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TMQ Vol IV.ii - tim

1. BOUNCEOIDS Where do they come from What de they mean You ll leave those ques tions to the scientists Your duty is clear DESTROY Utilizing you newly issued class 4 annihilator you must reduce the massive BOUNCEOID BOULDERS to cos mic dust BEWARE They bounce off of walls like giant pool balls and the smallest touch means instant death And as an added complica tion terrible shaking bugs come slithering out of null space to crun you into bug lunch If you can prove yourself worthy you will be chal H lenged by the mysterious alien in vaders in a nerve grinding test of incredible coordination and target ing skills Will you survive by SEGA The popular arcade game for TRS 80 Models I amp UL MISOSYS has licensed the powerful action games previously published by The Cornsoft Group Frogger Scarfman Bouncezoids Crazy Painter and Space Castle are exceptional action games with great video and Alpha joystick support even the new MISOSYS joystick All games are for Model II I or 4 in II mode Each is priced at 14 95 Buy any two and take 15 off Buy all five and take 30 off Add 2 for S amp Hin U S Canada U S 1 Foreign U S 3 Crazy Painter Become a Crazy Painter and create a masterpiece Af you can A mischievous puppy snakes and poisonous turpentine buckets force changes in your painting In higher skill levels paint eaters
2. The Hardware Corner e ee ee TE EE EW r EE E ge e id ee oaar d r ep On ee eptin ation es Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii If you will use only 128K of memory refer to drawing N and skip down to where we add the resistor For those who will be addressing the full 256K of moth erboard memory take the new 74 LS 157 chip TH call it Z63 socket lovers use a socket here and bend pins 2 7 and 9 14 so they are parallel to the chip body see sketch Tin pins 1 8 15 and 16 on the inside of the tips then tin the broad shoul ders of the same four pins of U63 double check itmustalso be a 74157 chip Last slip Z63 over U63 if Z63 doesn t grab U63 like Garfield on a car window bend the legs together a tad then heat each of the four overlapping pins so the solder flows and joins the circuits Z63 provide a multiplexed signal to the 8th address line of the 256K chips It gets its power and switching signals from U63 If you choose to abandon port 84 read the technical section near the bottom for de tails about drawing S which you will be using then jump to the next paragraph If you choose to keep port 84 board revisions force choosing a path because we will be activating more unused logic available on the motherboard Non REVision and Rev A board owners should refer to drawing A Rev C board own ers should refer to drawing C I ve n
3. Any disk as long asitreturned an index pulse The terminate command that I added ends the FDC s busy status without it the FDC never goes un busy even with a disk in the drive later on Of course this terminate command is quite unneces sary for NGA machines although it doesn t hurt anything Anyway I thought you might find that section of code useful for some experimenting If there s any infor mation you d like about the code in that file just ask Fm Bob Haynes A quick note to provide you a bit more empirical data on your quest re DOS 6 x CKDRV GA vs NGA systems TMQ IV i pg 27 I ve been running your little program loop expanded to 10K sys memdisk implemented on my two 4Ps The NGA machineis up to 8450 iterations w o a skip The GA machine is another matter Program run 5 times file not found error occurred at the following iteration counts Run 1 22 iterations Run 2 42 iterations Run 3 86 iterations Run 4 328 iterations Run 5 405 iterations Sure do look like a hardware problem huh Hope this is of some value to you Fm Adam Rubin Interesting I see that the number of trials until failure goes up each time too May I make a small request Would you be able to change the end of line 10 to PRINT Iteration TT FDC status HEXS INP amp HFO and try that test once or twice more on your GA machine If my guess is correct you ll get an
4. Res board was drawing Don tremem ber no problem What was happening was that the Mod4 Power Supply was going into Current Limiting Mode this is to protect the supply from burning up from trying to pass too much current to maintain the system I have added almost everything you can think of to my Mod4 Hi Res XLR8er Hard Drive Extra Flop pies and all of these take a certain amount of power from the internal Power Supply so when all of these are being powered and one wants more juice the supply tries to supply but often it just couldn t so to make a long story short I tried to bolster the supply in the machine by doing some redesign of its circuits but no help so I got a second 65 W PS from the guys at the Pacific Computer Exchange and now from one of these supplies I run the Floppies and video and on the other supply I run the main mother board With this set up I have no more problems with the screen or anything else If you would like I could get together a small file showing how to do this conversion yourself so leave a note Fm Bill Brandon Ted I seem to recall that the 65w power supplies will actually provide substantially more power if you just take the simple expedient of cooling them That is if you install one of those little muffin fans I m not an engineer and have not done this myself so I don t know if you would want to blow air into the case or exhaust air from the case or if thi
5. The virtual Memory that it accesses for storage and retrieval purposes is a normal DOS file supports double length integers string handling cursor manipulation graphics random numbers and floating point VolumeIV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii STAMP ASM A program for generating a date time stamp on printouts Please find the assembly source code for a short program I wrote called STAMP which I hope will be of interest to TMQ readers Itis intended as a convenient way to Date Time stamp source code docu ments etc that are sent to the printer When STAMP is executed it prints out the date and time the computer is set at on the first line of the paper The program has an optional parameter Title that allows the user to add a 30 character title e g Error subroutine from MYPROG to further identify the print out STAMP runs in the DOS overlay area and does not change the Stack Therefore it can be used for example when block printing from SAID I was happy to see the FUNDATE pro gram among others in the latest issue of TMQ I needed a concrete example of how to save the system stack Fm MISOSYS Inc Thanks for the in put Jane I took the liberty of making a few changes to your code The big differ ence is in the method of testing for printer availability I commented out the three Original lines which checked the hard ware printer port directly That method wo
6. start chewing up your work Suddenly everyone s a critic Can you over come them And on top of it all in the Exclusive Challenge Mode you have to catch an army of runaway puppies Crazy Painter is joystick compatible SCARFMAN Will you SCARF your way to victory DL f En K nels Ree s a e s v gt LE OE E E Ei AM gressive skill levels make the S game more difficult as you get soss j cscs better Do you have what it Can you avoid the MONSTERS that guard the maze Answers to these questions awaitthe brave who dare toen ter the maze where the mon BESSERES SES sters live SCARFMAN writ ten by the author of MISSILE ATTACK features quality eg GRAPHICS SOUND REAL TIME MONSTERS and hours H of ENJOYMENT Nine pro Enn enen takes to reach skill level 9 SPACE CASTLE Will you save the Andromeda Galaxy by destroying the Space Castle or will the evil warlord Yugdab continue to rule uncontested Locked in battle with Yugdab your main defense is your ability to skillfully handle your ship and it s projectiles If you are not careful Yugdab s intelligent mines will hunt you down and blow you into space dust Space Castle has fast action and exciting sound Volume IN nu THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1i Fm MISOSYS Inc Due to the hight ened interest in food of late on the forum I thought it would
7. DOS Subjects 35 DOS Subjects Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN o Vacant Hash Index Table entries Editor s Note The following dialogue partly pertains to products from other companies Although TMQ does not ordi narily include third party letters the dis cussion of whether or not a bug exists in LS DOS would be confusing without a complete reading of the correspondence Fm H L Smith Hobart Tasmania AUSTRALIA to Anitek Software Prod ucts Melbourne FL Dear Sir I wish to thank you for Model 4 LeScript V1 9 and the new manual which I received yesterday V1 9 certainly has many new and worthwhile features Ihave been busy experimenting with it Unfortunately there was insufficient packing in the container and the last few yellow pages of the manual were dam aged by movement of the binder As well the disk suffered minor external damage On examination of the directory of the disk using LS DOS 6 3 I found that there were 2 copies of each of the files re corded This is illegal under LS DOS 6 3 Super Utility 4 reported a HIT error in the directory of the disk After I allowed SU to repair this error on a copy of the master disk all is well with the directory How ever LeScript won t load correctly The program locks up the machine at the title screen If the HIT error is not corrected all appears well The program loads cor rectly However an attempt
8. Richard King 808 Orleans Place Raleigh NC 27609 919 872 5846 For some time now I ve had the urge to reinstall an XLR8er even after my first attempt pre Michel Houde failed mis erably when the motherboard memory chips wouldn t stay refreshed for very long after booting with a base XLR8er diskette Thanks Roy for having a 30 day return policy Even then one thing about the XLR8ER bugged me it can address 512K of memory but it uses only 384K of its ability Somewhere out there were two answers and I was determined to find them After getting a Roy s response to several nagging questions TMQ IV i 36 I de signed and tested drawings R and N on my Rev C machine The circuit uses 256K chips with a built in feature called CAS before RAS refresh see listbelow My design eliminates the need to gener ate extra refresh pulses 80 Micro 10 87 p 60 in fact the chips ignore the address lines completely when this refresh mode is used They maintain an internal counter to optimize refresh activity AND IT WORKS So now I had 256K of memory on an otherwise vanilla model 4 although only 128K was accessible at any given time With the hardware working I ordered the XLRer from MISOSYS your price drop was the clincher Roy along with the Disk Notes Duo get Michel Houde s source code Permit me to share my ideas and experience with you For the XLR8er user all you ll need are 8 256K chips from the
