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Editorial - Well PolyMorphic Systems has a new address, see their

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1. 0 PRINT list of integers The final arrangement must 0 PRINT have O on the left and count up to the highest 100 PRINT integer on the right Tou cam only reverse 110 PRINT the order of a block of integers This block 120 PRINT can be any length but mast begin with the left 130 PRINT most integer For exemple if the carrent list is 140 PRIFT 1234506789 150 PRINT and you reverse 5 you will thea have 160 PRIFT S 43210678 9 170 PRINT Hote the positions of the first and last 5 digits 180 PRINT How if you reverse 6 you will win 190 PRIN 0123456749 200 PRINT If you want to change the array size reverse 0 210 INPUTi How many digits do you want to arrange M 120 PRINT AS M INT M IF Mci THEN 610 230 IF Mci8 THEN 260 240 PRINT I m sorry but 1 can t go beyond 17 array elements 250 GOTO 210 60 G G X 0 PRINT CHRS 12 Game G 270 PRINT Thinking FOR bi TO M 1 280 ACLI RED M 1 IF Li 0 THEN 310 ELSE L2 0 290 IF ACLL ACL3 THEN 280 ELSE L2 L2 1 300 IF Lach THEN 290 310 NEIT R M PRINT CHRS 12 POSITIONS FOR Li i TO M 320 PRINT 31 L1 WEXT PRINT CHRS 11 PRINT THE LIST 330 PLOT 22 43 0 FOR Li 0 TO R i PRINT S31 A L1 WEIT 340 IF W 1 THEN 550 ELSE I Z 1 350 POLE 0 127 PLOT 6 40 Q PRINT This is jar AA A AS Oa 360 INPUT How many integers do you want to reverse R 370 PLOT 90 37 0 FOR I TO 10 PRINT AS NEIT 380
2. James Goodman Memphis TN General mix is excellent I d like to see more articles on on file interchange with non Poly machines and programs for PolyLetter 8606 Page utilities and upgrades 4 I will probably make a quantum jump to a new environment eventually Meanwhile my low capac ty obsolescent system continues to do most of what I need done Elementary data base programs and BASIC programs I write take care of most needs George Montillon Cincinnati OH User level terminal adapatation and Poly to Macintosh software Michael Aquino Washington DC Bit Bucket Fast Loading BASIC Programs Want to save a few seconds time when loading a BASIC program There are two ways to speed up the process The first is to make a SAVEF copy of the program The SAVEF copy is saved in BASIC tokenized form BASIC does not have to translate from ASCII to tokens when a tokenized rogram is loaded The second way is to ypass Exec s normal lookup process Normally we type in the name of the file When sec finds cout that iti isnt a command it calls Gfid to look up the file If Gfid found the file Exec looks in its table of extensions and discovers that a file ending in BS must load BASIC and then transfer control to it Since we already know that the program is a BASIC program we can save the time it takes Exec and Gfid to look up the file by simply typing in BASIC and the file name Then Exec goes directly for BASIC without looking
3. returns sector A carriage return steps out one and a LINE FEED steps back one sector When we get there we will see the following I have maked the byte we must change with x s C DS ES CD 2 SF Ei DI Ci C8 C3 DS ES 06 02 CD R FE 2F El Di Ci C9 EG 7F FS C3 DS ES 21 64 00 ES Id FE OB CA 52 2F FE OC CA 52 2F FS 21 F2 31 3AF R OR HI 31 BE 3E OC DC 2 2F 21 FO 31 3A F2 31 BE D24719 R 1i 1 G 2F CD 50 2F C3 37 2F Fi FE OD C2 52 2F2CD852 ar P RNR 3E OA 4F B F2 SE 2F 26 31 C6 72 6F 7E C9 DE 09 gt 0 A k ro CA 97 2F 3D CA 88 2F 3D CA B2 2F 3D CA B8 2F 3D f J J I C2 CF 2F CD FB 2F AF 32 F3 31 21 CB UF 77 3AFB 21 Iw 31 B7 CO 3A F8 31 77 C9 CD FB 2F 21 F2 31 34 3A1 iw J Ik Fa 31 BE CO 36 00 C9 3E 20 CD 52 2F 3A F3 31 EG 1 69 R 07 C2 97 2F C9 CD CF 2F 21 F3 3 7E CE OR EG FS OH I 77 C9 3A F2 31 B7 C8 OC CD 0 2F 3A F231 B7 Cow 1 Ps B8 2F C9 CD FB SF AF 32 F2 31 C9 00 00 000021 CB F 7E B CA E2 2F 35 C3 OF 20 CD FB U FCiCcs 5 CF 2F 21 F3 31 79 FE 08 C2 EC 2F 35 FE 20 DA FG ty 8 5 iF 3C FA FG 2F 34 3A FS 31 BE DS 79 06 01 OE 00 4 1 y Using the arrow ke move down and over to the location of t CD which has been marked We change that to a C3 he pressing C immediately a lowed by a 3 he cursor will Seep eee 2 Next press ete space aes and the byte will appear changed as ollows CS DS ES CD 2 2F E1 Di Ci C9 C3 DS ES 06 02 CD R FE 2F Ei Di C1 C9 EG 7F FS CS DS ES 21 64 00 ES td
4. Alpha Engineering of Dallas TX Beaird Poulan Chain Saw Distributors of Marshall TX Channel Is Financial Association of Oxnard CA Larry Chinnery of Rockville MD James Coleman of San Diego CA Don Cook of Grand Prairie TX PolyLetter Page Candace Cross of Birmingham AL Chuck Heindel of Brandon FL Rolf Levenbach of Plainfield NJ Mike Linthicum of Goleta CA Coley Andrews of Florence SC Philip Cuba of Atlanta GA Scott Daley of Santa Barbara CA Paul Dishman of Dallas TX Dan Ellis of Ventura CA Mike Falk of Atlanta GA Elizabeth Flynt of Pearl Harbor HI Roger Ford of Atlanta GA Mark Forte of Richmond VA David Freeman of Mesa AZ Mike Giheland of Shreveport LA Genine Gooden of Dallas TX Vince Heuring of Cincinnati OH Bit Bucket The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly analyze all Situations anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence have answers for these problems and move swiftly to solve these roblems when called upon owever When you are up to your ass in alligators it 1s difficult to remind yourself that your initial objective was to drain the swamp Anonymous There is a common misconception among Poly users The MS Mass Storage unit comes in two varieties They are singlo Sided and Double Sided Both Single Sided and Double Sided units use Double Density format There is no such thing as a single density MS If 2 bits are a quar
5. Front Panel Have no fear of this strange display The Front Panel 15 explained in appendix E of the System 88 Users Manual The unsolicited front panel is usually caused by too many interrupts happening in a noisy Celectronic environment In most cases you need only type G to return to what was going on before Occasionally the front panel shows up when a bug in a machine language program puts the Poly in hyper space Look at the first line of the display It begins with PC which stands for Program Counter Then next 4 characters comprise the machine language address of the program counter The rest of the line consists of three preceding instructions the one to be executed next the one in line above the arrow and four following instructions Here s what mine looks like when I hit CTRL Z in enabled mode PC OSEI ET OER Vil SES 3AM 882D B If the byte above the arrow is FF l ke so PC OSPE EN Fob 76 BE SA e8 2D TB Then Poly is in Hyper Space and typing G usually won t work here If Sprung G doesn t work the next thing to do depends upon whether you are in a program such as Edit or BASIC To get back to a user program which has a re entry point type SPJ3203G Edit will work for this BASIC puts you in BASIC with the Program loaded but destroys the run time environment All variables are cleared Other programs depend upon the program To get back to Exec type SPJ04036 Of course
6. There is a glimmer of light but it is quite dim PLUS I have been in touch with a company in Dekalb IL The company is Micro Solutions and they sell software and hardware for CP M and MS DOS machines MINUS I build IBM T compatible machines A clone with 640k plus a twenty meg hard disk and two DS DD drives costs about 1400 00 Mr PolyMorphic is asking 1200 for a hard disk setup Is it worth it It is my opinion that 5 100 is dead The cost of parts and the difficulty in findin parts that are more than three years old make maintaining a Poly very cost inefficient PLUS On the other hand Poly s Exec Editor Assembler and BASIC make the machine a better piece of equipment than almost anything around Poly s lack of software and the need to custom write applications almost makes it ridiculous Since I have written all of my own Applications on the Poly it works fine for me I do my own work on the Poly and all of my consulting work on the clone PLUS CP M is anything but friendly MS DOS is acceptable Exec is easier than both of the above BLUE have copies of most of the major WORD PROCESSORS Poly s Editor beats the hell out of all of them windows shmindows Note I do not consider anything but the latest ROMs 81 or anything less than Exec96 BASIC C04 etc an up to date Poly All of my comments are based on the fact that ou have the above If you have anything less you are using about 50
7. advanced what you see is what you get editors such as WordStar have become industry standards New word processors call themselves WordStar work alikes because the commands are similar WordStar lists for 395 MailMerge for 195 and SpellStar for 195 Dbase II lists for 700 These and the other programs included are in use by thousands of users Even for older versions there are upgrades available for a fee Poly s PLAN for example was an innovative spreadsheet progiss when it was written in 1977 and 7 The author Don Williams went on to write a version for the Apple that sold a lot of copies PLAN is written in BASIC is very slow and does not show recalculations on the screen It is an early primitive ancestor to VisiCalc SuperCalc PerfectCalc MultiPlan and the other current machine language spreadsheets Once I had ye eA on my Osborne 1 I never used PLAN on the poty even though I had a number of well developed spread sheets on the Poly It was faster and easier to rewrite them for SuperCalc than to continue to use them under PLAN Because there are 100 s of thousands of CP M machines in use with more than one hundred thousand users for each of the more popular programs like WordStar SuperCalc and Dbase II the programs are upgraded from time to time often for a fraction of PolyLetter Page the original cost I recently paid 50 to the publisher for an upgrade for the 295 SuperCalc spreadsheet for my Osb
8. earlier versions are rather limited I could go on for pages about the features but here are a few windows which ARE indispensable Back in m two Poly days I would actually use both machines to provide a crude two window system WORD provides as many as eight windows I ve had practical use for as many as six and typically have two to three on screen WORD also provides on screen formatting typesetting abilities auto generation of tables of contents and indexes several flavors of search and replace yes including control characters sorting the ability to undo edits column selection and movement arithmetic abilities outlining a wonderful spelling checker Cand I m picky as hell I wrote the most popular checker for the Poly SPELL 3 0 drivers for virtually any printer in existence Cand ways to build your own with user definable translation tables wonderfully simple and direct text selection and cursor control two levels of user programmable tabs operations customization to fit the eccentricities of the user environment level formatting abilities and on and on and on And oh yes for the first time we have a DOS editor whose updates on a 80x25 character screen are instantaneous just like Poly s 64x15 screen WORD 3 0 not at all true in earlier versions As a Poly user of nearly nine years walked into WORD in a few short hours was dumbfounded that it could be so easy to learn a system tha
9. en how MAILIST BS works is part of the roblem or the minute here is a simple minded way of fixing errors and updating both lists if you have two and keeping them the same 1 Use OLDFILE to find the mitry that needs correcting 2 Correct the entry on one of the lists 3 MAKE NOTE OF THE ENTRY NUMBER 4 Quit OLDFILE If the fixup does not effect the Key Field Use the BASIC program COPYLINE listed below If the fixup does effect the Key Field Use Oldfile to find the aire Correct the keyfield and QUIT Oldfile Use the BASIC program COPYLINE listed below JE HEHEHE HHH HEHEHE REM COPYLINE BS REN HEHE HHHEHHHHHEHE HHEHHEEEHHHHEEEH SHEE HEHEHE RE M A L Data record in first file RE You must know the length of each record REM If you do not know the as es make the Length 55 DIM L 1 550 REM Li Data record in second file REM Y 1 character used for Yes No ret N Record Number JEG HHH HEE EE eo L 1 175 L1 1 175 Y 1 1 Change the Names of theses files REM lt lt First File Name REN a Mia os a lt Second File Name ca al SE al In Case Of Typos REM 42 ON ERROR GOTO 50 REM iB Clear The Screen 50 PRINT CHR 12 REM REM Type The Entry Number pt or Type 0 and return to Exec oe Record Number To Look Up 0 To Quit N REM This works in Exec 94 REM pihi N THEN PRINT CHR 12 Z CALL 0 REM Reads both Files and displays both entries Bf HLEt POS NEIREAD 4 LAFI
10. 8605 9 8604 9 8604 9 8605 9 8605 9 8605 9 8604 9 8605 9 8604 9 8604 9 8604 9 8604 6 8605 9 8604 8 8605 9 8601 2 8603 3 8604 9 8603 6 8603 5 8606 9 8606 9 8603 4 8606 1 8604 3 8605 3 8606 3 8606 3 8605 9 8605 9 8604 3 8606 2 8601 3 8601 6 8606 4 8605 9 8605 9 8603 2 8604 9 8604 9 8606 2 8605 9 8601 6 8605 9 860174 8602 8 8603 8 8605 9 860476 9 NOV DEC 1986 TAPE LOAD AS Program Description 8604 9 TELETYPE CODE BS Program Description 8605 9 TERMINAL FC AS Program Description 8504 9 The First Bug Ralph Kenyon 8605 5 The Hew System Ralph Kenyon 8604 4 The Other Guys Ralph Kenyon 8604 3 The Other Guys Ralph Kenyon 8606 9 Time Display as Hours and Minutes Al Levy 8601 7 Trouble Using a Plotter John McNally 8604 1 Tweak AS Program Description 8604 9 TYPE on a Clone Ralph Kenyon 8604 3 User Defined Fuactions BASIC Charles Thompson 8601 6 Using Mailist Part 4 Al Levy 8601 2 Wait AS Program Description 8604 9 Wanted CASHFLOW Ralph Kenyon 8606 2 Wanted Checkbook Program Charles Mach 8606 1 Wanted Financial Programs James Salinger 8604 9 Wanted Inventory System Travis Miller 8603 5 Wanted Pascal Percy Roy 8605 1 WHO Assembly Language Input Ralph Kenyon 8604 6 WH Assembly Language Output Ralph Kenyon 8604 6 Winners Survey Ralph Kenyon 8603 8 WordMaster II and Keyboards Ralph Cenyon 8603 5 Wormhole Driver Description Ralph Kenyon 8605 6 Zits Ralph Kenyon 8606 1 The Other Guys by Ralph Kenyon
11. DOS people ooh and ahh at the things my DOS machine does That s because my DOS machine s drill instructor during the transition period was the bundle of experience from nearly a decade with Poly 5 SEP OCT 1986 Finally if you make the transition you are no longer bound by hardware I know now that after the initial awful task of shoving 30 MBytes through the serial port and spending months converting my applications and their 10 years of data that I will never need to do this again DOS is too big to die now and all my stuff software and data is in DOS land You can t know how good that makes me feel And Poly philosophically I miss you more than I can say But you will live forever in the ways in which I ll use any computing machine for the rest of my life Frank Stearns 11 20 86 The First Bug At 1525 for you land lubbers that s 3 25 p m on September 9 1945 the Navy s electromechanical Mark II computer was started on a Multi Adder test The test failed At 1545 the cause of the failure was found A moth had been caught between the contacts of relay 70 in Panel F HELP In this section I share with you the help system files I have built up over the last few years The entire system is included with Abstract Systems Exec Covered in this issue are HELP format HELP format bs HELP PROGRAM PUNCH HELP PROGRAM ARISE and HELP COMMAND COPY SHELP format HELP file for system pro
12. I forgot to put my name on this column last time and some of you thought it was Bob s It s really mine however I ll be glad to include submissions from others of you concerning how to make them look and work like us In The Stack Al tevy aee mentioned that CTRL U works in PC DOS like CTRL X does for Poly s System 88 The roiya LIST command works by just typing L and I HATE having to type out Every Poly one knows that DIR means LIST to the printer To avoid this I created the an L BAT file DIR 1 2 3 i MORE With it I get Poly s single letter and MORE causes the display to pause on each page The parameters allow using L ona subdirectory and to include DOS parameters if desired In Exec AiS I can exit from LIST by hitting the ESC key See PL 8604 8 HELP COMMAND LIST but MS DOS only responds to CTRL C Moreover when you hit CTRL C MS DOS blithly asks you if you want to terminate the batch file I wouldn t have hit CTRL C if I didn t dummy Turing of this rather soon I modified MORE to exit when I hit the ESC key Now when I use L on my clone I can escape all this tom foolery by hitting ESC In Poly s Exec s X exits from an incomplete TYPE command in Exec A S ESC exits from an incomplete TYPE command as well as from an incomplete LIST command Reader s Responses Frank Stearns more articles on More articles like Confessions 8605 amp hardware boards etc
13. Portage IN 46348 Cedar Lake IN 46383 Bobenhouse Irma The BEAMS any P O Box 2418 Des Moines 10 58311 Chevalier Steve Southwest Engineers of LA Box 2484 Natchitoches LA 71457 Kelso Bob 108 Belle Chasse Drive 2586 Lafayette LA 7 m on Ral ract yates E Etc Di White Oak Williamstown Ma 81267 re Bob 23 dicott Dr tboro MA 81581 Davis Dr David V 15881 Providence Brive t LiF Southfield MI 480 Petty Raymond c 0 Neng 9 9th amp Tryon St Charlotte NC 28255 aes Thomas E The Chardon an 2500 Sahler oe Omaha NE 48111 Teall Robert A Bob s Industrial Electronics 1728 North Sherman North Platte NE 69101 Bushnell Dave 47 Hudson Ave Maplewood NJ 207048 Hills Jack 6 Los Alamos Nat l Laboratory ir so lb Vista Drive Mulloy Patrick 4371 Toledo Ave Las Vegas NV 89121 Al Hart Record Co Hicksville NY 11881 ptb sony C Suellen Dr Drive Palmer Poroner M amp B lt lt N The Art Liaison Inc 305 West 28th St 136 0021 New York NY 1 Rosenfeld Sam uter Applications 61 Crai Islip Tories NY 11752 j E anas R odenis NY 14428 Gross Charles W 445 Rising Hill Dr Fairborn OH 45324 e Jack I Anderson Wa Cincinnati 45242 Jones Robert L ADirections Inc 3222 N High Street Columbus aa Ein aa er amp Associates Cincinnati OH 45222 Ains Pa Babee Company llips Bldg Bartlesville OK 74004 Dav
14. You can pick up drives at prices from 5 00 to 100 00 depending on your resources Try to get a hold of a MS controller board Just to startle you I am enclosing a printout of my Directory in Drive 4 If the price gets too steep talk to Ralph about his 96 TPI drives which work off of the Single Density controller boards 1600 sectors per drive Ed There is a great possibility that we will be running the Poly software on PC clones Details will be published as the works progresses in future issues of PolyLetter The aim of the project will be to a read Poly disks on the IBM clone b Run Poly disks on the IBM clone c transfer files from to Exec Dos by putting disks into the machine on which you are working To read Dos Disks NorthStar CP M disks Kaypro disks etc on the Poly you must have Poly CP M Note Poly s CP M can only read and write the NorthStar single density disk format but most CP M software will run once it is copied over into NorthStar or Poly disk format Ed Please read my article on the MatchPoint hardware software combo This is significant If you cannot run CP M on the Poly or if you don t know if you can run CP on your Poly contact Ralph or my office This will be a Siegert oint I intend to run off a mimeogra check list with costs involved which will send to you for a STAMPED SELF ADDRESSED ENVELOPE I also think its about time m got off our duff and sent meaningful questions o our
15. each Contact Abstract Systems 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 458 8421 Send for a complete software catalog 3 New 88 MS 8 DSDD rack mount no wood cover with controller 995 2 used 8813 s SSSD with 2 drives 64K monitor and Keyboard III 495 each New 20 Meg Hard Disk 1295 From PolyMorphic Systems at 7334 H Hollister Avenue Santa Barbara CA 93117 Phone 805 685 6238 REVIEWS I have no particular software packages or articles to review here so I will use this slot to review the public domain software area Public domain software is software which someone has written and given away the rights of exclusive controll of it Usually stuff which has been published anywhere without any copywrite notice is ublic domain free for the taking In olyLand this includes stuff which some wrote while they had a Poly and sold if the buyer places the software in the public domain If you have written any programs which you are willing to give away suggest you place them in the public domain I have collected and put together several disks See In the Public Domain MAR APR 1986 of such software The past PolyLetter disks of the month are such examples As editor of PolyLetter these disks will be available for the price of 10 each Cincluding shipping This small fee is to help pay for the maintenance of the library The larger this library gets the better the survivability of the Poly is so ac
16. nothing is guaranteed if the Poly got to the front panel hyper space from a software crash or some kinds of hardware problems it might just be best to punch the load button and start over I have a program called Inhibit which stops spurious front panel interrupts There is also one in the July 82 Disk of the Month You can do it with the following BASIC program 10 POLE 3100 100 REM Set the SS interrupt 20 POLE 3101 0 REM vector to loret 30 2 CALL 1027 REM Return to Exec CP M I loathe CP M as an operating system Mostly I have used a few programs in the CP M public domain but have not done much of anything My viewpoint s that CP M should be used only in private PolyLetter 8606 Page and only when it cannot be avoided However since you have a NEC 8801 which probably runs under CP M you may want to et some use from it All I can say is hat if there are any public domain CP M programs you want you can probably get hem from Al Levy for a token amount Progronming under CP M is another story That requires mastering assembly language Assembly Language am planning to put some assembly language programming articles n The first one I have in mind is about housekeeping requirements There have been some programs in previous issues of PolyLetter 8002 Top of RAM 8004 WHO WHi Input Output 8101 Today 8103 MACROS 8204 PL Inhibit front panel 8206 More MACROS 8506 Still more MACROS 860
17. old lt new creates an output file named new on the same drive that the input file old was found SHELP HELP file for system command The 8 command sets the Wild Card Path Syntax d path RETURN cancels the previous wild card path d sets the wild card path to d 4 dcpath sets the wild card path to d path Use LIST is equivilent to LIST dipath TYPE lt file is equivilent to TYPE d lt path lt file Example 2 lt LETTERS SHELP PROGRAMS HELP file for programs Help is available for the following programs ARISE Clock Cursor DIRCOPY dlist Emedit prism PUNCH RDB Reset slist Syntax HELP PROGRAM lt name RETURN Example HELP PROGRAM lt ARISE HELP PROGRAM lt namel displays the help file for name HELP PROGRAMS displays this message again FETCH ew BASIC One of the features which is available in Poly BASIC is recursive functions Unfortunately the implementation is not a Eee one in that the variables can get clobbered by sucessives calls to the same function One way around that is to define an array for the parameters of the function The function must keep track of the level at which it is called and operate on the parameters passed at that level In the following program the parameters parren to the function FN M are copied o he appro ae level in the pray 2 statement Of course there is a mt to the Tooth of ca
18. xample AS CHRS 0 3 REM LEN CAS 3 FILE 4 POS 1 PRINT 4 A8 writes hex 30 00 33 FILE 4 POS 1 INPUT 4 48 returns hex 30 33 LEW A 2 FILE 4 POS 1 READ 4 A returnas hex 30 33 LEN A 2 Note One expects trailing 00 bytes to be skipped Movember 3 1982 November 8 1982 According to Len Araki at PolyMorphic Systems the file input routine in basic skips all OOH bytes returned from the file Notes on a fix a Amend the file input routine to return 00H bytes with NZ sag set when there are actual OOH bytes in the file b Amend the string input routines to input as many characters including 00H bytes as are needed to fill up the string ean a routine to backtrack over trailing nulls 2 Writing to a fixed length file with blank Chex 20 records in the INOUT mode continues to write past the end of the file without reporting an error It is possible to write past the end of the file and on top of data past the end of the file I lost several programs in one incident Page 6 PolyLetter November 8 1982 According to Len Araki at PolyMorphic Systems use of FILE X POS N prior to writing will prevent this type of problem because the actual end of file check in done in the POS routine Do HOT use FOR 1 1 TO 1000 PRINT 3 A HEXT DO use FOR I 1 TO 1000 FILE 4 POS 1 PRINT 5 A8 WEIT GAMES For you Adventure fans here is a map of the maze of twisty little passages all different If you fin
19. 00 20 System Programmer s Guide 50 00 Theory of operation manuals for the following boards including schematics 1 5 DSDD Controller A 20 00 2 8 Controller i 20 00 3 SSSD Controller 15 00 4 Video Board 20 00 5 CPU Board 20 00 6 4 0 Monitor ROM 20 00 7 48K amp 16K RAM 15 00 Add 5 00 for shipping and handling CP M hardware conversion CP M license manuals 100 plus parts and software 200 16K to 64K memory card conversion 125 00 prus parts The 16K board has to be a oly board and in good working condition t inch MAXALL 32 hard ttes for your MS 15 00 per box or 0 per ten boxes From l Levy Post e Aigi 71 Hicksville NY 11802 516 sectored wa oo F W For Sale monitor 8813 with 1 drive Hitachi Keyboard and Practical Automation Printer Best offer From Barry Adler Gynecare 230 Route 59 Monsey NY 10952 914 357 8884 Pits Beatrice Allen NE Wanted Poly Keyboard II or Daubendiek 1821 Jackson St 68310 402 223 5863 For Sale 3 drives Multiple 8813 systems each with 64K Monitor and Keyboard Make 5 NOV DEC 1986 offer Robert L Schwartz 906 Main Street Cincinnati OY 45202 TI 241 3447 BASIC Programming Many readers have said that much of what has been ublished in PolyLetter is too technical tor them Well I would not go that far but I would admit that it may have been too technical for their present stage of involvement with Gi ar e
20. 2 M ea Televideo 950 terminal cache memory CP M 2 Wordstar 3 0 w MailMerge amp SpellStar Dbase II 1 4 with Zi accounting packages 4 spreadsheet E eA Also for sale was a Qume Sprint 45 printer for an aditional 950 2900 for a system that was faster newer had greater on line storage with better eh ee and in some cases more powerful software than the Poly Following are excerpts from the to the lessor Along with the ads selling used Polys I am enclosing a sheet describing some other used equipment for sale in Spokane I thought it might be helpful to do a comparison of the Poly versus another piece of used equipment with bundled software letter PolyMorphic wasar esigne CPU chip 6086 7808 a faster enhanced version of 8680 Clock rate 1 8 ah 0 ahr over 3 times as fast as a Poly Main memory 48 to SEK ar Operating system Poly s proprietary CP M industry standard Only Poly software will rum on Poly 1000 s of programs are available for CP M systems 2 5 1 4 SSSD 90K ea 2 8 DSDD 1 2 Meg ea 80K bytes 2 400K bytes over 25 times greater on line storage Quasar allows much larger text files date files and easier back ap of data hard sector soft sector industry standard not on 5 Poly system included comes with Poly 8 system Disk drives Total capacity Disk format Cache Memory Software Much as I like the Poly operating system and Poly s WordMaster text editor formater
21. 3556 A matrimonial merger was included in the deal Congratulations Bob Glitch of the Issue My apologies for spelling and typograpical errors in the last issue In my aste to get it out I didn t run everything through the spelling checker Also my proof reader didn t get around to looking over the proofs until after publication Let s see now proof reading comes before publication ya dat sounds right We ll try to get the order straight from now on My deepest apologies to MARK Sutherland for getting his name wrong I must have been talking to too many Chucks lately Conversation with PolyMorphic Systems By Bob Bybee MAY 86 I had an interesting conversation recently with Sirous Parsaei the current head of PolyMorphic Systems He was quite candid with me on several issues By now it s certainly no secret that Poly s operation is trimmed to the bone Poly s only sales seem to be from hard disks and from support of old customers repairs and occasional upgrades There is no new system for sale and no new software development is being done for the old system Other rumored projects such as PolyNet and Pascal are never going to be Buying the Source One of my reasons for calling Sirous was to find out if it would be possible to buy the source code for the oly operating system and utilities I m interested in this for two reasons First we all know PolyLetter Page that someday Poly won t be around
22. 5010 Hi INT M 68 M1 MOD M 42 5020 RETURN X 503 FNEND Terri rit ttt iti ittttitttiiitttittestititttttt tits REM suple Routine REM o a Accept a number of minutes E b display as Hours and minutes REM Submitted to Polyletter 02 01 86 REM Al Levy REM Box 71 REM Hicksville NY 11802 REM 516 293 8368 REM 10 DIN YS 1 1 Z8 CHRS 12 3 D ON ERROR GOTE Ad 40 PLOT 12 3030 ADRAN 127 38 2PLOT 40 30 50 INPUT Number Of Minutes MPOKE 0 ta 40 RESETH INT W 60 M1 HOD M F 70 PLOT 40 24 0 BQ PRINT H AUR AND M1 HINUTES POKE 0 160 HA PLOT T Dyb BDRANI27 4 2 b sr ta ain yy REN it IF yg y THEN 120 IF _Y N OR Y n THEN PRINT Z Z CALL 0 130 GOTO 98 POLYLETTER Editor and Publisher Charles Steinhauser Contributing Editors Al Levy Charles Thompson Subscriptions US 15 00 yrs Canada 18 02 yr Overseas 20 00 yr pa able in US dollars Editorial contributions Your contributions to this newsletter are always welcome Articles suggestions for articles or questions you d like answered are Soo accepted This is your newsletter please help to support it Advertising camera ready 2 00 column inch full column 18 08 full page 30 00 Personal ads are free of charge Polyletter is pie iyo PolyLetter is not affiliated with PolyMorphic ystems PolyLetter 403 FAIRVIEW DRIVE RICHARDSON TEXAS 75081 214 649 3169 FIRST CLASS MAIL PolyLetter The Newsletter for
