 6 3 I understand that there is a copy protection in this latest release and also understand that each user is supposed to purchase a new copy for each Model 4 or 4P that he or she may own I have owned a Model 4 for years and have just bought a 4P This is not feasible when you swap diskettes between the two computers Also if I purchase the hard disk you described in your letter this would also cause problems because the LS DOS 6 3 will recognize the computer as different from the Model 4 that I originally installed LS DOS 6 3 on I was told that when LS DOS 6 3
113. ck graphics board and GBASIC 3 0 or a Micro Labs Grafyx Solution board DRAW A powerful full screen graphics drawing and editing program 34 95 BIZGRAPH Create business graphs from hand entered or VisiCalc data 59 95 xT CAD Professional drafting aid which outputs to a printer or plotter 145 00 SURFACE PLOT Plot three dimensional equations of the form Z F x y 39 95 3D PLOT View three dimensional data from any perspective or angle 29 95 MATHPLOT Plot equations of the form Y F x with auto scaling 29 95 CHESS A very powerful program with 10 skill levels 40 play options 39 95 REVERSI Play Othello with 10 skill levels 20 execution options 29 95 3D Tic Tac Toe Play the computer or a friend on a 4X 4x4 matrix 19 95 SLIDESHOW Create a sequence of hi resolution picture displays 19 95 Biorhythm USA Plot your biorhythm or learn the states and capitols 14 95 JOY MOUSE Allows a Radio Shack Color Computer joystick mouse or touch pad to be connected to any Model 4 4D 4P Ill Hardware provides X Y position values from O to 255 119 95 Superior Software The board comes with over 40 programs and files which make it easier to use serve as practical applications demonstrate its capabilities and serve as programming examples The software works with TRSDOS 1 3 6 1 2 6 2 6 3 Dosplus 3 4 3 5 4 LDOS and Newdos80 The Grafyx Solution is als
114. ck move and copy partial save and load a full screen turbo type editor is supported on CGA equipped systems the ASSEMBLER supports structured coding can directly generate a COM o1 EXE file assembly to memory for faster debugging The DEBUGGER includes symbolic disassembly of arbitrary code to disk ED ASM 86 M 86 030 SHE 5 S amp H Now only 99 95 RATFOR 86 Rational FORTRAN translator A professional implementation of RATional FORtran by James Beard Ph D Provides structure and greater portability to FORTRAN programs to reduce your programming time and effort dramatically over that required when writing directly in FORTRAN Includes tutorial reference manual compiler has extensive macro support arith macro for binary arithmetic short form READ and PRINT enhanced switch case support Requires a FORTRAN compiler RATFOR 86 M 86 73 99 95 5 S amp H MISOSYS INC PO Box 239 AN Sterling VA 22170 0239 Ca 703 450 4181 MC VISA CHOICE VA residents add 4 gt sales tax MISOSYS SOFTWARE FOR YOUR PC RN ET EN CIS EE ITT Order Now 800 MISOSYS 647 6797 A PT RTS ETE LB86 A useful and flexible data manager Easily used by anyone for managing their data It s menu driven for ease of use absolutely no programming needed Why settle for expensive over kill with data managers you have to program when economically priced LB86 will do mailing labels customer lists
115. commands will set clear or complement points lines boxes circles ellipses or arcs The hi res screen can be printed on any of 30 popular printers or saved or loaded to disk without leaving Basic Areas may be filled in with any of 256 patterns Sections of the screen may be saved and then put back using any of five logical functions Labels can be printed in any direction The viewing area can be changed The entire screen can be complemented or cleared Graphics Basic provides dot densities of 640 x 240 320 x 240 160 x 240 and 160 x 120 all of which can be used in the same display Graphics Solutions High Resolution Software and Hardware GBASIC 3 0 Radio Shack Model 4 4D 4P Ill hi res board owners take note of an enhanced graphics Basic GBASIC 3 0 It not only provides an equivalent for each of the BASICG commands but adds a number of important new ones while using less memory Without having to exit Basic the hi res screen can be saved to disk loaded from disk or printed on any of 30 popular printers Epson Star Micronics Radio Shack Okidata C Itoh NEC etc The software works with TRSDOS 1 3 PAS 6 2 0 3 Domus 34 35 4 LDOS and NEWDOSS8O0 The disk con tains 40 graphics programs files Also in cluded is a detailed manual with assembly language entry addresses 39 95 Specify Model 4 or III mode or add 10 for both The following eleven programs run on a Model 4 4D 4P IIl equipped with a Radio Sha
116. compatibility to K amp R greatly helps me to recompile and run the same C programs on the MS DOS machines which are popular in my company s laboratory Although PRO MC system is rather big for my 4P s pretty small main memory the XLR8er s 256k RAM disk provides a wonderful environment in which I can do source code writing with SAID compile link all in the memory It s amazingly fast I thank you for the excellent C compiler software By the way I have a question about the logical record length LRL of the disk files generated by the C programs which were compiled by PRO MC When I was developing a C MISOSYS Products Tidbits 55 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume II program which generates DOS help text files 1 found 1 have to make the LRL of the help text files to one All the MC generated files I examined had the LRL of 256 Unfortunately I failed to find a way to create files of LRL of 1 with PRO MC though I know it s simple from BASIC The Technical Reference Manual of the DOS says that the LRL of files can be specified or altered only by CREATE or COPY commands Can I control the LRL of the files from C programs I understand that C s character I O functions provide an effect as if I were accessing the files of LRL of 1 however it does not help me in this case because DOS HELP command handles the help text files which LRL is actually one I expect your advice Thank you for reading Fm
117. cter or last error code encountered LC maintained a table of pointers which was called the File Vector Table FVTBL When I revised the MC stream functions to better support UNIX System V standards it required more space in the FCA The oct function documents the control word added and is generally used to access the first three bytes of the expanded FCA block Since all of the stream functions were written in assembler and the indexing of the FCA was based on the file pointer it was less error prone from a programming standpoint to just tack on two bytes to the front of the FCA and not alter the file pointer value When you fopenQ a file an FCA block is allocated and optionally a file buffer The address of the control flag is inserted into a vacant FVTAB slot Note that this address is two bytes beyond the first byte allocated The address of the FVTAB slot is returned as the FILE pointer Ideally I should have altered the coding in all of the stream functions to keep the FILE pointer address the same as the structure address however since it was all internal it really didn t matter I was more concerned with introducing coding errors bugs As another aside MC uses the FVTAB slots as FILE DESCRIPTORS Recollect that DESCRIPTORS are small numbers By default STDIN is usually 0 STDOUT is 1 STDERR is 2 etc Thus the sequential slots in the File Vector Table represent FILE DESCRIPTORS On A conversion function such as fileno s
118. d am also specifying POSTSCRIPT printer in WINDOWS Okay there Most of my word processing is for a magazine which I publish The primary font is Times Roman I also make use of boxes and lines which require SYMBOL After much puzzling and printing I determined that Pageview was using Courier where I specify Times Roman in WORD So I called the Microsoft Support organization and was asked if I created the PFF file for my PRD file I stated that the POSTSCRP PFF file was supplied on the Page View disk This was a Microsoft provided file In any event the support I did Following the book I brought up WINDOWS WRITE and wrote down the names of the supported fonts I then brought up WORD and wrote down the names and generic identifications of fonts supported by WORD with the POSTSCRP PRD driver I then went to the PageView Appendix A table and correlated the PRD font numbers with the generic font names It s funny that the Pageview manual states Type each numeric font code a semicolon and the Write font name that corresponds to the numeric code Yet the POSTSCRP PFF file supplied on the PAGEVIEW disk is as follows 0 Courier 1 Courier 8 Helv 9 AvantGarde 10 HelveticaNarrow 16 Bookman 24 TmsRmn 25 NewCenturySchibk 26 Palatino 27 Souvenir 50 ZapfChancery 56 Symbol 60 ZapfDingbats Those font names are supposed to be the same as WINDOWS Write I see Courier Helv Symbol and Tms Rmn showing up in the Write scr
119. d to each application member If a directory position has no member assigned to it WAMLIB will fill that position with spaces That s what I use to test for an APP The screen display sets up a maximum of four names per row starting at the ninth column This means I have to tab over to column 8 based 0 every fourth name displayed The tabbing routine also emits a RETURN to end the previous line 042 LD IX CODES Point to code table 043 LD HL BUFFER Point to buffer start 044 LD B 0 Init counter for tabbing 045 SCAND LD A HL Get 1st char of APPNAME 046 CP E zIf blank no APP there 047 JR Z SCAND2 048 LD A B Do we tab here 049 AND 3 Tab at start of 050 CALL Z TAB8 Z every fourth APP 051 LD ES Display code d 052 SVC DSP 053 LD A LETTER 054 LD IX A Save code for this one 055 LD C A 056 SVC DSP The Programmers Corner Volume IIli 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 counter 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 LD SVC LD SVC INC PUSH PUSH LD SCAND1 APPNAME INC SVC DJNZ CALL POP POP THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 ZS Bump counter Preserve Display Now four spaces At this point I have completed the processing of the current directory slot Now I increment the pointer to my CODES array for the next position 1 then increment the letter value Since there can be up to 32 entries 1 must test fo
120. daptor drive case device drivers and so on would not have to be duplicated with a second drive so one would need your 495 target price setup plug only the additional bare drive just as a shot in the dark say some 300 8 Are there any typical figures available for the gain in speed for a Locating a specific file on a drive and b Reading writing a specific file 9 Would any surgery have to be performed on an existing computer to connect the drives I would assume not or could the hard drive cable simply be plugged into the card edge connector on the computer in the same way as external floppies I would assume yes 10 If I connected two HD s how many floppy drives could I have on line at the same time 11 Most of my work demands absolute reliability or as close to it as I can get in writing to disk and reading back On some of my large data bases unflagged I O errors can be very serious When operating with my present floppies any time data is sent to disk it is sent straight from RAM to two disks I always consider the possibility of flaws in disk coating in which one or more cylinders just got by when formatting but which might be marginal So if I write to one disk and unknowingly hit a marginal track then later back up that floppy to another possibly the marginal information also goes onto the backup If I used HD s I would probably use a similar system by writing to disk in duplicate direct from R
121. data disk and I think things are back to normal although I don t think the X backup works yet Any thoughts Necessary to do dateconv after using SU do you think Fm MISOSYS Inc Robert I do not know what SU does in its repair of the GAT and HIT sectors Although I have documented the changes to the directory structure of LDOS 5 3 I doubt that SU was revised Thus I cannot speculate on what needs to be done after you use SU Obviously if the TIME field was blank LDOS no longer recognized that disk as a 5 3 disk SU probably rebuilt the configuration byte and didn t set the extended date flag Your best bet would be to copy the files off on to another disk then re format the bad one You can t just DATECONV because that will clear out DOS Subjects Volume III i all of the extended date time fields of each directory record with a subsequent return of 1988 dated files to 1980 Alpha clock patch Fm Stu Martin Roy Here is a copy of the ALPHA clock patch for LDOS 5 3 The only problem noted during the last year was when the clock is removed from the system When removed and the system booted the date and time is invalid i e garbage I ve noted this within the patch I haven t had time to look into this since it works fine with the clock installed 1 have not had any problems running any Model III program to date but note that Um running mostly Model IV I hope readers of TMQ will continue
122. ding DEF file is read The record length is stored in integer variable LRL which is then used in the OPEN statement Since the file field buffer must also be dynamically declared a loop is entered immediately after the OPEN fielding the input and output file buffers as arrays of one byte strings of DIMension LRL This is a good technique for dealing with file records of unknown length that only interpreted BASIC will allow Incidentally forget about compiling this program the compiler will choke at line 140 The BASIC compilers do not take kindly to allowing dynamically dimensioned arrays with bounds set by run time input Long descriptive variable names are used throughout with the file buffer equivalent of a program variable differing only in the suffix The program will of course run faster if you delete the comments from your run time version Subroutines begin at line 1000 If you delete the REM statement at the beginning of a subroutine be sure to correct the associated GOSUB statement to call the following line BASIC should be entered with the F 5 parameter as LBMOVE uses five files Lines 20 and 30 prompt you for the input and output filespecs The input file is the name of the Little Brother database from which you wish to move records aa aa i e Do not include the file extension The output file is the name of the database to which you are moving records No extension necessary here either You are
123. do with bending up pin 7 of U3 I got a 20 increase in a integer loop counter 1 11 send it along on a disk in a week or SO Fm MISOSYS Inc Dave From the feedback I have received from that mailing so far and its only the 3rd of June I will have plenty of orders to justify the hard drive Letters to the Editor Volume UI package The Model AU is far from dead A lot of folks have a very large investment in software which meets their needs The machine works for them If they can forecast a need for a reasonably priced hard drive then it keeps them operating better for longer with no additional investment in software Some folks never consider the money they have invested in software and the costs to acquire replacements on another operating environment Now I recognize the concern with re using the investment over in the MS DOS world That s why my fundamental approach is to use everything from the MS DOS world to build this package Not only would the drive be re usable but the controller as well We re going to use a controller which can plug into an IBM PC or clone Thus when you replace your 4 or add to it you can take the drive controller and connecting cables out of the external case and plug them right in to a PC clone The software for the MS DOS world is in a ROM BIOS which is part of the controller How s that for protecting your investment On the other hand in your case you would just want to replace you
124. e 3 amp amp argv 2 _abort parameters must be in parentheses l else if argc 3 E argv 2 fetchprm arge argv fetch command line parameters check parameter values if pnum if page lines lt 3 _abort too many lines per page to print page number else if page lt lines _abort too many lines per page file open if fpi fopen argv 1 r NULL _abort source file not found if fpo fopen PRINTER w NULL exit 1 set sys date sys time title and filespec strcpy title Program listing of Ss printed out s s source filespec uppercase while argv 1 i argv 1 i toupper argv 1 i i MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IIli clrscrn lmargin printf title argv 1 sysdate sys date systime s ys time fprintf fpo title argv 1 sys date sys time loopute 4 n amp line read file send it to screen and printer while fgets buf 80 fpi lmargin if lnum line numbering printf 3d progline fprintf fpo 3d progline progline if stremp buf n 0 biputs buf line nextpage amp line else if stremp buf n 0 biputs hyphens bipute n linet else if strcmp buf n 0 hyphens biputs n line else if strcmp buf n 0 biputs hyphens biputs n line
125. e 2 5 ROM Also the 3 0 ROM allows the 1200 not only to continue to be fully DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 9G Volume II XT compatible but also fully compatible with the TANDY 3000 and 4000 Thus Bob can purchase the TANDY 3000 4000 MS DOS BASIC systems such as 3 2 and operate with them without problems However using the 3000 s DOS on the 1200 will cause the floppy drive tracking to sound differently giving a courser sound while moving between tracks He can smooth that out easy enough I don t understand why this doesn t work from a COM file under 3 2 it works fine under 3 1 but my method runs OK from DEBUG From the DOS prompt A gt or C gt or whatever enter the following lines do NOT include the comments to the right copy con db a lt go into the ASSEMBLE mode int 13 lt reset floppy In this case AH is already zero int 20 lt short and dirty exit which works well from DEBUG lt this is a BLANK line Just press ENTER g lt execute the small program q lt leave DEBUG and return to DOS Close up the file by pressing F6 and then ENTER Now include the line DEBUG lt DB in your AUTOEXEC BAT file preferably as the first entry or simply enter DEBUG lt DB from the DOS prompt This process will smooth out disk track stepping considerably under MS DOS 3 1 or 3 2 On another subject in Bill s column page 31 column 2 paragraph 6 he said that MS DOS would
126. e Quarterly was for a newer version of SAID so I would like to upgrade it By the way is the name SAID an acronym for something It has been always a mystery to me Final question would you reconsider about binders for the manuals the large size 3 ring binders I can understand that you sell not enough binders to make them commercially Letters to the Editor 17 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IIli attractive to you but in Europe it is a problem to find the right binders to put your software manuals in European standard is 4 ring and A4 size paper just different enough to be a minor problem Fm MISOSYS Inc Hans Sorry but I ve been really busy here and correspondence has backed up The archive restore utilities that are part of the RSHARD package will work with any drive package they re not driver dependent The driver and formatter would not work of course The XLR8er board comes with interfacing software for one DOS We currently have software for DOS 6 LDOS and MM CP M Each additional software set is 9 95 Once the board is installed it should be transparent to all software unless you have little low memory available The software interface in DOS 6 mode needs low memory After installation I can t see what problem there would be with any software unless it uses undocumented Z80 opcodes which are not supported by the 64180 TRSDOS 1 3 was one DOS which used some 8 bit loads into the T
127. e WEXEC function I immediately switch to Z80 MODE get the string control block and subsequently the string address into HL place the WEXEC function number into register B the WINDOW SVC number into register A then issue the request The command then switches back to HIGH MODE for the return THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 FUNCTION GETARGS Z80 MODE LD HL BCSV LD amp ADDR HL HIGH MODE INDEX 0 T5 REPEAT CHARS CHR PEEK ADDR INDEX INC INDEX IF CHARS REPEAT CHARS CHR PEEK ADDR INDEX INC INDEX UNTIL CHARS lt gt IF CHARS gt 0 TS CHARS ENDIF CHAR CHRS 13 ENDIF Volume IIli UNTIL CHAR CHR 13 RETURN T COMMAND WEXEC M ENDFUNC 280 MODE LD IX amp M LD H IX 3 LD L IX 2 LD B 12 LD A 124 RST 40 EE This is a straightforward routine to convert an assumed one RETURN Character string to uppercase if the value is within the range ENDCOM a z otherwise the string is returned unchanged It would be easy to adapt this to a generalized routine to convert an n length string to upper case This is a user defined multiline function which obtains an argument from the command line When a program begins execution the DOS sets up certain program entry conditions Register HL points to the first non blank character following FUNCTION TOUPPERS T IF T lt a OR TS gt z the program name Register B
128. e all this doesn t sound too picky What is really going on in my mind is an unresolved question whether to stick with the Model 4 which I like and with which I am familiar or whether to abandon all hope not to mention software and documents and go MSDOS for the sake of compatibility more power etc Having looked at several MSDOS options I have come to realize how good the Model 4 is and how comfortable I am with it But if it and its documents are soon to become dinosaur fossils Fm MISOSYS Inc Walter Let me try to answer your questions some of which actually require great depth which I really cannot go into here It would take a huge amount of patching if even feasible to convert PROFILE M to Model 4 mode I know of no one who has tried to attempt that Actually if you had the PROFILE III HD version it would run under LDOS and then could be used on a 4 in III mode at the faster speed LDOS at high speed is actually faster than DOS 6 at high speed because LDOS does NOT have DOS Subjects Volume IIli to bother with bank switching memory management But the HD version of PROFILE may not be available from Tandy Iam not familiar with HOME Accountant thus I cannot advise you as to what is available on the Model 4 side which is compatible I am enclosing a small brochure which gives some more information on LB Specifically LB probably has most of the features of PROFILE Il but may in fact be easier t