9. Suite B Portland OR 97214 503 236 2949 Powersoft Contact MISOSYS effective 11 1 89 The File Cabinet PO Box 322 Van Nuys CA 91408 RANTECH Computer Systems PO Box 1101 Clackamus OR 97015 503 771 0390 Storage Power 10391 Oakhaven Dr Stanton CA 90680 714 952 2700 Tandy National Parts Hardware 817 870 5600 T Maker Research Company 812 Pol lard Road Suite 8 Los Gatos CA 95030 408 866 0127 TRSTimes magazine 20311 Sherman Way Suite 221 Canoga Park CA 91306 Try o Byte 1008 Alton Circle Florence SC 29501 803 662 9500 70 INCOME TAX PROGRAMS For Filing By April 15 1990 TRS 80 MODELS I III and 4 4P JUMBO tape drive from MISOSYS is your solution The Colorado Memory Systems JUMBO tape drive is one drive that fits all computers It comes ready for intemal use in AT s XT s and PC s and connects to your floppy disk controller Our adaptor board can be used to connect JUMBO when all FDC connectors are in use Kits convert Jumbo to extemal use In about 5 5 minutes JUMBO backs up 10MB s file by file the fastest in the industry 40MB s gets backed up in about 18 to 20 minutes Uses industry standard DC2000 tape cartridges So JUMBO plugs into your floppy disk controller to save cost power and a slot Needs 5 1 4 or 3 5 with faceplate mounting slot Our tape adapter board mounts in your host computer to provide two more floppy ports especially
10. Super Utility has over 65 functions and features Too many to describe A fantastic buy Does not work on hard disks Our ToolBox or ToolBelt has similar features for hard drive use as well as floppy SU does not support Newdos 80 double sided disks 86 price 79 95 Super Utility Plus Mod III amp I Disk repair password removal plus 65 other functions with manual 34 95 Super Utility Plus 4 4P 4D same asabove for TRS 80 Model 4 4P 4D Reads Writes 4 III amp L 34 95 The Model 4 version of Super Utility has all the features of the Model I IH version but more It uses the larger amount of memory for quicker operations plus utilizes the three function keys One key is even definable by the user to go right to their favorite or most used function in Super Utility 4 Also boots right up in a Model 4P without having to first load the ModelA Ill ROM file Many other niceties for the 4 have been implemented in this version of Super Utility Extra Super Utility manuals disks or unprotected disks Need an extra manual for your SUPER UTILITY Pick up an extra manual 3 hole punched for only 10 Need an extra disk Send 10 if registered for an extra copy Want the unprotected CMD file version Send 20 and your serial number if registered and we ll send you the unprotected CMD file version LDOS ToolBox Hard Disk Check Repair Modify much more Likea SU for hard disk 24 95 gt Original 1986 price 49 95 by Kim Wa
11. You can include system date page number title etc Note that line length in the body of the printout may be adjusted by changing variable B which however does not influence the heading whose width depends solely on the TABs used with LPRINT which should be set to suit paper width margin and printer pitch The stand alone LPRINT in 200 leaves a blank line between heading and text You will of course change the printout text in 200 to suit your own needs and NN to your actualdecimal numerical value to PEEK When the IF in 200 tests true and the date heading and line num ber are printed C is then incremented ready for the next page number it starts out as i in line 25 If you don t need page numbering omit references to C in line 200 and delete 25 If you aren t interested in any of the features in line 200 simply delete 25 200 and 210 and the GOSUBs in 70 and 90 The above suggestions for finding loca tion NN on the model 4 should enable you to use my method However if you were in doubt Or wanted to see things clearer and get the feel of how this works Applications for the User 43 Applications for the User Volume IN u you could test by first resetting line count to zero from BASIC Ready with LPRINT CHR 12 or LPRINT CHR 6 again the semicolon is part of the command don t omit it otherwise a line feed will sneak in and throw you one line off perhaps causing much head
12. close enough to YMODEM for you ShareWare not PD but my own program of choice on the local BBs Fm Alan Varga Try Mel Patrick s Fast Plus BBS available from the author He runs his own BBS with his own software and has Ymodem and 1K Xmodem avail able at least on the receiving end FastTerm II with scripting So far all of the soft ware I ve gotten from him is reasonably priced and works without bugs wow Give him acall at 604 594 7398 24 hours a day give or take 3 12 2400 baud UART 8 N 1 Fm Bob Haynes really hate to give in to this but well I m trying to trace through normal boot sequence of 6 2 via The Source sticking to basics here not attempting either HDBOOT or LSDOS for neither of which have I commented code No sweat up through most of SYSINIT as far as line 24150 Source V1 pg 112 But I don t understand the call to ICNFG OK CONFIG SY S gets LOADed line 23930 into LEOOH overlaying SY SINIT that s why the stub had to be moved right And I presume the xfer address of 0000H is to keep folks from playing with CONFIG SYS as a CMD file So my natural guess is that the ICNFG call does a JP 1EQOH to run the config code and the RET when done there brings us back to line 24170 What confuses me is how does the original vector C9 00 00 2 get changed to C3 00 1E if it DOES I figured it had to be the previously exe cuted SY SGEN command with the change loaded i
13. elementary questions What s the best way to clean connectors I discovered an eraser only works on card edge types Output pins output on power supply going to controller board and bubble TRSFORM6 supplied with TRSDOS 6 2 does both the low and high level format ting correct What about the DRUN adjustment C33 on controller board you discussed with Gary Phillips a while back Bob Haynes thoughtfully sent me a copy of the thread Does that have anything to do with this If I do have to replace the bubble that s a Tandon 602S in there I think What brands models would you recommend as plug in replacements i e no hardware mods needed Answers from anyone would be greatly appreciated thanks in advance Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Adam For non edge connectors unplug and replug them two or three times anything that is going to come off will Don t be tempted to use compressed air on those header and socket connectors Right on the output power supply pins also don t forget to check the actual volt ages supplied Spec is typically 5 but anything outside 3 should proba bly be adjusted TRSFORM6 does do both the high and low level format The software for some other controller systems Oe non RS controller does not 69 Try adjusting DRUN as a last resort after you ve tried everything else Generally a DRUN problem won t generate Error 07 or Error 11
14. ful That said I generally follow a procedure similar to yours thatis once I need to use the computer it is turned on I turn it off when I go to bed or leave the house for work Thus the computer goes through one complete power on power off cycle about once every twenty four hours I would avoid cycling power more often than that I do turn the brightness down on the monitor if I anticipate being away more than a half hour or so My computer at work OTOH has run almost continuously for about three years now I don t have to pay the electric bill directly anyway Fm Shane Dawalt Adam The main point I consider is HD s do not like to be cycled and or disturbed all that much Since I am usually leaving and entering the house twice a day or more leaving the machine running is better The only moving parts in the computer are the cooling fan and the HD Everything else 1s electronic Electronic components do not wear out as fast as mechanical parts do so I don t mind leaving the CPU running all the time And no the HD is internal The screen is turned off during the night I had a problem with the screen a couple months back A high voltage connector worked loose and started arcing on the connector The connector became hot melted and began to burn the board The solution was to solder the HV wires to the board but just in case any other connec tors decide to repeat that adventure I want to be at stage
15. helps some of you 4Pers out there Tandy 2400bps MODEM Fm Don Bird I am having an interesting problem with a 2400 bps half card mo dem It isa Tandy product and I am using an original Tandy 1000 When I type ATDT lt number gt the phone picks up and I can hear the dial tone on the modem speaker butthe message NO DIALTONE comes up and Iam disconnected I thought it may be a problem with the modem so I exchanged it for a new one and the new one does it too Has anyone else had this problem Fm Louis Self Don Get a regular tele phone with a double female connector and check out the line that you have hooked to the modem I had a cable with an open wire once This is so simple and easy to check that it is worth a try to eliminate the possibility of a bad line connection gege The Hardware Corner 74 The Hardware Corner Volume IN u THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1i Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Don You might try disabling call progress detec tion if the telephone company or PBX you are connecting through is off in terms of dialtone frequencies Probably one of the ATX or AT amp X or AT amp W commands More Power supply fixes Fm Ted Haigh I have finally come up with a method of totally curing the screen problems on the Mod 4 with Hi Res graph ics You may remember that I had a thread here awhile ago about my screen expand ing shrinking expanding when the Hi
16. ing dir 0 to printer i e overwrites same line doesn t understand CRs Is there a driver needed and is it available from the library to make the laserjet at lease func tion as a line printer Second question Fired up my 15 meg Tandy HD and get nothing but write pro tect light on steady and Error 11H messages when LSDOS 6 3 attempts to boot up HD as drive 0 Suspect my bubble has gone to happy hunting groundasit has been making noises sounding like dry bearings when starting up or turned power off Is this worth fixing at RS or should I order a20 meg HD drive from Roy Soltoff and can the RS HD drive I backed up the drive regularly so shouldn t be a hassle getting started again but suspect 15 meg bubbles are rare finds anymore Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Jack Not to usurp Jim but my two cents says you are right on both counts ji RE The LaserJet install the printer filter with the ADDLF parameter That s PR FLT in LDOS 5 and the FORMS FLT in LS DOS TRSDOS 6 Should fix you up on anything that goes through the OS for output RE The Hard Drive the write protect light on steady is odd The switch isn t pushed in eh Could be drive could be controller could be cabling inside the drive What does the green light do Fm MISOSYS Inc TU double that Just connected up my NEC LC890 to a 4D to run about 3 inches of printouts Set up the 890 to Diablo 630 emulation mode at 15 cpi then installed the for