23. I thought I d share my experience with you in case you started getting a similar problem I had a problem like this once with memory location 6A94 on another board which only showed up when the 8 MS disk was used I got rid of the MS and never had another problem with that memory card In that case would IMAG a disk and then use COMP DISK to compare the original and the copy About 3 to 5 bytes per disk were changed al dropping the 20H bit That s the problem i traced to memory location 6A94 It seems to involve the CPU going into the halt state and the converted 64K dynamic ram cards Any hardware hackers out there got any ideas The New System By Ralph Kenyon The new system has been a closely guarded secret at Poly but some of its parameters have finally leaked out It is really something else The biggest surprise is its completely integrated software package Considering Poly s integrated software in 1976 I guess it s really not such a surprise The front end is a natural language processor NLP with PolyLetter Page a dynamic translator DT which converts any spoken language into its highly flexible internal representation a new language design called mentalese Noam Chomski predicted it s existence but it was Fodor who proved its ability to translate between any two languages The NLP uses a combination of structured semantics transformation SST and Graded Unprocessed Extra Segmented Syntax While Or
24. JUN 1986 does work on keyboard II Each function key generates a single control character but the WordMaster II software also recognizes a multiple key stroke escape sequence Preface C to the WordMaster II manual explains that Keyboard II can be used by substituting the ESCAPE sequence listed in the table below for the appropriate function kay In addition I have listed other ways to accomplish the same result KEYBOARD III equivalents for KEYBOARD II FUNCTION ASCII HEX CONTROL ESC SEQUENCE I FS 1 A ESC H I GS 1D 3 ESC 5 III US 1E ST ESC A IV RS iF DEL _ ESC CTRL E CLEAR CAN 18 X x 8 ae bade Sh de ue 5n aby a al Ye ad hee h and _ are all on SHIFTed keys it requires an extra finger to hold down both the SHIFT and CTRL keys unless you re pretty dexterous while pressing another character key Personally I find the two key escape sequence easy to remember because of their mnemonic value ESC H elp ESC SJelect and ESC A dd are easy to remember while ESC CTRL E is the same as the exit sequence for Edit But for those purists who desire the minimum keystrokes CTRL DELETE would be preferred to ESC CTRL E I nearly never actually use WordMaster II in its menu version I use Edit and FORMAT instead It would be interesting to see how many of our users do or do not use WordMaster II and why Please write in and tell us whether you do or do not use WordMaster II and what you like or dislike about it Also i
25. Kenyon Al Levy ae Kenyon Al Levy Constantin Pavloff Charles Steinhauser Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon James Salinger Ralph Kenyon Al Levy Al Levy Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Constantin Pavloff Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Charles Thompson Al Levy Ralph Kenyon Page 8602 6 6603 6 8604 8 8604 8 8605 8 6605 8 8605 4 8606 7 8606 7 8603 2 8605 10 8606 2 8608 3 606 8606 2 8606 2 8604 9 8605 3 4606 7 8606 3 8602 2 8602 4 8606 2 8605 6 8605 2 8604 8 8606 2 8606 2 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8603 7 8601 7 8604 8 8601 7 8606 2 8601 3 8602 1 8603 1 8604 1 8605 1 8606 1 8606 10 8604 9 8605 5 8603 1 8603 2 8604 8 8606 2 8606 2 8603 5 8603 2 8604 9 8604 1 8606 1 8602 6 8604 7 8602 6 8605 6 8604 7 8604 8 8604 8 8605 5 8605 5 8603 6 860576 8605 5 8602 6 8602 5 8601 6 8603 7 8603 7 8 Historical Sketch of Poly HORSE RACE BS Program Description nH To Use Setup IBM made to LIST like Poly IBM made to TYPE like Poly NOV DEC 1986 Ralph Kenyon Charles Steinhauser Al Lev Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon INDUSTRIAL SIMULATION BS De
26. Listing PolyGlot Library Volume 06 Listing PolyGlot Library Volume 07 Listing PolyGlot Library Volume 08 Listing PolyLetter Hardware PolyLetter Printing Ralph Kenyon Al lary Al Levy Al Levy Charles Mach Charles Mach Charles Mach Chris Bagley Chuck Gross Constantin Pavloff Doug Heary Earl Gilbreath Jack Hills James Purvis James Purvis Jim Ryan Jim Salinnger Jim Trahan John McMally Joseph Toman Michael Aquino Percy Roy Robert Johnson Russ Nobbs Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon NDER BS Program Description Ralph Kenyon Al Lev Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Lenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Al Lev Ralph Lenyon Bob Bybee Ralph Kenyon Bob Bybee Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Percy Roy Bob Bybee John McNally Russ Nobbs Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon 8603 1 8604 1 8606 4 8605 3 8604 1 8605 6 8606 9 8604 9 8605 9 8604 9 8605 9 8602 5 8601 2 8605 8 8602 7 8602 7 8604 6 8604 9 8605 9 8605 8 8602 2 8605 9 8604 3 8604 4 8605 9 8604 3 8604 3 8606 9 8604 6 8606 7 8605 8 8605 1 8604 3 8604 1 8606 7 8602 7 8602 7 8602 7 8602 7 8602 7 8602 7 8604 8 8604 9 8604 1 8604 1 PolyLetter 8606 PolyLetter Subscriber Address List PolyLost LA m olyMorphic Systems PolyMorphic Systems PolyMorphic Systems PROGRAM LOAD AS Program Description PROMS Dio Read Error BugMote 004 0 Ralph Kenyon Printer Interf
27. PolyMorphic Systems Owners and Users PolyLetter 8602 Table of Contents Editorial r 1 Letters To amp from The Editor 2 News 3 Is There Any Hope For Poiy Users 3 Ads 5 Reviews 5 Regular Features Assembly Language Pro r aaa Help How Does it work 5 BASIC gt z 6 BugNotes 6 Games 3 7 Public Domain 7 Readers Survey 8 Editorial This is a surprise I find that I have volunteered to take over time when it is 3 issues behind schedule I am calling this issue the MAR APR issue because I have not decide whether or not I cannot catch up to the schedule The worst part of this is that the former editer Charles tells me that no one has written or called to complain about the tardiness What kind of people are these subscriber that do not complain when their favorite publication does not arrive on schedule Well whatever kind of people you are I hope to serve you as well as the past editors of PolyLetter have Cif not better I have made suggestions to the different editors about how to organize PolyLetter but none have taken the bait As a matter of fact that is why I am now the editor I have a chance to do the things I have suggested I hope to implement a number of departments and features to cover most users needs Included among these are Letters comments and opinion from our readers help information about various system facets information about bugs that have been discovered comment
28. Systems Proms Enhancements amp bags corrected 35 PolyGlot Library Volumes 6 each Send 1 00 for a complete catalog free ne any order Make checks payable to Ralph Kenyon c p m mao anam From Foote Bog Systems 7334 ollister Avenue Santa Barbara CA 93117 805 685 6238 uals Field Service Aligning 88 disk drives Ow awn oo oo WordMaster II User s Manual z System Programmer s Guide ory of operation manuals for 0 aak oOoo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0o ooococoo a lowing boards Cincluding sch 3 SEP OCT 1986 3 Printer Interface 15 00 4 Adding a SSSD or DSDD drive 15 00 5 Keyboard II amp III 15 00 6 Testing amp Maintaining 88xx 15 00 7 88 MS user s manual 25 00 8 Confidence 25 00 9 Hard Disk 15 00 0 Exec 96 Addendum 1 00 1 Twin System 15 00 2 Twin System Confidence 25 00 3 Twin System Diagnostics 25 00 4 Plan gt 3 00 5 Mailist 35 00 6 Assembler 2 00 T Basic 40 00 8 40 00 9 40 00 0 50 00 h o e 5 DSDD Controller 8 Controller 3 SSSD Controller Video Board CPU Board 4 0 Monitor ROM 48K amp 16K RAM Add 5 00 for shipping and handling NDU UNIN mh D e RRR Re pea t pat at MoOocowWod BF OOOO U UU U U U U U U U Uu vvv Be CP M hardware conversion 100 plus parts CP M license manuals and software 200 16K to 64K memory card conversion 125 00 plus parts The 16K board has to be a Poly board and in good working condition Eight diskettes fo
29. TX 31 17 D PART2 TX 34 PART3 TX 19 4C PARTI TX b jor 7B READ me 28 65 CPM EDIT TX 16 81 B CPI TX 25 91 POLYLETTER TX 12 AA REMoval BS 5 B4 Q ESCAPE TX Look For Your New file and Check the Addr Column Use SZAP or Szap Type and the drive number of the new file Example Typa and the sector number of the new file This is the number in the Addr Column Example B4 Press the ESCape Key If the file is more than one sector long hit the RETURN until you see the end of the fil es s sssissss HEX 8 s or null characters When have reached the last sector of the file use the down and right cursors to get past the last Gore 7 2 How To Use Setup There have been several inquiries on the use of the printer setup routine Many have come from people that have recently purchased new printers The main complaint has been that they could not successfully connect the new printer and make it work properly The fact is that they did indeed set the parameters correctly however did not know that when the system is booted the old parameters were loaded and that the new setup routine has to be cold booted in order for it to work as planned or call the routine Printer new name to set the Printer as newly defined _ A good starting point when installing a new printer is to view the default printer listing and take note of how it is defined Now carefully read the documentation for the new printer and c
30. Without Arrow Keys With arrow Keys With Numeric Pad Chim OO ee EAN E ep Porc ne ee Memory Top of RAM is CF 562 DFFF 481 5 Drives 8 Drives aD Addional devices Extra printer card installed Device 0 mini card Priater s __ nies SS eee Versions PROMS eee Exects 2a eee PolyLetter 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 Address Correction Requested PolyLetter Editor and Publisher Ralph Keayon Subscriptions US 15 00 Jr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable ia US dollars Editorial Contribetions Your contridbetions fo this newsletter are always welcome Articles suggestions for articles or questions you d like answered are readily accepted This is your netsletter please help sapport it Advertisements by subscribers are free of charge Polyletter is not affiliated with PolyHorphic Systems MAR APR 1986 User s Name Address PRONG Ss Ree ak ts aT a ee pee Please describe briefly how you use your Poly s Business type Do you write programs _ Assably __ MSC __ FORTRAN Forth Pascal Ada Other teagntge ee ee ee To find the PROM version Open the disk doors and press the load button When Error 0306 oys press the CTRL key and then the Z key Then type L0439 and RETURN The horizontal arrow will point at a number 75 76 81 or some other number That is the PROM version number To find the Exec version type RESET at the 3 prompt T
31. Y ESC and then when you Seg Ese Y the square root sign r CTRL Y will appear To make the insertion of an ESC easy why not define the operation using the escape library Since you cannot define the escape key I ll use the key we ll robably never want to use CTRL anyway ane define the key by the sequence ESC gt i left lt arrow CTRL D CTRL U thes when you type ESC the escape character will appear but it will not be a block marker Ralph Kenyon Poly Resale Valu By Russ Nobbs JAN 84 I was approached in 1984 by a person who had bought a Poly system in 1982 to lease to a small business The system was an 8813 with dual 5 1 4 SSSD drives Qume Sprint 5 printer various accessories Poly s operating system WordMaster PLAN and a GL AR package adapted by the now bankrupt Spokane dealer PCI The system with software cost around 11 000 The business wanted to drop the ment The lessor wanted to know how the system could be sold for The was greatly disappointed at my equi muc lessor estimate of 1000 for the printer and 1000 for the Poly and all the software The lessor was hoping for 5500 to 6000 I sent them copies of some recent ads from PolyLetter for examples of PolyPrices and the following comparison of another used system on the market in Spokane Another Spokane business was closing and offered for 1950 a Quasar S 100 system 4 MAY JUN 1986 64K 6mhz dual 8 DSDD drives 1
32. a pain beyond belief to master and it still holds unpleasant surprises However it can be compiled which means it runs bloody fast and has several built in functions that are very useful Of course one also has C Pascal Fortran and nearly every other major real language on a DOS machine Why did this avowed Poly owner and past editor of PolyLetter finally make the switch i DOS machines exist that are at least as fast and faster than the Poly these are the 8 MHz 80286 based AT class machines the 5 MHz 8088 86 based PC class machines are and continue to be first order garbage Those machines are an embarrassment to the word computer The irony here is the raw hardware power needed to match a clunky 8080 with the right software 2 I had a real need for a machine that would run my client s software 3 My clients offered me a Compaq 286 machine for half of list 4 I have a dear friend at Microsoft whose early exposure to computers was on my Poly while we were in school Having worked on Poly himself he understands my demands of a machine and what I will not tolerate Working at Microsoft for the past three years he s been on the cutting edge His patience was enormous as he helped me overcome my various prejudices long enough to be able to show me some incredible things fad any one of these items been missing I never would have made the switch and as it turns out I would have missed a lot Let
33. and decide which TYPE each datum is Payroll hours would be of NUMERICAL TYPE but the names of items in an inventory would be of STRING TYPE STORAGE When BASIC stores a datum it does it by putting it in a location whose contents may be variable We could get access to the datum by telling the computer where to look but it s easier if we just have a name for the location and refer to the stored datum by using the name of its location I ll describe how this works by using an example which may be familiar to some of us In one bar of my aquaintance the liquor was arranged on 3 shelves The top shelf had the ighest quality stuff and the bottom shelf had the cheapest lowest quality stuff One could order top shelf scotch In this example we are using the location name to refer to what is stored in that location In another bar there was only one shelf but one could still order top shelf scotch In this case the name applied to the stuff kept on the left end of the shelf We don t actually care where the location is but we do need to have a name for it in order to refer to the stuff stored there Leaving the bar and heading for the computer we can bring with us the top shelf idea Once we store a datum in the computer we refer to it by the name of its location BASIC has several locations for storing variable data these are appropriately enough called VARIABLES VARIABLES of course must come in two TYPES NUM
34. any service that may call WH1 Assembly Language Programming Here is that memory test program I wrote about in the Anatomy of a Bad Chip article BLK BYTE and CROUT are labels I have added to my system file In this program I define and use one macro WAIT he B register is used to contain the pattern which is put into memory and then tested for The C register is used as a scratch count HL is used as a memory pointer In DISP the top of the stack is used as a temporary storage area To see that the pogran is working the keyboard routine s eft in place If you touch any key while the program is running it will report the memory location changed The location s determined by the test byte stored in KBIP and KBIG he first pass it will be at location FFFF The second pass it will be at location FEFE etc s SEAAAAARLAAAALALALALAAALALAALAATIALALARITARLALAALALALLALS t i MEWTEST AS 2 This program is designed to do a memory test in 1 conjunction with the CPO going into a halt state QEAALTTRLLALTALALTALALIAALATALAAALLNAALIALLLLALTALLIATE REFS SYSTEM SY REF BLE 0397H Clear screen REF CROUT 038DH Output a carriage returna REF DEOU 03DIH Output DE as 4 digit HEY REF BYTE 03DEH Output Aas 2 digit HEX PolyLetter Page REF Dhalt 0409H Stop SD drives REF MEMTOP 2D00H Storage for TOP of RAM ORG OCCOH Free space im onboard RAM IDET 8 8 ghead and start addresses We ll use this block of code many times It p
35. error is only reported if the in memory copy of Edit has been changed To insure matched versions of Edit and Efun Efun computes a checksum for Edit and compares it to its known value I immediately got out my Compare program and compared Edit on the disk with the error with Edit on a master disk No difference What gives How is this possible So tried again and Edit worked fine So chalk it up to a fluke or as Jack woul say a Gremlin and go on with my work couple of days later the same thi happens Another DEAD error Well th time I use ARISE to get back the old fil and try again This time it works begin to suspect that I have one of those 5 Q DPA mm or s M terrible intermittent errors the kind that only show up when the repairman isn t around After a couple of times of this happening put my thinker into high gear Let s see the error couldn t be in reading the disk or there would be a checksum error It could be with Poly proms but I am running on ASROM proms which corrects the multi sector read bug in Poly s proms I begin to suspect that memory is at fault that is that the checksum is changed after Edit 1s read into memory So I run the confidence disk It says there s no errors in memory Now this is gettin really spooky Edit s checksum isn t changed but it is changed I have horrible thoughts about the effect of flakey memory during packing a disk with bytes being changed hel
36. has been set to 0 by the left over code sequence Rtn can t find the overlay it thinks was in memory lt 0 gt fn3 vice lt D gt fn3 Abstract Systems BugMote 004 1 November 3 1982 Dio Exec 95 EDIT 3 3 06 10 81 has a bug when reading files into memory I have occasionally lost one or more whole sectors when reading the input file No error was 8 JUL AUG 1986 reported The sector was not read into memory Sniffing the disk showed checksum error on the sectors not read in On one incident I lost 2 sectors On another incident I lost 1 sector Both happened on drive 2 I occasionally get soft errors on drive 2 In this example I edited the file but made no changes to it Example Saiff 2 oe fe 0102 006C 8 Disk GSpaper3 has 2 files on it 288 sectors in use O deleted 62 sectors free Size Addr ba Sa Name 143 4 6 DSTI 141 4 0 Oas TI Pr BOLOG November 8 1982 According to Len Araki at PolyMorphic Systems this bug is in the ROMs n the SSSD Dio code and only appears during multi sector reads A tix will be incorporated in the next revision to the SSSD ROMs April 5 1983 The correction to this bug has been incorporated into the ASROM proms Public Domain this We ve got some real issue for the public domain we ve got FORTRAN I spoke to Bill Holmes the proprieter of Micro fe a Corp who had marketed a RTRAN compiler for the Poly He reports that both the company that had written t
37. integrated diskette based micros wit renar RARI sophisticated software for its ay The poly may be great for the hacker but it s hell to get zor useful work out of t without struggling to program it every step of the way and every minor change meant another debugging debacle I have CPM and MSDOS machines now that may not be quite as easy to use as TV but they work for me instead of me working for them as I did for the Poly Even now I d use the Poly if I could make it do two very simple jobs without taking the rest of my life to relearn its system and cope with the aberrations of its wondrous Exec On the one hand I have sizable mutual fund and stock data bases on a PC clone and in the closet I have a small but smart Radio Shack four color plotter I d love to use the Poly to drive the plotter to produce comparative performance plots of the individual mutual funds in a family I can print the plot data as a series of ASCII characters out the serial port of the PC if I could get the Poly to receive it and store it to disk A group of such strings would constitute an array for processing and then the Poly could print the plot Instructions out the serial port to the plotter At one time I did have an assembler routine that would accumulate characters from the serial port into memory from the earliest version of the system programmer s manual so I could probably get the data into the Poly and save i
38. merged PolyLetter s mailing list with Abstract Systems and came up with a final list of 400 names I sent my first issue of PolyLetter to the entire list So far I have received over 75 back as address unknown Whenever this happens I wonder what happened to the Poly I have a book of users which has one page for each user The book has been divided into three sections The last section has the names of past Poly users who have gotten rid of their Poly In some cases I have a record of where the Poly went The second section has the names of People whose location has been lost And the first section contains the active subscribers plus those from whom no response has been received We presently have about 75 active subscribers whose interests are quite varied 15 census survey responses have been returned to date The respondents use their Polys in business for accounting general ledger accounts receivable accounts payable and payroll Plan and Word administration Mailist processing loan services and investment advising amortization escrow and interest calculations inventory control product management manufacturers representative and for tax services The reported ersonal uses of the Poly include address ists amortization education games geneology mathematical modeling numerical analysis publishing telecommunication and word processing If your application isn t mentioned here please send i
39. of the Poly s potential Page 3 PolyLetter PLUS Despite my remarks about CP M it might pay to have it installed on your machine Using a combination of programs and cables I have been able to glean the best from each of the worlds mentioned above and use what I need when I need it without too much hassle When I wanted Public Domain Software I had friends create a NorthStar SS SD diskette FORMATTED CINITed using CP M Poly s CP M allows you to read the disk and transfer the files to a Poly CP M disk The PolyMorphic program PCOPY allows one to transfer from CP M to Exec or the other way around One of the CP M tricks is to UNLOAD a file This creates an ASCII Hexfile from a machine language file The file can be transferred Ry cable or modem and then LOADed on the receiving end The result is a perfectly running machine language program I have a CompuPro CP M machine I can always unload a CP M file on the CompuPro and send the HEX file to the Poly via a null modem I am using an assortment of file transfer programs under Exec not FTP and usually work at 1200 baud I then use PCOPY Poly CP M to transfer the file from one Poly disk to another and end up Loading the file on the newest disk The plus side of MS DOS and even CP M There are thousands of Public Domain software packages available There are still more commercial packages available The latest DOS modem program called PROCOMM is free The aut
40. only the pay roll for a radiolog However it comes down to the editor as the one thing most people like best I still think the Poly editor is better than any other I have seen and I plan to adapt it to the IBM PC But I ramble on and on and on Let me continue this saga with the next issue In the mean time send me your stories on how you got involved with the Poly and what you do with it business Ed Letters Dear PolyLetter KKKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK KKKKK The Importance of CP M on a PolyMorphic Pe So STS SCS COSC OS AK KK AK A SSS SSeS eS e See eet es Let s look at the facts and take a hard look at the future First I am buildin and selling PC XT AT clones I write mos of my commercial software on the XT since this is what m customers demand References to Exec are Exec 96 using Rom version 81 or ASROM If you are still using Execs rior to 93 you are using antiquated equipment Although the earlier Execs where ahead of their time they suffer by today s standards a CP M I have in house an Apple Ile MAR APR 1986 3 3 system BASIS a CP M 2 2 system Compupro a PC XT clone MSdos a PC AT clone MSdos and I have used and tested a MegaData Unix system I am also anung software and helping to maintain a Dec PD mainframe 75 users not counting the Data Processing Maintainence People The PDP is using the Unix operating system The pros and cons My favorite machine is sti
41. over the margins once the proofs go to the printers but I will shrink the center division and ask the printer to see If he can shift alternate pages away from the one margin I do not want to reduce the column width a screen width 64 characters in condensed mode 17 1 cpi requires 3 75 inches This gives 7 5 inches of printing not counting the center margin I have been supplying the printer with the printing centered on the page Perhaps I can try to shift it although it will require more hand editing of the print file Ed Dear Mr Kenyon December 26 1986 I was very happy to find the copy of the May June PolyLetter in my MailBox the other morning together with the subscription form which I ve dutifuly sent in I ve been a loyal PL subscriber since 82 1 and PolyLetter 8606 Page am not about to stop now But whatever Dappeanad to my Mr Squock see 84 04 s I looked through the current issue which cannot help but make the 8813 sound obsolete I asked myself Well what does the Poly do better than anything else right now Assuming that many of your subscribers acquired the Diablo 1610 daisy wheel printer one answer is still orn prones rng I know that may raise a few eyebrows in these days when there are so many fancy W P programs around I have two Mac Pluses and am well versed in things like MacWrite and M crosoft Word Nevertheless three facts continue to be inescapable Most fashionable comp
42. processor This device forcasts errors anticipated by the code and data and rewrites the code to prevent the error from occurring before the code gets accessed The system was tested with the Drain the Swamp program It correctly replied Not until you get rid of See the Bit Bucket the alligators Ed The hardware is even more marvelous The entire system is designed with the massively parallel architecture connecting many minuscule PM Gat aie via serial links to each other ach processor is called a Hybrid Operating Master User Node Combining Uniform Logical Understanding States CHOMUNCULUS for short What s reall fantastic about this hardware is that eac HOMUNCULUS divides up its task and farms out the parts to the others so that it has no real work to do itself Since it has no work to do itself it gets the job done in no time at all a real breakthrough in computing speed Of course there is a certain amount of overhead in the communication but because of the parallel architecture and by increasing the number of homuncull in the circuit the jobs get broken up into smaller pieces and it takes less time to farm them out and get the results back a classic case of the well known PC syndrome just get more hardware is that the system may not get 5 JUL AUG 1986 I suppose even Poly had to compromise somewhere ADS From Abstract Systems etc 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413
43. screen is initialized by th system boot process to point to the video display driver Vti in the TwinSystem no separate label for the single user system Certain character values have special effects when displayed They are Code Jane A ad cursor O38 VT Move cursor to top of screen OCH FF Clear screen and move cursor to top oDi CR Move cursor to start of next line 188 CAN Erase remainder of line Fi DEL Move cursor left one position Values less than 20H not appearing in the above list are ignored Note that displaying a character may cause the screen to scroll up a line destroying the information in the top line of the screen The display driver finds the starting and ending ALK address of the screen by examining SCRHM and SCEND On exit from the display driver POS contains the address of the cursor within the video display In the TwinSystem and in ROMs version 81 and later the screen driver does not alter the state of the interrupt system Earlier versions of the ROMs always enabled interrupts In the TwinSystem erasing lines clearing the screen or scrolling the 1s done with the task protected against slicing by first calling the Lock service This prevents the screen from being left partially updated The Unlock service is called as part of exiting the screen driver Vti and WH1i even if Lock was not called this means that a program WEESInG to remain locked against slicing may not use
44. since programs saved in SAVEF tokenized format load much faster The reason is that when BASIC loads a text format program it looks up each keyword and replaces it with a single token The SAVE command reverses the process by looking up each token and then converting it into the text characters that make up the keyword The SAVEF command simply writes out the program in its tokenized format Converting a program saved in tokenized format SAVEF back to text format is not difficult Simply LOAD the rogram and stop it from executing with CTRL Y Then use SAVE to get the text copy Sometimes a program dumps one back into Exec when CTRL Y is hit No matter simply type in REENTER from Exec and then SAVE it One note of caution program modules which CHAIN to one another can sometimes be difficult to deal with MAILIST is an example The problem is that program statements from one module may be left in memory when another module is CHAINed to As a result what we get with SAVE may have some extra stuff in it otk Ralph January 2 1987 I have a request to make about the printing of PolyLetter When I punch 3 holes in the letter to put it in a 3 ring binder some of the text gets cut out How about leaving enough space at the left margin so 3 holes can be punched for booking the letters Charles Mach Irving TX Doug Schrippa also made the same request by telephone I will see what I can do I do not have quite as much contro