129. ect switch in your design that was one of the best features of the Radio Shack hard disks It would appear that Tandy is making model 4 Fortran hard or impossible to get at least from the remarks on the LDOS Forum I don t suppose they would consider transferring their distribution license to you but it might be worth asking sales of RATFOR could pick up if you had the Fortran available as well Fm MISOSYS Inc Yes Gary MISOSYS is now in control of site licensing I have been much too busy to evaluate any change in policy I am contemplating a Personal Letters to the Editor Volume IILi Site License for those folks who have a small number of machines 1 would suspect that the next TMQ would have more on that thinking Also note that we don t yet own LS DOS 6 3 our agreement with LSI only gives us the right to sell and support the product although Bill has given me leeway to make any changes I deem necessary Of course 6 3 is just one product of ours it doesn t demand immediate attention I am still trying to clean up all of the little things around here so I can concentrate on developing a new release of our LB Data Manager Powersoft and Aerocomp were apprised of our flyer I never heard from Dennis Brent although since he had recently sent out a flyer to his customer list I really didn t think he cared to get into another one I also assumed from the content of his flyer that Powersoft was shifting to a very m
130. een Why are all those other names being used in the PFF file provided by Microsoft Under close scrutiny I noted that Write had Tms Rmn whereas PageView provided TmsRmn That single SPACE was quite important After I edited the PFF file provided by Microsoft and changed TmsRmn to Tms Rmn I came DOS Subjects Volume II very close to seeing the PageView screen with the same formatting as that generated by WORD I noticed two things which caused a difference in formatting between WORD and Pageview One was an extremely small difference in the calculation of character widths This caused the last word on a particular line in WORD to be bumped to the next line in PageView The second thing I noticed was that PageView did not separate a hyphenated word that WORD did This of course caused page formatting to differ from that point on Well I accepted slight differences and proceeded to attempt an insertion of a picture frame or I should say picture frames I first discovered that I could not insert a picture frame immediately adjacent to another picture frame That s one of the things I wanted to do Thus another drawback The final blow came when I went to print the result of my labors The pictures didn t show up nor did the box surrounding a heading I am enclosing a 360K diskette which contains the BLURB DOC file the associated STY file the picture files the modified PFF file and the POSTSCRP PRD file I a
131. ements Because that should help you to understand the binary computer world which has only addition In a fashion corresponding to the decimal system a binary number has a ones complement The ones complement of a binary number correlates to the nines complement of a decimal number You just mentally subtract each binary digit from 1 to get the ones complement But since 1 0 1 and 1 1 0 all you need to remember to take the ones complement of a binary number is to invert each bit Change one bits to zero and zero bits to one That 1s the operation of complementing In fact when we use the term complement we always imply ones complement The binary system also has a complement which correlates to the tens complement of decimal it is called the twos complement The twos complement is simply the ones complement plus one Most computers use a twos complement representation for indicating negative numbers That s because as in the decimal case 11111111 negative one in twos complement added to 00000001 positive one equals zero To construct negative one in twos complement representation start with positive one complement it then add one Here s those steps in tabular form 00000001 11111110 positive one complemented A Da at i Te DN one added If we confine ourselves to a signed 8 bit binary number its range therefore extends from 128D to 127D We also can determine whether a binary number is representing a posi
132. er from buying the CHIPS he needed After all it is just GOOD BUSINESS isn t it It seems to me that the computer market is in for another shake up I m sorry but I had to get this off my mind and just needed to write to someone who could possibly appreciate the gravity of the situation I have just FIRED up my RSHARD package my hard disk crashed about 2 months ago and I have just gotten it UP again and would like to tell you what a fine package it is Thanks so much for your continued support of this market I also see that 80 MICRO is gone just got the last issue and they deserved it Here is hoping that You Brenda and the kids are all in GOOD HEALTH On computer mathematics Fm Donald W Jones Roy I just got the spring issue of TMQ and I want to respond to your question Should a number of articles on computer mathematics be written Yes Yes Yes Please count that as 3 votes I ve always been curious about how float and double floats are handled I thought I saw an article once in 80 Micro but I couldn t find it Are floats handled in TRS 80 Model 4 Basic different than they are in MS DOS basic Because of your informative teaching style I would warmly welcome such a series On PRO WAM upgrades Fm R M Doerr What would be the cost to trade in my PRO NTO on PRO WAM Fm Norman P Prosser Please send Your latest catalog in support of the Model 3 and Model 4 4P TRS 80 computers I re
133. er supplies should be able to hold their DC voltages for much longer than a millisecond when the power is cut So a SPS is sufficient for most folks and economical to boot Our pricing on the two SPS packages recommended by us are PTI Datashield PC200A 299 S amp H PTI Datashield Turbo 2 300A 469 S amp H PTI Datashield Turbo 2 450A 499 S amp H PTI Datashield Turbo 2 625A 549 S amp H These weigh about 37 pounds each so shipping will be by UPS ground only and only in the 48 United States Shipping will vary between 5 and 18 The PC200A unit is recommended for floppy based systems the Turbo 2 450A will handle a bigger 286 or 386 class machine I have one 450A unit feeding Brenda s AST Premium 286 40Meg drive and Radio Shack Line Printer V The PTI Datashield S400 and SS700 systems are true UPS but prices are considerably higher 750 and 975 respectively Family Update by Brenda Roy has asked me to write the family update again He is so busy trying to get the rest of TMQ ready to go to the printers before we go away on vacation We will heading down to Miami for a few days Since it is getting too expensive to fly we will be driving On the way we will be visiting my family We will stop in Gainesville Florida to see my brother and his family While we are there my parents will be taking three grandchildren our two girls and my brothers boy to Disney World We will then be on to Lake Placid to see my gr
134. erenced in the other two versions That gave me the impetus to work in BASIC Of course I wouldn t even begin to try interpretive BASIC although I would suspect that it could be used as well except for getting command line parameters BASIC allows a common facility for error handling Here s where I first establish the routine to take control if an error is detected Note the clarity of code evidenced by the use of line labels in lieu of BASIC line numbers The ALLOCATE statement is used to establish a file buffer EnhComp defaults to none The rest of this block is straight BASIC 001 ON ERROR GOTO IOERROR 002 DEFINT A Z CLEAR 1000 003 ALLOCATE 1 CLS DIM CODES 32 LETTER ASC A 004 FAPP wam0 apl LIB 0 Line 5 assigns the result of the command line argument fetch to the variable T The GETARG function is a user defined multiline function defined later We ll discuss it then For now all I need say is that it returns a sting value The in The Programmers Corner 49 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IT i character tells the EnhComp compiler that a multiline function call follows The rest of the block is straightforward BASIC however I have made use of the block structured IF ENDIF I think this exhibits far greater clarity than the confusing IF THEN ELSE of interpretive BASIC 005 TS GETARGS 006 TF TS lt gt 007 IF TS lt POT OR TS gt 90 008 PRINT Library CHR
135. erly handle the case of a application being invoked external to PRO WAM activation I found one case of the BC compiler not closing up the BASIC source file under an error condition That too was fixed up by a patch the Model III mode version doesn t require that fix up Here s the two patches BC54 FIX for the Model HI mode EnhComp and BC64 FIX for the Model 4 mode PRO EnhComp BC54 FIX 07 25 88 Patch to EnhComp s BC CMD Patch fixes up error handling on INC amp DEC type mismatch errors and ELSE without IF error PATCH BC BC54 Apply via D2B 61 03 67 F2B 61 97 07 D2B 81 03 67 F2B 81 97 07 D2D 3A CC F2D 3A CA Kop MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 56 Volume Ili BC64 FIX 07 25 88 Patch to PRO EnhComp s BC CMD Patch fixes up error handling on INC amp DEC type mismatch errors and ELSE without IF error Also corrects closing of source file after pass 2 Apply via PATCH BC BC64 42 31 3A 2B 88 C9 F05 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 D22 AD CD 70 2F F22 AD 3A 2B 88 D2B 70 15 3B F2B 70 AC 07 D2B 90 15 3B F2B 90 AC 07 D2D 49 CC F2D 49 CA Eop LB Database Little Brother M4 L 50 510 LB is a flat file data management system where ease of use is its primary goal you don t need to program anything or remember complicated command Sequences to manage data Even for the most complex data management needs LB produces results quickly EVERY function in LB is
136. ess you are using the KI4 DVR which is part of the Model 4 Hardware Interface Kit M 12 110 the LDOS KI DVR recognizes only the lt LEFT SHIFT DOWN ARROW gt combination as CTRL Note the following text which is part of the README TXT file which is on the LDOS master disk It was added back in February of 1987 Note If you are using a Model 4 with clustered ARROWs which are adjacent to the lt RIGHT SHIFT gt key you can apply the following patch to have KI DVR use lt RIGHT SHIFT gt lt DOWN ARROW gt for use as the control key instead of lt LEFT SHIFT gt lt DOWN ARROW gt PATCH KI DVR DRIVER DO01 EC 4E F01 EC 46 I believe this should put you in the correct direction to make full use of TED SuperUtility and LDOS 5 3 Fm Robert E Murch Roy Does it make sense that there is a minor incompatibility between LDOS 5 3 0 TCOA0524 and SuperUtility 3 2 84308 I think what happened was that I repaired the HIT and GAT sectors of a LDOS 5 3 0 data disk and did some file copying using SU and then had a series of problems back in LDOS 5 3 I didn t Capture all of the detail but the data disk in drive 1 wasn t recognized from time to time and I finally discovered that rebooting made drive 1 available Trying to backup with the X option was not successful a directory read error was the problem most of the time And finally I noticed that the time field in the directory listing was blank I did a dateconv on the
137. etters for the codes then tested for BREAK which is used to designate an EXIT of the program 1 then search through the CODES array for a match to the character entered If no match is found I go back and accept another character Since the entry is not displayed the only means of noting your selection is when the designated application executes 084 X 085 Select application code letter 086 x 087 INPUT SVC KEY keystroke O88 CALL Get a TOUPPER Convert to upper case 089 B 32 090 HL CODES Scan code list 091 BREAK 092 Z EXIT 093 CP HL 094 2 INPUT2 095 HL code and 096 INPUT check further 097 INPUT Oops no more codes Break key A match Bump to next Based on the value remaining in the loop counter 1 can calculate the position of the member name in BUFFER 098 INPUT2 into 099 SUB the APPNAMEs 100 ADD A zx 2 101 ADD A ix 4 102 ADD A x 8 103 LD Set up APPNAME pointer 104 LD Develop index HIGH BUFFER Here s where I build the member specification mspec The library number has already been placed into the first position I now insert characters from the directory BUFFER until either the first space is reached or eight characters have been transferred I then add the drive specification and terminate the string with a NULL Actually PRO WAM stops on any character value less than a SPACE after fetching the string w
138. f automating the process Initially it seemed as if the MISOSYS LB Maintenance Utility would be able to perform this automation The Maintenance Utility will write selected records from any database to a new file but will not append records to an already existing file I set out to design a quick and dirty program in BASIC that would perform the following archival tasks 1 Read a Little Brother index which contains the record numbers from the input file that you wish to move to the output file This must have been previously selected using the LB Sort and Select Records function 2 Write the selected records to an output file with matching file specifications 3 Delete the copied records from the original file In my efforts I was limited by BASIC s constraint that the maximum number of records in a file may not exceed 32 767 This is because a record number in BASIC is represented in integer format and may not be a negative number 32 767 is the largest positive integer that may be represented in signed integer format in the two bytes allowed This limitation makes this program an excellent candidate for translation to C In C you can declare a variable as an unsigned integer allowing for values up to 65535 This program therefore will not support input or output files that are in excess of 32 767 records Unless you are dealing with tremendous databases this restriction will probably not matter too much If the number o
139. f it has one That s it There is no maintenance Some folks do consider the use of a second hard drive as a backup medium for the first I ve never used that method I ve always used floppies I did consider a tape drive once in fact Leven have a Cipher FloppyTape drive which I was going to write drivers for That works off of a floppy controller But I never got around to that If a second drive were in the same The Hardware Corner Volume JII i cabinet our intended case holds two half height drives then it would be powered along with the primary It would be running for the same time and be exposed to the same wear Even archived floppy diskettes lose their data after some period of time My gut feeling on speed increase is an order of magnitude That s for both access to a specific file and read write time as well A hard drive plugs into the I O expansion bus That s the 50 pin cable header on a Model 4 The only problem that would arise is where you already have a clock board plugged into that connector My experience has found that two peripherals plugged into that I O bus create problems The operating system LDOS LSDOS supports a maximum of eight drives That can be any combination of floppies and hard drives given supporting hardware In the case of a standard Model 4 you can have up to four floppies and four hard drive partitions or two floppies and six hard drive partitions What work doesn t de
140. f records that you have selected for archival will make the output file exceed 32 767 records LBMOVE will move only as many records from the first file as can fit in the second within the specified limit It is also the responsibility of the user to make sure that the two files have the same structure before running LBMOVE It is always advisable to have backups of the original files handy especially if you are not sure about what you are doing A particular challenge prior to writing this program was to determine the exact structure of the Little Brother database and definition files I did quite a bit of peeking around with a disk sector editor to find different data pointers and counters and got a couple of tips from Roy Soltoff and Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo online via the CompuServe LDOS Forum My findings are presented in table one along with documentation on the variables in my program that use the various values Applications for the User HTA aR DA NOs mn a Volume III i Disk space efficiency is always a consideration when dealing with a database application Therefore LBMOVE makes use of the deleted record chain in the output file and will reuse any record that Little Brother has marked as deleted One of the nice things that interpreted BASIC will do is to let you dimension an array based upon a variable subscript This is necessary because the logical record length of a file is not know until its correspon
141. f that was as a matter of course or because I asked for info about any other software they might have Well now I subscribe to TMQ and get patch reports problem discussions and much more on a regular basis and it s presented in a form that makes me feel more like being a member of a club rather than just a subscriber to yet another publication As for the new DOS i e LS DOS 6 3L alone the changes of the editing features in BASIC are worth the whole price How much more valuable is the access to SVCs for those programmers who want to get a bit closer to the machine Then there is TED the ASCII Text Editor worth the price of the whole disk and I haven t even mentioned BREF or DISKCOPY What were your reasons to choose C over PASCAL or any other language for that matter as your software development language When comes the point when BASIC just won t do anymore What texts do you recommend teaching how to program in C When should I rather choose RATFOR as my next language A pity you don t sell a FORTRAN compiler to go with it Enough of all that else you might accuse me of having an acute bout of verbal diarrhoea All the best to you and your family I hope all is well with Brenda and your baby SY ON Letters to the Editor Volume II DOS Subjects LDOS 5 3 LDOS 5 3 S TED editor Fm A J Paszyc I have been using your LDOS 5 3 0 for one full year now and generally I am well satisfied with its perfo
142. f the 4D s selling for 500 bucks I certainly don t want to think of replacing my software library with MS DOS stuff My model 4 does about all I want even though it may not have all the bells and whistles of the new 286 machines I m doing this at work on a 70 meg Tandy 4000 with WordPerfect and a laser printer So that s the Model 4 users dilemma How much do I keep plowing into hardware and software Do you perceive a market for new HD users I don t I see your market as the diehard users who will use their hardware till it croaks but need more storage for the HD they already have Don t get me wrong If I could dump my 5 meg unit for say 200 I d line up to give you 500 for your new 20 meg especially if I could use it ina DOS machine with new controller of course later As you can see I place a limit to the value of increased storage Your unit sounds great I like the small footprint Would a conversion bubble for the R S cases be a viable product Probably not it sounds like a hardware hackers project I hope this rambling has given you the feedback you re looking for Thanks for your continued support I m always looking forward to the next issue of TMQ By the way I have a draft of a little piece you may want to consider for TMQ it s a speedup for the OLD model 4 s I ran across it a couple of years ago and finally had the guts to try it when I had the case off installing SmartWatch It has to
143. f the drive associated with the file buffer passed as the argument The drive number is returned as an ASCII string Astute readers will reconize a portion of this function as being identical to the SETEOFO function covered in an early issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY as well as included with the 2 6 release of EnhComp The function first establishes a one byte string for the return value since its far easier to let HIGH MODE allocate the string space It then switches to Z80 MODE and uses assembly language it calls the library support routine which obtains the address of the file buffer control area after first testing the validity of the buffer number The address of this area is returned in register IX The control structure is documented on page 5 2 of the EnhComp manual I then pick up the drive number and convert it to an ASCII character Next I point IX to the address of the string control block for T Register HL is then loaded with the address of the string and the contents of that one location are loaded with the ASCII drive number I then switch back to HIGH MODE and return the value of T as the function value 060 FUNCTION GETDRV BUFNUM 061 TS 0 062 Z280 MODE The Programmers Corner Volume III i LD AL BUENUM CALL CALADR LD A 1X 16 6 ADD A 0 LD 1X 4 T5 LD H 1X 3 1D L 1X 2 LD AL A HIGH MODE RETURN T ENDFUNC This user defined command performs th