17. ments and particulars THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 The family corner Since I did print some scanned pictures of Stacey Stefanie and Benjamin in the last issue I have had a few requests for a picture of me and Brenda Suffice it to say that Ihave been given the order that we re getting a family picture this year I need an advance warning to allow me time to schedule a haircut My head is slowly migrating to a Yul Brynner so I spend less time at the barber shop these days But you folks are off the hook for now because the photo sitting won t occur for at least a few more weeks That means I should be able to get a family photo into the next issue for those anxious soles out there wondering what the other end of the horn looks like Anyway I m pooped out pushing to get this issue out so I ll probably be a little brief Guess I m trying to do too many things atonce One of these days I ll have to give this column over to Brenda My mom s husband Marty passed away in October So with Brenda s grandfather leaving us in August and Marty in Octo ber it hasn t been a fun period of time I did get Stacey s room painted and Stefanie s swordfish had lots of babies so there are some bright moments We now have in our possession wallpa per and trim paint for the first floor pow der room Guess what my next job is as soon as TMQ gets out of here The room will get done in time for our Decem
18. required for side select the others imple ment the drive address Be sure the two replacement drives have their jumpers or switches properly set for motor on with drive select and for the proper drive address and that the outboard one on the cable probably the one you put in the bottom slot has the terminating resistor pack You definitely do not have to replace the controller You ought to be able to find serviceable used drives at a show for 20 apiece I did You might be able to build your own drive cable if you want three 34 pin edge connectors and somewhat less than 18 inches of 34 connector ribbon cable should suffice _ Modems wanted l Fm Hall Roberts I would like to buy modems for two Radio Shack Model 4 computers Does anyone have a used modem fora Radio Shack Model 4 I also need a terminal program to go with the modems Please send me a letter on Easyplex if you are interested My ad dress is 70040 1000 Fm Pete Granzeau Assuming your Model 4 computers have the RS 232 board in them you need no special modem any external modem will work internal modems are invariably intended for IBM PC or clones thereof Any standard RS 232 cable with a DB 25 male connector at both ends wired straight thorough will work 2400 baud modems can be had for well under 130 I could have bought one had I needed it last weekend at a Volume Nu computer show for 115 Fm Bob Haynes Folks time marc
19. sant with details of how the print head works s he may decide to or be advised to change the print head A friend recently had this problem on a Tandy dot matrix printer He consulted a The Hardware Corner 76 The Hardware Corner Volume IN uo THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV service shop who told him the head had to be changed I suggested he ask the Tandy Parts people for the price of a head and they quoted around 200 the Printer was some two years old and he had paid about 700 for it so the price of the head was working out at about one third the cost of the machine A bit steep we thought So I took a look at his printer after some testing I thought back to my own experi ences withclogged head pins TMQ IiLiv pages 78 79 so we removed the head to take a closer look Sure enough the pins were clogged with gummy ink debris which as had also happened to me was the result of reinked ribbons perhaps containing excessive ink One of the pins the cause of the white streak was clogged solid We cleaned off the excessive ink from the head snout and then soaked the snout in isopropyl alcohol as described in my TMQ writeup After a thorough cleaning the head was reinstalled and the thin white line due to pin misfires had disappeared completely evidently showing that the only problem was a pin that couldn t fire due to clogging with ink debris This head was a particularly
20. this jumper tells the chip that the CAS signal is always present causing CAS1 pin 12 CAS2 pin 19 and MPA15 pin 13 to settle down and be available to the memory chip addressing pins sooner While you still have the chip or socket in your hand put a little solder on the shoulder of pin 12 for a later connection Set this chip aside for the time being This next step can be done on either the front or the back of the motherboard The back is easier and should be chosen if you plan to use an XLR8er board Referring to drawing R prepare several jumpers from wrapping wire Strip about 1 8 from each end and tin the bare wire Component side modifiers should also tin the broad shoulder of the chip pins mentioned here and when everything has achance to cool gently hold the wire end to the chip leg and reheat the solder with your iron to make each connection Here we go One wire will go from U58 19 PAL HAL chip to U52 5 CAS signal A second wire will go from U57 28 that s your Z80A bunkie to US2 4 REFRESH The last wire will go from U52 6 to U72 12 SOCKET or pin 15 of any one of the 256K memory chips installed in sockets U77 through U84 CAS1 This unused U52 logic block creates a new CAS1 signal which goes active at either the normal CAS time or when REFRESH is called for During refresh CAS will activate long before the normal refresh RAS goes active The Hardware Corner 64
21. why isn t there a nice MISOSYS Inc logo on the front of the Leadman case Fm MISOSYS Inc For the small quantity of expected sales I couldn t justify such a label Z 80 Lives Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo This just came off UseNet I thought it might be appreciated here Cheers With apologies to Bob Seager and Give me that old time rock and roll Just take those old 8 bitters off the shelf Pll stay and code on them all by myself Today s chips just can t put up a fight to that old time 2 80 e height chorus THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Give me that old time Z 80 That funky chip it just fills you with glee Them new procs with all their thirty two bits so complicated give you terrible fits Don t try to tell me bout your RISC Os You ll never even get my cross com piled code Today s processors are just so over blown They fail more often users grumble and groan chorus Correction to FUNDATE ASM Fm Adam Rubin I have a short question about the FUNDATE ASM program in the latest TV 1 TMQ In the section at the bottom of page 51 after the label FUN DATT you check the access level of the file with LD A HL As I understand it on entry to FUNDAT1 HL is pointing to the filespec in the command line and the calls to FSPEC FLAGS and OPEN don t alter HL When the LD A HL is done isn t HL stil pointing to the file spec in
22. 330 There is a digit at the beginning of each string solely to make it easier to follow on the printout when testing This will enable you to make a test run of any number of pages without wearing away your fingers typing test strings In auser s program AS would of course be the input string generated during program run to be printed out The GOSUB 200 in lines 25 70 and 90 is for checking the line coun er to detect top of sheet and change paper and or print headings as explained later Subroutine 200 may be changed to suit the require ments of each program and is also ex plained further on The length of the printout on each line which the program run may shorten slightly on individual lines to prevent word cut ting is B in line 60 while the user may change to suit required printout parame ters such as line length paper width margin and printer pitch If A the length of A input at lines 300 330 is equal to B or smaller A gets printed out line 70 the operation on that string is complete Re turn is effective and the program jumps to 30 to get the next string If the length of A is greater than B the IF in line 70 tests as untrue and the program jumps to line 80 which examines the Bth character of the string the 70th in this example If it isn ta space that s a single space between the quotes then B is de cremented by one and the line loops back on itself this continues from right to left
23. 4 4P Technical Ref 29 Mod 3 Profile 3 Plus un 45 Mod 4 CBASIC wc ccc eet eee rece 45 Mod 3 Investment Portfollo 10 Mod 4 Superscripsit e e 55 MOG A RER A aentesznegees 45 Mod 4 PFS Report EH Mod 4 Disk Scripsit 39 Mod 4 Visicale wu nu TETE Mod 4 Deskmate ecece0 8 69 Mod 4 Ue OU Cech A KEE Ks KES 55 Mod 4 Payroll Mime er DID Mod 4 4P Teleterm e e ice 40 Mod 4 Profile 4 Plus 79 Mod 3 4 External disk drive 85 Mod 4 TRS DOS amp Manual 24 Mod 3 4 Keyboards ee ee 55 Mod 4 TRS 80 Pascal 49 MOG TE 2 8 040s 68 e 8 SS 29 Mod 4 Videotex Plus 34 Mode WEE ove S88 Mod 3 Visicale gt cc ccces eee a Soa Printer Cables Mod 3 4 14 Mod 3 4 Formation cs 18 Mod 3 4 Disk Drives eu un 55 Mod 4 Target Planner Calc 35 ee re er Mod 4 Multi Plan Pere ee Printer Controller 65 Mod 4 Accounts Receivable a 45 Mod 4 CO0Gl 6 oe ban sends aaa SO Mod 3 Dow Jones ccc ccccccces 15 Mod 4 Cobol Query sssssessss 49 e All equipment is guaranteed to be in good working order e Equipment is cleaned and tested e Drives are cleaned and timed as needed We accept VISA amp MasterCard or C O D The above prices do not reflect shipping cost Inventory changes daily please call for availability If you don t see what you need please call and we
24. A16 and A17 clips are not shorting where they connect to U4 With the machine cover laying on its side adjacent to the base connect the video cable and ground wire then power up the machine Watch for smoke just kidding If none appears and the disk drive rattles its way to track 0 you should be off and flying on your new chips Push a test diskette into drive 0 and boot away As mentioned above software must also be installed to complete this project The verifications in the FIX files mandate that you start with a fresh copy of the LS DOS system on a diskette Drawing N users there are no patches Drawing A and C users will need to install XLBOOTK FIX in place of the XLB OOTA FIX file Drawing S users will need to install XLBOOTS FIX and XLSYSOS FIX files in place of the XLBOOTA FIX and XLSYSOA FIX supplied on your XLR8er Installation Utilities TRSDOS 6 diskette Also apply the remaining Houde FIX files You will need to reconfigure your system because of either BANK modification in low memory and the fact that the configura tion save routine captures the memory The Hardware Corner 65 The Hardware Corner Volume IV 11 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN ua image starting at x OFF4 which contains these changes TECHNICAL For the technical types drawings A and C are logically the same employing unused Model 4 logic circuits The XLR8er us