45. thousand dollars Compara this to the price of a Poly hard dis sub system I could buy seven clones for the price of a new Poly 8813 It is a bewildering situation I use the Poly for all of my personal and business affairs I own seven PolyMorphic systems and constantly have two working I use the CP M machine and the Apple for my club work LICA Our monthly publication a forty page newsletter is written on the Poly I of course am the standing joke of this 1500 member group When any member visits my office and I give them a ten minute demo of the Poly the attitude changes I hear remarks such as wow I never realized People from Intel were at my office and their minds were bo ates by the Poly s software Exec BASIC Edit Assembler What to do You may not realize the ower in your machine Do we need you ou bet we do Without other users to communicate ideas etc the emotional feel goes There is hardware support from at least three sources There will be software support a Public Domain from Page 2 PolyLetter Ralph myself and any other person who feels they can contribute b Commercial software provided you can afford it and the programmer is willing to accept the task must say I have turned down a few offers on the Poly not because I wasn t willing but had mper priced jobs available and Couldn t find the time My reccomendations are a grab a hold of an MS system eight inch DSDD and find heaven
46. to support the software Even now it seems that software improvements aren t going to come from PolyMorphic anymore Shouldn t this software be available to the user community just in case someone discovers a bug that needs fixing Or in case someone decides that a number of enhancements should be made Second there s always the possibility of running the Poly software on some new hardware someday I know I ve prayed this tune before but I recently found out about a new development that could make it much easier There s a processes chip that plugs into an IBM PC or XT which can execute not only the 8088 instruction set the one IBM uses but also the 8080 instructions Cour Poly s as well People are already running CP M 80 programs on PCs with this chip If we had the source code to the Poly assembler editor BASIC Exec and a few other important pieces of the system it might be possible to run our Poly software on a suitably equipped PC A few minor changes might still be needed but it would certainly be simpler than the massive rewrites we d need to do if we wanted to move to IBM BASIC The chip I m talking about is called the v20 made by NEC It s available from many mail order houses for about 30 You just purl out your PC s 8088 and plug in the 20 instead As a side benefit the chip also runs IBM programs faster than the 8088 did up to 50 faster in some cases I bought a V20 for my PC and have the proce
47. to do is to locate lost Poly users I have several address lists of various ages and have put them all together In some cases a courteous person has notified me that they no longer use a Poly or even where their Poly went If you know of people who had a Poly at one time but no longer have one that information would be valuable in pore the mailing lists If you have nowledge of someone who does not have a Poly any more particularly you users of second hand Polys please send it in to help up purge our list Also if you know of someone using a Poly who does not get PolyLetter please let us know They may have programs to add to the public domain library which would allow everyone to benefit In fact anyone who brings in a new subscriber to PolyLetter will be entitled to a free volume from the library With this issue I am making it easy for you to give PolyLetter feedback by including a pre addressed postcard Letters Dear PolyLetter November 19 1986 Hurrah We thought you had died Up here in the boondocks you are the only connection we have with what is going on out there We certainly like your publication and hope that it will continue as long as there are any of us who still use your machines 1 SEP OCT 1986 We are enclosing the forms and a money order in US for another year s subscription so that we can keep in touch with all the rest of the users and keep getting all the helpful hints and suggest
48. which reads a directory and reports how much space is left in the directory Space was written by Larry Deran and SPACE by Don Moe Wait also written by Larry Deran is a program to hold the computer in Command File mode ve waiting for the operator to take some action Tweak resets the system bit CMDF executes internal command file buffer commands in the Help Your Fellow Users November 11 1986 James Salinger writes is for a program for compound My greatest need interest calculations Others needed are time value oi money interest conversion and cash ow The PolyGlot library volumes 3 and 4 contain programs which do some of these functions Also PolyLetter has a paper Zopy of PolyMorphic Systems CASHFLOW and CHECKBOOK programs CASHFLOW was written in 1977 for BASIC version A00 and CHECKBOOK was written in 1978 for BASIC version B08 Does anyone out there have a copy of either on disk If anyone out there has other financial programs please send PolyLetter some information about them Did you write them and are you willing to share Did you buy them from whom and are they still in business A brief description of the capacity of the system would be helpful PolyLost The following people or organizations who were once on PolyLetter s ae list have turned up missing the dreaded RETURN TO SENDER If anyone knows a current address for these people or where their Poly went Please advise PolyLetter
49. your ideas in to me Cheap Printers Have you noticed the prices on printers lately here are a lot of dot matrix and near letter quality printers for 150 to 200 mail order of course I can t vouch for their quality but sheesh Some of these printers are supposed to run at 120 characters per second about the speed of the TI 810 in my office That one cost almost 2000 a few years ago At 150 the day of the disposable printer may have arrived Board Bank It s called the S 100 Board Bank and it sells a lot of used goodies for old computer systems S 100 based and others Their address is Box 344 Olympia WA 98507 For a lifetime subscription to their catalog The Statement send a check for 4 37 or more As you might guess from the price the owner of this place has a sense of humor The jokes in his catalog are well worth the price of admission He defines a lifetime subscription as 1 the lifetime of your 4 37 or 2 his lifetime or 3 your lifetime or 4 the Board Bank s lifetime as arbitrarily determined by his attorney Austin Tacius Pomposo Your lifetime subscription can be cancelled but only at great cost Your life Anyway there were a few boards that could be useful in a Poly No true blue Poly boards but you never know what might show up I like to keep my eye on any possible sources of PolyParts Setnew For those of you who use BACKUP on your files You ve noticed that BACKUP only copies fil
50. 0 DEFAULT page parameters lines per page Characters per line Lines for TOP margin 0 Lines for BOTTOM A Offset for left EDGE Printer defined If this is your default ping parameters then the next line should read DEFAULT EPSON Then type EXIT or all of this work goes down the bit bucket If you have the cable and header wired correctly the switches or AE y ca S phew done correctly on the printer you ae ready to cold boot the system and enjoy your new printer Aa tr ne Mr yA Mrs Tucon Ar 85741 Biswanger Brian 4235 Dalhart Road NW og A Alba someting see Me ele Wy 82682 Clay Darlene Film Factory 14538 Camden Ave San Jose CA 95124 Daubendiek Allen Washingt on Ave 4 Towa 50010 149 E 582 South Midvale Utah 84047 Howard William 881 Woodsdale Terrace feat Ba 3121 Little George 1634 E th Ave Apt 382 Vancouver B C CANADA VSN 1P3 Miller Travis M Griffins Jewelers Inc 112 N Fredonia St Longview TX 75681 Purvis James P 4315 E Thunderbird 238 Phoenix Az 85832 Ro Te 4 sath Street Einnt neon ig Fairfield AL 35044 Elli John 1432 Lusk St Guntersville AL 35974 Mullins Graham Mullins Computer Service 1431 Marlowe Drive Montgomery AL 36116 Wohlford amp Jenkins Gas Consultants Inc PO Box 3427 Fort Smith AR 72913 Johnson Bob vy Camelback House 432 4618 North 68 th St Scottsdale AZ 85251 Pol ic tems Bab Debbie Read Sant
51. 0 20 20 20 expect 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 41 20 62 GF GE 75 73 20 70 72 GF 67 72 61 6D 3F A bonus program 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 26 20 20 28 2020202020 48 GF 70 65 20 79 GF 75 20 77 696C 6C 20 20 20 Hope you will 63 GF 6D GD 65 GE 74 20 73 GF GD 65 20 64 61 79 comment some day GF GE 20 6D 79 20 68 G9 G4 G4 GS GE 20 20 20 20 on my hidden GD 65 73 73 G1 67 GS 73 20 21 21 21 21 21 21 21 messages 1 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A A 2A 2A 2A 2A ARRaRAAAAAALLAEE 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 202020 53 74 69 GC GC 20 77 72 69 74 69 GE 67 20 61 GE Still writing an 20 G1 72 74 69 63 6C 65 20 GF GE 20 53 7A 61 70 article om Szap 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 202020 52 65 67 G1 72 64 73 20 2D 20 28 41 6C 29 20 20 Regards Al thought I d share with everyone what Here s what I saw when I Survey Winners The first three survey forms returned were from Kenneth Lowe of West Valley City PolyLetter 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 Address Correction Requested PolyLetter Editor and Publisher Ralph Kenyon Subscriptions US 15 00 Jr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable ia US dollars Editorial Contributions Your coatribations to this newsletter are always welcome Articles saggestioas for articles or questions you d like answered are readily accepted This is your newsletter please help support it Advertisements by subscribers are free of char
52. 06 encountered while reading directories No data on the disk has been altered Command file continued Pr HOLOG The first time it happened to me PACK had already moved some data and the next command acted on that disk Annual Index 7986 Requires Drive BugMote 006 0 Ralph Lenyon 8605 8 16 Memory Card Update Ralph Kenyon 8606 3 1984 Resale Value of a Poly Russ Nobbs 8603 4 A Conversation With Poly Bob Bybee 8603 2 About Public Domain Software Ralph Kenyon 6602 5 ACCURATE DIVIDER BS Program Description 8605 9 Address List PolyLetter Subscriber Charles Steinhauser 8601 4 Adventure Maze Map Ralph Kenyon 8602 7 Anatomy of a Bad Memory Chi Ralph Kenyon 8604 4 Assembly Language Input Ralph Kenyon 8604 6 Assembly Language Interface BASIC Ralph Kenyon 6605 7 Assembly Language Output WHI Ralph Kenyon 8604 6 Assembly Language Program Ralph Kenyon 8604 6 Assembly Language References in PL Ralph Kenyon 8606 3 BASIC Assembly Language Interface Ralph Kenyon 8605 7 BASIC Data Types Ralph Kenyon 8606 5 BASIC Function Draw a Border Al Levy 8601 7 BASIC Function To Skip Lines Charles Thompson 8601 6 BASIC Function To Strip Blanks Charles Thompson 8601 6 BASIC Function Recursion Ralph Kenyon 8602 6 BASIC ag bug BugBote 001 1 Ralph Lenyon 8602 6 BASIC LEM input BugNote 008 0 Ralph Kenyon 8606 7 BASIC Program COPYLINE BS Al Levy 8601 2 BASIC Program HANOI C BS Ralph Lenyon 8605 8 BASIC Program HANO BS Ralph Kenyon 8602 6 BASIC Program
53. 4 Memory test I d be happy to answer questions wish to call me Feel free to call if you most any time There are three teen age girls here so the phone is often busy in the evening For the best time get up at about 7 on a weekday and call me then you ll get me at 10 my time and you l have the night rate Ed Dear PolyLetter December 10 1986 I have to commend you for your work with PolyLetter Please keep it going I have a group of programs that I am thinking about sending to you for the Public Domain They are CRUDE but may be of some value to someone Incidentally since I converted from 40K to 64K recently I have a few good boards from the original setup I would consider modifying them for spares I have a good 16K board and a good 8K board Whom do you suggest for this kind of work I would also like to find a possible source for a backup CPU board A question which you may consider for PolyLetter When a BASIC program is stored in SAVEF or SAVEP what happens Further if a program has been stored with SAVEP is there any way that the program can be restored with SAVE Thank yous James Purvis Mill Creek WA P S have only a single sided MS Jim by all means send in the programs You will be entitled to a disk full in exchange for a disk full 5 disk that s A better way to describe a program than CRUDE would be simple and unsophisticated just the kind of thing that beginning programmers n
54. 458 8421 DISKS DRIVES MODEM PROMS SOFTWARE SPELL MAYALL diskettes 13 per box of 18 disk drives Shugart SA 400 50 00 includes shipping Two drive external box and power supply 75 Hayes Micromodem 100 for only 40 300 baud in bus direct connect modem limited quantity HayesSys modem software for the Micromodem 100 35 AIS Spell a good spelling checker for 835 Abstract Systems Exec Enhancements amp bugs corrected 835 Abstract Systems Proms Enhancements amp bags corrected 835 PolyGlot Library Volumes 6 each Sead 1 00 for a complete catalog free with any order _ oo eet a From Al Levy 516 293 8368 1 gt eae inch MAXALL 32 hard sectored diskettes for your MS 15 00 per box or 115 00 per ten boxes From PolyMorphic Systems 7334 H Hollister Avenue Santa Barbara CA 93117 805 685 6238 Manuals 1 Field Service 35 00 2 Aligning 88 disk drives iS 0 6 3 Printer Interface 18500 4 Adding a SSSD or DSDD drive 15 00 5 Keyboard IF amp III 18 00 6 Testing amp Maintaining 88xx 15 00 7 88 MS user s manual 25 00 8 Confidence 25 00 9 Hard Disk i 15 00 10 Exec 96 Addendum 15 00 11 Twin System 15 00 12 Twin System Confidence 25 00 13 Twin System Diagnostics 25 00 14 Plan a A 35 00 15 Mailist 35 00 16 Assembler 25 00 17 Basic 5 40 00 18 Wordmaster II 40 00 19 User s Manual 40 00 20 System Programmer s Guide 50 00 Theory of operat
55. 68 REM Clear Screen and draw Stars REM 10 Z FNA X REM aH HEYA GHHHHHEE HEHE H HEHEHE HEHEHE HEHEHE HEE REM iia Display Banner AALELEZTEZEEETEEEEE EEEE EE EEEEE EEEE E EEEE EREEREER EES 20 PLOT 30 42 0PRINT My Program POKEQ 160 REM HEHHPHEHHHHHHEHHHHHHHHHEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEE E REM REM Put Your Program Here REM REM EEEREEEREEHRREERRHEEREREKEREEEEEEEEEEKEEEEEKX 30 PLOT 30 30 OPRINT ok POKED 160 REM 363TH EEEE REM REM Define Functions At End Of Program REM Then they can always be added REM to new programs REM REM Sh a ial 4000 DEF FNA X 4010 V 47H 0 4020 PRINT CHR 12 POKEQ 160 4030 PLOT aa DRAW 127 y 1V V 6IF V gt 40 THEN 4030 4040 RETURN 4050 FNEND hi A LITTLE TIME ROUTINE REM Sam ie Ka Defined Definition REM Accept a number of minutes iaa oa display as Hours and minutes REM Submitted to Polyletter 02 01 86 REM Al aiy REM Box 71 REM Hicksville NY 11882 fe 516 293 8368 10 DIM Y 1 1 Z2 CHR 12 20 PRINT Z 40 PLOT 50 Q0RAW 127 30 2PLOT 40 30 0 50 INPUT Number Of Minutes MPOKE 0 160 b0 E FIAI PLOT 40 21 BA PRINT Hi HOURS AND Mi MINUTES POKEQ 160 90 PLOT 0 6 QDRAW127 4 2PLOT 40 6 100 INPUT bo Again YsPoKe D 160 110 IF Y Y OR Y y THEN 120 IF Y N OR Y n THEN PRINT Z Z CALL 0 130 GOTO 90 REM HEEEEKELKE EKER EEE LER ERE EERE ERERERE EERE EERE REREL EEE REM Rn User Defined Functions REM 32GB EEE HEHEHE 5000 DEF FNT X
56. Add bit shifted to CARRY 80 WOV M A sStuff into screen memory POP PSN Get it back INI H iMove up to next display location DCR C Count down our number of bits JEZ DISPI Co back to do more RET All done Start with TOP of RAM Get byte from memory CAE LHLD memtop CI MOV A M CHP 8 sls it what we put there CEZ SHOW ilf aot show the user DCI H Drop back to the next byte MV ALIFE iSee if we already did 20008 CHP H JEZ CI iHope so go do more RET SHOW ICHG Ok it s bad Get the address to DE Show the user what the address is Put it back to BL Output a space Cet what it should be CALL DEOUT ICHG CALL BLE MOV A B 7 JUL AUG 1986 PESEE 83023 i ye Directory HF DX has the complete Abstract Systems Help files on it Most are included with Exec A S I am constantly adding files to the system The following are available as of this writing Which ones shall I do in the next issue HELP BASIC CMDF COMMANDS CTRL U files format FORMAT GAMES HELP INITIAL KEYBOARD MACROS NEW PROGRAMS Restore SERVICE SYS HELP COMMAND Auth boot CONTINUE COPY DELETE DIRECTORY DISABLE DISPLAY DLIST DNAME DONT DUMP EDIT ENABLE TER fold FULL GET HELP IMAGE INIT LIST PACK PAGE PRINT Printer REENTER RENAME RESET Restart Auth SAVE SetSys Sniff SQUEAL START TYPE UNDELETE UnSys WRITE ZAP HELP format bs chr cmt cnt cor date graph input
57. E COMPUTATION and OUTPUT Okay we re going to discuss how to do this in the BASIC programming language BASIC is one of the simplest languages to learn one doesn t need to know much about the computer hardware to use BASIC INPUT Before we try to get the data into the computer we need to take a look at it There are two types of data we can deal with in BASIC There are numbers on the one hand and words on the other hand Numbers are composed of the digits 0 through 9 the or sign perhaps a decimal point and maybe for scientific notation the letter E The number 23 can be expressed in the following ways EST Oa LARGIT d in scientific notation FERT Or 2 3E 1 3E 2 OSOE Smi 9 et Words are composed of a string of alphabetical characters and or digits Since a string of characters could be all digits we or the computer might get confused as to whether it was a word or a number To prevent this confusion from happening BASIC has two TYPES of data These data TYPES are NUMERICAL and STRING types information is used only it probably has no business Of course it is An item which PolyLetter 8606 is a STRING TYPE is always pe in Page uotation marks An item which is a NUMERICAL TYPE s never put in quotation marks 23 is an example of a NUMERICAL TYPE 23 is an example of a STRING TYPE Before we go ahead an try to input data to the computer we must look at the data
58. ERICAL and STRING the names of VARIABLES in BASIC consist of an upper case alphabetic character A thru 2 or an upper case alphabetic character and a single digit PAO jtherw wag In addition a STRING VARIABLE has a dollar sign appended A thru Z and A0 thru Z9 So when we get data into the computer we need to decide which of these locations to use for which datum If you ve been paying attention you have pet looked at the data and decided which TYPE each datum is therefore you know which VARIABLE TYPE is needed for which datum A datum of NUMERICAL TYPE must be put into a VARIABLE of NUMERICAL TYPE and a datum of STRING aioe must be put into a VARIABLE of STRING Suppose we have decided that we want to enter some very simple inventory data how many and what we have Clearly how many we have is of NUMERICAL TYPE and what we have is of STRING TYPE Let us decide that we will put the quantity into the VARIABLE Qi and we will put the name into the VARIABLE Ni The quantity datum is of NUMERICAL TYPE and VARIABLE Q1 is of NUMERICAL TYPE The name datum is of STRING TYPE and the VARIABLE Ni is of wn TRING TYPE Before we start writing the program we must know a housekeeping requirement that BASIC has BASIC assumes that a program is a sequence of numbered lines and it executes these lines in numerical order So to get our quantity and name into 6 NOV DEC 1986 our beginning inventor
59. FE OB CA 52 2F FE OC CA 52 2F FS 21 F2 3134F NU OR EE 31 BE 3E OC DC 2 2F 21 FG 31 3A F2 31 BE D2 47 19 RP is 1 G RF CD 0 2F C3 37 2F Fi FE OD C2 52 2F2C3252 2F P I UR 3E OA 4F B F2 SE 2F 26 31 C6 72 GF 7E C9 DE 09 gt 0 amp 1 ro CA 7 2F 3D CA 88 2F 3D CA B2 2F 3D CA B8 2F 3D f f Ie C2 CF 2F CD FB 2F AF 32 F3 31 21 CBF 77 3A FB 21 Jw 31 B7 CO 3A F8 31 77 C9 CD FB 2F 21 F2 31 343A 1 iw ik F4 31 BE CO 36 00 C9 3E 20 CD 52 2F 3A F331 EG 1 6 gt Ri 07 C2 97 2F C9 CD CF 2F 21 F3 31 7E CO 08 EG F8 r I i 17 C9 3A F2 31 B C8 OC CD 50 2F 3A F2 31 B7 C2 w Fiz 1 B8 2F C9 CD FB 2F AF 32 F2 31 C900 00 00 002i n 21 CB 2F 7E B CA E2 2F 35 C3 0E 20 CD FB UFCi C3 J8 j CF 2F 21 F3 31 79 FE 08 C2 EC 2F 35 FE 20 DA FG iy 7 8 2F 3C FA FG 2F 34 3A FS 31 BE D8 79 06 01 OF OO Ve J i 7 Pressing CTRL E causes the changed sector to be rewritten to disk befor exiting Szap Now Prnt has been modified for the special driver on this disk If you do not want to make the change ermanent the solution is much simpler e ENABLE the system hit CTRL Z to bring up the front panel key in L2F4D RETURN key in C3G and the change will be installed until the next time the Prnt overlay is called by a printer command or a program To make this temporary change from a BASIC program is even easier The program merely must include the command POKE 12109 195 There is a way to py ans the worm hole drivers ike Sele ih A is a bit more in
60. FUL HINTS IN LAYMEN S LANGUABE by Charles A Thompson Attorne 2907 Rosedale Avenue Dallas TX 75205 1532 _ Recently I was discussing the capabilities of Poly BASIC oO ee oe programmer who has written some very sophisticated business software for his Poly s To my surprise he wasn t uein user written functions After a quick demo however he found many places where a well written function would save both space and time An easy way to understand a function is to think of it as a atl Indeed a multi line function even ends with a We all use the built in functions regularly TAN X INT X SORT X etc All we do is to substitute for the X the number for which we want the tangent integer square root and BASIC returns the answer A user written function works the same way For example you want to do a simple arithmetic routine many times You can write a function to do this Let s say you want to add two figures multiply the sum by a third and divide the result by a fourth A function to do this could be 5008 DEF FN M X1 X2 X3 x4 5010 X X1 X2 X3 X4 5020 RETURN M 5030 FNEND What have we done On LINE 5088 is the required DEF FN could be DEFFN to tell BASIC we re defining a function Then we specify the variable name of the function DEF FN M Then in lg theses we include DUMMY variables in this case X1 X2 a X4 are used ANY legal variable can be used but CAUTI If you use this same variable anywhere e
61. Glot Library Volume 8 PGL V 08 include Disk PGL V 08 has 13 files om it 48 free entries 350 sectors in use sectors deleted sectors free Site Name 23 PROCRAM LOAD AS 17 TAPE LOAD AS 52 M100 AS 16 Space AS 22 SPACE TI Wait AS 3 CHDF AS 4 Tweak AS 6 READ ME MAILER is a program that writes form letters or prints labels It uses a letter or label that the user creates a form that describes the fields in the letter or label and a data file that contains the mae that is inserted in the form etter 9 JUL AUG 1986 RDE is the Remote Data nuy system to allow user programing from a terminal and modem over the telephone line using the MICROMODEM 100 modem In order to use it it must be named INITIAL GO on the disk that is to be used TERMINAL FC is a terminal mode operation program that allows the 8813 to operate as terminal for another computer with text flow from keyboard and or from output text disk file out and in to screen and or in to input text disk file HAYES s a D C Hayes modem control program for the 80 103A modem board PROGRAM LOAD is a program to read source programs being transm tted from another computer into the printer interface TAPE LOAD is a program to read assembler source programs written using poly assembler version G02 MM100 is a driver program for the D C Hayes MICROMODEM 100 for the polymorphic systems system 88 Space and SPACE are two versions of the program
62. I systematically violate in the above program I don t know about you but I tend to forget where I used a variable or a function especially after I haven t worked on the program for a while One can LOAD the program connect the printer with FILE 2 LIST and then XREF 2 to get a hard copy of the variable cross reference list But who wants to get out of Edit invoke BASIC and LOAD the file and then get out of BASIC and return to Edit It s a lot easier to use the CTRL F Cfind feature of Edit But when you only use single letter variable names CTRL F finds a lot of gnipeo as well CTRL F stops at every PRINT statement whenever you are finding any variables named P R upa NY or TH PolyLetter Page To make things easier it is a good idea to not use single letter variable names for numeric variables There are also some letter number variable names which should not be used as these combinations also occur in formatted print statements These are Fn Floating pore format as in PRINT 6F2 and En Exponential format as in PRINT 11E8 Now it would seem that we have no problem with string variable names which are always followed by a dollar sign but this is not true For example D occurs in MIDS C R in STRSC and CHRS and TS in LEFTSC and RIGHTS C Program maintenance is much easier if one can quickly find occurrences of variables in Edit To make this easier it is best
63. IS TX ADDRESS DX the month JUL 83 has 12 files on it Name en e ei o gt n AI WOW S p PH WOH o U o N WH I U O U O O wwa N PONO U m m 09 OO 9 wo m DI D1580 G DI D ell edd READ THIS TX f the month NOV 84 has 14 files on it Name CNT GO MERGE BS GEMSET SRC TX GEMSET GO STRIP CM DDBLIST INFO TX DDBLIST SRC TX DDBLIST GO SETPR SRC TX SETPR INFO TX FUTIL2 BS SCOPY GO LABE TX READ THIS TX Hidden Messages Disk Siz sa a m p NK UDOWPWONOKNMAUNODO MOONM WMOoOWDO _ When I get an old disk from someone one of the first things I do to it is look at the unused portion of the disk with Szap One never knows what goodies may be left PolyLetter Page after files have been deleted and the disk packed I have recovered several programs in this manner and many interesting parts of programs It s a little like icking over the local dump Most of what s there is garbage but one occasionally finds something valuable I once got a driver for some noise generator Another time I got a copy of Don Moe s Form OV overlay Well the other may I ot a disk from Al or Levy with stuff he last issue of PolyLetter I was so busy I didn t look at the disk Since then I have taken a look and I I found there brought up Szap 20 20 20 20 20 20 2A 2A 2A 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 111 57 G8 G1 74 20 64 69 64 20 79 GF 75 20 20 20 20 What did you 65 78 70 65 63 74 3F 20 20 20 20 20 2
64. LEMONADE STAND BS is a game simulating a small business ACCURATE DIVIDER BS attempts to bypass Poly s digits limit STAR LANES BS is a game of interstellar trading The object of the game is to amass the greatest amount of money by establishing vast interstellar shipping lanes and purchasing stock in the companies 9 SEP OCT 1986 that control those trading routes Several players are allowed BIORHYTHM 2 BS is another program which Prints out a hard copy of your biorhythm chart SUN RISE SUN SET BS calculates the time of sunrise and sunset for your latitude longitude and day of the year MAJOR MINOR FINDER BS computes choices of a college major and minor based upon interests SEAWAR BS is another solitaire game NUMBER CONVERSION BS converts binary hexadecimal and decimal numbers from one to another form SYSTEM SORT PRINT BS reads SYSTEM SY sorts the labels and prints out the sorted list SORT BUBBLE BS demonstrates the bubble sort method BASIC USER FUNCTIONS BS contains basic functions for the following generate random graphic lines blank the cursor check a string for numerical conversion multiply by dozens and to check the length of a string SORT HEAP BS demonstrates the heap sort method BIORHYTHM 1 BS is another program which prints out pu biorhythm chart to the screen or to the printer HORSE RACE BS demonstrates Poly graphics in a 4 horse race INDUSTRIAL SIMULATION BS simulates an Air Force plant t
65. LEs7 PO8 N IREADI7 LIS REM Display the entries oe L PRINTPRINT Li PRINT REM Verif Procedure z y Copy 100 INPUT ok to copy Y REM opy Copy it a IF Y Y THEN FILE 7 POS N iPRINT 7 L REM Start Over REM 128 GOTO 50 A few years age I wearied of doing the Printer Diablo 1200 and Printer SET routines from the keyboard Using 8 DSDD drives more often than not I ran out of Directory space long before using half of the disk I am not a p fan of WordMaster and prefer to format files directly from Exec I use a large number of different formats and different print wheel sizes Due to the above I use only the FORMAT IN file as opposed to having many IN files The first problem I overcame was renaming FORMAT GO to FOMAT GO A Because everytime I wanted to delete FORMAT IN I had to type DEL FORMAT IN instead of DEL FORMAT and I am so lazy I wanted to typa as little as possible So I set up a sub directory called CMDS DX short for COMMANDS The problem How do you put the ESCAPE character in a text file Solution a Type BASIC Enter The Following Lines 10 FILE 6 OPEN lt 3 FAKE TX OUT 20 PRINT 4 CHR 27 30 PRINT GPRINT GF ILE 6 CLOSE BYE n pe Solution b Edit a text file Close the file ENABLE the system List The Directory Disk SAMPLE has 11 files on it 185 sectors in use deleted 2279 sectors free Size Addr La ame 6 4 ADVERT TX 13 A NEWDISK
66. M ARISE HELP file for system program ARISE ARISE CO program undeletes a selected deleted file in a directory Syntax ARISE icacpathcfile EX m RETURN see UNDELETE ARISE ncpath lt mame undeletes the first deleted file called pame on drive n and in subdirectory path ARISE lt cncpathcname m undeletes the m th deleted file called name on drive a and in subdirectory path Example ARISE lt 2 lt LETTERS 2 undeletes the second deleted file named LETTERS on drive 2 SHELP COMMAND COPY HELP file for system command COPY The COPT commend copies one existing file to a new file Syntax COPY lt n lt pathicold file TZ m path2 new file TXI RETURN n m are drive numbers pathi and path are subdirectory paths old file is the file to be copied and new file is the new file name new file will be an exact copy of old file COPY may be combined with ZAP yielding ZCOPY ICOPY works faster for copying larger files Minimum size COP or ZC Example COP Dick 2 LETTERS lt DICK Which ones shall I do in the next issue Device Driver Direct Access I have lots of good things to say about Poly s printer driver organization but I agree with John H Mc Nally PolyLetter 8604 it can be very frustrating when one wants to output special characters The driver connects thru three worm holes WH is the normal character output address WHS is the outp