144. f town and just getting around to reading some of my backed up mail for the last three months Concerning your request for Market Research on a 20 Meg Hard Drive and priced as you stated in the Quarterly 495 00 you have my interest and I will look forward to the availability of the system A few months ago 1 had a problem with the XLR8er and PROWAM You hit the nail on the head with your reply Seems that I failed to install the faster Ram 15Ons in banks 1 and 2 of the 128K I now load PROWAM into Bank 10 PROWAM BANK 10 and have not encountered any further problems The Ram is not available in 150ns in this area Would you please tell me of a third party vendor who handles these chips and has directions for their installation in the Model IV also the price if known Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 15 Volume UI The following is a short narrative on my use of the Model IV I have two 1 with XLR8er and 1 with 128K converted Model III I use the machines during three months of the year to do Taxes JAN APR The addition of the XLR8er on the DS Disk Drive Model IV and the use of MultiPlan reduced the amount of time the customer is serviced in half I also do payrolls and book keeping for a number of customers My children and I also do a lot of our school work Learning is a never ending process I keep a mailing list and copies of the clients taxes 1000 and a Data Base The use of PROWAM has
145. fine adjustment best described as light pressure on the screwdriver then reset again You should be using your normal boot up sequence and this procedure works best with two people In my case turning counter clockwise about 1 5 to 2 degrees did the trick Upon resetting the hard disk booted perfectly Since we adjusted the capacitor no more Error 11H messages have been encountered and the hard disk functions every time There is only one other adjustable feature on the board and that affects the stepping rate This adjustment is on the outer edge of the board Apparently the early Western Digital controller used in the R S Hard Disk drives are prone to timing loop problems The same controller board is utilized in the 5 12 15 Meg disk drives 1 hope this helps in solving your problem XLR8er Board Bug in RAMDISK for LDOS Fm MISOSYS Inc John Gelesh forwarded a problem to me which practically caused a double take He was trying to install the H I Tech XLR8er RAMDISK utility in the Model Ili mode When he attempted to install it under LDOS 5 3 it always crashed during the installation When he attempted to install it under LDOS 5 1 4 it worked perfectly Well I couldn t believe that So I checked it out Sure enough when I booted up a stock LDOS 5 3 and installed RAMDISK it crashed at the exact point where John had stated I booted up a LDOS 5 1 4 I had around and installed the RAMDISK it worked perfectly What was the differen
146. for lots of automation 4 A telephone list and autoDIALER for Hayes modems 4 CALCulator gives you 4 functions at your fingertips RPNCALC gives 7 functions in bin oct dec and hex PSORT puts your PRO WAM data files in sort order EXPORT and IMPORT functions allow you to move data across windows between applications and programs There s even an online HELP facility PRO WAM works with all programs which use standard DOS keyboard requests and honor the DOS high memory pointer requires one 32K RAM bank about 2K of high memory and a small piece of low RAM If you have a model 4 then you must have PRO WAM QWEXEC bug in WAM22 FIX While 1 was engineering and developing the PAW utility for this issue Of TMQ 1 happened upon a problem with the code MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume II introduced by the WAM22 FIX Recall from TMQ ILiv that the WAM22 fix was designed to allow PRO WAM to operate properly even if the video display was in 40 character per line mode when PRO WAM was activated The fix worked correctly to deal with that problem I also don t think anyone who applied that fix got into any trouble But let me elaborate The PRO WAM high memory module is a very complex piece of code There really are two distinct processes at play there and two distinct entry points One process is the keyboard device filter which gets entered on every KBD service call That means when ever any program or the DOS is asking for a
147. fputs xlc xlf stdout Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Masa aki Let me cover the problem with CPR I believe you have a programming error in the fetchprm function You have declared a variable char parmv which is a pointer to a pointer to char According to your code you are breaking up the single string parameter list into a series of strings Essentially you are using the parmyv variable as an array of pointers to chars That s okay since the two are somewhat synonymous On the other hand you go about dynamically allocating space 10 bytes to the array elements but the array itself has never been allocated You either have to have a statement such as parmv alloc 12 or you need to define it as char parmv 6 Hem e why your program crashed when you entered parameters The statement char parmv allocates a 2 byte word on the stack this word is not initialized and will contain whatever was in that location of memory when the program started When the parameters were parsed by your function the un initialized contents were used as a pointer to the base of the array When the pointer to the allocated 10 byte region was assigned to parmv parmc that could have been anywhere in memory even in the DOS region That s why the crash occurred Changing LRL with MC Fm Masa aki Kitajima Mr Soitoff I am a LS DOS ID 16939 PRO MC ser 00236 user and am enjoying developing utility programs with PRO MC Its well conserved
148. gt to exit 192 BADLIBS DB invalid CR 193 NOFIND DB application library 194 FAPPS DB WAM0O APL CR 195 DC 32 S FAPPS 0 Expand FCB to 32 Select your application IT ETX Library Tts is Cannot locate This is where I define the BUFFER to be on a page boundary The conditional test handles the one time out of 256 that the program counter would be already at a page ae In that case I don t want to skip a page S AND 255 S AND OFFO0H 256 DS 256 BEGIN PAW CCC C Language version I start off the C language by including the header files associated with MC library functions used in the program The INLIB option is designated to request a search of the IN REL library that s where I installed the WINDOW support routines paw Popup Application Window for PRO WAM include lt stdio h gt include lt fcntl h gt include lt sgtty h gt include lt memory h gt option INLIB need for window rel Here s something new for you MCers It is a data structure of the file control area used in MC streams As an aside the FCA and its association with FILE pointers was first used in LC and developed by Jim Frimmel the designer of LC At that The Programmers Corner Volume UI time the FCA consisted of a single byte containing eight flags a 32 byte region for the DOS File Control Block FCB and a one byte buffer to store a single push back chara
149. hat raised cain with my budget so I m glad that you retained sales of the XLR8er I want another one but I can t bend the budget any more for at least a couple of months I am holding back for that harddrive though I have installed the one XLR8er that I have in my new 599 00 4D and it has become my favorite Its what I m using to check out Enhcomp Listed below are various timings of Larry Hildebrand s sieve TMQ IL iv run on the 4D with the XLR8er under Enhcomp No switches 807sec NX 753sec NS NX 726sec I have also installed the Smartwatch Mods in all 4 of my machines The fix for my previously reported problems with the scroll stop left lt shift gt lt gt is very simple I just had to delete wait 1 from the line set ws fixall flt wait 1 in the HI TECH SETUP JCL file I was also having problems with the PLOT statement of Enhcomp It would not draw a horizontal or diagonal line and wasn t drawing the proper length vertical lines I had HIBANKS installed When I dropped back to the stock setup with the RAMDISK driver PLOT worked OK So I ll wait till receipt of Disknotes ILiv to reinstall HIBANKS I m enclosing an item from Northern Bytes that I found useful on my two old style Mod 4 s I put the mod in both and haven t been bitten yet The old style 4 s are now running at 4 MHZ as close as I can tell Thanks for the fine service up to now Hope you can continue to hang in Fm M
150. have run I in the future would desire to replace the word UNSUPPORTED with MATURE After all MATURE software typically has been running so long no one can remember the last bug that was corrected The aforementioned software is MATURE It remains true that some of the programs DON T LIKE one another very much and that 1 must remember that 1 can t run ALLWRITE with ALTRES I just add another BANK to my XLR8er ramdisk Considering the COMPLEXITY the fact that crashes are not more often and more serious remains a credit to those who offer programs for sale Concerning the ongoing TIME DATE STAMP the UNIX system that I worked on for a while dropped the specific Letters to the Editor Volume III i TIME DATE STAMP for DATE ONLY After 6 months the year could be in field My background I have been involved with computers since 1961 and have at times designed computer systems I remain amazed with the power of even the 8 bit machines Consider that the IBM System 360 30 was an 8 bit the IBM System 360 40 was only 16 bits and IBM System 360 50 only a 32 bit machine I currently work for General Telephone of the Northwest and support as one function of my job a digital switching system for up to 5000 lines based on the 8080 Microprocessor How much power can we UNDERUTILIZE In closing please accept MY BEST WISHES for prosperity and CONTINUED SUPPORT OF THE TRS 80 COMPUTERS Fm Hans de Wolf I have some quest
151. ick Because of this persistent miss the machine operates at approximately 3 37 MHz or nearly one sixth slower than claimed The pre programmed PAL programmable array logic in the back panel s U3 socket U3 logically ties the op code fetch signal M1 to the crystal oscillator output PCLK The result is that clock cycles are suppressed during each op code fetch on those PALs labeled with Radio Shack part number 8075166 A later version PAL has reportedly eliminated this design feature But most of those sold in 1983 and earlier do run below specs CM II O S Q O amp S O 21 3 D UE 3 SECONDS M1 This shows component M1 causing PCLK in U3 to also output erratically so that the missing pulses mean on balance slower speed The clock suppressions aren t needed with the Z80A the computer was originally designed to operate with a ZILOG Z800 that was never released If you have this particular PAL the solution is simple Remove IC chip U3 by prying it up at each end with a small screwdriver With a pair of small The Hardware Corner 71 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume Hlhi pliers bend pin 7 horizontal so it will no longer sit in the socket Replug this chip back into your board Presto a 4 MHz operating speed Does this really make a difference Software particularly the operating system is tuned to certain operating speed environments When formatting my 8 inch drives under T
152. if akey return CHECKABORT return CHECKBAD timeout LBMOVE BAS An LB Archival Utility by Daniel L Srebnick Roy First off congrats on the birth of your son Hope that Brenda and he are doing well Here s the archival utility for Little Brother LBMOVE BAS is the ASCII program listing I hope that you and your readers find my little utility to be of help I know that for me it complements Little Brother quite nicely Perhaps when you get around to the rewrite you might want to consider offering this type of archival as a standard feature I am sure that many users want a package that includes archival as a standard database function Daniel L Srebnick 11 Brainard Avenue Port Monmouth New Jersey 07758 Database users often want to archive records which meet selected criteria For example a mail order firm maintains two different mailing lists The first list contains names of likely Applications for the User THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 38 Volume TT i prospects say those who have ordered within the last eighteen months The second list contains the names of customers who last ordered long ago When a customer has not ordered within an eighteen month period the company policy is to move that person from the first to the second list Other than manually deleting the record from the file for list 1 and then adding it to list 2 the solution to this problem is to have a means o
153. ild exposure in the TRS 80 community On the other hand I spoke to John Lancione a few times He was contemplating taking out a few pages of ads in our flyer Nothing ever gelled But I don t think that they are leaving the TRS 80 market As for Tandy s FORTRAN I wouldn t even begin to approach Tandy about transferring their Microsoft FORTRAN license to us If you have ever worked with Tandy you would understand how futile that would be But various folks at Tandy do get TMQ perhaps they will sit up and take notice Fm Mike Hollenbeck I am very interested in your little bit of market research as appeared in TMQ IL iv page 5 I had toyed with the idea of building a host interface as you called it for some time I saw no reason that the IBM type controllers would not work with just a little ingenuity I would like to see you offer other versions of this product Have you considered offering an internal kit This would help with your problem of getting FCC certification for the external drive Another thought is to offer the parts such as the host adapter drive and controller or enclosure a la cart As a hardware hacker I have collected parts here and there and at this time could make use of the host adapter only and a little software Please take these ideas into consideration when you plan to market the product Good luck Fm MISOSYS Inc Mike 1 do expect to make available individual components of our hard drive package In
154. ill operate under LDOS on the Model I and Model HI and under LS DOS 6 on the Model 4 I wrote it in such a way that NEWDOS CMD will recognize the environment that it is working under and to operate accordingly For a reference on writing such transportable programs see my article in the August 1987 issue of 80 Applications for the User THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 31 Volume III i MICRO p 86 A Disassembler for all DOSes Read the section labeled Making Programs Transportable on page 88 The conflict between the disk formats is that even though the sector naming is the same the way that the operating systems handle them are vastly different NEWDOS operates in such a way that it thinks that the disk even though it is double density has only 10 sectors to a track and 5 sectors to a granule What NEWDOS CMD does is fool LDOS into thinking the same thing and operate on it accordingly Of course the actual communication with the disk must still be for 18 sector cylinders and so it maintains its own drive code table within the filter to do the actual disk reads However the low memory DCT that the system THINKS it s using is set up for single density disks thus granule and cylinder calculations done by LDOS are computed properly for NEWDOS type usage What the filter does is take this calculated information saves it and recalculates the sector location pointers to the ACTUAL cylinder and relative sector
155. imply subtracts the table origin from your file pointer and divides the result by two to arrive at the associated file descriptor 007 MC file control area FILE 008 struct fca 009 unsigned short control 16 bit control field 010 char flag fca flag 011 char type FCB type 012 char iostat input output status 0135 char pdsmoo PDS member origin offset 014 char iobuf pointer to i o buffer 015 char nrnoff NRN offset E 016 char drive logical drive number 017 char dec I directory entry code 018 char ernoff ERN offset ar 019 char RAR logical record length 020 unsigned int nrn next record number 021 unsigned int ern ending record number 022 unsigned int sext starting extent The Programmers Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 47 Volume IIli 023 long extent quads 024 char Or error code 025 equad 4 CH chec i char buf Here s some data declarations Remember when you don t need automatic variables its best to make them global or Static Execution is faster when MC doesn t have to access variables on the stack I m using a structure for the directory buffer to more easily recognize the indexing I could have used a two dimensional array but structures are more clear The code array is declared and each element initialized to zero That s sort of li
156. ion to prepare to get record numbers 217 PRINT PRINT Working 220 FOR LOOP 1 TO INDEX NUM go thru once for each record 230 GET 1 get the next record number to process 240 IN REC CVI IN RECS 250 GET 3 IN REC 1 read the selected record 260 IF NOT DEL PTR 0 THEN GOSUB 1000 ELSE GOSUB 2000 265 GOSUB 5000 subroutine to delete input record 270 NEXT LOOP 300 PRINT LOOP 1 records were copied from IN FILES to OUT FILES 310 LSET LAST RECS MKI LAST REC 320 LSET DEL PTR MKI DEL PTR 325 LSET DEL COUNTS MKI DEL COUNT 330 PUT 2 1 CLOSE 2 331 LSET IN DEL PTR MKI IN DEL PTR 07758 Applications for the User Volume III i 332 333 340 350 360 370 380 390 1000 1010 1020 1030 1035 1040 1050 1060 1070 1080 2000 2010 2020 2030 2050 3000 3010 3020 3030 3040 5000 5010 5015 5020 5030 5040 5050 5060 5070 6000 6001 6002 LSET IN DEL COUNTS MKI IN DEL COUNT PUT 5 1 CLOSE 5 FIELD 4 2 AS ALLOC RECS 2 AS LAST REC 2 AS LRL LRL 6 AS DUMMY GET 4 ALLOC REC 1 LSET LAST RECS MKI LAST RRC PUT 4 ALLOC REC 1 CLOSE END REM Reuse Deleted Records GET 4 DEL PTR read in the deleted record PREV DELS OUT BUFF 3 OUT BUFFS 4 get location of next deleted record PREV DEL CVI PREV DELS DEL COUNT DEL COUNT 1 IF DEL COUNT 0 THEN PREV DEL 0 if no more deleted records set to zero GOSUB 3000 PUT 4 DEL PTR DEL PTR PREV DEL RETURN REM Use Addition
157. ions about some of the MISOSYS products but first I must correct an error of mine I wrote to you that Lair of the Dragon MEGADV1 MD3 could be made to run on the Model I by means of a one byte patch This is wrong the patch adjusts the address of the input buffer so it must be a two byte patch INBUF is 4225H in the Model UI and 4318H in the Model I The correct patch for MEGADV1 MD3 is D50 91 18 43 F00 91 25 42 Now my questions I am looking for a backup restore program for my Aerocomp 20MB hard disk Is it possible to use your RSHARD package for this or are the backup restore parts written especially for the Tandy harddisk the DCT files probably will not work for the Aerocomp About the XLR8er board I intend to buy an XLR8er from you and want to run LDOS 5 3 LS DOS 6 3 and Montezuma CP M Do you sell driver software for all these environments or must I buy that from H I Tech Do programs like SuperUtility Plus run on a XLR8 ed model 4P I know it is not your software and can t be responsible for it but maybe you have had reports from other users A question about support Do you support MISOSYS software that was manufactured and distributed by Molimerx United Kingdom In the past I have bought from them your LC EDAS package which includes the SAID editor This editor has become my favorite for general purpose editing but does not run under LDOS 5 3 because of the renamed keyboard driver module The patch in th
158. is M Garcia Borro I iv 56 UNREL REL to ASM translator I 1 11 UNREMOVE Recovering REMOVEd files I iv 18 VIDTEX Downloading I iii 33 VIDTEX PLUS Patch to change default baud rate to 1200 I iii 32 X FTS General info Es 9 X FTS Q amp A I iii 99 XLR8 General bits amp pieces I ii 86 XLR8 Notes on the H I Tech XLR8 I ii 89 XLR8 SET2RAM and MEMDISK driver I iv 21 XLR8 XLR8er Ramdisk I iii 109 XMODEM General info Li 9 XMODEM Q amp A I iii 32 Z TIME1 Z TIME1 Clock Board I iii 104 ZAP Means of getting patches I iii 26 ZCAT Product Highlight I i 76 ZSHELL Product Highlight I i 76 ZSHELL Product Highlights I ii 83 Index to Volume I 80 Index to Volume I Superior Hardware The Grafyx Solution provides 153 600 pixel elements which are arranged in a 640 x 240 or on the Model lll a 512 x 192 matrix Hundreds of new business personal engineering and educational applications are now possible The hi res display can be shown on top of the standard display containing text special characters and block graphics This simplifies program debugging text labeling and upgrading current programs to use graphics The Grafyx Solution fits complete ly within any tape or disk based Model 4 4D 4P or lll Installation is easy with the plug in clip on Grafyx Solution board Grafux Solution save 170 00 Hi Resolution Graphics for Mod 4 4D 4P IMI Superior Basic Over 20 commands are added to the Basic language These
159. iskDisk and am equally impressed with the program It is a definite must for hard disk drive owners especially those who have upgraded their hard The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 66 Volume IIli disks to more then 3 Meg Thanks a bunch for your continuing fine support I have a comment for Gary Phillips Volume Il iv The Hardware Corner Hard Disk Intermittent Gary I too experienced almost the identical problems you described with my Model 4p coupled to an early R S 5 Meg hard disk drive I cleaned checked replaced until I was totally frustrated Utilized three different drivers and finally installed a Seagate ST 225 in case that was the problem No joy Finally with a lot of help and patience from a local sysop the problem was resolved As Adam Rubin surmised the problem lies in the Controller Board timing loop This is almost non existent today but the early controllers had a means to adjust the timing loop It s fairly simple and straight forward to accomplish Open the R S 5 Meg case and leaving the wires all attached locate an upright capacitor in the vicinity of the center of the board It s the only one with a small slot in on the top of the capacitor This is for adjustment of the timing loop Using a small slotted screwdriver the capacitor is adjusted in small 5 to 1 degree increments With both units powered up reset the computer observe the error message the hated 11H make a