25. Fm Bob Haynes 73075 77 Ingredients Skinless boneless whole chicken breasts 1 4 Large white Spanish Onion Fresh broccoli spears Fresh carrots Casse role egg noodles Dry vermouth white wine or chicken broth Salt Pepper Sage or Bell e poultry seasoning Soy sauce Butter margarine Cran berry sauce Thoroughly clean chicken and pat dry season with sage salt pepper Clean and prepare vegetables into 1 chunks pre steam or boil carrots until slightly under done still a bit crunchy In large covered skillet melt 2 tbsp butter 1 2 cup liquid and soy sauce add sliced onion sim mer 2 5 mins till translucent Add layer of carrots then broccoli then chicken on top If you like your broccoli firm add it 2 3 minutes later instead Cover simmer 10 15 min atmedium heat Have noodles or pasta your choice boiling merrily on another burner Dram when done optionally toss with pat of butter Removechicken don t overcook it ll toughen separate from veg gies and the onions will be liq uified by this time which gives you a tasty sauce base Optionally adda bit of cornstarch and cook to thicken add more liquid to taste be sure to cook out the alcohol Serve on steaming hot plates dressing the noodles with sauce Adjust quantities to suit 1 4 persons Slinkman s Stroganoff Fm Frank Slinkman 72411 650 Take 7 lb top round steak partially thawed for ease of slicing and cut into thin strips Ch
26. HD Fm MISOSYS Inc John J Kennedy reported a problem in the installation of MSCSIS5 using a second hard drive Seems that there was a problem installing more than one partition the driver installer would report heads in use incorrectly The problem was indeed due to a bug in the installation software Although I tested out the driver with drives in both the drive 1 and drive 2 positions either I never examined more than one partition or there was a change in the code which intro duced this bug In any event I found two problems one was that it was always looking at the drive configuration infor mation for drive 1 regardless of which drive was being installed and another was that it was improperly masking off the drive select address when it was doing it s head calculations during installation The following patches one of which is for the MSCSI6 driver and the other is for the MSCSI5 driver correct the problem Ge Oe e Dk NNN G i a tate atate ote SOGO SD reusing disabled linkage Fm MISOSYS Inc Ken Strickler re ported a problem concerning SD6 s re use of trapped linkages He was right there was a problem improved SD over DiskDISK in that DD could not re use a trapped linkage it could only re use a linkage assigned to the DCT being en abled Unfortunately my testing was not sufficient to reveal the error he found The following patches one for SD6 and another for SD5 Application
27. Haynes Roy As long as I can get away with it w o any inherent system problems that s fine It s very handy to be able to p u or drop a PROWAM config w o having to fool with multiple com mands or re boot Thanks for the feed back Fm Peter Van Caeseele I was wonder ing if anyone can tell me how to use the XLR8er board in conjunction with OR CHESTRA 90 model 3 version I know how to set the XLR8er up for high speed but every time I run ORCHESTRA 90 the computer re boots There are probably some undocumented codes used in ORCH90 Are there any other software packages that will notrun Thanks for any help Fm Adam Rubin Peter To run Orches tra 90 you MUST start it by typing ORCH90 in UPPER CASE I m not sure why but if you type orch90 the pro gram reboots This has nothing to do with the XLR8er or undocumented opcodes it s the design of Orch From what I ve heard the only commer cial programs that use undocumented opcodes and therefore won t run as is with an XLR8er are TRSDOS 1 3 and I think the ZEUS editor assembler A few short patches will fix TRSDOS 1 3 dere reprinted in the current IV i TMQ Hope this helps Fm Ray Pelzer Adam ORCH was pro grammed to reboot the system if you startedin lowercase because the keyboard driver internally expected an uppercase only mode and figured that you were running in the wrong configuration if not Fm Adam Rubin Ah so that s
28. I finally decided to throw the extra money get more space and still have four partitions I have two slots left drive 6 for memdisk and drive 7 for maybe a sub disk Can diskDisk accomplish further partitions I copied c n the hard disk park routine to sys13 sys lsidos so that I can park the disk when shutting down simply by typ ing lt ENTER gt That way I can ask my wife and son to park the disk before shut ting down I fancy an elaborate JCL rou tine with menus for them but it s not really necessary Be well Fm MISOSYS Inc Typically I put a blank line in for the number of cylinders response re the last partition In that way the default quantity is chosen That should not cause any problem DiskDISK or SubDisk as I called it on the MSCSIx software package can be used to effectively sub partition that drive It s useful to create sub partitions the size of your floppy That makes it convenient It also makes it useful to explore a larger floppy With an HD these days you are less concerned about keeping both of the internal floppies the same type of drive Consider changing the second one to a 3 5 720K drive That may be better at this point for backups as well Buta 720K subdisk 80D2 is also quite useful in con trast to an 180K subdisk Since 3 5 drives are getting quite inexpensive and media prices are reasonable the 3 5 720K drive may be a good backup solution for now MSCSI amp 2nd
29. Or better yet step through the code of ERAMDISK I can t step through it because I don t experience the problem Fm Frank Slinkman Well I have fi nally nailed down the reason s why the ERAMDISK F N parameter won t work on my M4 gate array Actually there are two reasons 1 The fool program looks for the disk name of ERAMDISK If you change the name to anything else PROMRAS for example no way Jose Now when the disk is properly according to Michel Houde named the F N parameter works if and only if the eramdisk was disabled via ERAMDISK OFF 2 Something is happening to the refresh on my machine virtually every time it is rebooted whether a hard or soft reboot In banks 0 and 1 addresses on each page virtually always affected are 04 78 84 and F8 Often affected are 71 75 Fi and F5 Other bytes are altered at what seems to be a random pattern In banks 2 and 3 the affected address are 71 72 Fl and F2 Usually all 4 bytes on each page are changed but sometimes just one pair or the other on consecutive pages alternat ing i e 71 amp 72 on one page F1 amp F2 on the following page all 4 on the next page Banks 4 11 XLR8er memory are not affected Thus using the technique I described to recover lost files worked only because those files were in XLR8er memory Had they been in standard memory they would almost certainly have been trashed I suspect this may also acco
30. Stefanie has accepted kindergarten quite well considering she was the one who appeared more clingy But then every one grows up in their own way I still wonder when kids start learning to pick up their things Wehavestarted assigning little jobs to the kids Stacey s job is to bring in the news paper in the morning Stefanie s job is to bring the mail in from the mailbox when she comes home from school She also has the job of bringing to the table sodas from the refrigerator we keep out in the laundry room But Benjamin who has not been assigned a job seems to be pushing to take that job from Stefanie Benjamin has just been a dream We couldn t ask for a better boy You should have seen him on Halloween It took him but a few houses to understand that the candy was his one neighbor did bake some oatmeal raison cookies for the tots and specially packaged two big cookies in a bag with each tot s name He wanted to hold the plastic pumpkin used to collect his horde In fact it was aroad to hoe to get him to put the loot into the pumpkin He was dressed up like Big Bird Until next time The Blurb 5 The Blurb PowerSoft s World Famous Utilities and Software for TRS 80 Computers with Floppies and or Hard Disks Now available exclusively from MISOSYS SUPER UTILITY PLUS The greatest utility ever written for the TRS 80 Every TRS 80 magazine has said so Five Star Excellent Reviews in
31. TMQ mentioned that multiple DIM state ments are not allowed in EnhComp If multiple DIM statements cause problems then it must be an obscure bug Could it be that you are talking about reDIMensioned arrays and not two or more DIMs that allocate space for different arrays Many of my Pro EnhComp programs use Mul tiple DIM statements apparently without ill effects The only reason I use multiple DIMs is to keep the listings looking pretty no more than 80 characters a line Fm MISOSYS Inc Multiple DIMs will at some point cause a crash It doesn t support them unfortunately it currently doesn t trap them The culprit is that the compiler generates a code stream to deal with initializing some pointers associated with arrays The compiler doesn t trap the fact that a DIM may have previously been compiled Of course it s not just the fact of compiling more than one DIM it s executing more than one Since arrays are allocated dynamically its only at run time that the allocation occurs This run time allocation has a piece of initializa tion code which prepares the array table If more than one DIM is compiled and then executed the second DIM also has the initialization code which will mess up the previously allocated arrays When I get the time I m going to fix that But first I need to do a lot of leg work The Model DI and Model 4 compiler packages use totally separate sets of source files That s becaus
32. a machine not currently receiving an XLR8er board for trials I m trying to expand it to its full 500k capacity at the same time I almost have it working Fm Adam Rubin Okay I tried your little program on p 27 of TMQ IV 1i In fact I tried it with both SYSTEM SMOOTH ON and SMOOTH OFF Both times there were no problems and I finally pressed lt break gt shortly after 400 This is an early 4P serial 003701 non gate array The FDC is an FDC1793 apparently from second source SMC Standard Microsystems Corp Incidentally if you re still thinking about this problem or plan to go back to it someday here s two related pieces of information One I don t think the gate array circuit has anything to do with the problem My schematic for the gate array 4P shows the drives IP line meets a 150 ohm pullup then goes through a 74LS367 mislabeled on the schematic and then into the FDC it isn t connected to the SYSTEM gate array atall Inthe NGA 4P it has the 150 ohm pullup then goes straight into the FDC Second HDBT2 TXT 4P boot from HD is now available in Library 0 here The patch line for SYSO beginning DOD 0A is eleven NOPs then send a terminate command w o interrupt to the FDC A restore with verify had been sent to the FDC by the boot ROM and at this point the FDC in the GA machines is still re porting busy unless there had been a disk in the drive for that command