67. Maintenance Hints Ralph Kenyon 8605 8 BASIC Programming Ralph Kenyon 8606 5 BASIC Programs Fast Loading Ralph Kenyon 8606 10 BASIC Software Maintenance Hints Ralph Lenyon 8605 8 BASIC User Defined Functions Charles Thompson 8601 6 BASIC Variables Ralph Lenyon 8606 6 BASIC USER FURCTION TABS BS Program Description 8605 9 BASIC USER FUNCTIONS BS Program Description 8605 9 Backslash and FORMAT Levy 8603 1 Backspace and FORMAT Al Levy 8603 2 Bad Memory Chip Anatomy of Ralph Kenyon 8604 4 BIORHYTHM 1 8S Program Description 8605 9 BIORHYTHM 2 8S Program Description 8605 9 Bob Bybee s New Address Bob Bybee 8603 2 Bug The First Ralph Kenyon 8605 5 PolyLetter 8606 BugWote 001 1 BASIC Input BugMote 002 0 RENAME with 2 bug BugNote 003 0 Double Error Message BugMote 004 0 PROMS Dio Read Error BugMote 008 0 Pack Syntax Failure BugMote 006 0 Requires Drive BugWote 007 0 MS Controler Ports BugNote 008 0 BASIC LEN fa BugNote 009 0 Pack Error NO Abort Buying jad S Software Source Bypassing FORMAT IN CASHFLOW Wanted Cheap Printers Checkbook Program Wanted Cleaning Disk Drives Cleaning Keyboard Keys CMDF AS Program gt sre Confessions of a Past Editor Confidence Test fie pg ing from SAVEF to SAVE CP M CP M Device Driver Direct Access Digital Research Board Modification Dio Read Error PROMS BugNote 004 0 Disk Drive Cleaning Disk Drive Speed a es Disk of the Month APR 80 listing Disk of the Month AUG 80 listing Dis
68. POKE 0 127 PLOT 0 34 0 IF LEM RS lt 3 THEM 410 390 PRINT I can t use a number with more than 2 digits 400 PRINT even if it s correct GOTO 350 410 IF LEN CRS 0 THEN PRINT aa error retype GOTO 350 FOR 1 1 TO LEWCRS RI ASC RS 1 430 IF R1C48 OR R157 THEN EXIT 450 440 NEIT R VAL RS GOTO 460 450 PRINT That s a J choice tr 460 IF R 0 THEN 210 ELSE IF R M THEN 500 470 PRINT Please remember you can t reverse more thana M 480 GOTO 350 490 REM REVERSE R NUMBERS IN LIST A 00 FOR Li TO IMT R 2 1 T ACLI VACLI ACR LI 1 10 AC R L1 1 T WEIT 20 REM CHECK FOR A WIN 530 FOR Li TO M 1 IF ACLi lt gt bi THEN EXIT 338 46 NEIT W 1 GOSUB 336 350 PRINT PRINT PRINT PRINT And you WON in X move 560 IF I 1 THEN PRINT ELSE PRINT s PRINT W 6 570 PRIIT Ty return key whea you are ready to continue 80 POKE 6 127 Z 1EP 1 PRINT IF Gci0 THEN 268 590 PRIET You ve Abas nary games are you getting bored G00 Z 1NP 1 AND 93 IF CHRS Z gt Y THEN G GOTO 260 G10 PRINT CHRS 12 BYE CHRS 13 Back to CALL O ADS DISKS DRIVES MODEM PROMS SOFTWARE SPELL 1 Maxell disketts 13 per box of 10 2 5 disk drives Shugart SA 400 50 00 Cinclades shipping 3 Two drive external box and power supply 75 4 Hayes Micromodem 100 for only 40 300 baud in bus direct connect modem limited quantity HayesSys modem software 35 6 A S Spell a spe
69. PolyLetter The Newsletter for PolyMorphic Systems Owners and Users Jan Feb Bbo Editorial fhe Gltch wo net fo Well PolyMorphic Systems has a new address see their ad ra j 4 k this issue It seems that the future of PolyMorphic and of 4 k mM A PL Bache m deena p Non pb Sopp Sew ly like fhe er ETE sucicide ope that PolyMorphic will be around for some time however Pone can nly guess As far as PolyLetter thu pion C pe this subject needs some discussion As I said in the Ps ast issue I will continue to edit and publish PL as long as the subscriber count remains to where it is economically feasiable At the present time and for some time I have BaS UAL x been going in the red Gary amih ett loert xT There are several ways o et around this problem I for Vf Lt one want PL to remain in print or I would not have gone on uh k hra hawt a this long I hope the rest of Ta want PL to ey in print S The obvious is raise the tariff I don t want to do this CCL nr Iny thea The second way would be to publish PL four times a year instead of the six Now I know what you are thinking thats about what he is cang now Yes I have been late and asked several subscribers what they thought of me turning over the letter to someone else The ey was that it is better late than never I also think that if PL was given up that it would gre expire in a very short time Who else would spend as much time as it takes to d
70. R TL TOAPRINT ANEX TRETURNES 11838 What does this do All it does is skip lines but how simple it is to use 535 P FNP2 4 to skip 6 lines It s also VERY easy to edit There is also a single line function which works the same way but is written slightly differently The example in your BASIC manual is 20 DEF FNS1 A B A B No FNEND or RETURN is used on a single line function IN CONCLUSION Let your imagination be your guide You can call functions from within functions if you want You can use ON GOTD in a function think of all the variations of the function you could command by only adding a dummy variable in the definition and then inserting the appropriate number In my 1048 Tax Program I would estimate that fully 50 of the program lines involve function calls I have functions which add lines print lines skip lines make decisions By captions on lines followed y r etc Where ave printing done I can also specify the amount of TAB for positioning on the form etc If eg haven t tried functions TRY THEM Experiment You ll find your programs run faster and take less space Speaking of my 1848 Tax Progres the 1985 1040 Tax Preparation System is ready for shipment This program pac age is now in its fouth year and really really works t peels slices dices calculates and prints your federal income tax Form 1040 and Schedules A B C 6 and W Price is 75 for first time purchasers t 150 00 for ta
71. Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Bob Bybee Ralph Kenyon Ralph Keayon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Al Levy Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon George Montillon James Goodman Resale Value of a Poly in 1984 Russ Hobbs Reseat Chips Ralph Kenyon 100 Board Bank Bob Bybee 5 100 External Device Controller Robert Johnson SAVEF Ralph Kenyon SAVEP Ralph Kenyon SCREEN PROTECTED DEMO BS Program Description SEAWAR BS Program Description SETWEW Bob Bybee Setting Disk Drive Speed Ralph Kenyon Setup How To Use Skip Lines BASIC Function Small Print with a Diablo SORT BUBBLE BS Program Description SORT HEAP BS Program Description Software Source Buying Poly s SPACE AS Program Description Space AS Program Description speri Setting on Disk Drives STAR LANES BS Program Description Strip Blanks BASIC Function Charles Thompson SUN RISE SUN SET BS Program Description Subscriber Address List Polybetter Survey Fors PolyLetter Survey Winners Ralph Kenyon SYSTEM SORT PRINT 8S Program Description System Programmers Guide Ralph Kenyon Charles Thompson Michael Aquino Bob Bybee Ralph Kenyon Charles Steinhauser Charles Steinhauser Charles Steinhauser Page 8601 4 8604 9 8605 9 8603 2 8602 5 8603 1 8604 9 8604 8 8606 7 8604 3 8604 1 8605 9 8605 9 8605 9 8605 9 4605 9 8604 9 8604 8 6605 9 8605 9 8605 9 8604 9 8603 9 8604 9 8605 9 4605 9 8604 9 8604 9 8605 9 8605 9 8605 9
72. Sa flags Name 8 79 2000 2000 S Efun OV xx 8 81 2000 2000 S Prnt OV xx 8 89 2000 2000 S Pack OV 2 A7 3000 3000 S N Sio PS In this case the file resides at location 81 hex The worm hole driver is the 7th sector in Prnt Since the first sector Starts at 81 the 7th starts at 87 Remember this address a HEX number so if Prnt started at 7A the 7th sector would be at 7A 6 or 80 If this hexadecimal arithmetic is too hard then we could start at the first sector of Prnt and step through to the proper sector To do that we need to start the program Szap GoO Key in Szap RETURN Next we use the command to select our disk drive which will be 1 unless you are working on a MS Key in 1 RETURN You won t see the 1 on the screen The drive will step and Szap will bring up a page of hexadecimal bytes and the drive and sector number on the right Press ESC to see the ASCII display on the right Next we move out to the starting sector of Prnt with the command eyin followed by the sector address which was in the ENABLEd directory listing In my case that is 81 so I key in 7 81 RETURN Again we won t see the 781 but the disk will step out to the first sector of Prnt We can see that we are in the right location because the first 4 characters on the top left of the ASCII display on the right will be Prnt which is the name of the Overlay To get out to the 7th sector we need to hit 6 carriage PolyLetter Page
73. X COPY SUB DIR BS Cursor DT BIG LINE BS MIRROR GO DUP GO the month JAN 81i has 25 files on it Name SORT DEMO BS DEMO STRINGS DT MAZE GO READABILITY BS GENE BS HOME INVENTORY BS READ THIS TX the month MAR 81 has 33 files on it Name TABBER BS FNTIMER BS PEEK DUMP BS Tran OV TRAN DOC TX TRAN TEST BS READ THIS FIRST TX the month MAY 81 has 32 files on it ame BIORHYTHM BS BATTLESHIP BS HANGMAN BS SPIRAL BS ART BS HANGMAN I1 BS ROULLETTE BS READ THIS FIRST TX FROGS BS the month JUL 81 has 27 files on it Name READ GO COUNT GO eae ee INPU READ THis TX the month DEC 81 has 31 files on it Name SLOT BS BACKGAMMON BS ARTIL BS MOON LANDER BS Sex ie Spd ee READ Is 7K Disk of the month MAR 82 has 15 files on it Size Name 6 Letter TX 12 Leaflet TX 132 VM VM 7 MAY JUN 1986 INITIAL GO FETCH GO PUNCH GO Bchr OV BCHR DEMO TX bchr demo GO BCHR TEST BS READ THIS TX Disk of the month JUL 82 has 31 files on it Size Name SDIR ns FIND FIND ss OSDIR INFO TX DX GO FPL GO BOWLING BS COMMENTS BOWLING TX TEXT TRAN BS TEXT TRAN INFO TX TEST TX TEST 2 TX CHANGE GO MASTERMIND BS READ THIS TX July XD MasterMind Instructions DT the month MAR 83 has 12 files on it Name DATA SORT BS ADD A BASE BS DATABASE TX CREATE IT TX DIRECTORY TP DIRECTORY DR DATA ENTRY BS BASES GO SCAN GO SNIFFALL GO READ TH
74. a Barbara CA 93111 no risen a v 21H Leaver San Fi at pn aie 94133 _ De Lellis PJ 2155 West 235th Place Road leta CA 93117 Mikuriya Tod M D pestle Hotel Berkeley CA 94785 Scully Tim Ph D Mendocino on age Ry s Inc ah Albion iy be lbion l Phe R Conway lt 983 N bak Avenue Fillmore CA 93915 Trayser Charles V Vv Mission San Jose Veterinary 1844 Washington Blvd Fremont CA 94538 Trahan James Oso Investments PO Box 217 Oxnard CA 93832 Warkentin John J 8442 Ahrentzen Court Citrus Heights CA 95412 Tur st J Reid eee e Work Inc PO Box 573 Dillon CO 88435 Barrett John Barrett Associates Y 1122 Ne Black Acre Ct V V Casselberry FL 32788 Combs aie F Panama City FL 32405 Lloyd Stacy 5 D 0 536 1 3rd Ave N Redington Bch FL 33708 Bob mit Beria Peripherals Court Stone h aaanan GA 32087 Lippman Dr Mitchell Terrell Mill Rd Marietta GA 30067 Sutherland Mark Telecorp Systems 3144 Oakcliff Ind St Atlanta GA 38348 Stuart a tree Haven Dr N E miris GA 30342 _ Cottington Merrill 6 14 Stery St Boone IA 58036 Sterling Gary A RED a y Hedrick IA 52563 y ponies A II 11 Claymore ena oes 62540 erille Mack George and Reva 4444 Thornbark Drive Hoffman Estates IL 60195 Heng e ed arc 9 WW ving park Rd IL 60634 Chicago _ ust La dr omg yeaa ailroads ag 218 Ogden Dunes
75. a Modem ut thus far cannot find usful data bases or program info that justifies the expense Mr Parsei at POLY has been most cooperative to the extent of his ability Also one of the part time technicians 2 MAY JUN 1986 there has given me useful insight or several problems I have learned how to diagnose and remedy hardware problems through my inventory of backup boards parts and a nearby URI store Unfortunately I am not qualified to understand much of PolyLetter s technical content However I am interested in knowing how CP M would be of use to me Also I realize that the ability to convert POLY programs to an IBM PC or clone would represent a quantum leap forward However the ability to avoid down time without calling in a service man would be a critical consideration I would be glad to join a network of POLY users if the technical level would not be too frustrating and if an interchange of info and ideas would result Enclosed is my subscription renewal and the census data you have requested Best wishes for success Sincerely Jim Salinger Cincinnati OH PolyLetter November 3 1986 This reader had not questioned lapse since last issue since PolyLetter has been consistently inconsistent Am delighted to receive this copy and would welcome regular resumption of service Earl Gilbreath Savannah GA News 1 Bob Bybee and Poly Peripherals have moved to 5011 Brougham ourt Stone Mountain GA 30087 404 498
76. ace Confidence Test Russ Hobbs Printers Sui Bob Bybee Printing Polyketter Ralph Kenyon Program ACCURATE DIVIDER BS Description Program BASIC OSER FUNCTION TABS BS Description Program BASIC OSER FUNCTIONS BS Description Program BIORHYTHM 1 85 Description Program BIORHYTHM 2 85 Description Program CMDF AS Description Program HAYES AS Description Program HORSE RACE BS Description Program NDUSTRIAL SIMULATION BS Description Program LEMOWADE STAMD BS Description Program MAILER AS Description Program MAJOR MINOR FINDER BS Description Program MM100 AS Description Program MORSE CODE BS Description Program NUMBER CONVERSION BS Description Program PROCRAM LOAD AS Description Program RDE AS Description Program SCREEN PROTECTED DEMO BS Description Program SEAWAR BS Description Program SORT BUBBLE BS Description Program SORT HEAP BS Description Program SPACE AS Description Program iua Description Program STAR LANES BS Description Program SUN RISE SUN SET BS Description Program SYSTEM SORT PRINT BS Description Program TAPE LOAD AS Description Program TELETYPE CODE BS Description Program TERMIMAL FC AS Description Program Tweak AS Description Program Wait AS Description Programmers Guide Ps ge y Languages Naming Public Domain Public Domain Put ESC into a Text File Putting ESC Into a Text File RDE AS Program Description RENAME with an BugWote 602 0 REVERSE BS A BASIC Game Reader s Responses Reader s Responses
77. and running on the MAR APR 1986 MS DOS machine If you have never used hard disks or mass storage units the following may be a little tough to follow To make it easier here s some data Poly SS SD has 350 useable sectors 90k Poly DS DD has i400 usable sectors or 360k A Poly 8 inch DS DD has 4928 sectors or 1232k a little over one meg This means that I have the equivalent of 28 SS SD diskettes on line with two Poly 8 DS DD drives In addition I still have the three small drives To help you feel the impact I m asking Ralph to rint my current directory with this article Al s directory listing took up 263 lines accounting for 214 files taking up 4444 sectors in 9 sub directories it s just too Di to devote that much space to in PolyLetter But if you want to see a copy of it write him or me and we ll be glad to send it to you Ed Now imagine multiplying the two eight inch DS DD directory by twenty Forgettin the speed of a hard drive figure out wha you can have on line Since all of the room is available it is common to partition a hard disk At one point I partitioned Poly s twenty meg to some sixteen different drives Directory space becomes precious therefore Sub directories become a neccesity Exec 96 contains all of the software you need to ibis large storage devices such as a hard isk Partitioning a hard disk under DOS is not as easy It is normally done by the dealer who sets up the machin
78. anymore Isn t it Sincerely Michael Aquino Washington DC ADS From Abstract Systems etc 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 DISKS DRIVES MODEM PROMS SOFTWARE SPELL 1 MAXALL diskettes 13 per box of 10 2 5 disk drives Shagart SA 400 50 00 includes shipping PolyLetter 8606 Page 3 Two drive external bor and arith supply 75 a fps Micromodem 100 for on 0 baud in bus direct connect modem limited quantity 5 HayesSys modem software for the Micromodem 100 35 6 LA S Spell a good spelling checker for 35 1 Abstract Systems Exec Enhancements amp bugs corrected 35 8 Abstract Systems Proms Enhancements amp bugs corrected 35 9 PolyGlot Library Volumes 1 thru 9 6 each Send 1 00 for a complete catalog free with any order Make checks payable to Ralph Kenyon From PolyMorphic Systems 7334 H Hollister Avenue Santa Barbara CA 93117 805 685 6238 Manuals 1 Field Service 35 00 2 Aligning 88 disk drives 15 00 3 Printer Interface 15 00 4 Adding a SSSD or DSDD drive 15 00 5 Keyboard II amp III 15 00 6 Testing amp Maintaining 88xx 15 00 7 88 MS user s manual 2 25 00 8 Confidence 25 00 9 Hard Disk 15 00 10 Exec 96 Addendum 15 00 11 Twin System 15 00 12 Twin System Confidence 25 00 13 Twin System Diagnostics 25 00 14 Plan 3 35 00 15 Mailist 33 06 16 Assembler 25 00 17 Basic y 40 00 18 WordMaster II 40 00 19 User s Manual 4 40
79. b the Poly Let s discuss some of the issues that are appropriate to the less involved stages What s programming for anyway The purpose of programming is to solve roblems with data processing Usually we ave some vague idea of what we want to see such as a report of some kind of an equally vague idea of what we want the computer to do for us such as to do the payroll or to do inventory and reorder etc What kinds of things should we be asking the computed to do and what kinds of things should be not ask it to do There are several things a computer does well Tedious computation is the most common Not forgetting is another If a datum is to be used in several different applications a human being can often fail to remember to do all the things with it that must be done Here is where the Compia excells f a piece of once then being in a computer really rare that a datum is only used once Okay now that we have said a little about what should and what should not be done by a computer let s see what s involved when it is decided to give a job to the computer There are four processes involved in using the computer to solve a data management problem First the data must be gotten into the computer Second data may need to be stored until it 1s needed Third computations involving the data must be performed And finally the appropriate data must be gotten out of the computer So we have to deal with INPUT STORAG
80. ces to channel 2 will use these device driver codes Also to prevent BASIC from inserting carriage returns a PRINT 3 statement must be terminated with a comma BugNotes Abstract Systems BugWote 005 0 November 6 1982 On Exec 95 with Vmgr removed Pack only looks at the first letter of the argument For example PACK 12 packs drive 1 This was only discovered as a result of a typing error Abstract Systems BugMote 006 0 Exec 98 Dfn2 has a bug in the LIST function The use of the Wild card results in an error when it is defined without the November 8 1982 drive number Example Wild card LIST bug demo bugs LIST Bad disk identifier Pr NOLOG Geting around this bug is easy Always eens the wild card using the drive number also 4 lt bugs Abstract Systems BugMote 007 0 November 9 1982 The MS controller has a design bug in the memory access Memory on board the ms controller is not disabled during a processor IN or OUT instruction with the address in the 1000H to 17FFH rang This abd s using address i0h thru 17H for 080 port addressed peripheral devices because some contents of the MS on board RAM is placed on the bus during 8080 IN or OUT instructions To avoid this bug do not address peripheral devices in the 8080 port address space from 10H thru 17H BASIC in this column I questions features solutions involving programming Since I just started publishing PolyLetter I haven t yet had que
81. d There are other handshakes available such as Xon Xoff and Etx Ack I have found that the Poly likes the DTR best For a straight thru header connection on the serial mini card you should wire the cable as follows in most cases COMPUTER SIDE PRINTER SIDE 1 1 2 3 3 2 485 8 6 20 7 7 8 4 amp 5 20 6 For the header 87 6 24 38 2 44 ex ob Perel 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 The nice thing about _ is that you can define many different_ printer parameters and call them by using Printer name This is very handy when you want to change from printing text to say labels Just define the lines per page as 255 and the fanfold labels will print perfectly This is how I print the PL labels y lets look at the ien main menu The first screen gives you the commands available in Setup The command NEW is for defining a new printer type View is used to look at an existing printer s setup parameters Default is used to tell Exec that on boot it will load THESE penri Delete is for oain a printer name The gin in Setup is the or depending on whether you are ENabled or not Ms following is how to define a new printer with the name son NEW EPSON SIMILAR TO A DIABLO N for most serial printers Understand Form Feeds Understand TAB characters Y Seen or rinter in baud 9600 Blocking type device N unless you want to use ETX ACK ASCII code for PAD character70 Number of pads after CR 0 LF 0 n Tab 0 n B57
82. d a dozen or more people to make a group purchase possible Bad Feelings I hadn t spoken to Poly in quite a 3 MAY JUN 1986 while In fact when I began selling hard disks through Poly Peripherals I decided that it would be better to let PolyLetter talk to PolyMorphic and stay out of that relationship I knew that selling HDs wouldn t make Poly fond of me But until my conversation with Sirous I had no idea how upset they really were Now that hard disks are the only piece of new hardware that Poly sells they are very sensitive about my role in the HD business When I discovered this I made Sirous aware that I had only sold a total of three HD units and wasn t even actively advertising them for sale anymore The truth is there wasn t much profit in them for me anyway And with Poly s HD now at 1295 there s no way I can compete I wrote Sirous a letter the next day explaining that for the good of all concerned I would promise not to sell HDs Cor any competing product anymore Sirious said he is assembling a mailing list of 500 to 1000 Poly owners and preparing to send out a mailing about HDs used equipment and services He was concerned that if PL obtained a list of PolyMorphic s customers I would bry to sell HDs to those people possibly ta ing sales away from PolyMorphic Systems assured him that I had no plans to do so and I hope that my letter changes his mind about my intent I feel that all of u
83. d yourself in the maze this map will get you out It took me many reincarnations to get this map I went into the maze with both arms full of treasures and dropped one in each spot until I found out which passage went where If you don t have dventure it is available as one of the past PolyLetter Disks of the Month All of which are now available for 6 each Direction and Destination Code LOCATION HWE ESE SSW WW OU OD Maze twisty little 3 811 2 9 4 7 5 OUT 2 Mare habe Little e355 10 9 TF Serr rH 3 Maze little twisty EH SOF oP ON s 4 Mere little twisting 5 E TIET i FUE 5 Twisty little maze iI EEEH Fees 6 Twisting little maze Ta OE es Et N en FO a 7 Twisty mare little 10 3 1 3 5 8 241 8 6 8 Twisting maze little 11 6 7 316 5 9 4 1 2 Little mare twisty SH 450 6 2 ks 3 10 Little maze twisting 9 7 8 353W 211 3 11 Little twisty maze je ee ae a im Sh OO a Ts Vi Vending machine 10 To VM from Entrance N BE From WM to Erit E WE E D Public Domain The first 6 volumes of the PolyGlot Public Domain Library are listed here These disks are available for 6 each Disk PGL V 01 has 27 files om it 33 free entries 347 sectors in use O sectors deleted 3 sectors free Sire Name 50 STARTREX BS 17 GALAXY BS 15 GALAIY 1N5T BS 2 USER S INST TI 21 SURVIVOR 3BS 15 CAI BS 28 STARWARS BS 22 BACKGAMMON BS 16 HANCHAN 8S 28 DOCTOR ELIZA BS 23 LUNAR LANDER BS Disk PGL V 02 has 27 files on it 34 free entrie
84. e It is not impossible for the layman It just takes a little learning and some hand holding the first time out Many hard disks are partioned using half for MS DOS and the other half for UNIX or CP M Why not half for Exec I know there are people who will tell me why it can t be done Columbus fell off the end of the world Maybe they are right but I feel it is worth a shot How about some feedback from you I prefer notes postcards and letters but phone calls are ok no collect If you need info on upora ag your machine please write y address Al Levy Box 71 Hicksville NY 11802 Phone 516 293 8368 P S I now have the entire CP M and SIG M catalogs on Poly disks in all formats Poly Exec not CP M SS SD take three or four diskettes therefore the high price 5 SS SD 7 50 5 DS DD 5 00 8 SS SD 6 00 8 DS DD 6 00 One definition of obsolete is in use or practice discarded As applied to equipment obsolete means that there is more modern equipment which will do the same job better ow it is clear that the Poly may be antiquated but it is far from obsolete No other equipment and software can do the same job as well If your requirements remain the same then the same equipment which originally met those requirements will continue to meet them However the availibity and cost of repair arts and service is a point well taken n addition the investment in software cannot be replaced by off the shel
85. e as the current subscription rate CU 15 00 yr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable in US dollars Individual issues are also available 3 00 3 50 4 00 PolyLetter The Newsletter for PolyMorphic Systems Owners and Users PolyLetter 8605 Page Editorial Well So far I ve done quite well with getting PolyLetter back on schedule if I do say so myself I cannot say that it has been without some strain Putting an issue out every two to three weeks has been demanding With this issue I have only one more to do to complete the 1986 issues which will probably be out in the first weeks of January 1987 Thereafter I will be going back to the bimonthly schedule There will be more time for readers responses to be received to be in time for the very next issue One thing I have been trying to do is to increase the amount and availability of public domain software for the HONS Last issue I added two new disks to the PolyGlot library FORTRAN and a disk full of assembly language programs This issue I am adding a disk full of various BASIC programs Anyone who has written any programs for any purpose just might find that there are Poly Users in need of or interested in his or her programs PolyLetter knows of three users interested n geneology as well as several adventure affectionados There were requests for financial programs and inventory programs in recent issues Another thing I have been trying
86. e named by acronym FORTRAN is an acronym for FORmula TRANslation COBOL stands for COmmon Business Oriented Language or something like that Then the thing got silbky APL stands for A PolyLetter Page Programming Language and PL i stands for Programming anguage number 1 Programmers claim LISP stands for Lots of Irritating Silly Parenthesis And ADA is just Another Damn Acronym Nicholas Wirth started a new tradition by naming his programming language after a famous mathematician Blaise PASCAL DoD named ADA for Lady Lovelace Daughter of Lord Byron who worked with Charles Babbage in writing rograms for the Analytical Engine the first on paper computer Ada Agusta is credited with inventing subroutines Few know that Babbage and his cohort liked to play the horses and wrote their grant proposals to fund the design of a device to help them calculate the odds at the track as well as to fund their passion for the ponies Now there s motivation we can understand I still haven t gotten an anwer to what four bits are Bypassing FORMAT IN Did you know that FORMAT IN can be bypassed Even pea amp it ise rr Ehe directory If the first file name on the command line is a IN file FORMAT GO will book for if I it foes not exist FORMAT GO will not report an error When I do not want to use any IN file I put X IN on the command line as the first file FORMAT X IN file name and FORMAT GO just shrugs and continues wi
87. e next issue SHEL NEW Hew features added to Exec 9 5 96 A S UnSys clear system bit enabled mode Restart resume an aborted command file enabled mode Sniff d s Smiff drive d starting with sector s WRITE text prints text om printer without paging DI files are listed when the file name is keyed in DC files are typed when the file name is keyed in AS files are I don t know what to do with that file LIST amp TYPE accounts for protected portions of screen LIST adds number of free entries amp flags enabled mode Setup shows default printer amp selects device 0 REH corrects 1 and uses input file extension as default SQUEAL reports Dio errors DONT cancels SQUEAL po 6 ow SS or me oe ue Public Domain The first Disks of the Month from PolyLetter are listed here These disks PolyLetter Page are available for 6 each Disk of the month APR 80 has 5 files on it Size Name 2 COUNT GO 1 CONTROL U GO CALENDAR BS 4 READ THIS TX Disk of the month AUG 80 has 33 files on it Size 2 8 1 8 2 2 3 5 5 2 1 2 3 Disk o Size 37 44 6 17 38 44 2 Disk o Size 5 7 7 3 7 2 6 Disk o Size 13 35 15 2 1 22 19 31 4 10 Disk o Size 3 5 5 12 10 Disk o Size 17 22 6 9 22 4 laa f r A Name POP GO SZAP GO Cursor GO O COPYALL BS MOVE BS ROOM GO POKE BS READ THIS T
88. e test plug should have come with your machine No test plug was delivered with my system but I was given one at no charge when I asked the dealer the now out of business PCI if they had one I could use If you are in an area with one of the few remaining active Poly dealers you might ask if they have an extra test plug BugNotes Abstract Systems BugWote 008 0 BASIC C03 04 14 81 November 12 1982 BASIC s LEN function accepts only a string variable as its input argument I recently wrote a program to parse a line of input text which tested the length of a part of the input line BASIC reported a syntax error for the code fragment and some crude soldering 7 NOV DEC 1986 IF LEM MIDS LI8 S1 1 gt 19 TREN In order to get around this an intermediate variable must be defined Substituting the following code works USS MIDS L18 S1 1 IF LEN I5 gt 19 TREN Most functions will accept inputs of the correct type but the LEN function is more specific It will only accept a strin variable It will not accept a litera string or a string function Correct LEN A String variable Incorrect LEN MIDS AS I 1 String function Incorrect LEN TEST Literal String lacorrect LEN FE B 1 String function Abstract Systems BugNote 009 0 November 30 1982 Exec 95 PACK reported a fatal error on drive 3 while packing but did NOT terminate command file mode The following log file demonstrates Error 01