160. it to LD DE NAME LD IY 1 C DCT LD A DE CALL GETMEM get himem CP HL point hopefully to current driver RET NZ INC HL LD B A POP DE CKLP INC DE AND A INC HL SBC HL DE jsame LD A DE JR Z YANK3 yes CP HL CALL PRINT RET NZ DB FILTER YANKED BUT CANNOT RECLAIM DJNZ CKLP HIGH MEMORY SPACE RET DB CR 0 j Teeme JP EXIT display drive filter address to DE DRIVE CALL PRINT YANK3 EX DE HL DB DRIVE point to old himem MSG DB AQUA INC HL DB 0 INC HL PSA LD DE HL get it display a message EX DE HL reset PRINT EX SP HL CALL SETMEM himem LD A HL CALL PRINT INC HL DB FILTER YANKED FROM OR A DB 0 JR 2 PRINTX JP DSPDRV CALL DSP pK Ik kkk kkk k k kkk k k k k k k k k k k k k k KK KKK KKK KK k k k k k JR PRINT 1 SUBROUTINES PRINTX EX SP HL p RRA KKK KKK KKK KKK RK KKK k k k k KK RK RK RK KK k k k k kk k kkk k kk k k RET figure which computer we re working with poo save buffer pointer display a byte SETMDL PUSH HL DSP CALL MODEL LD HL 0 point to lowmem JP NZ 33H LD A HL PUSH BC Applications for the User 34 Volume III i save value change it set new 2 if RAM old value Save reg save regA Model type set Z for Model A get address from DCT point to filter name current filter name match no selse set count point to a byte name byte 3 match no check next get a byte bump
161. ith the FSPEC SVC Of course FSPEC will terminate its scanning on any character not alphanumeric unless its a valid file specification character so you can use RETURN ETX or NULL 103 LD DE MSPEC 1 Bypass LIBnum 106 LD B 8 Init for 8 chars max 107 INPUT3 LD A HL Transfer until either The Programmers Corner Volume IIli 108 LD eight characters or 109 CP E until a SPACE has 110 JR Z INPUT4 been sensed 111 INC HL 112 INC DE 113 DJNZ INPUT3 114 INPUT4 LD A 3 Now insert drive 115 LD DE A 116 INC DE 117 LD A DRIVES 118 LD DE A 119 INC DE 120 XOR A 121 LD DE A Terminate mspec Now invoke the requested application via the WEXEC function of PRO WAM s WINDOW SVC Then loop back to fetch another request until BREAK is detected Note that since the screen is preserved by PRO WAM we don t have to re draw it HL MSPECS B 12 WINDOW INPUT Loop until This exit branch is taken when the input routine detects the BREAK key Here I just clear the screen and return to DOS Note the return code is set to 0 in this case which indicates no error This routine posts an error message when an invalid library number is entered It then returns to DOS Note the return code is set to 1 in this case which indicates an error 129 BADLIB LD 130 LD 131 LD A FAPP 3 BADLIB 9 A HL BADLIB 132 SVC DSPLY 133 ERREXIT LD HL
162. ke the CODE DC 32 0 in the assembler version but since MC doesn t know about DC it generates 32 DB statements Of course the end result in the executable file is the same 026 char fapp wam0 apl 027 char letter A lib 0 mspec 12 pmspec 028 FILE stream 029 struct sgttyb sg 030 struct 031 char name 8 032 buffer 32 033 char code 32 034 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 035 appname 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 036 struct fca fca _ Main is declared with the typical argc and argv arguments to be able to gain access to any command line parameter I then declare the remaining variables needed by the program to be Statics again for speed of access 037 main argc argv int argc char argv static int i appfile appmaX currow 038 curcol drive count If there is a parameter on the command line it is assumed to be the library number Here I get that character save it then test it for validity If valid I insert it into the application library file specification otherwise appropriate error message I abort with an 039 if argc gt 1 040 041 lib argv 1 042 if lib lt 0 lib gt 19 043 044 printf Library c is invalid n lib 045 exit 1 046 The Programmers Corner Volume IILi 047 fapp 3 lib 048 The library file is opened using the block I O f
163. ld be easier to utilize than MRAS Most folks don t need to deal with relocatable segments That development concept is useful when a programmer is either developing many programs which can re use subroutines or when many programmers are involved in one complex program package However if there is an intent to get into the C language with our C compiler I Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 8 Volume IIl i would steer someone towards MRAS since that assembler or M80 is needed for C with our compiler Market Research F IAT Fm Dave Krebs I received your co op flyer yesterday and thought I d put in my two cents on your external HD project so here goes First I can understand your desire to create a market for your fine HD drivers and diskDISK but is it too ambitious a project too late Let me explain my situation I have a R S 5 MB HD with your RSHARD package and your diskDISK mod4 only I would like a bit more storage and although 10 MB might be enough I ve been looking at the adds for the Seagate ST225 s with controller that have been in the magazines with controllers MS DOS for 250 300 I look at these and wonder if I bought one of these could I switch the bubble for my 5 meg have my increased capacity and transfer it to an MS DOS machine when I get one Notice I didn t say IF but WHEN I almost wish my old 1983 vintage M4 would give up now I might sweep up one o
164. lts and need not be specified necessarily MISOSYS Products Tidbits 53 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume UI My current system is Model 4P with XLR8er LS DOS 6 3 FIXBANK or HIBANK original version appeared in TMQ Ilii with FIXALL filter XLR8er is usually running in its full speed I do not installed any other hi low memory programs I enclosed the list of the current system status via DEVICE command CPR CCC C source print utility ver 2 0 include lt stdio h gt define SP 0x20 define PRINTER PR option INLIB static FILE fpi fpo file buffers for input and output static char buf 81 static int pagenum 1 static int dummy 0 loopute command line parameters defaults static int lines 60 print lines per line input buffer page numbering dummy counter for page static int page 72 page length static int pnum FALSE page numbering static int 1num FALSE line numbering switch static int left 0 left margin static int tabsp 4 tab gt x spaces main argc argv int argc char argv int line 1 screen and printer head start line int progline 1 program source line number int byte column tab stop int i 0 char sys date 9 sys time 9 title 80 check command line arguments if arge lt 2 arge gt 3 prompt _abort command line format error else if argc
165. m also enclosing copies of the pages referenced in this letter For now I find Pageview totally unacceptable It doesn t print the Pictures it doesn t print the boxes it doesn t come close enough to the formatting generated by WORD Thus it is incapable of aiding me in incorporating pictures with my DOC files Unless the formatting of WORD and Pageview are identical Pageview cannot be used My alternative is to dump the 50 program and hope that Microsoft introduces a usable page display adjunct to WORD keep Pageview and expect to receive a free update which fixes these problems or shift to WordPerfect version 5 which incorporates the page display viewing in the word processor itself where it belongs not to mention adds better control over mixing multi column formats on a single page How about it folks do you have some concrete solutions to these problems Here s help for the Tandy 1200 Fm David Goben Roy Again I write So soon Actually I did not wish to mix too much stuff up with my order so I chose to send this separately In regard to Bob Haynes on page 36 of TMQ Dm and Hardin s reply If Bob does as Hardin Suggests and goes to MS DOS 3 2 then he will first have to upgrade his ROM from 2 5 to 3 0 Radio Shack supplies this service for around 35 which includes MS DOS 2 11 41 BASIC and Manuals Bob may find that some 2 11 41 applications and utilities such as FORMAT will not work properly with th
166. m with PRO MC While compiling the source programs and running the compiled CMD programs I frequently encountered the BAD BLOCK error I am confused because the error message sometimes appeared but sometimes not even compiling the same source programs MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 52 Volume IL I tried to find the explanation about the BAD BLOCK error in the PRO MC manual but I could not find any I missed I have read the short comment on BAD BLOCK which appeared in the previous issue of TMQ The comment said the error is a memory allocation error owing to the alloc or alike function misusage I tried to extensively use the memory allocation functions according to a C language text but I still encountered the same sort of error I am afraid the XIR8er board is not fully compatible with PRO MC that is too fast or like that Since I am not an experienced C programmer the most doubtful reason for the error is my illegal coding But I cannot understand the unpredictable generation of the error My XLRg8er is running with its full speed I found my 4Ps keyboard is fast enough to operate without the help of FIXALL filter The Operating system is LS DOS 6 3 My 4P is equipped with 128k memory Fm MISOSYS Ine Masa aki First let me explain the BAD BLOCK error This is something generated by the freeQ function which is part of the MC library When you allocate
167. mand absolute reliability Do you run with VERIFY ON That s one way of catching an error right when it happens Of course a read error can develop later caused by some later write operation I haven t run with VERIFY ON for many years I just don t think it necessary And the degradation in speed is something I am unwilling to live with I consider hard drives much more reliable than floppies If you had to back up a full 20 megabytes of hard drive you might spend 10 20 minutes doing it Usually you are just backing up modified files That time should be no more than what you now spend in making backups in fact it should be less When moving hard drives the only caution to observe is to ensure that they are powered down and the platters have stopped rotating Finally one of the reasons I decided to explore the development of a hard drive package is that I was tired of hearing all of the problems folks were having with other suppliers And there are not that many other suppliers these days Most of the problems folks have is with drivers Either they are too big or they don t work right Well I just got tired of trying to refer people elsewhere We ll do the job right or we won t do it at all Hard disk intermittent Fm Mike Gilien Roy I just finished reading my first issue of The MISOSYS Quarterly and was I impressed My only regret is that I didn t subscribe earlier I ordered my subscription at the same time as LS D
168. me JII i The XLR8er comes with interfacing software for one DOS we have software available for DOS 6 LDOS and CP M But you have to order each additional for 9 95 each As far as an UNKILL for hard drives there s no difference in what needs to be done over floppies The UNKILL which is part of our UTILITY DISK I will do the trick Actually there is more done that just resetting one bit when you KILL a file The active bit is reset in its directory record the directory entry code hash code is removed from the hash index table and the space allocated to the file is deallocated from the granule allocation table An UNKILL facility must revers the procedure after ensuring that all granules previously used by the file are still unallocated We re also saving our money One day we will get down under Until then G day is that how you would write it International checksums Fm Bob Hyde Thank you for TMQ IL iv It arrived on the last day of May I am interested in the discussion on the XLR8er board and its compatibility I have a Model Ap international keyboard It has a model number 26 1080A serial no 004311 It has 128K and a Tandy hires board and I hope to keep it going with the aid of you Sterling folk I do not know what is inside gate non gate etc but when I run MEMTEST CMD TRSDOS 1 31 with MODELF ITD it suggests that all is not well To be precise ROM check A should be 9639 It is 9034 ROM check B should be 407C It
169. menu driven and comes with complete on line HELP information DO5 88 AF CD To set up a data base you just define the record layout For each field enter a descriptive name type and length LB handles up to 65534 records each can contain up to 1024 characters LB supports up to 64 fields per record fields may be up to 254 characters long There are seven types of data fields available alpha numeric right justified literal dollar float and calculated add sub mul and div any of which may be a Protected Field so that its data will not be displayed unless the proper Password is entered You next establish a screen and you are ready to begin entering datal You may view or edit any record at any time Find information quickly You can even create an index to your data so any record can be accessed within seconds Simply define a print format screen and LB will print records according to your specifications 10 different formats can be created You can print with headers footers date time page numbering totals and sub totals if desired mailing labels format and even form letters You select what records get printed and can use an index for printing in sorted order as well great for organizing your report For automating your processing LB can be run in an automatic mode frequently used procedures such as selecting sorting and printing can be saved for future use LB requires a minimum of two floppy disk drives and
170. mments from readers 1 will forward them on to you if they mail them to me direct if they post them on CompuServe I suppose I will read them in the next issue I would like to add a word on my experiences adding a double sided drive to my Model 4 What Joe says to John Gelesh on page 82 is true as far as it goes but it applies only to adding TWO drives I recently added just one drive 1 when a friend replaced his original drive in a PC XT with a 3 1 2 unit and gave me the old drive I bought a new cable with all the pins in it from Aerocomp and pulled the pins that affect the drive selection pin 12 on the drive 0 connector pin 10 on the drive 1 connector pin 14 on both connectors My original RS drives have no jumpers on them they are interchangeable according to cable position The PC XT drive was apparently already set to be drive 1 it was drive B in my friend s computer Anyway once everything was hooked up the PC XT drive would still only format as a single sided drive even though pin 32 was present on the cable A call to Aerocomp tech service solved the problem pin 32 is apparently used by the RS drives as part of the drive select process so it must be pulled from drive O if I want to keep that drive standard RS but get DD use from drive 1 where pin 32 is NOT pulled The resulting cable configuration which works just as I want is with pins 12 14 and 32 pulled for drive 0 standard RS single sided drive and pins
171. mo NAK putblock data char data if fwrite data 1 XBLKSIZE fo leave NOWRITE char recvblock blknum int blknun Static char data XBLKSIZE int i blk blkc ch csum if rwaitfor SOH TIMECONST CHECKBAD return NULL if b1k timedrecv SHORTTIME TIMEDOUT return NULL if blke timedrecv SHORTTIME TIMEDOUT return NULL if blk blkc amp MODMASK return NULL if blk blknum 1 MODULUS return ACKSAME if blk blknum return NULL for i 0 csum 0 i lt XBLKSIZE i ch timedrecv SHORTTIMB if ch TIMEDOUT return NULL csum data i ch return ch timedrecv SHORTTIME TIMEDOUT csum amp MODMASK ch NULL data rwaitfor c secs char c int secs Applications for the User int rxch long expire extern long time expire secs time NULL 1 while secs time NULL lt expire if comc cl switch rxch comi c1 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IIli case EOT leave SUCCESS case CAN leave GIVEUP default if c rxch return CHECKOK if akey leave INTERRUPTED return CHECKBAD timeout timedrecv secs int secs int rxch long expire extern long time expire secs time NULL 1 while secs time NULL lt expire if come cl return comi cl return TIMEDOUT timeout RRKKKKKKKKKKK
172. mon until the end of the code stream The current archi tecture of MLINK establishes a memory block for each module segment used to store bytes for the segment This requires that the segment size link item must precede any bytes which are part of the segment To handle FORTRAN linking MLINK needs to either incorporate a sophisticated memory management scheme or read the input module twice to establish the segment sizes I haven t yet decided which way to go I suspect that I may decide on the latter and provide a preliminary pass under switch control MLINK could easily detect the condition of sensing a segment byte before the segment was sized So this is why I can t formally announce a new MRAS release I also had not planned to alter the EDAS or PRO CREATE assemblers but since the code changes have already been done for MRAS altering EDAS will only require me to re groom the source code files to incorporate all of the patches which have been applied I now expect to add the 64180 support to EDAS PRO CREATE As far as the XLR8er driver is concerned that ran into a few snags Remember folks that the driver support was supposed to be provided by H I Tech many months ago MISOSYS never had the responsibility for that However since we have taken over the distribution of XLR8er boards we have been forced to do the work First I discovered that the power cables supplied by H I Tech were incorrectly assembled Next it appears that the
173. more A supervisor program automates the edit compile test phases inherent when using compilers this makes using EnhComp almost as easy to use as your BASIC interpreter With its built in Z80 assembler you can easily create hybrid programs of BASIC statements and in line assembly code which completely eliminate contorted string packing and DATA statement high memory module techniques for your BASIC program to access a machine code module You ll have to edit existing BASIC programs but the power and completeness of EnhComp make that an easy task Z80 Disassembler DSMBLR DOS 6 M 31 053 LDOS 5 x M 30 053 Provides direct disassembly from CMD disk files automatic partitioning of output disk files data screening for non code regions and full label generation lt even generates the ORGs and END statement the complete ball of wax You will find that the use of this disassembler even by a beginning assembly language programmer will be paying handsome rewards with the ease of its use and clarity of the documentation It s a professional tool for your use The disassembler allows you to build a screening data file telling what segments of the program are to be interpreted as data regions You enter the addresses of the segments after analyzing the target program s disassembly Output to DISK produces a file suitable for MRAS EDAS and is automatically segmented into manageable file sizes Special Sale Prices Product DS
174. mp 2 plus connecting cable set data amp control 285 6 Ibs 8 50 11 50 S amp H Note that S amp H figures are US 48 States Hawai amp Alaska Outside US please write for shipping charges Standby UPS Power Supply MISOSYS has switched to operating three of our systems Over to a standby power system Summertime in our area is The Blurb THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 6 Volume II fraught with thunderstorms which result in temporary power Outages not to mention surges brownouts and other nuisances of clean power 1 finally got tired of having to shut down when the skies darkened for fear of getting caught with an unexpected power outage We just couldn t operate any longer If your area is subject to unexpected outages or has problems with clean AC I suggest you consider a standby system or an UPS The difference between a Standby Power System SPS and an Uninterruptable Power System UPS is that an UPS is always feeding your system with regulated battery driven power whereas the SPS rides the line and switches over to the battery backup within moments of a brownout or blackout This issue includes data on the line of UPS and SPS we are offering Unless you are hyper critical I don t see a need for an UPS over the SPS The UPS is inherently more costly The PTI Turbo 2 line of SPS we re carrying switch to backup under 1 millisecond and also have surge protection Most if not all computer pow
175. mpatible REL files Supports REPT IRP and IRPC macros nested includes and a full range of nested conditionals It has flexible output redirection of listing and symbol table MLINK supports virtual memory bit stream buffering REL and IRL library searching zero disk space for DEFS in DSEGs and COMMONS generation of program overlays special link items 0 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 Includes MLIB our REL module librarian and our SAID advanced full screen text editor which can be used to generate your assembler source code C language source code or edit any type of ASCII file Z80 Assembler EDAS DOS 6 M 21 082 LDOS 5 x M 20 082 This powerful combined disk based line editor and Z80 macro assembler assembles from nested source files or memory buffer nested conditionals with ten pseudo ops nested MACROs with parameters both positional and by keyword cross reference listings and a separate full screen text editor If you are writing a software support software applications big or small EDAS will provide the power to make your job easier faster and more worthwhile Full C Compiler MC DOS 6 x M 21 064 LDOS 5 x M 20 064 If you are looking for a full C compiler look no further If you are looking for a well stocked UNIX System V standard library look no further MC reviewed in the January 1987 issue of 80 MICROCOMPUTING is a complete C compiler which adheres to the standards established by Kernighan and