33. a repeatable event with that diskette kindly submit one for ex amination Pd like to help out with a resolution of your problem but the paper dialogue leaves me nothing to test Fm H L Smith Dear Roy Many thanks for your reply I used Copy Cat to copy the master LeScript V1 9 distribution disk Notice that each file name appears twice in the directory They say they have deliberately introduced a HIT error be cause of a bug in the DOS There has been no further response from Anitek Nor have I received a reply from Cornu copia re upgrading my Electric Webster files for use with LeScript V1 9 My feel ing is that Anitek is working on the bugs in LeScript V1 9 that I have uncovered Pd love to read your comments Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Bert At last I have the answer as to why you are getting double directory displays for the files on that LeScript disk Sorry to break Peter s bubble but whatever he is using to con Volume IN struct the directory of that disk is incor rectly initializing the directory From day one of the TRS 80 DOS releases the Hash Index Table HIT is supposed to contain a zero when the corresponding directory record is inactive I have never known a DOS to do otherwise I don t know why Peter s LeScript disk has the inactive HIT entries filled with X FF But it s wrong Maybe that s what he is referring to as intentional HIT error What happens is that t
34. about forty megs Of course the three inchers will require mounting brackets or sheet metal work Fm Shane Dawalt Adam I ve had a The Hardware Corner Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume V ii Miniscribe 3650 for roughly 1 25 years No problems at all Works great For the first year it was continuously turning off and on For the last 3 months I decided bringing the HD up every day was stupid so now it runs 24 hrs a day 7 days a week except when I m not at home forextended periods or if thunderstorms come lurking around 42Megs formatted 61ms access time Fm Adam Rubin Okay Joe I took the 5M HD apart cleaned what I could resold ered the output pins on the power supply for me that was the hardest part on the other hand it looked like it really needed it and guess what It seems to be work ing I mnotsure what the problem was it may have been the PS or maybe that contact on the bottom of the bubble I hadn t noticed how long it had been tak ing to get up to speed until I reassembled it Anyway I hope it is fixed Btw whatexactly are low and high level formatting Does low level simply write tracks and sectors with arbitrary data and high level write the directory and boot info in the few sectors where it s needed If so I gather FORMAT SYSTEM would be only the high level format for a HD Thanks very much for your advice and indirectly from keeping m
35. all you need do is to SYSGEN the result onto your BOOT floppy the same way you sys gen d the hard disk Since you may want to use drives 6 and or 7 for subdisks you may just want to keep a Job Control Language file handy which will install both external floppies or either one based on a menu query If you want to establish a six partition setup all you need dois toadd some more lines in the existing HDxxINIT JCL file and revise the number of cylinders being requested If you spend a little time to evaluate and understand the current JCL you will have no trouble in adapting it to your needs I have found from experience that the more choices I give the more folks become confused So best to learn a little about the current job stream if you really want to differ from the default setup I gather from your second letter that you have installed system files into memory using the SYSTEM SYSRES n command Running with ahard drive the performance of system overlay access is sufficiently fast that I would recommend that you avoid installing any system over lays into memory It s easy to redo your configuration by starting from scratch with the HDxxINIT JCL file but DON T SPECIFY FORMAT I m enclosing a page from issue Liv of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY which cov ered the patches from level H to level K level L is just the nomenclature for a level K but patched by LSI Nothing init is a factor relative t
36. and patch the SYS3 SYS file on what was the current system drive As far as the error I will rely on an old Peter Sellers line from one of the early Pink Panther movies slightly modified I suspect everything and I suspect noth Ing Fm David Huelsmann Mike Had me going when I first tried it as well Roy finally got me on track The SYS3 patchis patching the CLOSE vector to read the clock after every file close Because the patch is quite long it crosses a sector boundary at the end of the existing SYS3 MISOSYS Products Tidbits 56 MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV 1i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1ii code Since SYS3 is the module that per forms the CLOSE and then updates the DCT and then the directory entry it kind of makes sense that if you are patching it it might have trouble handling its own CLOSE The solution is to patch another copy of SYS3 SYS Le not the one residing on the system drive e That should solve your problem did mine lt grin gt Boot up on a regular floppy system no hard drive involved On your second floppy drive play another copy of LDOS 5 3 Now patch the SYS3 on the second drive Assuming that works bootup your floppy sysgened for hard drive and BACKUP SYS3 SYS 5 0 s and do the same for your boot floppy All should now be well Fm Mike Harrow David Ok will boot up in LDOS 5 3 and give it a try Just back from at
37. be appro priate to request favorite recipes for publishing in TMQ Sounded like a good set of data for the winter issue What follows are the few I received from interested forumites Enjoy By the way the only one tested here at MISOSYS is my crumb cake rec ipe and the hot buttered rum Egg custard Fm Jim Beard 71675 566 Ingredients 4 eggs 1 qt milk 1 cup sugar 2 tblsp vanilla extract 1 4 tsp salt Optional l oz dark Puerto Rican rum 1 oz dark amp Hershey s cooking chocolate use two more eggs for firmer custard Scald the milk in a double boiler do NOT boil As it heats grate the chocolate into the milk and dissolve Beat together the other ingredients separately Pour in the scaled milk and beat until thoroughly mixed Bake at 350 degrees for 45 min utes in a 1 5 quart baking dish Watch carefully and do NOT overcook custard is done when a straw is inserted and comes out clean Fm Bob Haynes Sounds neat Option add cooked rice or stale bread crust to taste One suggestion put the baking dish into alarger deeper dish or pan filled with boiling water controls the cooking temp Sa ae eh ah eh NNN Ce E Gees E Ger and pre vents burn ing sepa rating Now I m embarrassed you aren t James Beard the famous chef are ya Fm Gary Phillips Jim try a microwave to cook the custard It gets done more quickly and no danger of scorching or overcooking STOVETOP CHICKEN
38. be over folks we re moving into the last decade of this cen tury This year the Soltoff s will be getting together with family down at Lake Placid in Florida As such MISOSYS will be closed from noon on Friday December 22nd until 9 00 a m Tuesday January 2nd 1990 We wish everyone a safe and pleasant year end Late Breaking Patch Roger Alcantara brought to my attention a problem with LDOS 5 3 Seems that using the ATTRIB command to LOCK or UNLOCK the passwords on a disk causes the dates to be changed The astute will know why that happened and what was overlooked by me when 5 3 was created What I want to know is why has that particualr bug gone undiscovered since Volume IV ii January 1987 until this September SYS7I FIX Patch to LDOS 5 3 Corrects ATTRIB LOCK UNLOCK Apply via PATCH SYS7 SYS SYSTEM SYS7I DIS 03 00 00 00 00 F1E 03 2C 73 2C 72 Hop BBS and Clubs I set aside space in TMQas aservice to the Model I III 4 community of users to pub licize the following three things a list of phone numbers of companies still serv icing and supporting this market a list of public computer bulletin boards anda list of computer clubs which support the TRS 80 user The responses received to date appear in the Letters to the Editor column note that the list of Resource Companies was generated by me Mail me any additions deletions or changes TMQ Schedule Our target for mailing
39. center to nip it in the bud The printer is usually off but that s be Cause it is not used often enough to leave running Again since nothing is moving in the printer I wouldn t hesitate to leave it on There is a small current in the carriage motor and print head motor but not enough to get concerned about Fm Adam Rubin Joe What about things like the bearings on the HD I d think that wear on those would be zero while it s turned off and non zero while on even if unused Or would that be negligible compared to other factors One problem I ve run into is that essen tially I can t use the stereo while the computer system is turned on the two fans plus the HD are loud enough to interfere with listening And I suppose I ought to be keeping at least the non motorized audio components on all the time too Maybe a larger house is the answer Fm Adam Rubin Shane What would bother me most about leaving my system on all the time would be 1 the wear on the HD motor bearings etc 2 thenoise and 3 the electric bill Either the bubble or the fan in the HD is loud enough to interfere with listening to music and slightly distracting the rest of the time as well On the bright side I think I ve just re cently lost the ability to hear the 1SKHz horizontal sync so at least that wouldn t bother me Sigh Fm Bob Haynes Nooow laddie dinna The Hardware Corner 70 The Hardware C
40. disk Great utility for hard disk users Superior Hard Disk Drivers for Tandy disk systems Mix Model HI and 4 easily 49 95 gt Original 1986 price 99 95 These hard disk drivers out perform the Tandy drivers in many ways Our drivers allow you to combine LDOS and TRSDOS 6 on the same drive and boot from either system with floppy disk They run faster and take much less memory from the system Only for use with Tandy Hard Drives PowerMail Plus Please specify Model 4 III I 5 Star mailing list data system 34 95 gt Original 1986 price 99 95 3 This program was because all the other mailing list data base systems couldn t keep track of al the types of data most folks wanted to keep track of You needed speed you needed hard drive support and you needed a crash proof data structure PowerMail was top rated 5 stars in several publications and has never been topped Works on floppies or hard disk under all popular TRS 80 operating systems Allows importing of data from several other once popular mailing systems to avoid re typing Written in machine language by the author of Super Utility this program is FAST and sorts upto 10 levels very quickly If you keep track of names and addresses along with associated data for any situation this is the one touse Many churches organizations and businesses use PowerMail for all the different kinds of lists they need to pull from Each record has 24 user definable flags to allow total cust