89. ed any more so I might have trouble with this project Robert Johnson Roanoake VA S 100 journal published quarterly by Octoplus Corp 2426 Wade Avenue Raleigh NC 27607 919 839 0115 has an ad on page 43 of the spring 86 issue for a Real Time Real World Controller by MULLEN Ed December 8 1986 Glad to see this news letter will continue It is much better and more interesting Charles amp Helen Mach Irving TX Dear Ralph December 9 1986 I really don t know if this should be congratulations or condolences but I am glad to see that somebody took the bull by the horns or by the tail and took over PolyLetter Chris Bagley Tucson AZ December 10 1986 Keep up the good work Will try to put the finishing touches on QUICK LEDGER Simple accounting system for your D O M Also list of spare cards etc available Jim Ryan Richardson TX ADS From Abstract Systems etc 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 DISKS DRIVES MODEM PROMS SOFTWARE SPELL MATALL diskettes 13 per box of 1 5 disk drives Shugart SA 400 s50 ti includes shipping Two drive external box and power supply 75 Hayes Micromodem 100 for only 40 300 baud in bus direct connect modem limited quantity HayesSys modem software for the Micromodem 100 35 LASS Spell a good spelling checker for 835 Abstract Systems Exec Enhancements amp bugs corrected 35 Abstract
90. eed character at the head of each even page The absolute line command wil cause the printer to go back to the head of the same page for printing the right column Finally I use the write program to print out a copy of the document It is printed in one pass leaving a space for the header on page i and leaving the bottom of page 8 open for postal use Ed Letters Ralph November 3 1986 Glad you took PL over Will try to send you some copy altho I had to drop CP M user group newsletter due to lack of time Thanks Russ Nobbs Dear Ralph November 3 1986 Glad to see that PolyLetter ts still alive I had about given it up for dead About the only thing interesting is I have moved via Modem some of the Poly programs I have written and adapted them to the two IBM PC s that I have but still use the Poly all the time Of the three machines I have two are up and running with little or no troubles I agree in many ways Poly is great too bad PolyMorphic missed the boat back a ways Regards Jim Trahan Dear Ralph November 5 1986 Ah the persistence and endurance of die hard Poly fanatics like you and Al Levy never ceases to amaze me Nor in spite of having owned an early 8813 since about 1978 have I ever come to PolyLetter Page attribute any special wonders to Exec or Edit or have the Poly be especially friendly in any way I do have a sentimental attachment to mine as one of the earliest plesk aaa 4
91. eed as examples While I do not have an MS I do know peo RE who are willing to transcribe ormats for me Russ Nobbs at Rings amp Things in Spokane is one who is close to you He started with an 8813 0 with a MS but has since aquired a 5 drive and controller to ena easily with others The 16K board can be upgraded to a 64K board I have done the job myself on some of my boards but I paid Poly to do the first one See the Ads The 8K board cannot to my knowledge be upgraded but a couple of 8K s and a 16K board can get you through a pinch As for the spare CPU card perhaps there s a reader out there who can contact us and fill this need Also check out the Computer flea markets le him to swap disks 3 NOV DEC 1986 in you area I am working on getting a list of parts from a few ex dealers to include in ads Your best bet might be to ick up a spare system you could get the D controller and 5 drives too have leads on Polys for sale but for which ads have not yet been submitted Ah yes SAVEP stands for SAVE PROTECT I think it stands for SAVE PAIN since those who used it most often have gone away leaving their customers in the lurch The programs can be restored but how it is done is a trade secret by those who know how There are several methods from tricks to brute force I use the tricks If you have such programs I will be glad to un encrypt them for you SAVEF obviously stands for SAVE FAST
92. en received one renewal card back with the word NEWER scrawled across that area of the card I am beginning to feel like there is a community of Poly Users out there who are interested in what we have to offer Zits by Ralph Kenyon While merrily computing away on my Poly my screen suddenly began to grow zits A stray graphics character would appear at odd positions on the screen It didn t seem to be correlated with anything I did They became worse as the moments went by Sooo I plugged in my trusty confidence disk and pushed the load button Oops It says I have bad video ram chips Now that doesn t seem likely since the characters all seem to show up ok in edit Lets investigate sez me and I proceed to unstack the hardware which sits on top of my 8813 A 2 drive box and power supply a seldom used 30 meg XT clone my spare 8813 chassis and finally the cover Whoo DUST everywhere So I get out my vacuum and start to clean it out Oops there s a cob web and a cob web spider between two of the cards Who says computers don t have bugs anymore I pull out the video card and find that the S 100 bus plug seems to be corroded I clean it up and remembering that the old anti static bug rug foam was corrosive 1 NOV DEC 1986 reseat all the video chips now Nope still got errors but different chips I remember that I ve had problems with the CPU chips too so I clean them up also and reseat al
93. es File utility program Placed im Public Domain by Abstract Systems 33 free entries 350 sectors in use 0 sectors deleted sectors free Size Name 7 M L 8 BS 9 CPM BS ii PERT BS 57 STATPACK BS 18 REGRESSION BS 23 L REGRES DEMO 85 30 Plotter BS 2 C n m BS 3 OW BS 2 TIMER BS Disk PGL V 06 has 34 files on it Exec 83 amp BASIC C02 These programs are From various sources Some are by Poly and some are by others All are of mathematical subject areas 28 free entries 350 sectors in use 0 sectors deleted sectors free Size Mame 52 INVERTORY 3S 14 INVENTORY DT 40 DisAsmb31 85 1 DM318 BS 16 8080 INST TX 10 DisAsmb DC 8 Srap o 5 SCOPY GO 2 SPACE GO 2 CLEAN CO 5 COMPARE CO 4 DUMP GO DUMP DC 1 Unsys GO 1 ser G0 Exec 83 amp BASIC C0 Another INVENTORY systen Placed in Public Domain by Abstract Systems Utilities from Poly Page 7 PolyLetter SURVEY Please complete this census form and mail it to Ralph Kenyon Polybetter 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 The first 3 entries received will receive a free disk with the PolyGlot Library of your choice PolyMorphic Systems Census information Hardware How many of each 813 o 5S SD DS5 SD SS DD DS DD SS Single Sided SD Siagle Density 8810 ____ 55 SD DS SD SS DD DS DD DS Double Sided DD Double Density uS ____ 5S DD DS DD MS Mass Storage 8 Drives Keyboard I II IH
94. es which have the new bit set That happens when a file is created or when you use the SetNew program to do it yourself It does not happen when a BASIC data file he modified a simply changing one record of the file PolyLetter cannot confirm this assertion We tested a program which only read one record of a data file in BASIC C04 and the new bit was properly set Bob give us more detail about your experience Ed I recently wrote an overlay which can be called from a BASIC program and which can set the new bit on any file Your application program could call this overlay to set the new bit after modifying a record in your database If you d like a copy of this overlay send me a diskette cs SSSD For a listing just send an envelope On A Personal Note Thanks to all of you who congratulated PolyLetter Page me on my recent marriage Hawaii was a gres place to honeymoon but now it s back o the land of reality jobs the o Poly and life in general And Charles thought my days of programm ng at home were over Bob Bybee ob c 011 Brougham Court Stone Mountain GA 087 404 498 3556 The Anatomy of a Bad Memory Chip By Ralph Kenyon 4 an be reached at Poly Peripherals 30 I run a 16K memory card which has been converted to 64K While editing my thesis one day Edit reported back with SYSTEM FAILURE CHECKSUM CHANGED after deleting the old input file Now I ve disassembled Edit and know that that
95. eter level and exit 170 Z FN Mi S L D L RETORM REM Move from source to dest 180 FE END 190 DEF FN Mi S1 Di REM Move from Source to Destination 200 T D1 22 T D1 22 1 REM Increase destination stack size 210 TCDL TCD1 22 T S1 7 S1 22 REM Move size to destination 220 PLOT 42251 20 T 51 T 51 22 7 T 51 22 0 REM Erase from 230 DRAW 42251 22 T S1 T S1 22 Y T S1 22 0 REM source stack 240 DRAW 212 51 D1 1 T 1 1 1 REM Show movement 250 DRAW 422D1 20 T S1 T S1 22 Y T D1 22 1 260 PLOT 2251 22 T S1 T S1 22 Y T S1 22 0 270 DRAW 212 Si D1 1 Y E 1 0 280 DRAW 422D1 20 T 51 T S1 22 Y T D1 22 0 290 PLOT 422D1 20 T S1 T S1 22 Y T D1 22 1 REM draw on top 300 DRAW 422D1 22 7 51 T S1 22 Y T D1 22 1 REM of des 310 TCS 22 T 51 22 1 REM Decrease source stack size 320 RETURN 0 FNEND 330 INPUT How many rings do you want to move f 340 K INT K IF 021 THEN PRINT Too many GOTO 330 350 PAGE POKE 0 127 REM Clear screen and blank cursor 360 PLOT 0 7 1 DRAW 127 7 1 REM Base line 370 TUL 22 TC2 22 0 T 3 22 0 REM Height of stack 380 FOR I 1 TOK 390 TUL 1 K i REM Pat site of chip into tower slot Ar uor 22 K 1 1 Y 1 1 DRAW 20 K 1 Y 1 1 REM Draw it 420 Z FH M 1 2 3 0 REM Move L from 1 to 3 using 2 as middle 430 PLOT 0 47 0 PRINT Done Helpful Hints For any of you who program in BASIC here are some hints that are helpful when it comes to program maintenance Which
96. f no longer Page 4 PolyLetter commercial software It is true that few people would choose the Poly as their first choice today but for those of us who already own one have an investment in hardware software and experience Changing horses in midstream shouldn t be done while the horse can still get us across If your requirements change then it becomes appropriate to make a cost benifit analysis comparing some new system with upgrading your Poly How much cost must we place on learning a new system and developing or buying new software This becomes a highly subjective matter which each of us may have to answer in turn For my money I chose to upgrade my system by increasing my disk size with 96 tpi drives I am very loyal to the Poly operating system and I also have a large investment in enhancing and developing software for it Long Live the Poly Ed ADS inch MAXELL 32 hard sectored 5 ie pagat diskettes for your MS 15 00 per box or 5 00 per ten boxes 1 Contact Al Levy at 516 293 8368 2 Hardware Supplies amp Software Five inch MAXELL 10 hard sectored disketts 13 00 per box 5 disk drives Shugart ener ave o 0 50 00 includes sipping We f these drives which all test out with no errors on the confidence package Two drive external box and pore supply 75 Abstract Systems Exec 35 Abstract Systems Proms 35 Abstract Systems Spellin Checker 35 PolyGlot Library Volumes 1
97. f you have any desires concerning how it could be improved let us hear about them Maybe they will fall on the sympathetic ear of a prog Help Your Fellow Users November 3 1986 Travis Miller is looking for an inventory system for use in his jewelery business He has an 8813 and a MS and uses it for most of his business needs but doesn t yet have an inventory system He says that adapting the MailList program won t work because it doesn t have enough fields If anyone out there is using an inventory system please send PolyLetter some information about it Did you write it and are you willing to share Did you buy it from whom and are they still in business A brief description of the capacity of the system would be helpful Games This is a game called REVERSE It is written to run on BASIC version C04 so there are a few statements which may need to be changed to ohare it for older versions of BASIC PAGE is the same as PRINT CHR 12 POKE 0 127 is the same as POKE PEEK 3087 256 PEEK 3086 127 RANDOMIAR is the same as Z RND TIME 0 10 DIMO DIM AC30 A8 1 16 RANDOMIZE G 0 ON ESCAPE GOTO 610 20 AS REM 16 SPACES 30 PRINT CHES 12 TABCES REVERSE PolyLetter Page 40 PRINT Would you like instructions T or N POKE 0 127 50 Z INP 1 AMD 5 PRINT IF CHRS Z H THEM 210 ELSE PAGE G0 PRINT This is the game of REVERSE To win all you 10 PRINT have to do is arrange an unsorted sequential
98. for some purposes I am forced to use WordStar because it has more features than Poly s editor I edit the local CP M user group newsletter Many articles are submitted to me on disk formats that the Osborne can read None in a format the Poly can read The industry has passed poir PY o Tf they had delivered the 16 bit machine they announced last year 1983 they might have had a viable market share The new Poly would have had many times the power and speed of the present Poly computer It would have used a fraction of the number of individual chips What takes PE several boards in the current Poly would have been on a single board in the new system And it would have been less expensive Now the IBM PC the rush of PC look alikes most of which are not selling well and the new Apple Macintosh may have sealed Poly s fate Poly s market share may be limited to selling upgrades to current owners and some specialized markets serviced by dealers who like Cand push PolyMorphic computers Frank Stearns is from Cheney and bought his first Poly from PCI He recently bought a second working system for spares for around 700 Keyboards and WordMaster II Mark De Piolenc of San Diego asks How do users of KEYBOARD II use WordMaster What corresponds to the function keys Keyboard III has the separate numeric ad with additional keys labeled I Il bk IV and CLEAR ordMaster was designed with Keyboard III in mind but it 5 MAY
99. from another life Don t know if you remember me about 3 years ago as I was moving to California I exchanged my BS disassembler for GO and am still here and loving every minute of it First yes I still have my Poly 8813 Has a home made sheet metal enclosure mounts vertically less desk space It got converted from the Poly linear power supply to a modified IBM PC switcher I had a friend at Zenith and he fixed me up before I left the Midwest Cross my fingers the Poly has never broken down once Oh by the way it also runs under POLY CPM I guess I feel the same way as the rest of you do about the Poly maybe more 2 SEP OCT 1986 because I was part owner of a computer store and it was Poly that kept us in the money with a commercial account Must have sold 30 8813 s As a matter of fact the hone number was 8813 I have met and alked with the man behind the Poly Brian Wilcox I think was his name Poly started out with like 6K and what a shame DRI had to get in with CPM I will probably not ever expand the Poly unless I can find the parts very cheap I do go to the computer swap meets and may find something at the right price I don t know about prices on the East Coast but here I can get an AT clone with 640K of memory serial parallel port mono interface and a 1 2 mByte floppy for 1400 Absolutely 100 msdos compatible I have gotten very used to using an AT at work and rather than expand the Poly I would
100. g away characters after a line is full It truncates long lines Moreover form feed characters are inserted at the end of each page These features which make the Poly printer driver system so easy and convenient for driving printers can be a bit of a headache when in comes to driving special devices such as the plotter John wrote about It is possible to bypass these features The line truncation can be bypassed by setting the printer characters per line to 255 Bypassing the automatic linefeed is harder e have to modify Prnt Some time in the past a friend of mine got a printer which had an automatic line feed on it and we had to bypass the automatic line feed in the device driver We used Szap to change 1 byte in the wormhole driver portion of Prnt The wormhole driver area is the same for all versions Since Printer 36 which came on Exec 83 If you have an earlier version of Printer to modify call me and I will figure out what must be done This bypass can be installed on a system disk but since it modifies the wormhole driver of which there is only one a special disk must be made for this Bat p28 To make this change the following steps must be accomplished 1 Make a copy of the system disk and boot up on the copy 2 ENABLE the system with the ENABLE command 3 LIST the drive and look for the file Prnt OV Make a note of its address The flags column won t be present unless you have Exec A S Size Addr La
101. ganizing Real Knowledge GUESSWORK to correct for mis pronunciation incorrect words and lack of meaning to correctly determine the desired command structure to execute Why one barely has to think about what one wants done and the new Abd tag has the task half done The SST is ast The brain of the system is the newly designed Binary Random Access Inferencing Nucleus As is well known binary random accessing allows the system to remember anything in two stages find it and then report it And of course it was proven earlier this century that if anything could be remembered then everything could The big advantage of this design is that since everything can be remembered it need not be entered into the system The biggest bottle neck data input is completely eliminated It is also because of this theorem that the new system can have an unlimited virtual memory The one drawback of unlimited random access to virtual extended memory around to accessing the particular memary that is needed right away creating the tip of the tongue error However when this happens the system doesn t crash The job is resubmitted to the queue The big advantage of unlimited random access to virtual memory not having to input data far outweighs any minor inconvenience from random rescheduling due to tip of the tongue errors By far the most ingenious portion of the operating system is the pre detection error reprogramming look ahead
102. ge Po is not affiliated with PolyMorphic Systems 8 MAY JUN 1986 Utah James Salinger of Cincinnati Ohio and J Earl Gilbreath of Savannah Georgia Congratulations you beat everyone else and are entitled to a free PolyGlot Library Volume of your choice In This Issue Editorial 5 a Letters To amp from The Editor News 3 5 z P Glitches 5 A Conversation With Poly Bit Bucket s z 1984 Resale Value of a Poly Keyboards and WordMaster II Help Your Fellow Users Games s Ads BugNotes He How Does it work Public Domain 5 Hidden Messages Survey Winners O NO OD O O UU u e UNS D e ae Coming Soon Ends from Atlanta by Bob Bybee An Assembly Language Memory Test Program Hardware Problems oy Bob Bybee Finding a Bad Memory Chip Letters from Russ Nobbs amp John mena liye More Help and BugNotes Towers of anoi in Graphics etc Odds amp The Newsletter for PolyMorphic Systems Owners and Users PolyLetter 8604 Page Editorial When I took over PolyLetter I received a mailing list with about 350 names on it A large proportion of those names had 0000 in the renewal field which meant that the dreaded RETURN TO SENDER ADDRESS UNKNOWN had been received at PolyLetter In some cases I have been able to get a new address by simply calling directory assistance This is fine when the move was local but it doesn t work when a PolyUser has made a long distance move I
103. gram format Help is available for the following A S format commands chr cmt cat cor date graph iapat ital ltr pep pop prism quo sdate sisp tab tiger Syntax HELP format lt name RETURN Example HELP formatisisp aital pap ung wail wide HELP format lt name displays the help file for name See also HELP FORMAT format GO was written by Ralph Kenyon of Abstract Systems SHELP format bs HELP file for A S format command bs bs is a command to allow backspacing the printer for the purpose of overwriting characters be te 1 Make fae siga by overwriting a c with a i ctbsl 2 Make a not equal sign by overwriting am with a 3 Make ie Pound sign by overwriting an L with a s 4 Show literal strikeouts by backspacing over a word and adding dashes this arefbs bs bs IS incorrect SHELP PROGRAM PUNCH HELP file for Program PUNCH POUNCH GO is a utility program to convert machine code in memory to Intel hexadecimal format which is readable by ROM burners and some other devices and transfer the data to the printer device driver and out the RS 232C serial port PUNCH assumes the serial port is already set up at the proper baud rate so you may have to define a temporary printer type to set the serial port properly PolyLetter Page Syntax PUNCH start adr end adrJ Example PUNCH 5000 S3FF PUECH was written by Bob Bybee SHELP PROGRA
104. h 2 First page number Header for all pages tepi 2 ljc pno skp This blow down format if used with a daisy wheel will probably get more readable text on a piece of 8 1 2x1i1 paper than any other system I know with the far more expensive exception of a ee oe ee combination it I have one last word of praise for the Try Poly In these days of endless anonymous colorless steel and plastic the Poly remains incomparably beautiful and unique because of some early designer s decision to emplay those hand crafted hardwood casings which have been carried through to other items such as the hard disk HD 18 I would not be in that much of a hurry to sell of such a work of are as this any more than I would sell a 1929 Bently ier because there are 1987 Chevrolets and Fords that will go faster Think about it Poly people If the day ever comes when your Poly fails and you can t get arts for him her any more polish up that elegant cabinet and put him her on display in your den When the invariant question is asked you can answer with pride Why yes that is the first computer ever made for personal use long before IBM or Apple ever came along Those were the days when you wrote your own programs son and when the mass market insult of copy protection hadn t even been imagined Yes we had many a good year together Poly and I Isn t he she beautiful Too bad they don t make the like this
105. h is 60 and you want to print one of these cent signs you would need to include the following commands fwid62 ci Also the next line needs to be preceded with fwid60 A S format would only require cfbs i as the bs command automatically allows for the extra printable characters Ed Dear PolyLetter Did you know that if you use lt CTRL F gt to find then close the file and edit a new file lt CTRL C gt often works to find the same thing Using the CP M PCOPY you can create a file in Exec with NO EXTENSION PCOPY PIP COM From Poly or CP M C Poly Filename lt 2 gt WHATEVER result is an Exec file called WHATEVER with no extension I call FORMAT GO FOMAT GO This is because I hated having to ype DEL FORMAT and get the error message I can t do that use FORMAT IN and no more hassle Al Levy 1986 to a System File I when I delete it Dear PolyLetter November 3 To say that I am dependent on POLY is the understatement of the year Since i977 I have been conducting this Investment Advisory service based on several Basic program styles which were patiently given to me by Vince Heuring the computer vendor who is no longer in business I have written all the numerous evaluation reporting and technical analysis programs that I use I bought Pcalc which I use only for client billing and resort to Edit mode much faster for input of new data instead of the Pcalc input system Recently I added
106. hat produces a Constant Speed Drive assy CSD for several Air Force aircraft ou are expected to maintain 320 CSD s on hand to absorb fluctuations in demands and production Your objective is to control the production for 12 months and produce a low average cost per CSD This is a simulation for management training PolyLost The following people or organizations who were once on PolyLetter s eee list have turned up missing the dreaded RETURN TO SENDER If anyone knows a current address for these people or where their Poly went Please advise PolyLetter Brondt s Metal Magic of Spokane WA Computer Techniques of Richmond VA Jerr Heyman of Germantown PA Katy Holkenbrin of Souix Falls SD Everett Holland of Frazer PA Chuck Heindel of Brandon FL Peter Jaackson of Santa Barbara CA David Johnson of Prince George VA Richard Jones of Fort Worth TAs Buteh Kasey of Greenville SC Dave Kominiak of Munster IN Dudley Koontz of Cedar Rapids IA Morris Lancaster of Laurel MD Rolf Levenbach of Plainfield NJ Mike Linthicum of Goleta CA Rich Little of Chesterfield MO Davis McCarn of Arlington VA Bill McConnell of Arlington TX Robert Measle of Lexington KY Jonathan Miller of Tiburon CA Bernard Noelting of Evansville IN Wayne Norris of Santa Barbara CA Steve Perdy of Alanta GA Richard Petersen of Sunnyvale CA Rod Peterson of Bedford TX Bit Bucket In the distant past programming languages wer
107. he Personal Computer Freiberger amp Swaine McGraw Hill It is a very good history of the micro revolution I modified Digital Research of Texas CMOS 64K memory board for my Poly to switch out 0 to 1FFFH for Poly use and bank switch for CPM Works fine had mention in PolyLetter and never heard one word from anyone I don t think there is much team spirit left out there Enclosed is a check for 15 00 If you have time let me hear from you I don t think I need any more instructions on how to operate my Poly I think I have most of the DOS and BASIC versions all the way back to 4D amp A01 if anyone should care I was browsing DDJ and thought I would send you the enclosed DRI story Good luck and best regards Joseph Toman Freemont CA Ralph December 6 1986 I was just putting away some papers and noticed that my PolyLetter label has an PolyLetter Page 8606 so I am guessing I need to renew my subscription I enjoy PolyLetter even if most of the articles are over my head I guess I would like to see more articles on user programs and lists of programs one can purchase Chuck Gross Fairborn OH December 9 1986 Just keeping PolyLetter going is a super achievement Hard to improve on that I seem to remember that someone in an earlier issue said that when his Poly was obsolete he d turn it into a home control center or do I remember wrong Anyone done that I don t see any S 100 interface boards advertis
108. he system and the one who had distributed it have gone out of business He has graciously consented to put the compiler in the public domain Therefore MAC FORT 80 is now available as a PolyGlot RLS Volume PGL V 07 Bill sent PolyLetter a copy of the documentation which goes with the system There is an implementation manual 32 ages and a language manual 92 pages ecause of the cost to reproduce an mail the manuals PolyLetter must charge 4 for the implementation manual and 10 for the goodies in language manual 20 for the entire package I have learned something about the system It is designed to operate on drive 1 but can be patched with a machine language patch to operate on another drive If you order the system and want to run it on some drive other than 1 let me know which drive you will be using so can patch your copy for that drive I have copied some basic documentation from the inplementation manual into some DC files on the disk MAC FORT 80 s supplied on an Exec 83 system disk Its contents include Disk PGL V 07 has 35 files om it 25 free eatries 349 sectors in use O sectors deleted 1 sectors free Size Naine PolyLetter Page 16 FORT GO FORTRAN compiler 13 FLOAD CO Loader 16 FORTLIO TY Library routines SAMPLE 1 FH Sample 4 SAMPLE 2 F FORTRAN SAMPLE 3 Fa PROGRAMS 31 FORT 245 60 Compiled deme PLOT FE gt A plotting program Drive Changing Documentation Ware sta
109. hey ll have a viable future I d like to see Poly design and roduce a transition product which allows a C clone to read and write Poly s disk format Poly could also assemble and market a clone The established base of Poly Users could transition with Poly s help and have Poly as their papitar of parts and service in the Poly Clone market In addition Poly would ba moving into a new market area which would improve their future outlook If Poly is going to make some such kind of transition it had better be soon while there are still enough active users Unfortunately the value of a Poly is steadily dropping In the market place Por is determined by demand The demand er ae fe is lower than the cost to produce See Russ Nobbs article a not going to close my eyes to SS I ll print the negative stuff ight along with the good stuff As part of the good stuff the Poly is still capable of doing a lot of good work Let s help each other by sharing our experience and software So ask you all to write in with your questions problems fixes and if you are looking for some software which can be run or adapted for the Poly write in and I ll publish your request No More GOTO s Since this is the second issue I have published you may have noticed that there are no more GOTO s at the bottom of each column One of the features of most magazines that I always hated is continued on page Unless I get a lot of fla
110. hor asks for 25 00 as a donation It is one hell of a program and worth many times the asking price of 25 00 How does this help us ell I recently installed a card from Micro Solutions in the XT This is called a MATCHPOINT card In addition I purchased UNIFORM PC and UNIDOS PC from Micro Solutions I have also installed a NEC V20 8 in the clone UNIFORM PC allows me to read and write about 160 different disk formats This includes most of the popular brands such as Osborne Kaypro Heath TRS Apple DOS ProDos Apple CP M and many more Apple formats require the MATCH POINT card Ed UNIDOS PC allows me to run any of the CP M programs on the MS DOS clone UNIDOS only works with a NEC V20 Programs which require specific hardware such as PCOPY COM will not run Ed HERE IT COMES With the MatchPoint card I can read write and run programs from a NorthStar TEN HARD SECTORED diskette Not yet See the news item Ed I have sent the techs at MicroSolutions all of the documentation they need about the Poly According to the head man he may have to add one more chip to the MatchPoint card and we will be able to read and write PolyMorphic diskettes on an IBM T This may be limited to Poly CP M If so we can use PCOPY to transfer from Exec to CP M Insert the disk into the regular IBM T drive and read write or run it At worst you can move your data and text files to the new machine easily At best we get Exec up
111. in this issue Send your answers and requests in FIRST CLASS MAIL Back volumes of PolyLetter are available at the same price as the current subscription rate US 15 00 yr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable in US dollars to Ralph Kenyon Individual issues are also available 3 00 3 50 4 00