176. nd a full range of ASCII characters David Goben s enhancements to Disk Scripsit may enable it to do these things 7 An upgrade to enable big Multiplan sheets using 128 K Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 SE Volume UI I would be interested in a reliable 20 Meg hard drive for the Mod 4 I think 595 would be OK for a ready to plug in and run external drive including power supply controller board cable cabinet good fast Seagate drive preferably self parking battery backed up real time clock practical software to boot date and time ready from the hard drive good dependable PDS software to circumvent the 8 drive by 256 files per drive limitation and any DOS enhancements needed for the hard drive Fm MISOSYS Inc Wow what a list Let me put that into perspective Most of those items are beyond the resources of MISOSYS Perhaps some of our readers can render assistance Item 2 should be easily satisfied by one of the public domain PRO WAM applications you can find on our Compuserve forum MicroLabs may be able to shed some light on 5 since they manufacture a graphics board As far as 7 I believe that Multiplan already makes use of the extra 64K to allow about a 90K spreadsheet As far as the hard drive our plan was for everything but the clock at 495 No DOS enhancements are needed we will be bundling our diskDISK product with the package Fm Jay Carman I think it is a very g
177. ndy such an index would be Well it was the Easter weekend with plenty of time at hand so I decided to get stuck Letters to the Editor 19 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume III into it myself Now I m not claiming it to be complete or perfect but it should come in handy all the same I just hope you have not spent some of your valuable time on such an index already It would be a shame having duplicated the effort Possibilities I see are 1 Include it in an otherwise thin TMQ unlikely there are no thin TMQs 2 Post it separately together with a catalog amp pricelist to all likely customers on your list expensive 3 Include it with any of your software packages sold 4 Put in onto DISK NOTES in the LB file limited circulation As indicated in brackets all options have some drawbacks but I feel it is quite handy to have this index when looking for those I know I ve seen it somewhere in TMQ situations so why not share it around somehow Of course I leave it up to you if and how you are to publish this index as it is rather lengthy Also I left out any patches from the Patch Corner as I am not informed enough to establish which patches may supersede previous ones So you still may need to organize an index of all current patches While I was working on this index I have overcome the skipping of forms problem I mentioned in my last letter Originally I had set FORMS PAGE 70 LINES 60 to accommodate
178. nebuf 256 int line 0 main while fgets linebuf 255 stdin printf 03d ts line linebuf I choose to discuss the assembler version of PAW first only because it is the most straightforward There is nothing fancy in it In implementing the C version I have used a structure which documents the file control area FCA of MC streams This has never been documented before Most of the data obtainable from the structure can be obtained from fstatQ On the other hand you may want direct access to the data in the FCA for your own reasons In any event that s what s special about PAW CCC In implementing the EnhComp BASIC version I have programmed a number of statements which merit observation I make heavy use of the REPEAT UNTIL construct I have used user defined COMMANDS and multi line FUNCTIONS I have used in line assembly code and I have provided a technique whereby you can parse command line parameters from the compiled program As a matter of interest I coded the C version first I then coded the assembler version Finally I coded the EnhComp BASIC version The easiest for me was probably the assem The Programmers Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 49 Volume UI bler version The fastest to code was probably the C version however the assembler version was pretty close I just happen to be a little more expert in assembler than C Since I rarely code in BASIC that version to
179. ngs at times with just the lt Shift gt key depressed it may delete parts or all of the current document or add on the contents of some keystoring buffer all rather disconcerting especially after having been spoiled by the workings of the NBI Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 20 Volume UI This leads me to the next question Which wordprocessing package can you recommend that works on LSDOS 6 3L and doesn t drive me around the bend What are the requirements of a Modem which should work now with the 4P and later on with an MS DOS type machine Just a couple of comments about the presentation of the last TMQ 11 111 Cut down on the number of different fonts Page 15 has at least 7 different fonts just in the text and not counting italics add the headers and footers and you have 10 fonts Fantastic capabilities of your printer but don t overdo it keep it to say no more than 5 fonts Of equally low level disturbance were some inconsistencies of upper and lower case titles Having said that I m looking forward to the next TMQ but even more to the XLR8 board which I m ordering today What s all the fuss about having to get a new DOS 1L 111 p 11 Thanks to the expiry of TRSDOS 6 2 I had to get LS DOS 6 3 as advertised in 80 MICRO definitely the best thing I got out of it I m still waiting for back issues I had paid for Thanks to LSI I was pointed towards MISOSYS I don t know i
180. nkers Tandy sells a power strip So does practically every computer store I have access to them If more folks want that item let me know I can start carrying power strips Now to give a list of the kinds of products we have access to would take most of this issue of TMQ But you re right unless I make some kind of statement no one will have any idea what I m talking about We are starting to carry an Uninterruptable Power Supply UPS because I think that s a definite item to have As far as other things let me provide a sample Letters to the Editor Volume II We can supply Western Digital controllers Seagate and Priam hard drives modems from Novation Hayes and Anchor Automation Intel processors and board products Nec monitors Mountain tape drives Boca Research board products American Power Conversion UPS AST computers and board products Acer Televideo Wyse and Toshiba computers Products from Alps Citizen Dataproducts Diconix Emerald Systems Magnavox MiniScribe Novell Panasonic Paradise Proteon Samsung Star Micronics U S Robotics also software from biggies such as Aldus Pagemaker Ashton Tate dBASE etc Bedford Accounting Borland Turbo everything Brown Bag Computer Associates Fox amp Geller Funk Generic Software IMSI Infocom Lattice Logitech Lotus Microsoft Micropro Norton Paperback Phoenix Polygon Quarterdeck Samna Softlogic Software Publishing Wordperfect and
181. now if it s just me or what but I find my floppies tend to be difficult to read after they get to be 5 6 years old Refreshing them every few years I have several hundred is a bit of a chore I don t know what archival method would be the best over long storage times video tape backup dedicated tape drive removable hard disk or some variant on floppies with perhaps more redundancy etc I ve seen quite a few offerings for PCs and some that even purport to hook up to a floppy disk controller only the software to write for TRS 80 use My primary concern is long term storage I have two TRS 80s a M4 and a MIID as well as a third older machine Each has its use or maybe I just don t like throwing things away I certainly can t sell them for anything Each has a sizable investment in software which I don t want to lose Anyway keep up the splendid work P S I m still trying to get a Seatronics speedup kit It turns out Sylvester Technologies does not now nor ever has been a distributor for them just a satisfied customer Fm MISOSYS Inc I was very pleased with the response of the mailer too Marc We expect to engineer another one in the fall I stay away from RLL controllers in the MS DOS world as well I don t think one would work in the TRS 80 anyway The problems which some MS DOS folks have experienced when using an RLL controller is they have tried to use just any drive That won t be too successful
182. nown directly by the location of its name in the directory The directory is sector 0 members are at sectors 1 10 19 28 etc This makes it easy to calculate the location of the header by DIRLOC DIRLOC 8 1 where DIRLOC is the offset of the member name in the directory 0 8 16 24 etc I make use of the WEXEC function which was added in PRO WAM release 2 This function allows you to invoke an application under programmed control The only information passed to the function is a pointer to the member specification string mspec The format of mspec is discussed in the PRO WAM user manual It consists of an optional library number the member name and an optional drive specifi cation The library number will default to zero if omitted But the drive specification will default to the drive last used to access a PRO WAM application Therefore the program builds a complete member specification string It does this by using the library number you designate to open the library file then it examines the file control block to obtain the number of the drive where the DOS opened the file It then uses this information to build the mspec to pass to WEXEC PAW is invoked via the following command line PAW lib where lib is an optional single character designation for a library If omitted it will default to 0 A complete procedure for each programmed version of PAW is presented in the 12 steps which follow 1 Examine the c
183. nt home on Saturday One of the neighbors had made up a banner saying Welcome to the world Benjamin and another baked a cake Stacey and Stefanie couldn t wait to show off their new brother We have now tried to get more into a routine We will be revising the routine come September Stacey will be starting kindergarten which means she will be riding the big yellow bus with some of the neighbor kids Stefanie will be in her Brenda and Roy Soltoff are proud to second year of pre school I will be working on a car pooling f arrangement with some others During my free time here I announce the birth of their third child hope that Benjamin will cooperate so I can spend as much of D i that time in the office to get my work done That way I will _ Benjamin Charles have most of the afternoon to spend with the kids I want to on Thur get Stacey enrolled in a dance class and Stefanie in a S sday June Ith 1988 at 6 44 pe gymnastics class Benjamin weighed seven pounds twelve The timing on the mailing of the Required Reading flyers ounces at birth and was twenty one inches was a little off A lot of the response from that mailing hit us just about the time I went on maternity leave Roy did his lo ng A tacey Elizabeth and S tefi anie Diane spent most of the time in the office getting orders written up 9 All of us are looking forward to our well deserved one week di Y ZN vacation One of these years wel have to take
184. ny signs of wear Naturally as soon as wear shows I ll have to use a refill One of the points that I like is the system of applying the ink Some reinkers in the past had a revolving sponge roller moistened with ink bearing against the ribbon as it went by I understand that this sponge roller arrangement was messy Now my inker doesn t use a roller but the ribbon runs tangent to a small vertical cylindrical ink container with a Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 12 Volume II minute hole in it through which the ink exits onto the ribbon Quite neat I seldom or never hear of other computer users reinking their ribbons but I feel sure that if the product were shown around a bit many might be interested Maybe Computer Friends advertising has been a bit too low key towards the back of 80 Micro Now if you could get folks talking about it in TMQ as they are talking of the XLR8er maybe interest would be awakened Another item which may interest you A power strip with a cord to connect to an Outlet the strip provided with several outlets for plugging CPU drives printer and other peripherals with a main switch on the power strip to connect and disconnect CPU and peripherals simultaneously and preferably with good surge spike protection I have been using such a thing for several years in an area where a thunderstorm sometimes produces enough fireworks to set off my telephone answerer
185. o break the sharp edge of the hole On the side you want to expand the rivet make a small depression with the drill Insert the rivet from the other side back it up with the flat end of a large drill bit or rod held in a vice and tap it with a center punch It s now permanent and neat Run your wire I use the so called wire wrap wire to the hole strip the insulation pull it tight and bend it to hold it in place Now for a quick disconnect I use the pins from damaged the good pins that are left machined pin or high reliability sockets Each of these pins have an excellent male end especially the gold plated fingers in the female end and a female end You can stick the male end in the rivet I mentioned above and solder it in Don t let any solder get in the female end Now strip the insulation from the end of a small stranded wire about 1 16 will do Insert it in the female end of another socket pin and solder it Slip a piece of shrink tubing about 0 10 O D over the wire and all but the male end of the pin Shrink it and you now have a subminiature disconnect I think some folks can use this help The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 72 Volume UI Floppy Drives Mixing I amp 2 sided Fm Gary Shanafelt It goes without saying that I m flattered to see my article on converting TRS 80 games into CMD format printed out so nicely in the last issue of the Quarterly If there are any co
186. o supported by 30 optional applications programs Draw Bizgraph xT CAD 3D Plot Slideshow Mathplot Surface Plot Chess etc The Grafyx Solution package is shipped complete for 129 95 reduced from 299 95 The manual only is 10 Payment may be by check Visa MC or COD Domestic shipping is free on pre paid orders Texas residents add 7 tax Micro Lass Inc 214 235 0915 902 Pinecrest Richardson Texas 75080 GRAFYX SOLUTION A plug in clip on board enhances any Model 4 4D 4P lll to provide 640 x 240 dot graphics 512 x 192 on a Model Ill The board comes with a 56 page manual and a disk containing both model 3 and 4 mode versions of over 40 programs and files including GBASIC 3 0 which adds over 20 graphics commands to Basic 129 95 Please specify your exact system configuration when ordering or requesting information Payment may be by check Visa Mastercard or COD Domestic shipping is free on pre paid orders Texas residents add 7 sales tax Micro Lass INC 214 235 0915 902 Pinecrest Richardson Texas 75080 A O NA a ae lt j NY MISOSYS SOFTWARE FOR YOUR PC Order Now 800 MISOSYS 647 6797 A A E A A ED ASM 86 80X86 Assembly Language development An integrated editor assembler linker and debugger for 8086 80186 80286 and 8087 assembly and disassembly All features are in a single EXE file a full featured line EDITOR with intra line editing blo
187. o use You cannot create menus but you can create automatic job files which can then be invoked We use this facility to automate re indexing a database Finding a record is performed sequentially when you are not using an index n indexed search is performed via a binary search algorithm At any time you can step forward or reverse through the data base either with an indexed sequence or straight sequential If you call the single stepping scanning then yes LB supports that Data cannot be transferred to Scripsit as part of any procedure currently supplied with LB But LB does have limited form letter capability LB records support calculated fields with 4 function capabilities add sub mul and div It could function with DoubleDuty if you are running with either a hard drive or double sided drives On a standard 2 drive 128K Model 4 LB requires that the system drive be the Memdisk The XLR8er requires no soldering The plug in mode arises from the fact that it plugs into the Z80 socket The XLR8er replaces the Z80 CPU chip with a faster enhanced HD64180 processor The XLR8er board mounts onto a new shield which is supplied by us The shield replaces the existing shield around the motherboard of the 4 And no the 4 doesn t have any facility for plug in cards the 4P does have one slot for a modem card If you have a Tandy service contract I would guess that you would have to revert the machine to stock before seeking repair T
188. ock and a for each unsucessful block transferred This program may work but has not been tested on other machines under other compilers vi include lt stdio h gt include lt sgtty h gt ifdef MC option REDIRECT OFF option ERRORMSG OFF tendif define como ch fpute ch cl define comi fgetc cl define comc checke cl define akey checkc stdin define NAK 0x15 negative acknowledge define ACK 0x06 acknowledge block received OK define SOH 0x01 block header define EOT 0x04 no more blocks to send define CAN 0x18 cancel transmission define NOTIMEOUT 0 define TIMECONST 10 transaction timeout define SHORTTIME 1 character timeout define XBLKSIZE 128 data block length define MODULUS 256 cardinality of data define MODMASK MODULUS 1 define TRYLIMIT 10 retry limit define CHECKOK 0 define CHECKBAD 1 Applications for the User THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 define define define define 1988 define lt file gt define define define define define define define define Volume Ui CHECKABORT 1 TIMEDOUT 1 ACKSAME 1 BANNER XMODEM by David B Lamkins June USAGE usage xmodem lt channel gt lt s r gt NOFILE can t open file NOCHAN can t open comm channel IOCERR can t IOCTL comm channel NOWRITE can t write output file STARTED started INTERRUPTED aborted SUCCES
189. odel 4 from a HARD DISK I iii 107 Model 4 Gate vs Non Gate 1 i1i 105 Model 4 Harddisk boot problem solved with HDBOOT DOC Es 11 27 Model 4 Help with RS 232 specs I iii 105 Model 4 Inverse Video I 1 ER Model 4 Megadisk driver in High Mem Misbehaved software I ii 28 Model 4 Model 4 RAM upgrade Case I I iii 107 Model 4 Model 4 RAM upgrade Case II I iii 107 Model 4 Port control under LDOS Be She 1 Model 4 Stacking Commands I iii 52 Model 4 Top Of Form feeds 1 iii 52 Model 4 4p 4D EXMEM Extended MEMORY Management I iii 75 Model 4P Double sided drives I ii 85 Model 4P Keybounce I ii 86 Model 4P The 4P BOOT ROM by Roy Soltoff I ii 87 Model I CPU Problems 1I iii 106 Model I re LDOS 5 3 beyond Dec 12 1987 1 111 17 Model II LS DOS 6 2 I iii 53 Model III 2 sided drives 1 111 105 Model III Bored of boards I 11 87 Model ITI Keyboard problem with new C ROMs i 11 27 Model III Model III Network ROMC 1 1ii 111 Modem NULL Modem The great Communicator I ii 23 MORSE BASIC program for Morse Code practicing I iv 60 Mr ED Backing up Mister ED I iii 102 Mr ED Q amp A about VED APP I ii 80 MRAS Assembly Language EDAS amp MRAS Ls 2 SL MRAS Mixed Case PRO MRAS I iii 96 MRAS Mixed case PRO MRAS I iii 86 MRAS MRAS switches CI and GC I iii 86 MRAS MRS510 missing in TMQ I ii will be in 1 iii DN7 I iii 96 MRAS obscure bugs to be corrected by later re assembly I iv 95 MRAS QA I ii 73 MRAS Q amp A I iv 94 MS DOS Getting into MS
190. oidance of cancellation may help get the mail on its way a little sooner Also since the postal rates Letters to the Editor Volume IILi went up we now charge 2 75 for shipping a single issue of TMQ still a bargain I use computers for Fm Henry S Campell M D I own two model 4P TRS 80 computers with one DMP 430 printer and one DMP 130 printer I use Scripsit Pro Visicalc and Profile 4 Plus I know nothing about programming I use my computers for the following purposes 1 As word processors since I write editorials for the Medical Society of Virginia 2 To keep track of my personal finances 3 To keep track of organizational lists such as the Democratic Party of Martinsville I am willing to invest 30 for a year s worth of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY because I Know that You will Teach me a lot By the Way where is Sterling Fm MISOSYS Inc Sterling is in Northern Virginia in the easternmost part of Loudoun County which abuts Fairfax County We physically sit about 5 miles due north of Dulles airport where the Concorde makes two trips overhead each day That places us along the Potomac river We are about fifty minutes from downtown D C outside of rush hour I wouldn t know how long it would take during rush hour because I wouldn t venture that way at that time Fm L R Boatman I hope Brenda has had the baby by the time you get to read this letter I also hope her ankle healed well I ve been out o
191. ok the longest I also had to program more routines to extract information which was unavailable It was also the most frustrating because I came across a few bugs in the EnhComp compiler which caused it to bomb when handling some error reporting if I had no program errors I wouldn t have had the bomb Those bugs and the respective fixes are printed in this issue s MISOSYS Products Tidbits 1 also had a problem with a PRO WAM patch I was working up Everything seemed to go wrong On the other hand I may have had the most fun with the BASIC version since I had to learn the most while coding it In the following listings I have added substantial comments to explain the approach taken These comments are not part of the source files Therefore they are not line numbered In order to avoid confusing the added comments from program lines which may wrap around I will prefix each comment with a period when appearing within a block of code Major comments will be added external to a block of code PAW ASM Assembler version This first section defines various constants used in the program as well as SVC assignments The approach of using a macro to expand SVC calls is common in assembler listings however I normally use more elaborate macros in my personal programs The simplified macro here just simplifies the program listing a little and gets you into the habit of considering the use of macros in your programs PAW ASM Popup Ap