41. do whatever ICNFG had pointed to before we installed COM DVR If anything else had been using ICNEFG this will be a jump to the last thing installed if not it will still be aRET All this make sense so far Now we SYSGEN Because I say so that s why The SYSGEN command creates the file CONFIG SYS you were right about its transfer address What is DOS Subjects Volume IN u THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii in CONSIG SYS Just about everything in memory that the user could change high memory and low memory modules the system flags user programmable SVCs interrupt vectors ICNFG DCTs the VERIFY flag the cursor character and all sorts of good stuff Now that you ve SYSGENed COM DVR you can turn the computer off and find out what happens the next time you boot up Back at the computer again boot up the disk that has the SYSGENed COM DVR on it As you ve noticed the system gets ready to LOAD CONFIG SYS but makes sure that control returns not to 1Exx but to 43xx 4300 43FF was over written by the boot sector already so why not keep the rest of memory as intact as possible Why can t the system load CONFIG SYS and return to LExx Well what has to be done before a file can be loaded That s right OPEN and THAT is what clobbers 1Exx CONFIG SYS loads into well loads over would really be the right term High and low memory modules are loaded directly into h
42. drive as knew I would I was holdin g out for one witha clock and you came through at least in Model 4 mode Fm Henry A Blumenthal Dear Mr Soltoff want to follow up very quickly on my letter of October 14 detailing my problem with garble in LDOS date and time which in my haste I called date and date but I m sure you knew what I meant I m beginning to suspect that every single copy of LDOS 5 3 that I have has a blown SYS file I suspect this because I tried a 5 1 version and it did not give me the garbling And you will recall in my previ ous letter that SYS3 would not patch Might that be the file that carries the time and date software I am pleased to report that I did figure out at last how to evoke the SubDISK routine it s quite ingenious I m sorry to have bothered you on that one I kind of wish now I d formatted the drive to include the system tracks but I won t want to lose everything I ve done by starting over which I suspect I would I can t have more than four SYS files in SYSRES without some programs balking However my problem with the cable connection to the hard drive persists I don tknow if the cable has an intermittent contact or the drive does but it s a pain in the neck Snapping the side clamps in place pretty much ensures that the con nector won t make solid contact In addition I still haven t solved the prob lem of re enabling my two outboard fl
43. factors involved I said brief inasmuch as a full analysis would be beyond my scope and many details are shown in printer and word processing manuals which contain much valuable and helpful information on the subject Among the many features of modern dot matrix and daisy wheel printers two are worthy of note Monospaced printing and proportional printing In monospaced the printer can be set to operate at one of a fixed number of characters per line of printout typically 12 pitch pitch chars per inch 10 pitch and often others In proportional printing this does not apply and the space taken up by each character is a function of its width so that a narrow letter such as 1 occupies less space than a wider one such as m or w Natu rally one cannot talk of pitch of chars per inch in this case as the width occupied varies according to which particular char acters are printed In a dot matrix printer the character size type of font and space occupied by each letter are normally provided by the printer in the case of daisy wheel printers a change of font means having to switch Applications for the User 45 Applications for the User Volume IN o Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 printwheels and perhaps a change in spacing so the typeface will agree with the spacing to produce a pleasing effect A modern printer can be given operating instructions by setting switches
44. in Model 4 which is 80 tracks DSDD 720K in size in model III mode I get the mes sage too many extents This I m sure is a very MINOR problem Overall this is a very nice addition to the Model III 4 family providing up to 80 MEG of storage a REAL TIME clock and JOYSTICK interface I would like to see the operating system expanded to contain more DEVICES to allow for more that just 8 If you have 4 Hard disk parti tions 2 Floppies anda RAM DISK 7 of the 8 DEVICE slots are in use leaving only 1 to be directed to a SUB disk The wordprocessor that I use ALLWRITE when linked to the FONTS from DOTWRITER require 5 SUB Disk slots System configuration becomes a little complex Fm MISOSYS Inc The preceding re view submitted by Ken Strickler has been printed verbatim However MISOSYS believes that it contains a few inaccurate statements Therefore the following rebuttal is provided To begin with I specifically state that MISOSYS performs the low level for matting thus there is no need for the user to do that unless he she wants to See page 6 of the MSCSI Operator Manual ex cerpted as follows pertinent statement in boldface 2 Invoke the low level formatter FSCSI to apply low level format information to the hard disk drive Note that this formats the entire hard drive specified Such low level formatting is initially done by MISOSYS prior to shipment of your hard drive pre assembled kit
45. issues I could not do the things I do today or would not have tried You are a good person and MISOSYS isa good thing d Model Fm Scott Silverstein I have some ques tions and comments about my new Model I TRS 80 Being a ham and hamfest fan I periodically pick up pieces of computer equipment when I see em cheap enough Last weekend I bought a 16K Level I Model I with 32K E E buffer cable and two Tandon floppies kerchunk for the grand sum of 50 A good deal almost as good as the Model 4 128K with 5 Meg HD for 100 at the last hamfest Visit those fests folks After de basement izing and contact clean ing the darn thing works There are no mods no lower case no double den Sity etc One minor problem there was no soft ware with the thing I have only TRSDOS 2 3b from a model I version of a III package 1 Anybody have a cheap source of Double Dens mod 2 Anybody have source for lowercase mod 3 Are there any patches to TRSDOS 2 3b It seems flakey When I created for ex a file with the square roots of 1 to 100 from BASIC and list it from DOS alter nate attempts produce garbage at the beginning of the listing Yet BASIC reads it OK every time 4 Anybody have LDOS cheap and VTOS for historical interest 5 TheE E is missing all the little doors Anyone have em Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Scott 1 Try Aerocomp for their DDC I think it was arou
46. list below 1 74157 or 74LS157 multiplexer chip use a 74157 if you plan to attempt installing THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Aa P a KARNA 3 VW JA AN o IN Be E C vost H e s bj D H i N l nR sit ty 9 Kaes 5 d Kies z b 512K on the motherboard to handle the extra load 1 PAL chip for socket U72 maybe read on either a 27 or 56 ohm resistor and some wire wrapping wire If you like to make your modifications more easily removable throw in a few 16 and 20 pin low profile soldertail sockets for good measure Sorry gate array board owners I don t havea solution for you all I lack the logics for those boards Can you supply me with two clear sets Even if you decide to stay at 128K for the remain der of your Model 4 days consider mak ing aportion of this modification because it uses more readily available chips that cost about the same as two sets of 64K chips If one bit goes bad chances are you can move one wire and use the other half of the chip set for years to come Last but not least the refresh cycle is more de pendable if you ve ever suspected this as a cause of intermittent problems due to speedup kits or other modifications Volume IV 1i WARNING THESE CHANGES MAY CAUSE TANDY TO FROWN ON SERV ICING YOUR MACHINE THOUGH THEY ARE REMOVEABLE SHOULD THE NEED ARISE You will reach a point in this article where you must make a rather cr
47. little short circuit experience What a power supply it sounded a bit different but no fuse burned but I turned it off VERY fast Fm Jim Beard Ralf I would go ahead and do it just be careful Wear glasses or goggles I feel I must include the warn ings to be fairto you and others who might be reading this and not know about CRT s A shorted out TRS 80 power supply will just shut down and wait patiently for you to find the problem A solid short circuit won t damage it Fm Ralf Folkerts Jim I did it From the local Energy supplying company where mv daddy has contact to a few people I lend the equipment they use for 20 000 Volt line repairs thick leather gloves leather clothes and a helmet Was no problem to adjust Now I have a SUPER picture A little drawback After I tested disks RS 232 Video etc I rebuilt the case around the machine Turned it on and had to re adjust the disk controller Don t know why butit was out of alignment Butnow it s running how long Fm Jim Beard Ralf Between your pre cautions and your success you have MADE my day Now I m going to take the week end off Fm Ralf Folkerts Jim I can t tell much about that The 1 4 Volt was too low the 2 MHZ signal wasn t 2 MHZ but the Precomp was OK 200ns That is the same board on which had to replace to chip a few months ago That time I ve adjusted it Hope that it will run now for a
48. loooooooo000000ng time without need of re adjustment Fm Jim Beard Ralf I gave mine the same treatment you just gave yours and haven t had adisk error since That was in 1983 or 1984 or something Model 4P Video Fm Bob Haynes I finally discovered the cause of my 4P s video shake Much ado has been made of problems with the solder joints on the power supply boards where the output pins are located But it s very easy to overlook the harness pin connectors In the 4P the p s connector is well out of the main flow of ventilation Of course it shouldn t heat up at all but a bad connec tion produces resistance and will cause heat to be generated This tends to weaken the spring tension of the female connec tor The weakened tension causes an even poorer connection resistance increases and the problem worsens You go in look for the problem wiggle the wires and the problem disappears And because the 12v video connector pins are different than the others they are especially suscep tible You can t determine the problem without actually removing the pins from the plastic connector housing After this problem became a nuisance on BOTH my 4Ps about a month ago I really HAD to dosomething Eventually Iended up removing the pins cleaning them with pink pearl and alcohol then bending them slightly with a small needlenose for more tension Problems have completely dis appeared in both machines Hope this