112. ing video games and making music he Poly was amazing completely integrated software with advanced 2 JUL AUG 1986 erformance features like disk overla s hat were wery similar to those of the IBM System 3 When the desk sized IBM System 32 was announced it still didn t have a type ahead buffer and automatic first job execution didn t come in the business systems until the IBM System 34 The Poly was way ahead of its time and the tragedy was the error of trying to keep it proprietary They withered away because of the self imposed isolation while Apple and CPM and later the IBM PC exploded in popularity because of their openness and accessibility to other hardware and software vendors The Poly also earned its keep as a home terminal while my youngest son earned his Computer Science degree His experiences were like those you describe in the current PolyLetter The ability to work on his programming problems at any hour of the day or night was a pig asset that we think helped him a lot e can attribute some of his success to the Poly so t has earned a place in his affections as well My renewal is enclosed Hope springs eternal Maybe you will make it a bit easier to use a Poly for constuctive work Perhaps if a future PolyLetter article should address ai plotter received and send problems above can put the Poly back in service I d love to show my clients a bona fide antique still working hard to maximize the
113. input file name output file name invokes editor omitting output file name deletes old input file PACI packs disk closes up deleted files DELETE file name file name deletes file s named UNDELETE N undeletes all deleted files on drive N NOTE UNDELETE pi works if the disk has not been packed COPY file name new file name makes a copy of file using new file name RENAME old file name new file name renames file file name evokes a file RUM a basic program etc File specification drive no lt path lt file name extension Examples i Help TX 2 BS Year BS lt 1 BS lt ML MENU BS On the system resident drive the drive number may be omitted Examples Help TI C2cBS Year BS BS ML MENU BS Extensions TI text file BS BASIC program DT data file GO machine program OV System Overlay SY System library file 20 Two user Page 5 PolyLetter RL Relocatable object code file all others are user defined AD Ada program Source AS Assembly Source DC Document file Li Ada Li object file MU MUsic source SHELP HELP file for system function The 2 may be used in place of the disk drive in many system commands The function is to cause the system to search all drives for the file Isee T file searches for file on each drive starting with the system resident drive When the file is found is set to the drive on which the file was found EDIT
114. ion manuals for the following boards including schematics 1 5 DSDD Controller 20 00 2 8 Controller 20 00 3 SSSD Controller 15 00 4 Video Board 20 00 5 CPU Board 20 00 6 4 0 Monitor ROM 20 00 7 48K amp 16K R 15 00 Add 5 00 for shipping and handling CP M hardware conversion 100 plus parts oa license manuals and software 16K to 64K memory card conversion 125 00 plus parts The 16K board has to be a Poly board and in good working condition PolyLetter Page Sgstom Programmers Guide What shall I cover next time System Service Vectors Wormholes Symbol name wie Single value oci Twin value 2 0C Eatry WHO takes no iapets Exit A Character from keyboard or command file IET not modified enabled See Also IBEX Flip Fold LBUF EBIP KBIG COUF CMDF CMDD CMDH CMDP CMDA Killi Flush DBARF Description is called to return a character from the user The character is returned either from the keyboard ring buffer see KBUF KBIP KBIG or from the command file buffer see CBUF CMDF A request to read a character past the end of a currently active command file causes the system to switch automatically back to the keyboard for input The character returned in A is not echoed to the screen this must be done by the program WHO is initialized by the boot process to point to Cin label not defined in the single user system If command files are not active and a character is n
115. ions e are interested in getting a Pascal compiler for our Polys so we would appreciate it very much if you could let us know who to contact in this regard Keep up the good work we really look forward to receivin the next issue P S I just receive the latest copy of PolyLetter this morning and it looks like there is no Pascal Someone wants an inventory program We have one but have not used it it requires 48K I don t know if it is Poly s or somebody else s but I will look up the documentation and send it to if you want Percy Roy Edmonton Alberta Canada Yes yes Send the documentation PL has inventory systems on GL V 02 and PGL V 06 but the documentation is minimal If your inventory system is one of these great we ll have some documentation If not perhaps the system will qualify for inclusion in the PolyGlot Library of public domain software You would be entitled to a disk in exchange for each disk you submit P Dear PolyLetter November 19 1986 hank you for sending me the MAR APR 1968 issue of PolyLetter I am enclosing a check for 1987 dues I would rather not cut up the 8602 issue so I will respond here to your survey survey omitted I originally bought my Poly in 1977 to use in my dental office I used it to do billing keep track of accounts receivable recall practice activity analysis payroll and letter generation Now ractice and finished graduate training am not sure about
116. is a dedicated word processing system had been being used for management information cg aes A My choices were the Apple the Sol a North Star Horizion a Vector Graphics and an Alpha Micro which wasn t really a desk top Back then in 1979 the Poly Editor had it all over everything else at the local computer store That s what sold me After learning about its operatin system and its front panel mode it seeme like it was light years ahead of everyone else in the market It seemed too good to SRN Too bad Poly lost the market ead Well about that time I started taking graduate mathematics courses and working on in mathematics My involvement with the Wang 2200 at work and the Poly at home soon had me taking courses in Computer Science and I SVOD UELI changed my major to Computer Science f course the Poly figured into every project in the program Well the university computer a DEC 10 had two editors both of which were terrible After using the Poly editor SOS and TECO were absolutely terrible I hated using them O k I ll do my homework on the Poly and transfer it to the DEC via a dial up line Well I needed a modem to talk to the University Siem ipa and bought the Hayes Micromodem 10 Unfortunately Page i PolyLetter there wasn t any software for it for the Poly I chose the Hayes Micromodem i00 because it went into the Poly s bus and I could use the printer and the modem at the same time H
117. is William B Church a Architects h Ave 444 Portlande OR 97285 Carlson William S Pittsburgh Testing Lab P 0 Box 1644 Pittsburgh PA 15238 Partlow Bill Westinghouse Electric Corp 1310 Beulah Road Pittsburgh PA 15235 Sloan John A sas gan prothers an 659 13th Street 4 Qakaont PA 15139 Graves Charles B 1074 Evergreen Circle ll St Dallas TX 75218 Hockert Susan 1 Hockert Computing Inc 7087 Pr Rd 308 hi TX 75285 Mach Charles amp Helen 709 Irving TX 75068 Ma Gr Ere eN Lane Houston TX 77079 Neal John R J 9570 Spring Branch Dr Dallas TX 75238 Norton Arthur W M 7648 Four Winds Drive Fort Worth TX 76133 _ Ryan Jim paver Connection Inc 2001 N Collins 183 Richardson TX 75080 Saith Walker 6503 Ridgecrest Unit D ball las TX 75231 Thompson Charles A 2989 Rosedale Ave Dalllas TX 75 A 1 apr Richard The Centre Shepherd s Bush 5416 Gaston Ave Dallas TX 75214 Wolfert Jonathon JAM Creative Productions 4431 Insurance Lane Dallas TX 75285 I Steinhauser Charles M Sead LTEETTER 483 Fairview Dr Richardson Tx 75081 Lowe Kenneth 5936 W Zina Circle W Valley City UT 84120 Johnson Robert v 5303 Luwana Drive SW Roanoke Va 24818 Nobbs Russ Rings amp Things Spokane WA 99218 Stearns Frank 14387 NE lth Street Vancouver WB S Ostergaard Flemmi Peni Jagtvej 149 B DK 2109 Copenhagen Dnmk HELP
118. ital ltr nital pap pep pop prism quo sdate slsp tab tiger unq wait wide HELP PROGRAM ARISE Clock Cursor DIRCOPY dlist Emedit FETCH New prism PUNCH RDB Reset slist HELP BASIC DIM EXEC EXPRESSION FORMAT FUNCTIONS H LET ABS BYE CLEAR CON CTRL Y DEL DIGITS LIST LOOPS PROGRAM REM REN RUN SCR STOP VARIABLE WALK XREF HELP BASIC FUNCTION ABS ASC ASIN ATAN CHR COS COSH EXP FREE INP INT LEN LOG LOGT MEM RND SGN SIN SINH SQRT STRS TAN TANH TIME VAL HELP MACRO aids ALIGN ck cmp dat db DDtab dequ dw EQ Flip GE gfid lt n gover hex If ioret ix JEQ JGE JLT JNE LT m MAGIC move NE neg overlay overto ralign rar rddef tds REQ RGE RLT RNE ROMoff ROMon rorg set user vcb vect VMGR WHtab SHELP COMMAND INIT HELP file for system command INIT The INIT command allows one to initialize a disk Syntax INIT RETURN see ENABLE INIT prompts for the drive namber and after writing zeros on the entire disk then asks for the new disk name isk names are limited to characters Minimum size IN The system must be in ENABLE mode PolyLetter Page SHEL COMMAND LIST HELP file for system command LIST The LIST command tupuy the directory on the screen LISTS waits after each page with At the ESC exits Syatax LIST cacfile DI or list lt n lt file DY RETORB LIST lists
119. k from the readers I m not going to do that in PolyLetter Letters Dear PolyLetter It occurred to me that Charles Our previous Editor didn t know that he could use the backslash character to print a backslash character Huh When I want to print a BASIC program using the FORMAT command from Exec I create a FORMAT IN file that includes the page size line spacing pe and most important is the command nfil I Edit the BASIC program to a file with TX as an extension Then I use lt Escape gt Control G gt to change all of the PolyLetter Page packstakhes to two backslashes becomes When using Poly s FORMAT GO a backslash is a command to print the next character literaly Therefore to print a backslash you must have two backslashes in est ce pas If you want to create a cents sign type a c a backslash a BACKSPACE and a vertical bar Unfortunately the programs Charles RR De do not read right All of the ackslashes are missing and commands are run together Al Levy FORMAT GO does not know about the backspace character It counts it as a Printable character so doing as Al suggests leaves two extra spaces on the right end of the line This is fine if you don t need right justified margins A S format has a fbs command which counts the spaces right Using Poly s FORMAT program one must reset the line width by adding 2 for each backspace character so imbedded For example if your widt
120. k at your complete software catalog I am glad to hear that you have taken over the position as Editor I have missed my PolyLetter In my mind it seems logical to assume that due to the limited number of Poly Users that the job you are taking on will not be overly rewarding either in terms of financial reward nor due to Post Office acclaim I would certainly contribute if there were something I had that would be of value However being NOT a computer programmer I have had to rely on people such as yourself for knowledge abot my Poly What I know about this wonderful computer outdated it may be is what I have learned from you and those like you who have contributed to PolyLetter So all I can contribute is a THANK YOU for staying in there agi whatever you will there 1s always something of value and send in another year s subscription to PolyLetter Thank you ever so much James Purvis Mill Creek WA Jim PL has access to someone who can copy from 5 to 8 diskettes For a second system watch the ads in PolyLetter Also the catalog is on the way Ed PolyLetter December 3 1986 I mostly use my PC AT at work and my wife s PC XT at home I would like to have more information on switching programs between the Poly and the PC world I have had my Poly for 9 years and I love it The lack of application programs has been a drag Jack Hills Los Alamos NM Dear Ralph December 2 1986 It seems like a message
121. k of the Month DEC 81 listing Disk of the Month JAM 81 listing Disk of the Month JUL 8 listing Disk of the Month JUL 82 listing Disk of the Month JUL 83 listing Disk of the Month MAR 81 listing Disk of the Month MAR 82 listing Disk of the Month MAR 83 listing Disk of the Month MAY 81 listing Disk of the Month NOV 84 listing Display Time as Hours and Minutes Double Error ag BugMote 003 0 Draw a Border BASIC Function Drive Problem Editorial Editorial Editorial Editorial Editorial Editorial Fast Loading BASIC Programs Financial Programs Wanted First Bug FORMAT and the Backslash FORMAT and the Backspace FORTRAN Front Panel Answer Front Panel Question Games REVERSE BS Glitch of the Issue HAYES AS Program Description Hardware at PolyLetter Hardware Errors Reseat Chips HELP HELP A Listing of Help Files HELP HELP COMMAND COPY HELP COMMAND INIT HELP COMMAND LIST HELP files HELP format HELP format bs HELP NEW HELP PROGRAM ARISE HELP PROGRAM PUNCH HELP PROGRAMS HELP SYS Helpful Hints In Laymen s Language Hidden Messages Hidden Messages Ralph Kenyon Ralph Keayon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Bob Bybee Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Bob Bybee Charles Mach Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Frank Stearns Russ Hobbs we Kenyon Al Levy Al ey Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Joseph Toman Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph
122. l the I O chips Lo the problem has gone away The confidence package races thru the tests and says everything 1s a ok The zits are gone too o I guess that there is a moral to this story One should periodically clean out the inside of the computer Remove each card clean the contacts insure the chips are all seated vacuum out any dust and cob webs and remove any bugs Let s try it Letters Dear Ralph December 23 1986 I enjoy PolyLetter and think you are doing the best job of all the editors thus far Keep up the first class job I am interested in a checkbook program You did not mention any price for whatever you have If it 1s only on paper what price goes with it Any documentation Re PolyLost Paul Dishman of Dallas TX is now Paul Dishman Jr of Carrollton TR zE he did leave the computer business and is teaching management courses t a local college This ts a bit sad Paul had run the local Poly store Computer Imagineering some years back and many of use got our Polys through him We held user group meeting in is store Don t know any more details but I think we have lost him The electronic typewriters coming into the market in great numbers should be considered if one wants a computer printer This letter is being typed on a 200 Panasonic T33 with 8K memory an elementary word processor 15 character display right justify and other stuff Very good for the price It has a plug built in f
123. ll the Poly First the good news The Poly operating system is unique Although it is a single user system it has many of the best features of Unix and it is the friendliest machine in town Writing a serious program on the Apple or on a CP M or DOS machine takes ten times the effort as writing it on the Poly You are used to Exec and working from the operating system Commands such as copy image etc are a snap no On the Apple you must load and run a copy program do all your copying and then run some other program All Apple disks are not compatible All C DOS disks are not compatible All CP M disks are not compatible The standard for CP M is eight inch single sided Most of today s CP M machines use 5 25 inch diskettes Using CP M you would need a collection of Public Domain software to do half the things built into Exec MS DOS is CP M with adenoids There have been 4 major releases in the ast five years Cat 100 a pop and the atest release 3 2 has bugs crawling throughout I just received a patch to fix some of the bugs Now the bad news The advantage of PC DOS or MS DOS IBM disk operating system YOU CAN BUY THE SOFTWARE YOU NEED There are telephone books crammed with offerings By the time a list is released it is obsolete because the titles have doubled Due to the universality of DOS and the IBM architecture parks are cheap I can ut together a PC XT clone with a twenty or hirty meg hard disk for about a
124. lling checker for 35 7 Abstract Systems Exec 35 4 Abstract Systems Proms 35 9 PolyGlot Library Volumes 6 each Available from Ralph E Kenyon Jr Abstract Systems etc 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 Send 1 00 for a complete catalog free with any order 10 Eight inch MAXELL 32 hard sectored diskettes for your MS 15 00 per box or 115 00 per ten boxes Contact Al Levy at _ gt agaia GOTO 330 6 MAY JUN 1986 516 293 8368 BugNotes Abstract Systems BugMote 002 0 November 3 1982 Exec 5 Dfni has a bug in the RENAME function The use of the wild card results in deleted files being undeleted and renamed Example L 3 Disk AsmbWork has 20 files om it 288 sectors in ase 1 deleted 62 sectors free Sire Mame 3 Exec 0V 12 Load AS 11 Dis AS 2 Encrypt A5 3 Prog AS 1 Prog G0 12 ASROM GO 4 1100 60 4 1400 60 4 1 00 C0 0 ASROM AS SsDL 3 Disk AsmbWork has 2 deleted files on it Size Mame 1 arCS TI 0 ASROM AS SEREN C3CASROM 2 3casrom t JCASROM CO renamed to 3 lt asrom CO 3CASROM_AS renamed to 3 lt asrom AS JCASROM_AS renamed to 3 lt asrom AS sDL 3 Disk AsmbWork has i deleted files on it Site Name 1 arCS TY DE 3casrom AS Icasrom AS deleted SREN 3casrom 2 3 lt ASROM 2 3casrom GO renamed to 3 ASROM GO 3casrom S renamed to 3 lt ASRON AS 3casrom AS renamed to 3 ASROM AS HELP Which ones shall I do in th
125. lls using this technique set to 64 in line 20 here To see that the technique works look at the log of TAn alee execution following the program isting 10 PRINT Towers of Hanoi MAR APR 1986 26 DIM T 3 10 S 64 MC64 D 64 L 0 22 INPUT What is the name of the first tower TS 1 23 INPUT What is the mame of the last tower T8 3 24 INPUT What is name of the middle tower T8 2 40 DEF FE M S M D 50 bebe S L re D L D 60 IF N 1 THEN GOSUB 117 GOTO 100 70 Z FM M S L DCL MCL H 1 40 COSUB 117 90 Z FN M WU L 5 L D L N i 100 L L 1 RETURE 0 117 PRINT Move from TS S L to T D L RETURE 130 FE END 140 INPUT How many rings do you waat to move E 150 Z FE M 1 2 3 0 IRUN Towers of Hanoi What is the name of the first tower Here What is the name of the last tower There What is the name of the middle tower Elsewhere How many rings do you want to move 3 Move from Here to There Move from Here to Elsewhere Move from There to Elsewhere Move from Here to There Move from Elsewhere to Here Move from Elsewhere to There Move from Here to There The object of the Towers of Hanoi game is to move a pile of rings or other sa n from one peg or pile to another using a third as a place to put things so that NEVER is a larger piece placed on a smaller one BugNotes Abstract Systems BugWote 001 1 BASIC CO3 04 14 81 f es a READ from a file skips over OOH bytes
126. lse in the progr an it will not affect the function but the function will change the other variable each time the function is used this MIGHT come in handy Then in LINE 5010 we have defined the mathematical formula to be executed using the dummy variables I used X but you could also use any numeric variable Note though that whatever you use will be set to the result of the formula In LINE 5020 is specified that the value to be returned is M and LINE 5030 is the mandatory FNEND to tell BASIC that your function definition is ended To use this function in a program you might use 50 M FNM 1 3 5 9 and the values specified in the parentheses would be substituted for X1 etc In this case X1 becomes 1 X2 becomes 3 X3 becomes 5 and X4 becomes 9 It is not necessary to specify the line number of the function since BASIC knows where the definition of FN M is located You could also use 50 PRINT FN M 1 3 5 9 and the calculations would be done with the result printed You can do ANYTHING in a function ya can do in a program line For example let s assume you have some strings which include filling blanks You want to strip off the blanks at the end of a large number of ar Sie with many variable names Here s a simple way to do it al 15100 X 1 102 REM even dummy variables must be eeEE 6802 DEF FN 5 X 6010 IF RIGHT X 1 lt gt THEN 6040 6820 X LEFT X LEN X 1 G0TO 6010 6048 RETURN S is
127. ly it s a game machine now as most functions have been moved to our PCjr The software just wasn t there when needed it I would be interested in sharing any projects to upgrade the Old Girl to a more up to date system either hardware or software A Peter Norton I m not but when PolyLetter Page it comes to the hardware I think I of help Sincerely Doug Henry Naperville IL The Other Guys I have been playing with an XT clone and have written BAT files to simulate some Poly commands I HATE having to type extensions or to type the command names can be fully out I have created a T BAT file which works mostly like the Poly TYPE command Here it s ECHO OFF F EXIST 1 GOTO TYPE IE EXEST 61 TRT GOTO THE IF EXIST 1 DOC GOTO DOC IF EXIST 1 BAT GOTO BAT ECHO I can t find file 1 type 1 BAT TYPE 1 BAT MORE GOTO END type 1 DOC TYPE 1 DOC MORE GOTO END ECHO type 1 TXT TYPE 1 TXT MORE END Odds and Ends from Atlanta By Bob Bybee It s been a while since I ve written anything for PL so this article is going to be a collection of subjects that I ve been thinking about over the past few months Have patience with my ramblings Projects I discussed with Sirous Parsaei PolyMorphic Systems my current proieets on the Poly including PCALC my spreadsheet program and several upcoming ideas He was very enthusiastic about these subjects and encouraged me and other software de
128. ly want to move on when the landscape gets crowded Many have one on to newer computers I love my Poly or many reasons Most of the software I use I wrote myself and know exactly what its limits are and how it works have become familiar enough with the hardware to trouble shoot many kinds of problems I re wrote and optimized the single density proms and adapted them for 96 tpi drives 1600 sectors I also made corrections and improvements to the operating system I even designed a minor change to the Printer Mini card I know how the Poly does what it does and have a great feeling of comfort about it I have found it to be extremely reliable I almost never keep backups Although I wouldn t recommend that to others or for Double Density systems I am very spoiled by my relationship with my Poly Sound like a dream Well the reality is that as long as my Poly does what I need it to do I ll keep her And since I can write programs to make her do much of what I want to I ll help her out Even though I love my Poly I am a realist See Bob Bybee s article A business stays in business in a volatile market by developing new products and by phasing out mature products Poly is not 1 MAY JUN 1986 developing a new system so has no future markets We all hope they hang in there to provide service and parts as long as we have our Polys If they move into the service market and do service work on other systems t
129. manual set that PolyLetter Page is my current project I ve made editing demands not thought of in my Poly days A final thought for WORD it is by no means the most popular word processing software the WORD market share is about 5 Like Poly in her day WORD may in fact be a product for the insightful and thoughtful user not the stumbling herd The fact that WORD is not so widely used is perhaps a good sign LITTLE KNOWN BONUS FEATURES OF PC COMPATIBILITY Besides the obvious items of tons of software and the ability to talk to the rest of the world there are some other advantages to using DOS You can start as many versions of DOS 3 X as you have memory to support them What this means is that you can suspend a process shell out with a new command interpreter and start eee else When finished you can come back to the original image This is extremely useful Imagine control Ying out of large edit typing Exec from the prompt getting a new prompt using another application such as a basic program finishing then typing exit and returning to your original session right where you left off DOS 3 X input keyboard and output screen can be redirected to and from files or the 1 0 ports This Vs how I automated the transfer of 30 Mbytes across the serial port The DOS machine command I O was redirected to Poly s serial port A Poly BASIC program and Poly command files spoke DOS and created DOS subdirectories and ope
130. me offer the following to those thinking about a transition first it can be done and you can gain in the process though you ll Eb ord want to hang onto your Poly Let me address the major areas of concern THE OPERATING SYSTEM DOS 3 X has few of the features of Exec But DOS 3 X does have a comprehensive parameterized batch command file mechanism One of the first things I did was set up a series of batch files that in name and function emulate Exec commands OS 3 X wildcarding is very good and saves a lot of hassle and redundant typing during file manipulation DOS offers search and sort tools and can combine two files or a whole directory full of files during copying DOS error messages are nearly useless but one gets used to them preety the various applications have somewhat better messages DOS does supply hooks for a lot more comprehensive message system that is individual error bits are set for numerous error situations it s just that the upper level of DOS itself doesn t always use these THE EDITOR I thought I would NEVER find an editor like Poly s Edit but there is _of for nearly ten years 4 SEP OCT 1986 such a creature Cactually it is two items Most DOS editors and so called word processing systems are idiotic beyond belief the prime example being Wordstar followed closely by Multimate and a bunch of other junk Microsoft WORD 3 0 however is in a class by itself Note the 3 0
131. my Poly I would like to use it in the new practice but to what extent that will be I m not sure When I originally purchased the Poly there was nothing in the same price range which could perform as well for the cost I wrote my own software in BASIC Now there are systems priced within reason and SOFTWARE is available For me the worrisome problem of reliability what do I do when it goes down and statements are due to be printed accounts can not be updated has me leaning toward the purchase of an new system AT I have purchased some software from Bob Bybee although this was sometimes a problem since I have only the MS which Bob does not have I bought his spreadsheet program and we tried to transfer his files having sold the PolyLetter Page over the telephone It took more than one attempt to accomplish a good transfer from Georgia to lowa I would be interested in articles on assembly programm ite pertinent to calling system routines such as Ckdr WHO WH1 mie etc I have a second hand copy of SPG and have read it several times I have also read several texts on 8080 programming However my difficulty lies in making the transition from pure 8080 code to Poly application I would also consider 1 Purchasing some of your PolyGlot Public Domain Library if you could provide disks for my drives 2 A second 8813 a back up system would make me more comfortable about using my ak in the Office 3 Taking a loo
132. ned DOS files Poly files were read via Poly BASIC and printed into the waiting DOS files There were some gotchas with Poly s printer driver call me if you have questions I was annoyed that the DOS harddisk can only be broken into four volumes I wanted eight as in my old 5 meg Poly harddisk But in DOS I found something almost as good if not better DOS 3 X allows substituting a disk designator for a path DOS uses letters for disks so these can have mnemonic significance to the user I have the four volumes of the DOS harddisk accessible as eighteen online disks defined by letters I hope this is not taken as a message to abandon a Poly I had to do so for client reasons and found through the good fortune of hardware availabilit and patient friends that things weren t so bad after all I had to sell my Polys to gain the office space That hurt more than anything But both machines do have a good home now in Canada I know the machines will be well taken care of That s something The important point here is your Poly spirit Poly let you know that bogus hardware the PC and silly software Wordstar and friends need not set your standards From a daily operations and practical usage standpoint Poly taught us more than most computer scientists will ever know except Ralph of course When we couple that knowledge and intolerance for thee with modern hardware and truly useful DOS software the results are stunning
133. new editor If we don t know what you need to know how the heck can we write meaningful articles Get with it guys and gals Despite Santa Barbara we can do miracles Al Levy A can be reached PA writing P O Box 71 Hicksville NY 1180 or by calling 516 293 8368 Ed NEWS 1 MATCH POINT a hardware product to allow Mess PClone to read and write files under PASA s Apple Dos or ProDos cannot read olyMorphic or NorthStar single density formats Ron Proesell phone 815 756 3411 says the project to modify the board to allow reading and writing our format is now a back burner project See the letter from Al Levy and his article on the subject If you are interested in moving your data to a PClone call and urge him to work on it Ed MAR APR 1986 2 Hardware Service for the Poly is currently available from Jeff Osborne 1215 Henning Ave Evansville IN 47714 Phone 812 479 5480 3 PolyMorphic Systems is still in business and provi ng hardware service Factory opara te to P M for 100 plus parts 7 Hollister Avenue Santa Barbara CA 93117 Phone 805 685 6238 4 9th Boston Micro Show amp Sale Sunday December 14 1986 Sheraton Hotel Conference Center Boxborough Mass Call 800 631 0062 5 Long Island Micro Show Sale amp Computer Fleamarket Saturday November 23 1986 Colonie Hill Convention Center Hauppauge New York Call 800 631 0062 Is There Any Hope For Poly Users By Al Levy