192. olution may be to use the free low memory space below 1300H the I O driver region if any exists in a particular configuration I would suggest that if there were say 64 bytes available just patch the stack switch instruction to point to the top of that 64 byte area and the same for the SPOOLer patch Then adjust the header pointer in the immediately preceding module to point to the byte following that 64 byte block the pointer would have been pointing to the first free byte which you are now using This technique essentially extends the last module in the low memory region by 64 bytes and avoids the requirement for another module header I used that technique in my Alpha Technology memory board patches The Blurb Volume II MISOSYS Hot List This list represents what products in our catalogs have been the most popular in terms of sales units The list excludes TMQ subscriptions and DISK NOTES I have added LS DOS 6 3 to the list effective June 1988 Since it will probably always be at the top of the list I m not sure it provides much additional information Let me know what you think The current month is July 1988 prior 3 months is Apr Jun 1988 and prior 12 months is Jul87 Jun88 MISOSYS HOT List Current Month Prior 3 months Prior 12 months LS DOS 6 3 LDOS 5 3 LDOS 5 3 LDOS 5 3 The Source PRO WAM The Source PRO WAM Little Brother MRAS Little Brother The Source Little Brother MRAS diskDISK PRO WAM DSMBLR RSHARD
193. ommand line for an argument If none entered default the library requested to 0 If entered check for validity as PRO WAM library files can be numbered from o through o 2 Open the designated library file Abort if any error is detected on the open attempt 3 Save the number of the drive where the file was opened 4 Read the directory sector 5 Close the library file 6 Clear the screen and issue the welcome message The Programmers Corner Volume IILi 7 Search through the directory and display the names of all members Assign each member a one character designator to be used to invoke that member Display names on the screen four to a row 8 Issue the selection message 9 Accept a single character which is to designate a member BREAK is used to exit PAW 10 Convert the character input to upper case to ease the procedure of matching against the character assigned in step 7 11 If a match is found build the member specification string and WEXEC the requested application 12 Go to step 9 In order to more easily discuss each program implementation I have provided a 3 digit line number for each line in the program The line numbering was easily added by using the number C program which follows Thus a simple NUMBER lt PROGIN gt PROGOUT will prefix each line with a 3 digit number starting from 1 followed by a colon then a space ZS number c include lt stdio h gt char li
194. ood deal for customers and you that you now are the seller and servicer of LS DOS 6 3 Congratulations on this transaction I would be very interested in the hard drive you mentioned in Required Reading My used Megadisk Just conked out and I don t want to get another Aerocomp hard drive if I can help it What would be the possibilities of mounting one or two internally in a Model 4 Disk Disk still doesn t work very well with my Aerocomp 30 Meg drive even with the patches I really didn t expect it to since I think something else is also messed up with the controller or software I have been unable to format the drive any configuration other than the one it came with 3 drives of 10 meg each When it was shipped to me the config sys was in the hard drive and not on the disks sent to me The answer I got on the telephone was that they were not in the business of giving hard disk tutorials I managed to get in to the hard disk by studying RS and Powersoft hard drive manuals and the sheet of paper sent by Aerocomp I filled all free space with Disk Disks located the good ones on the higher cylinders left the good ones packed by bad ones and deleted those on the lower cylinders I managed to get about 8 good 180k Disk Disk on each of the three partitions and have access to about 2 3 of the drive It has worked fine up to this time I have not had a chance to hook up XLR8er on my office Model 4 yet but I will let you know how it does
195. opup Application Window by Roy Soltoff 41 MISOSYS Products Tidbits 0 0000 eee eee eee ug OD MC CCOMpICE yin a ee EEA OES RA 52 COUN ie ic E a a ATA IA de UAT ds Ne te 55 Little Brother Data Manager o te es 56 PRO WAM Windows amp Applications 57 Data sheets on UPS SPS 0 2 ce ee te ee es 59 The Hardware Corner 0 o o 63 International keyboards 63 HATS a rer Be CR A ci E 64 fe TEE 66 PCB Hardware Ups ande 71 Index to TMQ Volume o uo 72 Copyright O 1988 by MISOSYS Inc All rights reserved PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 703 450 4181 AAA AAA AA ARA NAAA EEE Volume UI The Blurb by Roy Soltoff Points to Ponder Since this may very well be the first column you turn to when you open up your issue of TMQ let me first apologize in advance if you feel this issue is a little rough behind the edges I wanted to make sure that this issue was completed and off to our printer prior to going on vacation The Blurb is the last piece I generate for an issue As I write this it is Wednesday August 3rd and the camera ready copy for the entire issue must be ready by tomorrow afternoon Since I can t preprint the remainder of the magazine because the page numbers will depend on how long The Blurb is final printing takes place tomorrow morning That s a good
196. ort illegal parameter value else i set parameters param atoi arg 2 loopute max c count int max c count int i for i O i lt max itt biputc c count lmargin looputc left SP amp dummy nextpage line int line int j looputc page line page lines 2 2 n amp dummy if pnum loopute 37 SP amp dummy printf td pagenum fprintf fpo Sd pagenum n biputs n n for 3 0 3 lt 15 3 fputs stdout bipute n looputc page lines 2 n amp dummy pagenum line 1 hyphens loopute 75 left amp dummy biputs string char string fputs string stdout fputs string fpo biputc c int a putchar c putc c fpo _abort string char string printf n s n string exit 0 prompt int i 0 clrsern MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume TIT i puts CPR C source print utility ver 2 0 puts Masa aki Kitajima Jun 1988 n puts command line format CPR SOURCE _FILE pl p2 puts parameters default puts p xx lines printed per page 60 puts f xx page length 72 puts n line numbering switch off puts s page numbering switch off puts l xx left margin 0 puts t xx tab expansion 4 puts CAUTION parameters must not be separated by spaces n clrscrn
197. ort 141 LD 142 SVC 143 JR Mask abbrev Post error The welcome routine clears the screen then positions the cursor to column 15 because that s where 1 calculated it to start if the message is to be centered I could have eliminated the cursor positioning and added 15 spaces to the message but this way is shorter in memory 144 k X 145 Routine to issue welcome heading 146 xX 147 WELCOME SVC CLS screen 148 LD HL 15 Clear the Set cursor to column 15 149 B 3 150 VDCTL 151 HL HELLOS 152 DSPLY 153 The Programmers Corner Volume IIli Nothing special here Just a routine which returns twice once in the TABS routine then issues a message spaced over to column 8 154 x 133 Routine to issue selection prompt 156 157 SELECT LD C CR zist a CR 158 DSP 159 TAB8 160 HL SELECT 161 DSPLY 162 These routines merit some attention I wanted a routine to TAB over 4 spaces and one 8 spaces Here is a classic example of one routine calling the trailing portion of itself to repeat part of it then falling into the code just called You ll find such a routine useful for all sorts of things The tradeoff is slightly longer execution time caused by the CALL RET handling against reduced code space When memory is a premium as it is with a 64K address space it is generally better to optimize for space than for execution unless you are writing
198. osition Adding 8 3 yields 11 but 11 is too big a number to fit into that place If you go back to early education addition you may recollect that 8 3 does not equal 11 it equals 1 carry the 1 8 3 1 carry the 1 Thus in this example we mentally say to ourselves while we add from right to left eight plus three equals one carry the one two plus one equals three plus the carry equals four and one plus zero equals one Experienced adders have zoomed right through these minute details for so many years that they have forgotten them Notice that term carry That s an important term which indicates that the positional sum overflowed the storage capacity of the position Let s now switch to binary and see the same addition Binary has a small addition table the smallest of any number base First look at positional binary column addition It s table is Where a carry results from a column addition I have noted that with the letter C Roy s Technical Corner Volume II The binary representation of 113D is 01110001B and the binary representation of 28D is 00011100B Here I have used an eight bit representation i e I have represented the number using eight binary digits Bit by the way is a recognized shorthand way of saying binary digit We align the positions and add columns keeping track of overflow carry accumulating the carry into the immediately left adjacent position 01110001 00011100 10001101
199. ox the magazine on May 31 Needless to say I have nothing but praise for the timely arrival of the QUARTERLY An interesting side comment The quarterly was packaged in a very expensive looking and thick plastic wrapping and for some reason the postage meter stamp was placed inside the wrapping and as a result never got canceled Also the cost was 1 85 for the mailing which indicates to me that your shipping and handling costs of 2 00 is very fair indeed Here s wishing you the best in carrying the TRS80 torch and also your family in the upcoming months Fm MISOSYS Inc TeleTrends carries modems for the TRS 80 Perhaps they have one to suit your needs Also my statement about being able to obtain other products did not imply that we would stock them only that we would be able to order them for you Yes printer prices seem to change daily as new Ones come on the market We are perfectly willing to accept various kinds of input to TMQ make your suggestions to the other companies as I really don t have the time to ride honcho on that We do the best we can rushing things here to make the deadline I suppose I wouldn t be happy unless I was always two months behind on things Lastly you misunderstand the concept of postage meter imprints they need no further cancellation We businesses pay for the privilege of using a postage meter It saves us on the time to prepare mail we always have the correct exact postage and the av
200. p in this block after the WEXEC command is executed That s the correct way to prematurely terminate FOR NEXT loops The prefix in front of WEXEC tells the compiler that a user command follows And you didn t even know that BASIC was extensible 033 REPEAT 034 LETTERS WINKEY 035 LETTERS TOUPPERS LETTERS 036 FOR I 0 TO 31 037 IF CODES I LETTERS 038 MSPEC LIBS 039 T MIDS BUFFERS 8 I 1 8 MLEN 9 040 REPEAT 041 DEC MLEN 042 UNTIL MID T MLEN 1 lt gt 043 MSPEC LIB LEFTS TS MLEN DRIVES CHR 13 044 SWEXEC MSPEC 045 I 31 046 ENDIF 047 NEXT I The Programmers Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 50 Volume II 048 UNTIL 1 lt gt 1 This is the routine entered on detection of the BREAK It s a simple labeled block which clears the screen and returns to DOS 049 EXIT 050 CLS END Here s the error handler Since line numbers are not needed for EnhComp statements I have added line numbers only to the lines which would expect an error which I wish to report on I then calculate a GOSUB index based on the line number returned from ERL 051 IOERROR 052 ON ERL 90 10 GOSUB ERR1 ERR2 053 END 054 ERR1 055 PRINT Cannot locate application library FAPPS 056 RETURN 057 ERR2 058 PRINT Application library read error 059 RETURN Here s the function which returns the number o
201. p resistor and this should give me three screens with two to save I haven t mounted that third 6116 because I first must check Clearance I may have to eliminate the socket 3 Pm a fanatic when it comes to working on circuit boards I run my wires on the Socket Side of the boards When connecting to sockets or IC pins I desolder using small wire wick the pin and straighten it Radio Shack bends them to hold things in when wave soldering When attaching a wire to a pin I make a very small loop by taking a turn around a small needie cutting off more than one turn and looping the wire around the pin I hold the wire in place with a small lump of auto body putty It stays soft for ever I ve used the same lumps for years It s plastic and sticky enough that when pressed over a wire it holds it in place adequately Of course I remove it after it s served its purpose I m fortunate enough that I still have some of the very very small hollow rivets we use to repair circuit boards When you need to surface bring a connection to the top of a board a wire I use one of these units The ones I use have an O D of 0 060 and smaller with a flange on one end and should be only long enough to come through the board Hold your board to a bright light and you can find places you can use a rivet and miss the traces on both sides Drill a hole just large enough to hold the rivet in place Take a larger drill and with your fingers twist it t
202. plication Window 07 20 88 ETX 3 CR EQU LE EQU BREAK DSP KEY DSPLY VDCTL ERROR OPEN CLOSE READ CLS gt WINDOW This is the simplified macro prototype It just expands the SVC number into the two operations between the MACRO and ENDM pseudoOPs 016 svc MACRO OP CODE O17 LD A OPCODE 018 RST 28H The Programmers Corner Volume III i 019 ENDM The program origin and the resulting size of this assembler version program allow it to execute solely within the library memory region of the DOS Thus it s suitable for invocation from LIBEXEC 020 ORG 2600H When a program begins execution the DOS sets up certain program entry conditions Register HL points to the first non blank character following the program name This portion first executes It checks the command line character If a library number was entered then the character would be something other than a RETURN 13D Otherwise the character is inserted into the application library file specification and then checked for validity Note that a single comparison is used for this test Since the value under test in the accumulator need not be preserved it takes up less code space to test a single range of values by adjusting the base to zero Thus the SUB 0 instruction alters the valid range of character values from 0 9 to 0 9 Note the former are ASCII values 30H 39H while the latter are OOH 09H
203. pointer done display it and go for another display on Model I III Save used Applications for the User Volume II LD C A register svc 2 POP BC RET get DCT for drive C GETDCT CALL MODEL JP NZ 478FH SVC 81 RET erg ee ee AC em GETMEM CALL MODEL JR Z GET4 JR C GET1L LD HL 4411H RET GET1 LD HL 4049H RET GET4 PUSH BC LD HL LD B H GET4B sve 100 POP BC RET put high memory SETMEM CALL MODEL JR Z SET4 JR C SET1 LD 4411H HL RET SET1 LD 4049H HL RET SET4 PUSH BC LD B 0 JR GET4B pK RRR KKK KEK KR KK RK k k k k KKK k k k KKK RK KK KK KEK KKK EK RA k kk k k NEWDOS 80 FILTER ROUTINE ARK IOI OGIO IOI IOI III IO IOI ICI k k NEWDOS JR FILTER DW 5 high mem save NAME DB 7 DB SNEWDOS FILTER LD A B get function CP OBH set Write Protected Disk error LD A OFH RET NC not allowed PUSH IY else save regs PUSH DE LD IY LAST pt to new DCT REL1 EQU 2 PUSH HL PUSH DE LD L D set cyl to HL LD H 0 LD D H set DE to same LD E L ADD HL HL 2 ADD HL HL 4 ADD HL DE 7 5 ADD HL HL 10 POP DE get cyl sec LD D 0 DE sectors HL total sector count ADD HL DE now divide LD E 18 1t by 18 XOR A init counter INC A SBC HL DE JR NC 3 Applications for the User 35 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IIL i set cyls to A adj for Model I LD set cyl LD set sector POP CALL Do function
204. pology for overlooking the obvious I ve enclosed a diskette containing a simple XMODEM program written for MC The program has been tested on the Model III under LDOS 5 3 and does indeed demonstrate the proper use of the ioctlQ function in a communications application You may if you wish include the code in either THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY or Disk NOTES ed note I compiled versions for both LDOS and LS DOS from David s source which follows The program works equally well on both machines Model I and Model 4 Both versions as well as the source file are on DISK NOTES 3 1 Applications for the User Volume IIli David B Lamkins 25 Sutcliffe Ave Canton MA 02021 xmodem cce Written by David B Lamkins June 1988 Source compiler MISOSYS MC Target computer TRS 80 Model III This program implements the XMODEM protocol for transmission and reception of files between the local computer and a remote system running XMODEM The CRC variant of XMODEM is not implemented The RS232T driver must be installed for the CL device using a command similar to SET CL RS232T W 8 P N B 1200 XMODEM assumes an 8 bit communication channel therefore you MUST be certain to configure the CL driver for 8 bit data The program is invoked using a command like XMODEM CL S SENDFILE TXT to send a file or like XMODEM CL R RECVFILE TXT to receive a file During operation a will be displayed for each successful bl
205. program such as the Powersoft version of backup restore which creates hard disc mirror images on a series of floppies and then puts them back on another hard disc I m sorry to trouble you with these mundane questions but not being much of a computer expert I get nervous when I have to transfer data through methods that are unknown and untried to me Thanks for whatever information you can give me I am interested in your products Fm MISOSYS Inc Dr Laird There is no reason why a hard drive cannot be designed to operate internally within a Model 4 computer folks have been doing that ever since the early Model III days The question is whether our initial design should be internal it should not We have to assure that sufficient business will exist to justify our presence in the hard drive add on market In order to ensure our success at a reasonable price we must first engineer the one package which would be in most demand An internally mounted drive would require either 1 an additional power supply or replacement of an existing supply or 2 use of an extremely low power drive which is much more costly If we get our feet wet with the external drive and find sufficient demand exists to justify bulk purchase of raw materials for an internal addition we would of course pursue that approach as well Hard drives are not connected through the RS 232 port whether internal or external They are connected via the 50 pin external I O bus
206. quick look at that and see how it can be useful for us I have sent in a subscription for the quarterly and I am interested in both a hard drive and perhaps even that so called accelerator Pd like to ask a couple of questions about the drive Most of the Model IV s that we have have been converted so that they presently use half height floppy drives two in at least the bottom holes Why couldn t you install the Letters to the Editor 9 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume IILi hard half height drives in a similar fashion Do these drives need to be connected through the RS 232 port One of my somewhat nagging concerns is since 1 already use a rather clumsy and not all together reliable external drive Tom wondering what I m going to do with that data I recently went through an exercise of transferring a large amount of fairly critical data off of one of the Bi Tech s by pumping it out the printer port in the PFS print option in file through the parallel port and in through a parallel to serial converter and thence to a named file in the Unix system If your drives could be set up internally it would make the cabinetry neater and allow easier salvage of existing data In any event what would using one of your 20 meg drives offer in terms of transferring information out of an older hard drive Would there be some reasonably simple means of transferring that information or would I have to use some Rube Goldberg arrangement or a
207. r 5 meg bubble with a 20 megger The LDOS forum Compuserve PCS 49 has had some info on what needs to be done there It s a tough question to consider just when you stop adding to your present machine and replace it with a newer model The same question arises when you ponder whether to trade in your old car for a newer one or just fix up the current one When the water pump goes do you say let s fix that and get rid of it or do you say DU continue to fix it because it served me well You must also look at the long term I personally would not want to design a dead end peripheral Any printer you purchase for your 4 should be usable under MS DOS I feel the same way about a hard drive Incidentally we can take either Model 4 disks or MS DOS disks 360K 1 2Meg or 720K 3 5 The important point is to label the disk as to its configuration Fm Laird G Jackson M D I recently got back into the TRS 80 support circle by being forced to install my nearly one year old copy of LS DOS which extends the operating system calendar through 1999 At that time I had to call LSI about LS DOS 6 3 and got a look at the MISOSYS information This eventually led me to your announcement about 20 megabyte disc drives That device sounds interesting at the target price that you re guessing We have at least a half a dozen Model IV s or IV P s sitting around doing allwrite PFS file report and other things I did get a copy of Pro Wam and have had a