49. m very busy these days and nights at MISOSYS is that MISOSYS has made anumber of acquisitions lately all in the name of trying to ensure that for those of you out there still looking to your TRS 80 as the workhorse for computing needs there is a resource to turn to for your hardware and software supplies MISOSYS is proud to announce the ac quisition of Breeze QSD s PowerSoft line of software products effective 11 1 89 Until 12 31 89 MISOSYS will be honor ing PowerSoft s special summer prices as published in The MISOSYS Quarterly Issue IV i and repeated in this issue under our banner In addition until 12 31 89 for every Powersoft software product purchased from MISOSYS you can se lect one MISOSYS software product of equal cost or less at no additional charge That includes such things as Super Utility TRSCROSS PowerMail Plus BACK REST SuperScripsit printer drivers game disks and more Check out the ads for PowerSoft products in this issue Call or write MISOSYS for a set of brochures covering our EXTENSIVE line of soft ware and hardware products i The Blurb 2 The Blurb Volume IN o Not to be content with continuing to make available just PowerSoft s great products in addition to our own extensive lineup effective 11 01 89 MISOSYS has licensed the following powerful action games previously published by The Cornsoft Group Frogger tm Scarfman Bouncezoids Crazy Painter and Space Castl
50. major nuisance Has this been fixed by chance Also while reading thru back issues of TMQ I noted you had a reassembly fix for TED Is that refresh offer still good Also I have an OLD copy of MC needing an refresh understand you have a major update w doc changes Please advise pricing policy on that also Fm MISOSYS Inc No one reported that bug and I never came across it I ll look into it after vacation after TMQ 4 1 and after HD s get shipped The offer to re fresh the MrEd disk still stands it s free You supply a return address label If you are not up to V1 6 of MC then you need the 20 upgrade If you have 1 6 then just send in the library disk for a free upgrade Time marches on As far as your problem with FED APP you must have some local problem First it doesn t happen here with testing Sec ond I looked at the source code and it is impossible for FED APP to leave the file open The code opens the file then if the file was opened successfully or with LRL open fault it saves the FCB contents and closes the file Any other error condition would not have opened the file setting the directory file open bit Thus as far as the DOS is concerned the file is closed You better double check your own opera tion arid confirm what is going on locally MISOSYS Products Tidbits 62 MISOSYS Products Tidbits a rr a A NP ee me me Volume IN 0 All the way to FIVE TWELVE K
51. mention them now after reading Charles Ains worth s statement that he never heard of anyone else having that file doubling problem I have a question that I have never asked before and I am very curious to know the answer Over the years I have seen refer ence to Gate Array computers and Non Gate Array PAL computers I want to know what my 4P is Did I read correctly in TMQ thata 26 1080 is a PAL machine My 4P is Model 26 1080 Serial Number 002324 purchased in 1983 when they _ first came out Is my 4P definitely NOT DOS Subjects Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN Gate Array and what are the other ways of telling them apart with and without disassembling the computer Does anyone out there have a ScripsitPro printer driver for the Epson FX 80 Printer I have a Radio Shack DMP 200 at home which is supported but my office has an Epson and I was hoping I would not have to figure out how to write my own driver for it Has anyone come across the program named CHECKER CMD written in 1984 by Mike Orr The program checks every file on the drive you specify by reading each file and counting it s records and reporting any errors it encounters during the read I like the idea of CHECKER CMD but it only allows drive numbers 0 1 or2 to be entered I can t use it to check my floppy disks in drive 7 So if anyone knows how I can reach Mike Orr or if you have CHECKER CMD and can te
52. months To serve spoon three teaspoons of mix ture I prefer heaping into amug add one jigger of rum and six ounces of boiling water A cinnamon stick may be used as a stir stick Top with a dollop of whipped cream Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo s Famous Double Batch and Split the Difference Yankee Kentucky Windage Choco late Chip Cookies Ingredients Four and one quar ter cups All Purpose Flour Two tea spoons Baking Soda One teaspoon Salt Two cups one lb Land OG Lakes Country MorningBlend Margerine One and one half cups Granulated Sugar One and one half cups Firmly packed Brown Sugar Three teaspoons Vanilla Ex tract Four each Eggs Three cups 18 oz Nestle Toll House Semi sweet Chocolate Morsels One half hour prior to starting remove the eggs and margerine from the fridge to soften the margerine and allow the eggs to reach room temperature Do not substitute regular butter or margerine or shortening for the Land O Lakes Country Morning Blend If thisis not available in your area substitute only half butter and half marg erine two sticks each Preheat oven to three hundred and fifty degrees In bowl combine flour baking soda and salt In large bowl combine Sugar brown sugar and vanilla extract then cream in margerine until very smooth Add eggs Gradually add flour mixture stir until well mixed after each addition Dough should be smooth and firm but not stiff Stir in chocolate mo
53. more than one line so a multiline string generates sev eral PEEKs one per line If you were to attempt to use this PEEK system with some arrangement other than above PRTDEMO1 BAS by printing more than one line between PEEKs multiline string with one PEEK you might miss a zero NN value 1 with model 3 LDOS by jumping over it with a line that does not generate a PEEK line 200 would not operate properly and top of form func tions would be disrupted METHOD NUMBER TWO Same as method number one but without use of FORMS FLT The preceding method which I use on model 4 and LSDOS 6 3 uses a memory location which is PEEKed to detect the beginning of a page for headings and other top of page activities with FORMS FLT installed I feel this is very conven ientas FORMS FLT reliably counts lines Volume IV nu for us and all we have to do after every line is take a PEEK at the current line number which saves us encumbering our program with line count procedures However there may be users of other DOSes or systems who don t have such an advantage or who use other methods of forms control not compatible with the above and who may want to introduce their own line count with no equivalent of FORMS FLT installed So here s another version of the program before running any tests lines 220 and 230 have to be edited to replace XX and YY with suit able numerical values as discussed later Also note information in the prece
54. of these patches corrects the problem MISOSYS Products Tidbits MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IN A PRODUCT REPORT Ken Strickler P O Box 773 Stanwood WA 98292 0773 New Harddisk System for Radio Shack Model Ill 4 External 20 80 MEG Harddisk system REAL TIME CLOCK option JOYSTICK option PRICE 495 00 and UP Price as tested 738 00 Options as tested 40 MEG 28 MS auto park heads Seagate 251 1 Real Time Clock Joystick Distributor MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 Tel 703 450 4181 Roy Soltoff of MISOSYS Inc has just released an external Hard Disk assembly for the Model III 4 computers containing 1 or 2 half high slots REAL TIME CLOCK Joystick interface Host Adaptor card accessory card power supply and fan The Beige box is 7 wide 5 5 high and 15 deep Additional depth is re quired for cable access acouple of inches should suffice Software provided supports either the Model HI OR Model 4 with the addi tional system interface available for a slight extra charge MISOSYS Products Tidbits THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 After losing 2 5 MEG and 1 10 MEG TANDON hard disk BUBBLE I placed an order for the 40 MEG hard disk system described above and waited as Roy com pleted the final construction of the hard ware and writing debug of the software support packages Time well spent The system arrived late in September consist
55. one of the disk power supply boards the power demand of my new drives is far less sO I think I m ok brought the wires out of the computer to one of my old Tandy drives that I replaced I m going to build a nice box and switch for it one of these days I just unplug my external floppies hook up my old Tandon 40 tk single sided and trans fer files to my new 3 5 drive 1 Tandy sure wouldn t recognize this stuff now let alone work on it The software was just as fun I read the documentation to RSHARD several times over several days with time to think about things in between then I practiced con figuring my 5 meg lots of different ways since it was backed up and I knew it was going to be replaced All this was in preparation for my new 20 meg bubble The configuring was a little tricky of course with swapping 4 with 0 and 5 with 1 and using Driver mod3 for my four floppies Listing your JCL s such as INIT54 referenced on LDOS 5 3 README TXT were very helpful I configured the new bubble into 4 parti tions two heads at 307 cyl each in four sections This took the 20 megabytes I m going to close this letter and work on diskDISK now Feel free to edit and or use parts of this letter in The Quarterly I often see comments in The Quarterly and elsewhere that it is over the average users head At one time it was over my head but as I grow into my equipment I grow into The Quarterly Without the back
56. one way or another Thanks for pointing it out Fm Adam Rubin Bob I don t see any reason Why GET PUT can t be in voked inside of a filter either Just about every filter does an CHNIO somewhere and there certainly could be a file at the end of the device chain If they can do it you probably can too On to point 4 here s why it won t work Let ssuppose you DO use SY SBUF for your I O Now I sit down at my computer install your filter and start running a program I run the program for a while and while that s going on your filter does let s say 18 PUTs So SYSBUF will contain 18 bytes of data to be saved and has room for 238 more Suddenly my program decides to save something to disk Hmm looks like we ll need to allocate some space for that so we use SYSBUF for a moment When the program is done saving whatever it is to THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 disk yes it s done using SYSBUF but what does SYSBUF contain The GAT from the disk the file was saved onto Where are the 18 bytes your program wanted to save to disk Clobbered The case of GET is similar Your fil ter s first GET will read the first sector of your file into SYSBUF If my program reads or writes to MemDisk and its buffer is gt 7FFFH SYSBUF gets used for a moment What will the nextcall to GET bring back No not your file but some thing from the MemDisk sector that was there last Is that any