134. nk 1 After I put it back in I bring up the front panel and poke a FF into 4114 and press the arrow key Sure enough it changes to an EF in front of my very eyes I ve located a bad memory location Now the next question are there other bad locations too I don t know so I write a quick little program to write FF into every byte from MEMTOP down to 3300H and then to loop checking for changes If it finds a change it prints out the location and the incorrect value I assemble this program and run it Lo it doesn t find anything wrong So I say What gives and interrupt it with a CTRL Z to get to the front panel The byte at 4114 is FF like it should be I press the arrow key and it changes to an EF in front of my eyes again Ok I figure there must be some kind of interaction with the HALT condition When I press G from the front panel now I start getting 411F EF repeated at regular intervals It found the bad bit after I halted the program and restarted it during which the CPU was halted Ok I replace the suspect memory chip and ve now works fine k here s a memory failure which did not show up on the main confidence test routine Now I did not run the extended menory test so I don t know if that would have tound it Unfortunately when I put the bad memory che back in to try it out it had been zapped but good and failed the simple test done by Exec so I couldn t try the extended memory test Well
135. o an issue and spend an additional fifty dollars an issue to boot I m not for anyone to take on PL What I am saying is to 6e patient use your Poly help little ladys across the street eat your beets brush twice daily see Halleys comet and renew your subscriptions You need to at least do the last two because both are a once in a lifetime wonder Besides I hate beets For Sale 1 8813 and 1 8813 MS system The MS system can run CPM B2 and has a DC Hayes micro modem 100 in it th systems complete with Exec 9b Wordmaster II Spell 3 0 Mailist and documentation The 8813 has been used in an Architecural office for the last four years The MS system also has specifications and office management system software This software availableat an additional cost Both systems are in excellent condition First 2002 02 ets them both plus all the spares documentation and disks ntact Bill Davis evenings at 503 232 6208 Poly 8813 w 64K keyboard monitor 10MB Priam HD 8 inch floppy drive 1500 00 Contact Charles Trayser at 415 HD 18 system coe with controller chassis power supply cables etc 1295 00 MS 88 system including two drives controller p s Exec 9b roms chassis 495 00 Contact PolyMorphic Systems at their new address 7334 H Hollister Ave Santa Barbara Ca 93117 Phone 805 685 6238 SHEERS Using Mailist Part 4 Al L Box 7 Hicksville NY 11882 516 293 8348 What about mistakes or Changing an entry
136. o find Top of RAM type DISPLAY at the 3 prompt Page 8 FIRST CLASS PolyLetter The Newsletter for PolyMorphic Systems Owners and Users PolyLetter 8603 Editorial Page I m not sure what an editorial is I always thought it was just a place for the editor to say what he or she couldn t say somewhere else So here re some thoughts PolyMorphic Systems was one of the first manufacturers of desk top computers Before the 8813 line Poly entered the market in the hey day of the build your own craze Poly s original entry was the Poly 88 now affectionately known as the Orange Toaster It sold in kit form as well as fully assembled mostly to OEM s had an industrial base as process controllers Being small in size and rugged in construction it was most suitable for use in undustrial environments The 100 bus was new then and Poly s was compact and rugged When Poly moved into the Desk Top market they devised an exceptional operating system a superb Editor and some neat software As I look back thru my folder of promotional literature from Poly it gives me a choked up feeling and brings a tear to my eye a t went wrong ell we can t live in the past as attractive as it sometimes seems The original Poly Users were a combination of the hardware hackers who built from kits and the early professional pioneers who dared to be first Some of them are still using their Polys today However pioneers usual
137. ompare the data for the two It should be obvious what needs to be changed The first thing that comes to mind would be the baud rate The reason most foe are changing printers is to upgrade thier capability e newer printers have print speeds up to 160 cps plus The effective transfer rate of serial data from the computer to the peinar can be as high as 9600 baud for the Poly You need to see what speeds the new printer will handle and use the highest ei piik If you have a decent sized buffer in the printer then at 9600 baud the adverage file can be printed in one load to the buffer This gets you back to Exec in just a few seconds The second item to check is the hardware handshake Most printers I have used like the DTR handshake best Acually most serial printers come from the factory re as DTR The DTR handshake stands for Data Terminal Ready The come is the Te ee device When you call to print he printer controlls the DTR line This line is normally nes meaning it is ready to accept data As the computer fills the buffer the printer starts to print However at a 7608 baud rate the printer can t print as fast as the computer can send it data So when the buffer is full the printer toggles the DTR line low and the computer quits sending data Now when the the buffer reaches the sooty oint about 256 characters the printer then oe he TR line high and the computer resumes sending data This continues until the entire file has been transfere
138. or a computer interface although the interface and cable costs almost as much as the typewriter Other machines also could be considered for use as letter quality printers for a reasonable price Sincerely Charles Mach Irving TX Aww shucks blush Thanks for the praise In regard to the checkbook program I have a paper copy of CHECKBOOK a program written in July 1978 by Brian Smith consisting of 8 pages of program there 1s no other documentation The copy and mail cost would be 1 00 but who wants to type all that in I hope someone comes forward with a disk copy for the PolyGlot Library The second paper item 1s CASHFLOW by PolyMorphic Systems which consists of 15 pages of documentation and 14 pages of program listings in a 32 page manual Looking at the syntax of the listings shows lyLetter 8606 Page t the programs were written for A01 IC The copy and mail cost would be 0 who wants to type all in Let s hear from our readers and if anyone has it on disk I ll check mith Poly to insure this is a public domain item Also thanks for confirming that Paul Dishman is no longer a PolyUser Too bad he deserted the fold With help like yours Beare we can clean up the mailing list but again Dear Ralph December 17 1986 Thank you for the latest issue of PolyLetter My 8813 was gathering dust last year I inherited a NEC 8801 with two 8 DSDD drives I have a problem with my Poly the keyboard has a horrible ke
139. orne The last software upgrade I bought from Pol cost 150 The difference is the muc smaller base of users 50 times say 20 000 SuperCalc users made SuperCalc some money 150 times probably 30 Poly users who upgraded didn t do much for Poly The best guess is that Poly has sold around 3000 total 8810 and 8813 computers PCI s accounting software was installed in oniy a few locations I don t believe it is fully debugged The versions that were supplied to me did not work Other users who tried to work longer with PCI continued to tell me of problems in the software even after most of the bugs were fixed There is no support today because PCI has gone out of business Because the Poly programs will only run on the Poly wit their non standard operating system and non standard disk format and can not be moved to a more modern computer when the user upgrades the computer there is unfortunatly little value except to a current Poly user And then only if it fits their current application The PolyMorphic was an excellent design If their operating system had become the industry standard instead of Digital Research s CP M the Poly would be a much better value today PolyLetter has had several articles by users who speak of their beloved Polys and their friendly operating system and editor his letter was written on the Poly using Poly s WordMaster I find it much friendlier than WordStar on my Osborne However
140. ot present buffer the system waits until a character is available In the single user system the processor enables interrupts halts to wait for an interrupt and then checks again for a character In the TwinSystem Giveup 1s called to give up the processor see description of KBIP for this code If the character returned is from the keyboard buffer or a disk read was required to bring in command file data the interrupts are returned enabled If the character is returned from the command file buffer CBUF and a read is not required the interrupt system is unaltered Any errors in attempting to read from the command file cause control to be transferred to Err essentiall aborting the program restart may be difficult The character removed from either the command file buffer or the keyboard buffer is passed through the routine connected to KBEX this is commonly a nuJjJl routine but may also be either Flip or Fold or a user specified routine As the result of invoking Killi or Flush the contents of the keyboard typeahead buffer may be flushed Killi also aborts command files if in progress Symbol name Wil Single value oct Twin value E10 Symbol name Vti Twin value E087 Entry A character to be displayed on screen Exit All registers and interrapts unchanged See Also SCRHM SCEMD POS Vti Lock Unlock in the keyboard screen 6 JUL AUG 1986 Description 1 is called to display a character on the video
141. owever I had to write the software to run the board my first big aks language project With my newly developed interest in assembly language programming developed a desire to see how other people wrote assembly language programs and bought a disassembler It was a total disapointment It had horrible ee Pe I sent it back and got my money back then I wrote my own version in BASIC which did what I expected a disassembler to do It produced a source list which could be given o the assembler and which would assemble to the original machine language program without any errors Since then I ave written a fast machine language version About this time I connected up with Chuck Sutherland who was just starting PolyLetter He advertised my disassembler that s how I got into the business of writing and selling software for the Poly Many of the programs I have were written just because I wanted the Poly to do something for which there was not yet any software In some cases I just made something someone else had much better As a matter of fact the DisAssembler has been the single most popular program I have ever written In any event writing and selling software for the Poly became a part time side line business for me I met many interesting people through my Poly contacts One fellow is analyzing and displaying the minute by minute play of the stock market Another manages all facets of a printing business Yet another did
142. put my money into an AT clone I ad meant to renew the PolyLetter subscription but it got away from me Right now I don t know I have built up a CompuPro system with a 6 mHz Z80 2 8 1 2 mByte drivess 20 mByte hard disk 512K Ram Disk 1200 baud modem running under ZCPR and it is a very fast system And more than that I have all the software I need have hung in there with my Poly and PolyLetter in the hopes that there would be some or all the Poly source files published and I don t mean non commented disassembly No insult intended I have complete CPM source uninstalled and I am sure there are many others like me I have tried to get source on DIO with non disclosure statements signed I had some ideas from my own disassembly that could have led to a much better DIO Maybe this is one of the reasons DRI is still a viable operating system I have strong vibrations that Poly source does exist outside of Poly and even if it does not exist who except us want source to very old 8080 programs What good is it doing Poly to keep it under wraps I think that it is too late in the PC revolution to try to port Poly to the PC Too many people are in love with the Unix style operating system and big blue Ther is a RBBS in southern CA that claims to be a Poly system but I have lost the reference to it as I could never get in it was always busy I don t know if you have every read the book Fire in the Valley The Making of t
143. r answers and requests in FIRST CLASS MAIL Back volumes of PolyLetter are available at the same acs as the current subscription rate US 15 00 yr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable in US dollars to Ralph Kenyon ndividual issues are also available 3 00 3 50 4 00 PolyLetter The Newsletter for PolyMorphic Systems Owners and Users PolyLetter 8606 Page Editorial With this Letter is back on schedule almost he next issue is JAN FEB 1987 and is planned to go to press by February 25 After that I plan to get each issue out in the last week of the first of the two months MAR APR will be issue Pol due out in the last week of March MAY JUN will be due out in the last week of May and so forth By setting a schedule everyone should benefit into the next PolyLetter it to me at To get something you need to get least one week before the press date The more typing and research I have to do the more lead time is better I do have a policy of publishing all letters received at PolyLetter with a minimum of editing so feel free to submit your letters on disk Cit saves me typing them in I have been quite gratified by the responses I have been etting of course you have seen them all I have been sendin PolyLetter renewal cards to subscribers whose last entitled issue arrives and on the bottom of that card is a place for people to say they got rid of their Poly It was most pleasing wh
144. r your MS 115 00 per ten boxes Office Box 71 Hicksville 293 8368 inch MAXALL 32 hard sectored 15 00 per box or S From Al Levy Post NY 11802 516 For Sale 8813 with 1 drive Hitachi monitor Keyboard and Practical Automation Printer Best offer From Barry Adler Gynecare 230 Route 59 Monsey NY 10952 914 357 8884 Wanted ray Keyboard II or III Allen Daubendiek 1821 Jackson St Beatrice NE 68310 402 223 5863 Confessions by Frank Stearns Dear PolyLetter November 20 1986 Thanks for taking on that which at times can be a tedious task I know from personal experience Many Poly owners will certainly feel relief that PL still exists This is a rather difficult letter to write I feel as though I am something of a traitor Here I sit composing this letter on a DOS 3 X machine and horror of horrors I really don t miss my Poly other than the incredibly reliable hardware How could I possibly say that How could I ever do without EDIT Exec A BCD BASIC that s worth a damn Well briefly x Editors I ve found a DOS editor and PolyLetter Page some ancillary tools that together are actually quite a bit more flexible than the Poly editor x Operating system While DOS 3 X is crude and downright silly in many respects it s ne at all like the utter horror and absurdity of CP M DOS 3 X does rovide the tools to let you add things hat make DOS look ike Exec x BASIC DOS BASIC was
145. red to the other drives Replacing that pad can sometimes help The other thing to check is the speed of the drive You will probably need to remove drive 3 in order to get a good look at drive 2 With a florescent light look at s on the drive wheel on the right hand side of the drive while the motor is running To keep the motor running make a command file called RUN which has the command RUN in it on drive 1 Since all the motors go at the same time drive 2 will run while this command file keeps calling itself on drive i Look at the condition of the drive motor spindle and the drive wheel I found a good deal of caked dust on mine and held a small screwdriver up against the wheel to scrape off the gunk while it was turning I also cleaned it with alcohol The small spindle of the drive motor also got caked with gunk When these are all cleaned off then the strobe markin 2 NOV DEC 1986 check the speed lf it Takstir Volt it can be ar ap There is a small circuit board on the end of the drive It has one varable resistor a small block with a brass screw sticking out the end Turnin that screw one way or the other will spee up or slow down the drive While the drive is running adjust this screw until the strobe lines appear to stop rotating This will restore the drive to the proper speed If it still has problems it may be more than can be done at home I presently have two spare drives being offered for sale at 50 each
146. return they get from their investments Please hang in there I have a sentimental affection for die hards too Sincerely John H Mc Nally 1986 Dear Editor November 15 I enjoyed the last PolyLetter I must say I phone ht Poly was a dead issue though I ad lost track of the time between issues and really didn t expect to receive another In the eyes of everyone else I m sure Poly is a dinosaur But as you have well expressed it s a really impressive small system I d be among the first to say that the people at Poly did their homework well when they introduced the Exec operating system and Poly BASIC I ve not seen another to compare to the ease with which it operates or to the easy reading of those Was manuals I ve been employed by IBM for 26 years now and have seen lots of operating systems come and go but none have compared to Poly s My Poly is a Homebrew It all started with a Video I 0 and a Poly CPU card then came an 18 slot Godbout motherboard three used RAM cards and a new cassette recorder Boy this was living Now the old girl is a full blown 8813 with a single card CMOS RAM a SIO4 I O card an internal Hayes modem eprom burner and an Intex Talker box to boot Also added a Microline 82a Printer later on I m sure my PROMS are way down level 75 Exec is at level 80 and BASIC is at C00 But I sure enjoy what I have I have written assembly and BASIC programe for use around the home rimari
147. routines into string variables each needs to be 12 bytes long We also need a disconnect routine which won t do anything since we don t want to disconnect the device driver A return instruction by itself will do First we dimension the variables we need DIM DOS 1 12 REM D for driver 0 for out DIM Di 1 12 REM D for driver 1 for in DIM D2 1 1 REM D for driver 2 for nothing Next we build the output driver using the decimal values we computed for the assembly language routine Dos DOS DOS CHRS 245 REM PUSH PSW DOS DOS CHRS 197 REM PUSH 8 DOS DOS CHRS 213 REM PUSH D DOS DOS CHRS 229 REM PUSH H DOS DOS CHRS 6 CHRS 1 REM MVI 8 DOs DOS CHRS 205 CHRS 0 CHRS AS REM CALL 3000H ODOS DOS CHRE 195 CHRS 100 CHRS 0 REM JMP loret Next we build the input driver using the decimal values we computed for the assembly language routine Dige D1S D1S CHR 197 REM PUSH 8 DIS D1S CHRS 213 REM PUSH D Dis DiS CHRS 229 REM PUSH A DiS D1S CHRS 6 CHRS 2 REM MVI B 2 PolyLetter DIS DiS CHRS 205 CHRS O CHRS 48 REM CALL 30008 DI S DIS CHRS 225 REM POP H DiS DIS CHRS 209 REM POP D D1 D1S CHRS 193 REM POP B DIS DIS CHRS 201 REM RET Next D2S CHRS 201 REM RET We won t discoamect it so just return Page we build the disconnect routine Finally we connect the routines with the DEF keyword FILE 3 DEF MEM D1 MEM DO MEM D2 REM Connect drivers After this all referen
148. rts Exec Program rom manual Program to create files Some documentation 1 FORT DRIVE DC 1 WARM FE 10 SORT EMPLOTEE FE t EMPLOYEE BS 1 EPUT OUTPOT DC ALLOCATION DC copied from 4 DIRECTIVES DC the manuals EXECUTION DC repeated here 2 TEST FE A FORTRAN test program E Command file to compile TEST 21 TEST AY The test program hex file 2 TEST GO The test program GO file I don t know where the disk copy I have came from and don t know whether it is complete or not If anyone already has a core of the compiler please send PolyLetter a DIRECTORY listing of the disk I would eventually like to make the PolyGlot Library distribution disk as complete as possible LE anyone is using this compiler PolyLetter would appreciate you comments on it Let s find out what we ve got here Assembly Source Programs For those of you who want to learn assembly language programming there s nothing quite I example programs Here s a disk ull PolyLetter makes no claims about the correctness of these programs Some will work and some may need modification PL believes their best use is in learning Seca language programming by looking at the style of programs written by others These assembly source files were submitted by Al Levy Al aquired the programs when he bought the computer and the programs in a package deal The computer used to belong to Don Moe of the now defunct Logic Inc The contents of Poly
149. s 251 sectors in use sectors deleted 39 sectors free Size Hane 16 DOCUMENT TY 49 NVENTORY BS 13 STATUS BS 4 CREATE BS 11 STOCK BS These are original games which rua on BASIC A01 The system disk is Exec 4D This is Poly s original inventory system which is no longer supported by them t comes on Exec 4D with BASIC AQ iH 9 LAVENTORT DT IEVENTORT DT 2 DISCLAIMER TI Disk PGL V 03 has 30 files on it MAR APR 1986 31 free entries 349 sectors in use O sectors deleted 1 sectors free Size Name 19 DECISION BS 18 VENTURE BS 4 DEPRECIATION BS 31 ANNUITY BS 5 SAVINGS BS 26 INVEST 8S 22 LOANS 85 A ht BS STOCK 1 PUTSKCALLS BS 16 MLS BS Disk PGL V 04 has 34 files on it These programs are From various sources Some are by Poly and Some are by others All Are associated with financial matters of one sort or another The system is Exec 83 with BASIC C02 26 free entries 350 sectors in use 0 sectors deleted sectors free Size Mame 25 PERFIN BS 8 CHECKBOOK REC BS 3 INTEREST RULE 78 8S 3 FV INVESTMENT BS 5 T BILL BS IRR BS 10 FERR BS 15 FS RA BS 38 APARTMENT BS 21 FUTIL 85 7 CALENDAR BS 1 FileSort BS 3 FileSort76 BS 5 Calendar BS 2 DIR CREATE BS Disk PGL V 05 has 29 files om it Exec 3 amp BASIC CO2 These programs are From various sources Some are by Poly and Some are by others Some are finantial in subject and some are utiliti
150. s about programming techniques and style information about what programs are in the public domain and whatever news seems relavant You may have read one of my articles in the past or you may have used one of my programs in the pas I have tried to make the Poly do what wanted it to do I have not always been Pree In this day PolyLetter at a MAR APR 1986 and age most people have moved on to the IBM clone There are still a few hold outs who are loyal to the Poly One of the things I have been thinking about is writing a system which runs Poly software on the IBM PC clone A step in this direction has been taken by Micro Solutions DeKalb IL who is manufacturing a board for the IBM PC clone which is capable of reading hard sector diskettes See Al Levy s article Another step in this direction which I plan to take advantage of is NEC s new processor the V 20 he V 20 is an 8088 which is also capable of becoming an 8080 Writing a Poly emulator for the IBM PC clone would be much easier if the system had a V 20 installed I will keep you posted on that score Let e give you a little personal AAS A irst aquired a Poly in 1979 when Sak looking for a word processing system to handle the papers I was writing in general semantics I couldn t stand the idea of typing a paper over just for minor revisions so a word processing system seemed a good bet I had only worked with the Wang 2200 series which although it
151. s would benefit if everyone had access to the widest possible base of users and I encouraged Sirous to share his mailing list with PL If the PL subscriber list could be increased by 500 or 1000 names we wouldn t have any trouble keeping our newsletter going for years to come Bob Bybee Bob can be reached at Poly Peripherals 5011 Brougham Court Stone Mountain GA 30087 404 498 3556 Bit Bucket On November 4 1986 Al Levy reported that one of his clients has a broken ESC key on his KEYBOARD III He tested the keyboard with a basic program 10 PRINT INP i GOTO 10 and nothing happened when the ESC key was pressed What a bummer The ESC key is used in the editor for all kinds of things including geting out of E Dear Al The ESC key produces the same ASCII value as CTRL ell your client to use CTRL C in place of SC until a replacement key can be ao eh ike peering of the ESC key in PL 8201 Al described a method of getting a literal ESC character into you text file using Szap GO There s a much easier way How to put an ESC 1BH Character Into a Text File e ESC left arrow and a little left arrow will appear Second delete the left arrow and it will disappear Third use CTRL U and undelete one character the little arrow will reappear To insert other control characters First ty PolyLetter Page simply type CTRL F When the second cursor appeorn type the CTRL character of your oice excep
152. scription Input Assembly Language Inventory Available Inventory System Wanted Is There a Hope For Poly Users Key Bounce Problem Key Bounce Solution Keyboard Key Cleaning Keyboards and WordMaster II Ralph Kenyon Percy Roy Travis Miller Al Levy Constantin Pavioff Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon Ralph Kenyon LEMONADE STAND BS Program Description LEN input BASIC BugNote 008 0 Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter Letter LINE FEED Generation Bypass LIST on a Clone Lost Poly Users Lost Poly Users MAILER AS oa ie Description MAJOR MINOR F MATCH POINT Mailist Using Part 4 Maintenance Hints BASIC Software Map of Adventure Maze Maze Map for Adventure MEMTEST AS A Memory Test Program MM100 AS Program Description MORSE CODE BS Program Description MS Controler Ports BugNote 007 0 MSDOS Naming Programming Languages Networking New shia MUMBER CONVERSION BS Program Description Odds and Ends from Atlanta Other Gays Other Guys Output Assembly Language WH Pack Error NO Abort BugWote 009 0 Pack Syntax Failure BugWote 005 0 Pascal Wanted Plotter Trouble Using Plug for Printer Interface Test PolyGlot Library Volume 01 Listing PolyGlot Library Volume 02 Listing PolyGlot Library Volume 03 Listing PolyGlot Library Volume 04 Listing PolyGlot Library Volume 05
153. sing WordMaster II Version 1 3 Here are two environments which I have found very useful at least on the Diablo 1610 This first one gives you a nicely laid out page of text on an 8 1 2x11 sheet of paper Lines per page 57 Characters per line 81 Top margin 0 Bottom margin 2 Offset for left edge 0 Left margin 0 Right margin Line spacing 1 Standard indent 5 Printer type diab Character per inch 2 First page number Header for all pages fcpi 12 jc pno fskp Using 81 characters per line and then command a right margin of 1 overcomes the Diablos s tendency to avoid boldfacing the last character on the line if you try 4 NOV DEC 1986 boldfacing with an 80 0 setting Now to a more interesting variation How do you get more text on a printed page if you cannot vary your type size as with a dot matrix Answer You print out on a larger piece of paper then blow it down on a high quality photocopy machine I have done this by picking up a ream or so of 11x14 paper from a printing supply store This will feed nicely through the diablo printer The result can be blown down to a perfect 8 1i 2x1ii by standard settings on current lah che 2 machines The appropriate environment for the Poly 15 Lines per page 76 Characters per line 106 Top margin 0 Bottom margin 3 Offset for left edge 5 Left margin 0 Right margin 7 Line spacing 1 Standard indent 5 Printer type diab Character per inc
154. ssor manual but haven t studied the project enough to know if it s feasible to port the Poly OS toirthe Veo At any rate I discussed this whole prove with Sirous He was concerned that if Cor someone did convert the Poly software to the PC it would encourage more people to drop their Polys right away This would reduce the income he s getting from servicing those Polys This is a Legitimate concern of course We all want PolyMorphic to stay in business as long as we can I did suggest that if I developed this software Poly could sell it and earn royalties that way But Sirous wasn t interested How much When I asked what kind of money he would consider to part with the Poly code Sirous couldn t say my question had caught him by surprise He did say that given the possible loss of service revenue it would have to be worth his while before he would consider it I got the feeling that several thousand dollars would be a good offer Sirous suggested that several Poly users might pool their money and make an offer to buy the code He also said that if several users did purchase the code they could have it with no restrictions the could rewrite it distribute it resell it or whatever Personally I d be willing to sink a couple of hundred dollars into the project just to keep the Poly source code in my archives for emergencies or posterity or sentimental reasons Anyone else willing to go along We ll nee
155. stions posed for this column SOO ea Eh just ave to drift along in my own way until someone sends in a question roblem or other task to exhibit here eanwhile want to discuss Zproblems and in BASIC 8 SEP OCT 1986 In PolyLetter 8602 I described how a recursive function could be implemented in basic with the Towers of Hanoi a classical recursion problem Well I was not satisfied to have the Poly just say what disk is moved from where to where and tinkered with the program I added graphics to it It actually draws a tower of disks on the screen and then proceeds to move the disks from pile to pile with lightning like jumps Here is the listing for that program 10 PRINT Towers of Hanoi 20 DIM S 21 REM Source parameter stack 30 DIM M 21 REM Middle parameter stack 40 DIM D 21 REM Destination parameter stack 0 DIM T 3 22 REM Tower slots T Tower Stack 60 L 0 REM Set parameter level to 0 70 1 20 REM Location of base line 80 MAT T 0 REM initialize tower slots to empty 0 DEF FE M S M D E REM Source Middle Destination Number 100 L L REM Increment parameter level 110 S L S MCL M D L D REM Save parameters in stack 120 IF B 1 THEN GOSUB 170 GOTO 160 REM if N 1 we do only one 130 ZF MCS L D L M L H 1 REM Move N i to the middle 140 GOSUB 170 REM Move the last one to our destination 130 2 FN M M L S L D L H 1 REM Move N i from middle 160 L L RETURN 0 REM Decrement param