208. r indicates the physical disk damage or that the DOS is incorrectly informed that the disk is damaged by an unknown reason I invoked the program in the disk The program CPR CCC was successfully compiled with PRO MC without any error messages When I ran the program with some of its command line parameters specified two cases occurred One was the error 07H in the middle of the execution of CPR CMD at various positions every time and the other was a simple hang up of the system on which the system sometimes rebooted Such erroneous results were observed whether I used the RAM DISK or not and also whether I ran the XLR8er at its full speed or not When I ran the program without any parameters specified the program finished normally however when any one of the parameters are specified the program frequently stops with or without the error 07H message Would you help me to understand the phenomena 1 doubt the reason is in my poor coding however I cannot understand what kind of bad coding reasons the error 07H A short explanation of my program CPR would help you to understand CPR is a C source print utility It reads the source file and sends it both to the screen stdout and to the printer CPR has some command line parameters which permits the user to specify 1 lines printed per page 2 page length 3 line numbering switch 4 page numbering switch 5 left margin 6 tab expansion These parameters have their defau
209. r us That s because I can then make do with one imprint worldwide and all postage costs are paid with a lump sum check to the USPS rather than individual metering I also would have my printer do the labeling bundling and trek to the post office I would move to a Cheshire label the kind you see on all high volume mailings Thus if I went to Second Class once I passed the The Blurb THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 DE Volume IIli camera ready copy over to the printer 1 would have no further involvement That sounds peachy keen to me Domestic Second Class rates are a little lower than Third Class but foreign rates are identical a magazine still is subject to the AO Air Printed Matter rate even if mailed under a Second Class mail permit But all subscribers will have to move to Second Class I wouldn t want to have mixed classes Since the decision has yet to be made I cannot advise you of any impact But I thought you should know Most magazines are mailed at the Second Class rates I also note that 3rd class postal rates went up over 25 Ist class and international mailing rates took a steep increase in excess of 17 as well For instance mailing a ten ounce TMQ used to be 1 75 3 58 and 4 72 for 1st class US AO Air to Europe and AO Air to Australia respectively Now its 2 05 4 22 and 5 55 respectively In spite of that we have no intention of raising subscription rates TMQ advertising
210. r when the letter value gets past Z thus the special test switches the codes to the numbers 0 through 5 for the six cases of slots 27 32 Note that in this assembler implementation 1 have bypassed code letters when a directory slot is vacant As you will discover by examining the other two implementations 1 don t skip letters because the code letter incrementing is done only when I have found a member Thus the implementations aren t exact however it demonstrates different ways of doing something 072 SCAND2 INC IX pointer 073 A LETTER letter O74 A 075 2 1 Switch to 0 9 076 C SCAND3 after A Z 077 A 0 078 SCAND3 LD Bump code Bump code LETTER A After processing for a directory entry I advance to the next one When you are working with a 256 byte buffer it is extremely useful to origin the buffer at a page boundary that s a 16 bit memory address where the low order 8 bits are zero Since 8 bit ADD instructions set the CARRY flag on overflow a simple ADD of 8 to the low order register containing BUFFER not only advances to the next directory position but also lets me know when I have reached the end of the buffer I loop through the thirty two entries then emit the selection query Bump to next 7 slot l Loop if more SELECT The Programmers Corner AA Volume IIli A keystroke is accepted converted to upper case since 1 have used upper case l
211. rcuit and breaker 1332 60 4 120190145 322025x42 0 1000 000 Watts 100 Joules Transverse A Common 400b Minimum 100KHZ to 3I00MHZ 200V 120 ITON 220 240V AT 800 15 to 25 minutes 800 Waits 104 VAC 187 VAC 204 VAC 60 HZ 50 HZ 10 12 Hours 4 Millisec 10 Millisec Sine Buzzer 4 Ligm Current Limiting inverter Circuit and 10 amp fuse 72 32 8 12x8 8x15 LG 305122 1139 46 1 000 000 Watts 100 Jouies Transverse amp Common 0d Minimum 100KHZ to 300MHZ 200V 120 ITON 220 240V PC200 Designed to work with all personal computers that are floppy disk based such as Apple II Apple Ill Apple Macintosh and IBM PC It provides 200 watts of power AT500 15 to 25 minutes 500 Watts 104 VAC 187 VAC 204 VAC 60 HZ 50 HZ 10 12 Hours 4 Millisec 10 Millisec Sine Buzzer A Light Current Limiting inverter Circus and 10 amo tuse sas 265 128 SRS 1 2 30 9x22 1x39 4 100 Joules Transverse amp Common 2000 Minimum 100KHZ to 300MHZ 200V 120 IAN 220 240V 15 lo 25 minutes 350 Warts 104 WAC 187 WAC 204 VAC 60 HZ 50 HZ 10 12 Hours See Now 2 Pseudo Sine Buzzer A Light Shuts Down 172 S Sati satas 14002930472 1000 000 Warts 100 Joules Treneverse 4 Common 200d Minimum JO0KHZ 10 IOOMHZ 200 DAN DOV 2202404 15 to 25 minutes 300 Waits 104 VAC 187 VAC 204 VAC 60 HZ 50 HZ 10 12 Hours 1 Millisec 4 Miilisec
212. res run to the two pins 18 and a third from the throw connection of the switch to ground on the computer board I presume you understand the two wires came from the outer poles of the switch It works fine If you want the second screen clear though on boot up assuming a warm system as soon as the system clears the screen throw the switch and press the reset switch again now you can start working When you have a few lines or a screen full that you d like to refer to later throw the switch and keep on Remember thought that this does not reset the line or character count so vou be starting at the spot you left the first screen but it will scroll etc normally I should mention that each of two pins 18 will need a pull up resistor to 5V One tenth or quarter watter will do fine to a 5V trace nearby The switch I used has a center position off I thought without thinking of course it was the only switch I had handy this would be fine I could use this position to blank The Hardware Corner Volume IIli the screen when I walk off and let the machine run not so The screen fills with junk Investigating the board I found that I could use either of two empty not used gates of U92 a 74LS00 NAND gate IC 2 highs a low So I ve run wires from each of the pins 18 of the two 6116s remember they will be pulled up if the switch is off to pins 4 amp 5 of U92 Pin 6 will go to a third 6116 pin 18 it won t need a pull u
213. rmance I noticed however that from about 9 p m the time stamp becomes incorrect More recently I also found out that the TED editing commands do not work Specifically I can invoke TED after installing the KI driver by using TED filename txt command but cannot load a file using lt CLEAR L gt command after TED has been previously installed When the file is in the buffer I cannot toggle overstrike to insert mode using lt CLEAR A gt command neither can I specify DELETE with lt CLEAR D gt command I am using a Tandy 4D machine which has the lt CLEAR gt key but I also tried to use the lt SHIFT gt lt DOWN ARROW as control key but it does not work either The README TXT file included on my disk shows a number of corrections made to LDOS 5 3 0 including one or two to the TED editor I wonder if these corrections were inadvertently not made on my disk Or maybe I am doing something wrong Please help Fm MISOSYS Inc A J I believe the answer to your question is right there on page 15 of the LDOS 5 3 documentation update Most of Ted s commands are entered with the control key lt SHIFT gt lt DOWN ARROW gt under LDOS the control key will be noted by the caret character 7A tt DOS Subjects 21 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume Ii Your letter stated that in every case you were trying to use the lt CLEAR gt key not the CONTROL key Even though a Model 4 has a CTRL key unl
214. rror and SET2RAM I iii 46 Printer Control and PR FLT I iii 35 Problem with TED CMD I iii 42 README TXT corrections I iii 38 Reset 1 111 35 SLOW BACKUP and Interleave I i24 35 SMOOTH What s it for I iii 36 SUPERLOG and LDOS 5 3 I iv 25 SYNONYM adapted for LDOS 5 3 I iv 24 SYSGEMing other configs I iii 46 SYSGEN of SMOOTH I iii 36 SYSTEM SYSTEM d during JCL I iii 39 TED problems I iv 30 The JCL EXIT gotcha I iv 30 The TIME prompt I iii 37 Timekeeping with 50Hz I iii 49 Trouble with DEVICE I iv 23 UN DATECONV I iii 48 UNDATE by Luis M Garcia Borro I iv 56 Use of CMD V in BASIC I iii 36 What won t work on x 3 I iii 38 Where d the CAT go I iii 37 Where d ABORT go I iii 49 Where s MODELA III 1 111 37 Where s the missing file I iii 48 Upgrade Kit qt 11 13 Caution about fixes in I i p 14 I ii 8 SVCs and whatnot I i 14 Q amp A I ii 29 Is 2000 a Leapyear I iii 24 Leap years a la 2000 revisited I iv 13 Editors LED I i 39 Problem with hanging up when encountering 00 byte I 3i 67 LIBrary command changes I ii 14 No implementation for TRSDOS 6 I iii 16 Poem by Guy L Steele Jr I iii 28 Harddrive problem I iii 52 LS DOS 6 2 for the Model II 12 I i 12 PR timeout I iii 52 DODIR T iii 48 BASIC amp SOUND I iv 32 Bug in TED CMD I iii 56 Compliments I iv 13 Correction of error in patch published in I iii 65 I iv 45 Disk driver function codes I iv 33 Fix for TAPE100 I iv 32 NEWCLOCK I iii 57
215. s Letters to the Editor Volume UI unsatisfactory printouts as empty records are being listed unless all the prepared empties are deleted prior to printing In response to your invitation in TMQ II i p 8 Just what do you all do with your systems here is my little bit Back in RI we bought an NBI System 3000 Wordproccessor with a Ricoh RP1600 Daisy Wheel printer It was to help us with our invoicing with the Stored Keystrokes and Stat Maths package I got a System going which allowed most of our daily tasks Unfortunately two of my clerks who each had been sent to Remington the Company selling NBI in Australia to be trained for a week decided they get better pay in the Public Service and quit on short notice Well that was the Governments gain The next clerk was reluctant to use the WP but came up with a very simple manual system which required only single sheet Invoice Jobcard and we purchased a photocopier for the few cases when copies were required However by the time the WP was retired new models had been released and we couldn t sell it anymore for anywhere near its worth So we took it home and my wife Madeleine registered her own business to do contract wordprocessing She done a fair few reports for consultants and generally enjoys the type of work she gets The only drawback with the NBI is the lack of a spelling checker Meanwhile Madeleine has started a full time job at the same school where Alex and Nathanael
216. s eliminates head crashes 2 If the odd bits of info my friends and I have scraped together from various sources are correct hard drives spin at 3600 RPM with an air cushion separating the head from the The Hardware Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 64 Volume UI disk As an engineer with many years experience in many abstruse technologies I immediately think that 3600 is one heck of a speed to run a disk drive What about bearings Are they reliable enough to keep disks properly aligned and balanced at that speed 3 What happens when the power company pulls the switch on one or when there s a sudden voltage dip Does the head come down on the disk at say 1800 RPM when the air cushion dies but when the disk is still spinning fast enough to create chaos by head disk friction 4 Is an uninterruptable power supply a must to prevent disaster from power failure and resultant crashes If so that must be added to HD cost 5 What happens when there is a crash How much do repairs cost if the drive is repairable To pay several hundred dollars for a drive and have it crash creating a repair bill of another several hundred isn t my idea of fun 6 What normal service do hard drives require if any and how often Where is it available and what Just as a ball park figure does it cost on an average 7 If I were to go for hard drives I guess I would want a pair Presumably the disk controller host a
217. s to Hardin Brothers a STANDOUT PROGRAMMER for all the wonderful short assembly programs he tutored us with in 80 MICRO Another special thanks to you ROY for the production of the MISOSYS QUARTERLY continuing the support of the Z 80 machines During one of the conversations in TMQ you mention that some of your readers do not have a link to COMPUSERVE I fall into that group and would like to thank you for all the reprinting that you do The contributions that I have gotten from the magazine more than pay for themselves even without counting the FANTASTIC deals on software offered I have bought all but a few of the items that you have offered including LDOS 5 1 4 for my model T s LDOS 5 3 0 for my Model III the Mark II and Mark IV packages PRO WAM MISTER ED LS DISKdisk Little Brother Little Brother Maintenance Utility PRO CREATE DSM4 FASTBACK to name just a few Besides the fine software products Roy your Programmers Guide and distribution of THE SOURCE offer the TRS 80 far more insight than any of the CURRENT generation Those who haven t availed themselves with the above publications would be well advised to obtain a copy while still available Of course if you NEVER intend to be more than a USER purchase the manuals so that when you SELL your machine the new user could use them I wish to clarify UNSUPPORTED software Roy you haven t been capable to release UNSUPPORTED software in the ones that I
218. sion keyboards from my early involvement with the LDOS release which Tandy sold I really never knew them by the terms AZERTY or QWERTZU Gosh the latter sounds like the name of some alien creature Or robot reminiscent of Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still QWERTZU klattu borado nicto _ I ve heard of Flemings but I never heard of Waloons To tell you the truth I m not so sure I would want to be called a Waloon Maybe it loses something in the translation to English When I next get the chance I m only about two months behind in most things I ll see if that international 6 3 has all The Hardware Corner Volume II of the LSI patches to 6 3 installed Also 1 would be able to uncover the actual keyboard matrix by examining the keyboard driver According to my old information on the Model III international keyboards the extra keys are wired to matrix row four out of eight and columns four through eight That s the row of the matrix where the American keyboard only has three keys X Y and Z In looking at a facimile of the German keyboard I certainly can see how one can refer to it as QWERTZU What I don t have is the keyboard matrix layouts for the Model 4 international version keyboards But I suspect that 1 could take the row eight additions from the American Model 4 keyboard and add that to the Model MI international matrix versions Sound right Questions you never asked Fm Charles A Ainswor
219. t I suspect that a lot of folks don t understand some of the finer points of adding because they don t focus on the minutia But I have to focus on those finer points of the addition process to clarify binary addition operations So DI begin my discussion on adding by a review of decimal addition without omitting any minute details Addition is a positional operation That s very important to understand If we want to add up two numbers we have to align their positional coefficients before we add up the digits Taking as an example the addition of 113 and 82 we are adding 1 100 1 10 3 1 8 10 2 1 1 100 1 10 8 10 3 1 2 1 100 90 5 195 Roy s Technical Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 99 Volume II I aligned the two numbers so that the coefficients of like positions were added The obvious way and less confusing notationally is to just align the numbers vertically and add the columns in our head This produces 113 ue 195 That was an easy example there was no overflow in any one column position What if there were Say we wanted to add up 113 and 28 Aligning the numbers vertically and adding up the columns I calculate 113 28 141 Well how in the world did I get a 4 as the result of adding the second column What happened was that when I added up the 3 and the 8 of the first column the result was a value which overflowed the column p
220. t so reasonable 1 How do I gain access to drives 2 and 3 2 I just moved up to 6 3 now SCRIPSIT won t center on printing 3 How do I get rid of system files REMOVE doesn t do it 4 I have 6 3 but my SuperScripsit disk doesn t accept the new date 5 How do I format a 15 Meg hard drive 6 Where is MAILLIST BAS 7 FORMS filter is converting CR CR to CR LF Note my statements which follow concerning this one 8 Are 11H errors common 9 I m getting a read error in copying a file 10 Characters wave on the screen 11 How can l update my Multiplan disk 12 I can t BACKUP my deskmate disk 13 I have a problem with Scripsit 14 VIDTEXT gives loaded Communications driver not 15 I m getting Program not found when typing RM 16 How do I remove protected files And on and on I think that 90 of the calls stem from folks totally unwilling to read their user manuals Bear in mind too that a lot of the above statements came after DOS Subjects Volume UI trying to extract an intelligent error report out of the caller The request 1 would make of my readers is to urge all other users to to WRITE down the sequence of steps taken and the responses displayed if any when a problem is being experienced It serves no purpose to call the next day with a report I can t back up my disk or my deskmate program won t work etc When l ask Why not what error message did you get and you report
221. t the hard drive going yet as this is partitioned with LDOS 6 3 and CP M2 23 I received an LDOS TRSDOS disk for the XLR8er but from reading the manual I think there is also a CP M disk which should have been there I mentioned that I also ran CP M in the letter The Hardware Corner Volume III i As I mentioned in the original letter the 15 Meg Hard drive is used to run 5 3 6 3 and Montezuma CP M 2 23 The Hard drive is split into six drives three each for Tandy s and CP M with RSHard Can I still run the LDOS 5 3 and do an install of SET180 and FIXBANKS and FIXALL as for the LS DOS 6 3 A different point I would like advice on I have Toolbelt and the other day my son 15yrs accidentally deleted a file from the hard drive in LDOS How do you UNKILL a file on the Hard drive There seems to be no equivalent for the floppy UNKILL I understand the kill is only a directory flag change One more request could you please send me LBMU M4 to my home address as I am planning to develop a new journal reference database and envisage regular upkeep and pruning One final thing have a good vacation Come down to Australia some time They say hanging upside down is good for blood supply to the brain although I am not sure it has helped us all that much and 1 have never seen a smart bat or flying fox Fm MISOSYS Inc LeScript unfortunately does its own keyboard scanning It totally bypasses the DOS That s why it doesn t quite work
222. th Roy Your recent flyer and the latest TMQ ask for feedback in response to your proposal of providing 20 meg hard drives with the complete works Before I get into the subject let me clarify that I am not writing this letter expecting any specific reply but rather as my contribution in assisting you to consolidate my ideas with whatever others you may receive perhaps as an aid to all concerned in reaching a decision on the purchase of your drives I have many questions on hard drives that no one I could really trust has ever answered I have ruled out magazine articles and reviews as they obviously would not criticize hard drives too energetically as most magazines are unfortunately too beholden to their advertisers I have several friends some of which are model 4 users and others MSDOSers I have posed some of my questions to them and find they don t know many of the answers themselves even though some are hard drive users So this letter might be called a composite of questions and uncertainties regarding hard drives As things are today and apart from your entry into the HD field I am scared of hard drives Maybe you could at some point set my mind at rest possibly with a general coverage writeup in TMQ Here are mg points 1 One hears of the possibility of head crashes If you care to look at the Tandy 1988 computer catalog page 13 where a 20 meg disk cartridge system is offered you will see that it mentions Thi
223. the decimal system Similarly if we were to consider an octal system its eight symbols would be the class 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Likewise the binary system would use a class of two symbols 0 1 Hexadecimal being base 16 has 16 symbols We arbitrarily use symbols of the alphabet to indicate digits of value greater than 9 thus 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F are the class of symbols for hexadecimal Very early computers actually were decimal based I do recollect some early work towards a ternary based computer using tri state devices however since digital electronics oriented towards a scheme of gates which had two distinct positions computers soon switched to the binary system That s why its important to understand the binary number system and binary mathematics The binary system is simple since there are only two symbols in its class 0 1 If we want to write the number 01011011 in Our general formula construct it would be 027 126 025 124 1 23 0 22 1 21 1420 When dealing with the binary number system a power of two table is convenient to either have or remember It s quite easy to produce by calculating Gf you know how to multiply by 2 without a computer Here s a short power of two table Roy s Technical Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 28 Volume UI This shows our number has a value of 1x64 1 16 1 8 1 2 1 1 91D Here I have introd