156. t al ne Y CTRL Z CTRL ESC or DELETE CTRL Z works when not in ENABLEd model Next sg Se ESC and the double cursor and the CTRL character will disappear Next type 2 CTRL U s and a second brick and the CTRL character will reappear One left arrow to jump over the newly recovered CTRL character and one DELETE removes the extra cursor BRICK By the way the BRICK is the DELETE character so if you ever want to insert a DELETE character in a file the sequence CTRL F ESC CTRL U does it To get a CTRL Z character use ESC right arrow DELETE CTRL U CTRL cannot be getten this way because it s ASCII value is 0 and the keyboard input routine skips over any 00 inputs Never the less a CTRL can be gotten in three ney The hard way is to go to the end of the file and use CTRL U until some greek alpha s appear that s one Delete everything CTRL U came up with except the alpha mark the alpha sat and copy it or move it to where you want it The second way is to simply insert a left or right block marker When Edit 4 X writes out the file it changes these to 00 bytes first but writes them out anyway However don t expect the 00 bytes to be in the file when you read it it ala load routine strips all null bytes out The third way Cand the easiest also works for CTRL Y CTRL Z and any other CTRL character except ESC and DEL Simply use the escape definition se nenes eu use Y for this example Type
157. t did so much The WORD computer aided instruction is impressive and the online help is actually useful But satisfaction was not complete All that power at times needed a lot of keystrokes At least I thought it needed a lot non Poly people said I was silly and asking for the moon But never having used a Poly they d never understand After listening to me rant about an 8080 based machine called a Poly one sales fellow had the good sense to show me Borland s Superkey a general purpose and highly sophisticated keyboard macro definition program that works all the time not just in the editor Needless to say I have all the Poly editor keystrokes programmed in a macro library named approprie oly POLY MAC Control B and still go to the top and end of a file i and o still mean input and output w kills the previous word x a line and so on When I had that I was in heaven EDIT lived again but within WORD and on a DOS machine Superkey can do much more than there is space here to describe And then there is Borland s Turbo Lightning an online dictionary and thesaurus which can be directed to verify spotting and word choice for a word just typed ven while using Poly this was something I d dreamed Now I ve got it Lord forgive me but I could now never go back to Poly s editor not with my current editing demands Sadly a Poly would not have been able to support production of the 3000 page
158. t in for PL to include in the list Hardware at PolyLetter I thought I d take a little space to tell you about my system The hardware at PolyLetter consists of one 8813 with 3 double sided 96 tpi drives meine operated in a single density format This yields 1600 sectors 400K per drive or 1 2 megs on line I also have an 8810 with two 1 2 height 96 tpi rism 132 color printer and a Dataproducts formerly IDS 8050 color printer I also have a Hayes Micromodem 100 300 baud modem drives I have an IDS Letter 1 JUL AUG 1986 Software allows my 96 tpi drives to read and write standard PolyMorphic single density 5 diskettes PolyLetter is printed with the Dataproducts 8050 printer The software use in preparing it are the Editor Abstract Systems format program Abstract Systems rint to a File program and Abstract ip gatas write program I also use the Dio3 program to read SSSD disks submitted with articles and letters have set up my odd and even page headers to include margin setting commands for the printer so that the left column is printed as an odd page and the right column 1s printed as an even page The even page footer prints the page number right justified Each header includes a command to start printin at absolute line 4 First I format the document with my print to a file utilit to capture the output Second I edit that file and change all page numbers to the proper sequence I also delete the form f
159. t on disk Manipulation of the array wouldn t be too bad either But then I have to struggle to circumvent the Poly printer driver which insists on modifying the return backspace and similar characters before sending them Guess what characters are used to control special functions in the Radio Shack plotter Back when I was still using the Poly part time I started to disassemble the rinter Drive to try to control the plotter and pulled out what little hair I had left ANYWAY the point of this diatribe is that while the Poly was wonderful when there wasn t anything else you sure earn everything you get out of it I have communications utilities for both CPM and MSDOS that will both send and receive ASCII files without modifying them and with little effort on my part The Poly s will die because like Model T Fords only the highly skilled and exceedingly determined can use them So how come I have a sentimental attachment Because when designed it was such a wondrous machine At that time I worked for IBM servicing both hardware and software for medium size business systems principatiy the IBM System 3 in the middle 0 s When the first table tops came out I borrowed a tape cassette based IBM demo machine for a couple of weeks to see if it was practical for home use for securities investment analysis At that time no major manufacturer had a complete diskette system on the market and the Apple was a cigar box for lay
160. t out your old programs and send them in o encourage building the library Anyone sending in a disk of new programs will be entitled to recieve a free disk of public domain software in exchange HELP In this section I share with you the help system files I have built up over the last few years The entire system is included with Abstract Systems Exec Covered in this issue are HELP HELP SYS SHELP 7 HELP 8 and HEE PROGRAMS Which ones shall I do in the next issue SHELP HELP file for Exec fA S system command HELP Help is available for the Mii system commands Auth boot CONTINUE COPY DELETE DNAME DIRECTORY DISABLE DISPLAY DLIST DONT DUMP EDIT EWABLE flip fold FULL CET HELP IMAGE INIT LIST PAGE PRINT PACK Printer REENTER RENAME RESET Restart SAVE SetSys Sniff SQUEAL START TYPE UNDELETE UnSys WRITE ZAP Additional hel BASIC CHDF is available for the following RL U files format GAMES INITIAL MACROS NEW PROGRAMS SYS Syntax HELP name RETURN Example HELP LIST HELP NEW gives a summary of the new system enhancements HELP name displays the help file information for name HELP displays this message again Iminimum size H SHELP SYS HELP SYS Commands semicolon followed by space just print line LIST N lists contents of disk on drive H defaults to i PRINT file mame Prints file on printer PAGE pages printer TYPE file name Types file named on CRT EDIT
161. ter skelter between the reads and writes What a nightmare After a eg ere of more failures I decided to make a SAVE copy of Edit from memory after a failure and compare that to the master copy Sure enough there was one byte different I ot a F6 instead of an FE at location 4114 saved a copy of the difference in a file so I could look at it any time EMF for Edit Memory Failure The next trick was to load in Edit and look at that byte with the front panel Lo t was FE So I went back to Exec and TYPEd EMF Ok it was supposed to be FE So went back into the front panel and rae Hey now it s FG What gives between the time Edit was loaded and looked at the first time and the second time I only went to Exec and TYPED a file Let s try again I reload Edit and look at byte 4114 It s FE like it s supposed to be This time I press the arrow key and the byte changes in front of my eyes to a 4 JUL AUG 1986 F6 Hey It s not supposed to do that Now location C00 does do it because that is changed by interrupt routines but location 4114 has nothing to do with such routines Well now I suspect I ve got a bad bit in 16K RAM chip I reset the bit to FF with the front panel and press the arrow key Sure enough it changes to F7 in front of my very eyes Ok is it the memory chip or the support logic on the board So ull out the memory card after turing off the machine and swap bit 3 chip with the bit 4 chip on ba
162. ter and eight bits PolyLetter 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 Address Correction Requested Polyleiter Editor and Publisher Ralph Keayen Sebscriptioas US 15 00 Jr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable ia US dollers Editorial Coatribatioas Your contributions to this newsletter are always welcome Articles suggestions for articles or questions you d like answered are readily accepted This is your aewsletter please help sapport it Advertisements by subscribers are free of charge Polyletter is not affiliated with PolyHorphic Systems 10 JUL AUG 1986 are a byte what re four bits In This Issue Public Domain Help Your Fellow Users Lost Poly Users Bit Bucket Editorial 1 Letters To amp from The Editor 1 The Other Guys 3 P z e 3 Odds and Ends from Atlanta 3 Anatomy of a Bad Memory Chip 4 The New System 4 Ads x a i 5 System Programmers Guide 6 Assembly Language Program 6 Help How Does it work BugNotes z 9 9 0 a Coming Soon Hardware Problems by Bob Bybee amp PL Letters from Jim Purvis amp Percy Ray Confessions from Frank Stearns Assembly language housekeeping Towers of Hanoi in Graphics More Help and BugNotes etc Questions Can you find and answer the questions asked in this issue Send your answers and requests in FIRST CLASS MAIL Back volumes of PolyLetter are available at the same pric
163. th the next file Pushing a Truck Al Levy reports that he transfers a file PolyLetter 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 Address Correction Requested PolyLetter Editor and Publisher Ralph Kenyon Subscriptions US 15 00 Jr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable ia US dollars to Ralph Kenyoa Editorial Contributions Your contributions to this newsletter are always welcome Articles suggestions for articles or questions you d like answered are readily accepted This is your newsletter please help sapport it Advertisements by sabscribers are free of charge PolyLetter is not affiliated with PolyMorphic Systems 10 SEP OCT 1986 from a PClone to the Poly to use its editor and then transfers it back to the clone He says it s a lot easier that trying to use any word processor on the clone Al says Working on the clone feels like pushing a truck In This Issue Editorial 4 k Peete To CE from The Editor ds Confessions of a Past Editor The First Bug 5 F 7 Help How Does it work Device Driver Direct Access Septe cas 3 BASIC Program and Hints Public Domain P Lost Poly Users Bit Bucket OO O O o O a U oy O e coming Soon Hardware Problems by Bob Bybee amp PL Assembly language housekeeping BASIC for Beginners More Help BugNotes Public Domain Software etc Questions Can you find and answer the questions asked in this issue Send you
164. the system resident directory LIST a lists drive a LIST filel lists the directory whose name is file LIST cacfilel lists directory file om drive n The minimum site needed for the system to To this command is L or l Examples L 2 I 2a SHELP files HELP file for system file specifications A File specification consists of a drive number one or more sub directory names the file name and it s extension lt 1 BASIC CO icucReset GO C2C0S ML MENU BS didir name EY Examples The drive number may be omitted om the system resident drive BASIC GO ucReset CoO Example The extension specifies ie mit of file Tr tert SIC program DT date file 0 machine program OV System Overlay ST System library file PS Device driver RL Relocatable IN Environment ED Editor ESC library all others are aser defined AS Assembly source AF Help file DC Document file AD Ada source propon LI Ada object file SD Star Database Data file BugNotes Abstract Systems BugWote 063 0 November 3 1982 Exe 95 DENS OU has a bug in the TYPE PRINT routine such that if a Dio error 1s obtained while reading the file two errors will be reported The Hard Error Preamble bad message is followed by the I can t find that file message The cause of this seems to be the code sequence XRA A STA OVRLY Emsg is called using Ovrto in the Error Exit routine Since OVRLY
165. to not use single letter numeric variable names and to not use F or E with a digit It is also advisable to hl string variable names D R and s To find the occurrences of a function it is desirable to always use the function name either with or without the space FN A 267 ENA If you choose to do it without the space then it is best to avoid using E as a function name because CTRL F will find FNEND Public Domain PolyGlot Library Volume number 9 has various BASIC programs submitted by various individials at various times Disk PGL V 09 has 20 files om it 30 free entries 348 sectors in use 0 sectors deleted 2 sectors free Size Name 1 SCREEN PROTECTED DEMO 85S BASIC USER FUNCTION TABS BS MORSE CODE BS TELETYPE CODE 85 LEMONADE STAND BS 2 ACCURATE DIVIDER BS s S 57 STAR LANES BS i4 BIORHYTHM 2 85 58 SUN RISE SUN SET BS 53 MAJOR MINOR FINDER BS SUN RISE SUN SET DC SEAWAR 8S 1 1 9 NOMBER CONVERSION BS i STSTEM SORT PRINT BS 5 i SORT BUBBLE BS BASIC USER FUNCTIONS 85 SORT HEAP BS 15 BIORHYTHM 1 BS 14 HORSE RACE BS 18 INDOSTRIAL SIMULATION BS SCREEN PROTECTED DEMO BS protects the top and bottom quarters of the screen for demonstration Baer BASIC USER FUNCTION TABS BS saves space in a file by inserting TAB characters in place of spaces MORSE CODE BS prints the morse code equivalent on the screen as you type TELETYPE CODE BS prints the teletype punch code as you type
166. ued PRINTER INTERFACE TEST with POLY CONFIDENCE TEST by Russ Nobbs The PolyMorphic computer comes with one of the most extensive self test packages of any microcomputer on the market The self test software is more common on mini and main frame systems Like the bigger computers PolyUsers are encouraged to treat the Poly like a real computer and to run the main Confidence test once a week and the extensive memory test once a month For some reason many Polys in the Northwest were delivered without part of the confidence package which is necessary to run the printer interface test Poly part number 004533 Test connector Printer interface should be plugged into the RS 232c Printer port before running the printer test This part can be ordered from Poly or made very simply with a standard connector a little wire The connector is a male RS 232c 25 pin connector The panel mount type number DB 25P works best and is available at an Radio Shack store as part number 276 1547 Four pair of pins must be wired together with insulated wire jumpers The soldering is not at all critical Just don t melt the plastic insulator Connect the following pins as shown in the drawing Pin 2 to Pin 3 Pin 4 to Pin 5 Pin amp to Pin 2 Pin 12 gt to Pa 13 12 11 10 tot balit ta 0 0 0 0 0 0 O 0 O 0 n o 1 1 0 0 6 6 O Oe 8 Oye E OCE 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 If I read the Confidence test manual correctly th
167. up the file For example instead of typing PolytLetter 191 White Oaks Road Williamstown MA 01267 413 458 8421 Address Correction Requested Polyletter Editor and Pablisher Ralph Keayoa Subscriptions US 15 00 Jr Canada 18 00 yr Overseas 20 00 yr payable in US dollars to Ralph Kenyon Editorial Contributions Your contributions to this newsletter are always welcome Articles seggestions for articles or qtestions you d like answered are readily accepted This is your newsletter please help sapport it Advertisements by subscribers are free of charge Polyletter is not affiliated with PolyMorphic Systems 10 NOV DEC 1986 MALLIST type BASIC MAILIST Quote of the Issue I use my Poly as al General Substitute for Pencil amp Paper George Montillon In This Issue Editorial 1 Zits z 3 p 3 1 Letters To amp from The Editor 1 Ads gt f 3 4 BASIC Programming A s 5 Printer Interface Confidence Test 7 BugNotes A j 7 Index to PolyLetter 1986 7 The Other Guys 9 Reader s Response 9 Bit Bucket 10 Coming Soon Poly Problems by Bob Bybee Assembly Language pause eer es More BASIC for Beginners RS 232 Cables and Jumper Plugs Modems and Communications software How to UNSAVEP protected Programs More System Programmers Notes Making your PC work like a Poly More Help BugNotes Public Domain Software etc Questions Can you find and answer the questions asked
168. use this function merely call the function and substitute whatever variable you wish In some of my work I use L last name F first name A ist line of address A2 2d line of address C city S state and Z ZIP code Assume I ve extracted all of these variables from a data file and want to delete all padding blanks All I have to do is 108 L FN S L FS FN S F 110 ALS FN S AL A2Z FN S A2 120 CS FN S C S FN S S Z7 FN S Z and all will be stripped of trailing blanks You can see the beauty of this system You do not have to use the real variable s when you do the GOSUB just insert our real variable in the parentheses in the same order as he dummy variables and BASIC will substitute for you Incidentally you could also do 340 L FN S Thompson and the function would strip off those excess blanks You can also use a similar function to ADD blanks to pad strings before writing them to a data file I have a library of functions which I use in various programs In one set of programs my General Ledger package I use a MENU program to hold a number of often used functions then IN additional modules to provide the program parts to do various things This cuts down the total space the GL package requires on disk and on load time It also simplifies programming Just to demonstrate a more mundane use of a function here s one I use in my 1040 Tax Package 11QQQDEFFNP2 X 11020 FO
169. ut address which bypasses the normal control character filtering and WH6 is the normal character input address for printers with keyboards H5 also returns status reports when the character sent has the 80H bit set chr 1i128 Unfortunately BASIC seems to takes possession of WHS and installs its own routine there I have not figured out just what is going on but it seems to be associated with OUT statements What s even worse is that BASIC does not restore WHS after use See BugNote 24 In early versions of the operating systems before Exec 80 the wormhole driver and the device driver were combined into one program which loaded and executed at 2FO00H Since Exec 80 the wormhole driver and the device driver have been separated The serial device driver is Sio PS and the wormhole driver is a 1 sector block of code located at 2600H in the Prnt OV overlay When a new printer is connected Prnt OV copies the wormhole driver up to location 2F00H and installs the proper addresses in WHS WH6 and WH7 Sio PS is also reloaded at this time The wormhole driver keeps track of such things as the character count the line count and padding character counts It also inserts a line feed character ASCII 10 or HEX OA after each carriage return 6 SEP OCT 1986 This is because the Poly does not store line feeds in files and does not use them in the screen display routines Other things done by the printer driver include throwin
170. ut the data into a file we must decide what the name of the file 1s and where that file is going to reside BASIC can keep track of a number of files at the same time and does so by numberin each file So we must also decide wha the file number is It s a fact that we must remember that BASIC FILE numbers start at 4 In this example let us decide that we will use FILE number 4 that the file will be named INVENTORY and that the file will be on disk drive number 2 We must also tell BASIC that we are going to be sending stuff OUT to the file ow we can tell BASIC to create our file 50 FILE 4 OPEN lt 2 gt INVENTORY DT OUT Now when the pro Also we need to put the actual data into the file We do that with the PRINT statement again 60 PRINT 4 Q1 70 PRINT 4 N1i Another housekeeping task is to tell BASIC that we are finished putting information into the file 80 FILE 4 CLOSE Up to this point I have only dealt with the task of inputting data and storing it PolyLetter 8606 Page I have not discussed manipulation of the data or outputting it exnep oats alan ig amp Are there readers out there who want to hear more in this vein Is this got interest to would be programmers who haven t gotten started yet If there are any of you out there who find this helpful I will continue with the development of a simple inventory package on a step by step beginners level basis Write in if you want this feature to be contin
171. uters being graphics oriented are designed to be most compatible with dot matrix printers These while good still cannot match the daisy wheel for print quality There is still no computer on the market with the exception of the Macintosh with on screen text more easy to read than the 8813 THiS 1s aal E ar pA amp true if you have invested in he integral keyboard screen Enclosure made by PolyMorphic There s no keyboard in existence today more finger friendly than the ae Fe The keys are cushioned yet are quite firm enough to satisfy the user hat this means is that you can work at a Poly for far longer than at other PCs an further than that you will do so with mistakes and CAE pen ee fewer substantially greater eye and finger comfort Having written one doctoral dissertation and scores of books and essays on the Poly I am in a position to testify to this Many Poly people who are looking for productive things to do with their machines might well consider their versatility as devices to access commercial services such as CompuServe and MCI Mail If communications software and modem connection hardware exists for the 8813 I have not asked PolyMorphic about this Again the keyboard screen friendliness of the Poly make this kind of use a natural for the Poly If such communications hardware amp software exist perhaps you could alert people to it via PolyLetter I assume that many of your subscribers are u
172. uts the cpe iato ithe halt state and waits for am interrupt to restart it We iare guaranteed a real time clock iaterrapt every 1 60 second The 8080 CPU im the halt state restarts after am interrupt WAIT MACRO aL MVI A t BLT DCR A JIi ETDE Note We write noa zero patteras oa DONT so they cannot CTRL T out of the program Too bad but dey gotta push the iload Dutton to get outta dis one Since we write all ower system memory Stop the drives CALL Dhalt WAIT 30 LALD MEMTOP SHLD memtop sWait awhile anyway We write on this too 50 Save our OWR op KVI 3 6 iFirst pattera ia F LOOP DCEB Drop dowa to next pattera to test J 1f we re all done we loop forever CALL PUT Put the pattera into memory CALL DISP Show the pattera we re testing WAIT 10 Nait 1 6 second CALL CHE icheck it s still ok WAIT 20 pAnother 1 3 second CALL CHE Check again WAIT 30 More 1 2 CALL CHE pagain WAIT 60 bast second wait CALL CHE ilt s had two seconds to glitch JMP LOOP Go do the next pattera POT LHLD meatop iNe start with memtop MVI A LFH jand insert our pattern MOV MB in B until we get DCX fi dowa to and rot 20008 CHP E Did HL become IFFF If not thes Ji 3 g0 back to the MOV MB inst RET DISP LII H 1BCBE Display location om bottom of screen MVI C 8 78 bits to our pattern HOV A D iGet pattera iato A DISPi RAL iShift digh bit iato carry POSH PSY Save for later WVi A t Pat ASCII into accumulator ACI 808
173. velopers to continue to write for the Poly PCALC has turned into my hottest product et for the Poly So much so that I m eeping the price at 150 indefinitely PCALC 2 0 will be released shortly so call me for a brochure or more information By the way PCALC is written in BASIC and assembly language as a lot of my projects are But this time the two yore are linked together in a new novel way that you programmers may find interesting I m planning to write an article about that subject in the near future Networking Many Poly users have more than one system But in those situations there s always the problem of getting files from one system to another When do you do it without interrupting the operators How do you make sure that all systems have up to date data What if only one system has an HD What about sharing a printer between the two 3 JUL AUG 1986 Computer networking is an exciting solution to these problems PolyNet was talked about for a fong time but was never completed by PolyMorphic Systems I m currently working on a network system for the Poly It will use off the shelf hardware and custom software and allow any number of Polys to communicate over coaxial cable The systems can be separated by at least several hundred feet The cost per system is expected to be extremely low probably around 750 This project is still in the design phase so if you re interested now is the time to get
174. volved at I avon dana in the past is to write a machine language interface which sends characters directly to the device driver at 3000H bypassing the worm hole driver completely To do this we must write an interface program and use the DEF keyword to connect the driver to a BASIC device channel The BASIC manual is wrong On page i29 it states that the output character must be in the B register In fact the output character must be in the accumulator Also input characters must be in the A 7 SEP OCT 1986 register accumulator It also says that the contents of the other registers must not be changed Okay the device driver resides at 3000H and requires a i in the B register for output and a 2 in the B register for input Let us write assembly language routines to interface to that address e must save registers on the stack and restore them after the call to 3000H to make sure they are not changed Assembly language HEY Decimal GetChar PUSH B c5 197 PUSH D DS 213 PUSH H E5 229 MVI 3 2 06 02 2 CALL pon CD 00 30 205 0 48 POP Ei 225 POP D Dt 209 POP 3 Ci 193 RET cs 201 PatChar PUSH PSW F 245 PUSH B C 197 PUSH D D5 213 PUSH H ES 229 NVI 3 1 06 01 1 CALL 3000H CD 00 30 205 0 48 IMP loret C3 64 00 195 100 0 We know that the lIoret code restores all registers so we can save ourselves one byte loret POP H D The GetChar and PutChar routines each require 12 byte Since we are going to put these
175. x professionals Annual updates are one half price return previous year s diskette Operating manual is included non null character Enter 1B in the first 00 square Press the RETURN a few times and then CTRL Y Now if you EDIT the file you will see the ESCAPE character a left arrow in the file Solution c The easiest Edit your file Press the ESC key Press the left arrow Press CTRL F Press CTRL E Press ESC Press CTRL U TWICE Press LEFT ARRROW once Press DEL key once remove the extra cursor Exit The Editor ok now that we are past that let s get down to the matter at hand My sample EDIT CMDS lt LETTER Pr D I Changed Diablo 1200 to D ee FORMAT ED FORMAT IN Type lt ESC gt LEFT ARROW Type CTRL F ee CTRL E End Type ESCape Type CTRL U Undelete Typ pe CTRL U Undelete sinte the extra cursor Close the f In Exec Py CDSA and EnjOyssssssesss Al Note Since many of the characters used are control codes or escape characters it is oer to print these commands on paper Anyone wishing disk copies which you can edit and or use send 5 08 per disk to Al Levy Box 71 Hicksville NY 11802 516 293 8368 ESEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERNEEEPENENNEPEEE EEEE EEEE EEE EEE EEEE REM REM a a User Defined Definition M o a clear the screen REM b create a Border c display program name or whatever REM Submitted to Polyletter 02 01 86 REM Al Levy REM Box 71 REM Hicksville NY 11802 ree 516 293 83
176. y bounce that is several keys repeat very fast and the delete key works too fast so that I have problems typing anything Any suggestions Also my 5 1 4 SSSD rive number 2 is occasionally unreliable I also have a question what does the expletive deleted front panel represent Many times I get locked up n it and to get out means reset restart and loss of the program in progress I tried to learn assembly language but still do not understand t also CP M Any help here Sincerely gonrs onstantin Pavloff Richland WA Key Bounce I have had problems with the very same thing For Keyboard I I I gently pry off the key cap and use a small piece of stiff paper to rub between the contacts Take a business card and cut a trapezoid shape with one end narrow enough to fit inside the key with the cap removed A second thing I have done is to cover the card with fine emery cloth before cutting it to shape I have also tried contact cleaner sprayed directly on the paper I also use an aerosol duster to blow the dust out of the key Then I put the key cap back on That usually takes care of that key for a few months long cotton swab Drive problems Get a Swab off the and some de natured alcohol read write head on the drive It looks like a glass dome with a cats eye in it There is a little felt pad which pushes the diskette against the read write head Try not to disturb that Look to see if it looks thin compa
177. y progran we must use the INPUT statement start out as follows 10 INPUT Qi 20 INPUT Ni he program would When we run the program we are presented with a and after answering that we have 10 we are presented with the again to which we respond that we have widgets And the program stops If you didn t know exactly what the program wanted that cryptic question mark wouldn t be very informative This is not a user friendly program Well we can fix that up Hes using the PROMPT feature of BASIC INPUT statements By inserting a literal STRING in the INPUT statement before the VARIABLE name we can communicate with the user This is most easily explained by giving an example 10 INPUT Quantity of item Q1i 20 INPUT Name of item N1 Okay now that we have inputted the data we would like to be sure that the computer does indeed have it so we want it to repeat the data back to us To do this we would use the PRINT statement and tell it to PRINT the data on the screen for use to see 30 PRINT Qi 40 PRINT Ni ram runs BASIC prints Quantity of item on the screen before waiting for us to give it how many and likewise for what It then repeats back what we gave it But there s nothing more to the program and when we turn it off everything we have inputted is gone We need some more permanent storage The answer to this is to create a data file which contains the information Before we can p

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