224. then prompted for the index number This is the number of the previously created selection index for the input file Make sure that all files are online before hitting enter Lines 50 200 open and field files and load the various pointers and counters such as the allocated record count and the number of the last used record in the output file the logical record length and the pointer to the deleted record chain so that deleted records are reused before any new records The main processing loop begins at line 220 INDEX NUM hold the number of selected records that exist in the LB index file IN REC is the record number of the next selected input record to be moved Line 260 makes a check for deleted records to use A call is made to the appropriate record allocation subroutine at line 1000 or 2000 and in turn these subroutines will call the write subroutine at line 3000 If all has gone well so far the subroutine at 5000 will be called to delete the moved record from the input file The main loop ends at line 270 and a message is printed indicating the number of records that were successfully moved At this point Applications for the User THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 39 Volume IIli closing housekeeping is conducted to update the various altered record allocation pointers the files are closed and the program is terminated O REM LBMOVE BAS by Daniel L Srebnick c 1988 PO Box 434 Port Monmouth NJ cis 72216 5
225. tinguish a disk patched by you and one prepared by them I think it just caused more confusion Patch 17 was applied on 11 1 87 this changed LSI s designation to L MISOSYS published patch 17 in TMQ Iiv as noted above I doubt that Model 4 Visicalc would utilize any extra RAM even if supported through BANK as is available via the XLR8er board software interface Only a very few companies were astute enough to recognize the possibility of additional RAM Tandy was not On the other hand you could run the spooler using a bank higher than 2 The spooler as written will actually accept a bank value of 1 7 Even that could be easily patched to accept 1 10 for total support of any bank available with the XLR8er And yes you could crash in strange ways if that patch to SYS8 as discussed in TMQ ILii is not applied It doesn t just restrict itself to ALLWRITE and PRO WAM I can t recommend a bookkeeping system for the Model 4 as I never used one on the 4 Prior to shifting over to Bedford Accounting on the PC I used a very old Model III based package which was based on Osborne amp Associates General Ledger package A lot of string driven BASIC programs wind up being slow due to excessive time spent in string space manipulation garbage collection I also am unfamiliar with Microdex s program Perhaps I can throw the question open to TMQ readers DOS Subjects 23 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume III i Help with
226. tive or a negative value by examining the most significant bit If it is a 1 the number is negative if a 0 the number is positive We commonly call that bit position the sign bit So now how do we subtract when we have no subtraction operation We simply take the twos complement of the subtrahend and add it to the minuend As easy as pie Well 1 think this is enough heavy stuff for one issue 1 will pick up where I left off this topic in the next issue of TMQ Roy s Technical Corner A Volume III i Applications for the User The following programs although shown in their respective source code language are nevertheless applications which may be directly usable by the non programming user All you need do is obtain the assembled compiled program from the DISK NOTES 3 1 diskette which is associated with this issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Reading NEWDOS80 2 0 Disks From LDOS and LS DOS David Goben 67 Highland Rd Mansfield Ctr CT 06250 If you have upgraded your system to LDOS or LS DOS from NEWDOS80 2 0 you have been stuck with the chore of transferring your files from the NEWDOS80 environment to that of LDOS Because of the difference in disk storage format this normally involved saving the NEWDOS data to a single density disk and then copying it from that disk to the LDOS disk To ease this burden and remove that extra step I have written a NEWDOS80 disk filter called NEWDOS CMD This program w
227. tive April 1 1987 and July 1 1987 Close fault error ALTRES PRO ESP s CVT324 and listing Product Highlight A new name for PRO NTO Can it be invoked by JCL Use PRUN CMD instead PDS PRCTRL application can be cust to suit any pr PRO WAM and bigram PRO WAM and AUTODIALER PRO WAM and PSORT PRO WAM Release 2 description of features PRO WAM s BRINGUP APP past 1987 PRO WAM PRO NTO What is it Problems with LeScript Removing PRO WAM from Memory Reusing the screen with PRO WAM Trade In offer for old PW users exp 03 31 88 Use with Alpha Memory Board WINCALC APP by Bryan W Headley PRCTRL APP Appl customisable to ANY printer Problem with KSMP lus PSORT in original version single key hot key TYPEIN amp Profile 4 RAMDRIVE PD driver on COMPUSERVE Problems of getting Pro WAM through Tandy RS store Public Domain driver on Compuserve Driver for AlphaTech boards Foreshadowed RATional FORtran RATional FORtran Q amp A re difficulties obtaining manuals Accessing the RS 232 port from BASIC Pat on the back and how to send up a friend ARCHIVE RESTORE RSHARD from JCL Utility to support HD drivers use with DOS x 3 Editors SAID Problem with replacing double occurring characters Product Highlights Upgrade to 1 1 Previewing output SET2RAM and MEMDISK driver by Jeff Brenton change to program SIDEWAYS with MC General Info on IDOS TRSDOS6 Special Interest Grp 79 Volume
228. topic The error analysis of floating point math is really beyond the scope of most folks and certainly beyond anything I could posture in this publication On the other hand I have come to realize that perhaps its time to expose the TMQ readers to the intricacies of computer math I dare not jump right in at the floating point level because to do that would thoroughly confuse a good percentage of my readers Let me then start out at ground zero Let me also relate that I am no expert I just happen to have spent some time in developing floating point routines My background in Engineering has exposed me to a great deal of mathematics and my post graduate work in Operations Research was nothing but mathematics Mathematics is also a subject feared by many But I hope to bring most of this discussion down to earth Bear with me Let me know when I go off base Now an approach to computer math must first come with the assurance that we all understand the kind of mathematics we deal with daily and the kind of numbers we work with Our system is termed a positional system because the position of each digit in a number has something to do with the value of Roy s Technical Corner 27 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volume UI that digit What other kinds of systems are there Well at a minimum there are non positional systems The Roman system which by the way is used to designate the issues of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY is an ex
229. trickler Roy I am sure that you have heard the difference between a Fairy Tale and a True Story but to refresh your memory a Fairy Tale begins Once upon a time while a True Story begins Now this is no S it well Now this is no s it While I was a consultant back in 1975 for a manufacturer of an 8080 based computer system along with several dozen other small manufacturers of computers just as the computer field really began to ROLL all of a sudden it seemed that US small manufacturers seemed to be having trouble getting MEMORY chips at a reasonable price if at ALL Sound Familiar I did some investigation at that time to see what the problem could possibly be Much to my surprise at that time I found that a LARGE computer manufacturer who shall remain NAMELESS had approached each of the MEMORY chip manufacturers and signed agreements to purchase their TOTAL memory chip output for the following 30 months Needless to say COMPUTERS without MEMORY aren t your real HOT SELLERS The small companies folded as DOMINOS selling what assets that they had at FIRE SALE prices Now here we are again MEMORY prices are climbing for no apparent reason except possibly the fact that CLONE Letters to the Editor THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 18 Volume II manufacturers can be getting TOO much of the MARKET as the BIGS see it Now of course MONOPOLIES are prohibited but who would stop a manufactur
230. uced additional notation The suffix D designates the base of the number Without that suffix how would you know I wasn t talking about a hexadecimal number You wouldn t Therefore whenever we are working with different number systems it is important for us to designate the base of a number by means of a suffix symbol We commonly use D for decimal B for binary H for hexadecimal and O for octal We generally also assume that a number without a base suffix is expressed as decimal Sometimes when writing in certain computer languages its acceptable to use a Q as a designator for octal to avoid confusing the letter oh and the number zero when reading the numeric value Other problems exist when the language assumes hexadecimal as the default and you want to write a hexadecimal value ending in B Is the number 10B hexadecimal or binary To avoid even that confusion some languages use a V to indicate binary but that really isn t too common Up to this point you should have recognized that the way in which we convert a number from one base to decimal is to add up the positional values according to our generalized formula expressing the number But how about converting a decimal number to another base We can do that easily by repeatedly dividing the decimal number by the desired base saving the remainder as one of the new digits then repeating the process with the new quotient until the quotient becomes zero
231. uilt in Z80 assembler You can easily create hybrid programs of BASIC statements and in line assembly code which completely eliminate contorted string packing and DATA statement high memory module techniques for your BASIC program to access a machine code module Z80 MODE accesses BASIC s variables You ll have to edit existing BASIC programs but the power and completeness of EnhComp make that an easy task MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IILi Bug in error handling Fm MISOSYS Inc As reported elsewhere in this issue I experienced some problems with EnhComp trapping some of my programming errors while I was developing the PAW BAS program For instance 1 had neglected to put a DEFINT A Z statement in my program thus variables without suffix modifiers defaulted to single precision type The INC and DEC operations are restricted to integer variables EnhComp correctly trapped the error however the due to a programming error in the compiler the error reporting caused a crash I fixed that up with a 2 byte patch In another example I left off one double quote from a structured IF statement s expression This invalidated the IF causing the following ELSE to be treated as an ELSE without IF error The compiler s error handling procedure was also incorrect in that it was subject to a program stack problem which caused a crash A one byte patch fixed that up Lastly due to a bug in the WAM22 FIX which didn t prop
232. unction and tested for an error in opening If an error is detected the program will abort with an appropriate error message 049 if appfile open fapp O RDONLY EOF 050 051 printf Cannot locate application library s n fapp 052 exit 1 053 In order to obtain the drive number directly from the FCA structure I have to first get the file pointer The fpupO function is used for this get file pointer if stream fpup appfile return EOF Line 59 is Rich Deglin s code to fetch the address of the fca structure Note the use of casts I then capture the drive number convert it from binary to ASCII and store it 058 Get struct fca pointer 059 fea struct fca char stream sizeof unsigned short 060 drive fca gt drive 0 The directory sector is read into the buffer Appropriate action is taken if an error is detected other wise the file is closed 061 errno 0 062 if read appfile buffer 256 256 get the app directory 063 064 perror Application library read error 065 exit 1 066 067 close appfile Under MC BREAK can be set to generate an EOF condition on a stream This next sequence of statements conditions this behavior via the oc function Then the welcome message is displayed The Programmers Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 48 Volume IIli Turn on BREAK to set E
233. up to use PR FLT Patch to solve problem with PRINT USING PRINT with EnhComp Problem with If expression THEN Problem with SOUND Program devel almost as easy as interpretive BAS QA USING Comments When to use it FDC 1793 disk controller from Western Digital Info Product Highlight Writing FILTERs for LSDOS 6 x by Roy Soltoff FM File Manager Add 2 side prompt to TRSDOS 6 2 x FORMAT Bug with 2 sided drives LDOS 5 1 and TRSDOS 6 2 HS A Licensing rights Bug in Mod 4 with file LRL Enhancements by Harry G Clayton Jr Observations re ACCURACY A game for I III and Mod A Clear to end of frame Hard drive problems Harddisk Crash DK E S H Volume III i I ii I I ii I iv I A Te UL I iii iv I iii ii He He H He He pao eH lt He pa He He pes He po He pe be be HHHHHHHHHHAHHHAHHHHARH ARR AAA A aA AA He d HM I iv I iv I iii I iii Lo a I iv 65 18 78 65 16 14 60 15 16 13 28 105 108 105 78 65 79 20 2i 93 95 93 22 83 95 82 80 83 94 81 80 16 61 82 17 95 108 66 64 95 16 15 26 39 15 44 15 11 47 42 16 Index to Volume I Volume IIli Hard Drive HD64180 HYPERSOFT IEC JCL JCL JCL KILL KSMPlus LB LB LB LB LB LB LB LCOMM LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS LDOS L
234. ve specifications 20 megabyte half height drive Seagate ST225 PC type hard disk controller Western Digital WDXT GEN with on board MS DOS driver amp formatter MISOSYS designed TRS 80 host adaptor Leadman drive case for two half height drives e w 60 watt power supply switchable 115V 230V and fan device drivers for both LDOS model III mode and LS DOS model 4 mode along with archive restore utility and our diskDISK software Our target price is still 495 00 We are also planning a hardware clock on the host adaptor as a low cost option The beauty of this configuration is that everything except the host adaptor is re usable in an MS DOS PC environment Thus if you can your TRS 80 you have a 20 Megabyte drive with controller totally reusable in a PC MISOSYS is ready to ship the off the shelf components now to those folks looking to acquire a hard drive controller or external case Perhaps you just want to add a 20 Megabyte drive to your PC Or maybe you are a hacker wanting to The Blurb Volume III i upgrade your Radio Shack 5 Meg drive to a 20 Meg drive Check out the next section of The Blurb New Product Announcements PRO WAM Programmers Toolkit We are now shipping the toolkit for programming under the PRO WAM environment The package includes revised documentation which fits into your new PRO WAM Release 2 binder a revised WINLINK device driver which supports programmed invocation of applications a WINDOW CCC
235. ving equal magnitude but opposite sense sign result in a zero value Therefore in this special world without subtraction the sum of negative three and positive three must equal zero They represent a positive three by the sequence 003 therefore a zero result would require negative three to be represented by 997 Why Because 003 997 000 with a carry out of the hundreds place That means negative one is represented by 999 and negative five hundred by 500 Note that the range of values represented by this system of Roy s Technical Corner THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 30 Volume UI numbers is negative five hundred to positive four ninety nine or 500 to 499 in our normal world The number system just proposed uses what is called tens complement to represent negative numbers A mathematician or other ordinary person in our world constructs the tens complement by adding one to the nines complement That brings you to ask what in the world is the nines complement Good question The nines complement is easy to present simpler than the tens complement To figure the nines complement of a decimal number simply subtract each digit from nine So the nines complement of 267 is 732 the tens complement would be 733 You see therefore that we can t represent a negative number by the nines complement because the sum of a number and its nines complement is all nines So why discuss the nines and tens compl
236. with PRO WAM although it does poll the keyboard so that the DOS spooler can be used and that allows you to activate PRO WAM but not export back to LeScript That s why the FIXALL filter is not effective with LeScript Sorry but there s nothing I can do about that If the XLR8er manual were to include a diagram showing you where to look on the motherboard for the RAM chips it would probably have to have a dozen diagrams Tandy has redesigned their board so many times that you have to have a book full of schematics just to do troubleshooting The socket numbers aren t even consistent For the RAM though its probably just as easy to look for eight identical chips in a row which also have a second row filled if your machine is 128K In the case of two drives versus four drives you must be referring to LS DOS not the chip For more years than I have fingers on a hand and I have a full set TRSDOS 6 defaults with drives 2 and 3 disabled Actually you have a simpler command to enable drive 2 SYSTEM DRIVE 2 ENABLE The boot up drive code table has the proper information in it for a standard drive 2 floppy physical third Just enable it then SYSGEN You could also patch BOOT SYS to achieve the same thing That information was publicized some time ago In fact it was published on page 61 of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Volume I Issue iii Winter 1987 The Hardware Corner 69 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 Volu
237. with this patch and pass along any feedback Thank You and best regards for a great publication P S I ve included a copy of the original 5 1 patch for Reference Newclock 80 fix for LDOS 5 3 x only by Graham M Brown updated for 5 3 by Stu Martin Adapted from Roy Soltoff s Model I zap Note This is an temporary patch It works fine but if the ALPHA clock is removed from the system this patch should be removed as well If not the Gate will be invalid after booting but can be corrected via the date time entry at the LDOS Ready prompt PATCH SYSO SYS SYSTEM LDOS53 OPTION OFF DOD 94 3E 10 D3 EC 21 1C 42 01 BA 01 CD D2 DOD A0 4E 06 03 CD D2 4E 01 BC DOD A8 0F CD D2 4E DB BB E6 07 DOD BO 47 E6 03 11 1B 42 21 18 DOD B8 01 02 CB 4E 44 20 17 CB DOD CO FE 18 13 ED 78 OD AO 07 DOD C8 57 07 07 82 57 ED 78 OD 00 DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 99 Volume III i Newclock80 fix for LDOS 5 1 x for the Model III by Graham M Brown Allows the DATE to be read from BOOT up Adapted from Roy Soltoff s Model I zap Apply this to SYS0 SYS DOD 9A 3E 10 D3 EC 21 1C 42 01 DOD A2 BA 01 CD CA 4E 06 03 CD DOD AA CA AE 01 BC OF CD CA AR DOD B2 DB BB E6 07 47 E6 03 11 DOD BA 1B 42 21 18 44 20 23 CB FE 18 1F ED DOD CA 78 OD AO 07 57 07 07 82 DOD D2 57 ED 78 OD E6 OF 82 77 DOD DA 2B C9 EOP LS DOS 6 3 What s 6 3 s latest Level Fm
238. ws remain open recursion level of zero additional cleanup duties must take place Since it is possible that a WINDOW service request could be made without activation of PRO WAM the exact nature of processes performed depends on the status of the environment flag If an application is invoked via the WEXEC function without activation of PRO WAM the environment switch would not be made unfortunately the WAM22 fix added the code which restores the video mode to the global cleanup process rather than the cleanup process which is executed just when the environment flag is set The problem was that my PAW program was using WEXEC external to PRO WAM activation the video mode was not captured but it was restored Since the video mode is stored in the DOS MFLAGS which also keeps a flag for enabling the external I O port whenever I exited an application invoked via PAW MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY SUMMER 1988 58 Volume DI the external I O port was disabled this action disabled my hard drive Since the hard drive was disabled the next attempt to invoke an application resulted in a locked up system The hard disk driver was caught in a never ending loop waiting for the hard drive to get ready The solution to all of this was to revise the video mode handling routine to not do any cleanup unless the environment flag was set The small patch WAM23 FIX which follows corrects for this behavior WAM2
239. y of the program but then that s what I thought at first about an earlier version that I got too v1 68 or thereabouts That one only worked on a Model 1 and crashed on a Model 3 whereas this one seems to be the other way around Better send the disk back for repairs I guess Not that that is your concern just thought I d mention it in passing Well there s nothing more I can think of for now so with my best wishes to all the family Good Grief they almost feel like part of my family Best regards to all Fm Lee C Rice Ph D Friends Thanks for TMQ 1144 which as always contains a wealth of information and help In the past couple of issues you ve mentioned that you want articles from readers Would you be interested in one on Letters to the Editor Volume II desktop publishing MU Press publishes both a journal Philosophy amp Theology and a series of volumes Mediaeval Texts in Translation which are produced on an HP driven by a Model 4 We spent a couple of years setting up the software configurations and writing our own utility software as well as examining a lot of MSDOS text formatters Word TROFF Word Perfect PC Write etc before ending up using the Model 4 I don t know if your readers would be interested in this sort of information or not I am the author of several articles appearing in other micro journals and would be happy to send you something IF you think readers would be interested

TMQ Vol III.i - tim

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