57. power company switches gen erators when I m computing One more question before I sign off this letter I installed an SMDR board in the phone system at work which enables the phone system to send RS 232 serial data to a printer to keep arecord of phone calls I have an old Model Ill that I would like to _use to capture the data on floppy disk My problem is that I can t seem to figure out how to link the CL to a disk file and to the DO at the same time I would like it to automatically run a JCL that would make it all happen at power on and after power failures as I do not have an UPS at work Enter my vote for making TMQ into TMMM or TM3 The Misosys Monthly Magazine You could reduce the number of pages and increase the number of is sues You have a very nice magazine with real slick no pun intended covers The main reason it took me so long to sub scribe to TMQ was because I didn t real ize it was the magazine that itis I thought it was just a catalog of MISOSYS prod ucts Fm MISOSYS Inc Carl The patch to TED CMD in LS DOS 6 3 was released on 2 1 87 What level is your DOS I m including a copy of the TMQ IL page which covered that page Perhaps you ought to send in your master disk for a refresh The charge is 10 2 S amp H Your very rare instances of duplicate file names are probably not related to the currently recognized problem If you re hardware was at fault there would be many m
58. the file has been modified After you backup those files DIR again and you ll note all the s have disappeared 31 BASIC and cursor on off Fm Danny C Mullen There s a bug in BASIC 1 01 01 that came with my LS DOS 6 3 I tried to do PRINT CHR 15 to turn off the cursor doesn t work Tried my original 6 3 disk to double check no work I tried my 6 1 version of TRSDOS BASIC 1 01 00 and that command works I thought this occurred previously but didn t follow up Are there any patches that I missed I have all patches up to Level L but there s no differences Has anyone else experienced this Will send disk later if necessary Fm MISOSYS Inc Danny BASIC does indeed turn off the cursor when it proc esses a PRINT CHR 15 statement you just don trealize that at the command level BASIC turns it on again for the prompt Try coding that statement within the body of a program You ll see that while the program isrunning the cursor is OFF When the program stops and BA SIC emits its prompt the cursor is turned back ON That s a design feature Fm Danny C Mullen Roy Right you are About CHR 15 in BASIC I thought it worked like old version in command mode Sorry for the trouble The problem I had is in GBASIC from MicroLabs In a future TMQ would you consider explaining the OPREG port bits These and their manipulations baffle me Espe cially when I look at the Radio S
59. the marginal chip went along with a reminder to re place it before I XLR8 the machine 79 Fm John Metzger I understand that a patch has been developed that allows the ERAM Disk to soft boot without loosing data If this is so any information on the patch would be appreciated Also in ref erencing a message posted on 9 22 it appears that difficulty has been experi enced when installing drivers on System 0 and Boot System Do the new patches work Fm Frank Slinkman No John the patches were to SETX CMD and BOOT SYS to change the initial HD64180 settings from 1 1 40 to whatever and to remove an unnecessary wait state from the refresh cycle I know of no patch to supress re writing the ERAMDISK directory to pre serve the data after a boot I would imag ine that would be difficult and might require a separate routine Back when Michel Houde first released his patches through TMQ some people found they conflicted with HD drivers etc both competing for low RAM Fm David Huelsmann John Unless I completely missed the point of your ques tion about soft booting ERAMDISK without losing data that capability al ready exists Assuming by soft boot you mean an unexpected hardware re boot or pressing the orange reset button WITHOUT turning off the main system power If I am correct then the reinstallation of ERAMDISK without formatting will bring up the data in the ramdisk again I vedone th
60. to look out for is to make sure that if the modem has call progress detection that itis disabled This is usually one of the ATX command vari ants Otherwise all you ll get back when attempting to dial is NO DIALTONE Hi res Graphics boards Fm Jon Roberts anyone out there that can give some info on the differences of the RS and microlabs hires boards and your preferences and why I m trying to decide which to get Please help Fm Frank Slinkman Jon Differences between RS and uL hi res boards 1 RS board has 32K uL has 20K Extra memory on RS board has never to my knowledge ever been utilized by any commercial application and it s use is not documented although I know how to do it 2 RS board can normally only be written to during the monitors vertical blanking pulse uL board can be written to during both horizontal and vertical blanking Since 20 out of 100 character times are horizon tally blanked and 16 out of 256 line times are vertically blanked this makes the uL board theoretically 4 times faster than the RS board In most applications however the apparent speed is 30 40 since it s only writes to the board which are faster 3 Text screen graphics screen is possible on both boards but not documented on the RS board I prefer the uL approach to text overlay 4 RS board always displays 640 x 240 evenin Model III mode uL board shifts to 512 x 192 in M3 mode when text overlay turned
61. to the Editor Volume IN nu Fm Kevin R Parris I have asked you about this before but I want to phrase it differently to be sure you really are an swering exactly what it is I want to know Can I use your host adapter and hard drive controller to connect a Tandon TMS02 ten meg drive and a Seagate ST225 drive to a Model 4 p computer AT the SAME TIME and haveit operate as acombined thirty meg configuration for both LDOS and LS DOS alternately Thanks for all your fine products and support Fm MISOSYS Inc Yes you can have both connected at the same time The controller supports automatic configura tion on power up as the characteristics of the drive is stored on the drive at format time Therefore both drives can be dis similar as far as characteristics go My previous type of SASI driver for VRDATA drives and Lobo drives re quired that both drives if2 were used had to be of the same characteristics That was because I didn t want to initialize the controller every time I O was switched from one drive to the other I am taking advantage of the auto init on the Xebec 1420 and Adaptec 4000A controllers both of which we have in stock Fm Kevin R Parris TMQ Received today in Columbia SC Also I note in your subscription rates categories that group C includes Columbia along with Venezuela I suspect you intend the South American country of Colombia with an OH instead of a U I may
62. ucts Dear Mr Ray Thank you for your reply to my letter re bugs in LeScript V1 9 I originally used the LS DOS 6 3 copy command to copy over the files that required on my LeScript working disk I have been able to show that the Close Fault Error is related to this method of file transfer The fault did not initially occur if LS DOS 6 3 BACKUP 1 0 MPW was used to copy required files However I have since seen the Close Fault Error intermittently for no apparent reason I wonder if Roy Soltoff of MISOSYS knows of the bug in LS DOS 6 3 that gives each file name twice in the LeScript directory I am surprised that no mention of the bug is made with any of the documentation that came with LeScript V1 9 It is odd to see DOS attempt to copy the same files twice in one backup opera tion Could you please be more specific as to the exact nature of the bug in LS DOS 6 3 I cannot get a directory of the master LeScript V1 9 disk using LDOS 5 3 not LS DOS 6 3 A directory error is re ported I am still having printing problems with V1 9 On printing using a Radio shack DWP 410 daisy wheel printer and pro portional space wheel the underline is incorrect and superscript and subscript are not working I suspect this is because of a bug in the K79 printer driver or that the incorrect printer driver has been loaded DOS Subjects 36 DOS Subjects Volume IN 0 T
63. voltage s and provide a cross talk isolation barrier for the outer layers which carry the signals Cross talk be tween signal lines becomes a bigger prob lem as processing speeds increase and spacing between printed circuits decrease When voltage busses run parallel to sig nal lines they have a tendency to pick up and transmit their neighbor s information The Hardware Corner 78 The Hardware Corner Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN u to the logic chips they service Many layered boards reduce or eliminate this problem While the Model 4 motherboard should have no trouble handling 6 mhz it s nice to know that some real planning went into this aftermarket product Thought you d like to know Not all 64K memory chips are created equal My plain machine was running for the longest time with OKI M3764A 15 memory chips using the Z80 A proc essor Never missed a beat When I popped the XLR8er in it and booted up using an unmodified LS DOS site diskette the date prompt displayed and my input was ac cepted but the time prompt did some wacky things Mash the orange button This time the date prompt went crazy Mash it again Now the machine went off into never never land with the diskette twirling forever Pull the diskette shut off the machine and wait 20 seconds turn it back on No good I later discovered that the twirling diskette was being written to rende
64. will do our best to locate it for you Pacific Computer Exchange The One Source For Used Tandy Equipment 503 236 2949 PACIFIC COMPUTER EXCHANGE 1031 S E Mill Suite B e Portland Oregon 97214 TRELLIS RS IAL DIO LLIN AE AL IAL IE LOLA PPL A LPL RELL LA Sterling VA DoubleDuty published previously by Radio Shack cat 26 2231 has been licensed for publication by MISOSYS Inc oe DoubleDuty divides your 128K TRS 80 Model 4 computer s memory into three complete and inde pendent partitions Two partitions each operate as if they were their own 64K Model 4 The third can be used to execute DOS library commands DoubleDuty requires a 128K TRS 80 Model 4 p panisi eS MISOSYS now publishing DoubleDuty MISOSYS Inc P O Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 0239 703 450 4181 orders only 800 MISOSYS YOU CAN COUNT ON US TO DELIVER DoubleDuty is available now from MISOSYS at an introductory price of 37 46 plus 2S amp H until De cember 31st 1989 That s 25 off the regular price of 49 95 and 94 off the price of anew Model 4 If you thought you needed another computer think again With DoubleDuty you can now have two for the price of one m me y
65. 120 1120 X 1120 S 1041 1041 S 1065 2220 and Schedule D 1120 S K l 1120 S K l 1041 8656 7004 Schedule D 1065 K l 1065 1120 A Signature Forms 1040 1040A 1120 etc are for use with Overlays all Forms and Schedules are Computer Generated Write for Listings and Prices E a GOOTH SOFTWARE MasterCard 931 SO BEMISTON seme ST LOUIS MO 63105 Letters to the Editor 18 Letters to the Editor a Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN o PDUBL RDUBL drives gt 3 Fm Daniel L Srebnick I am using LDOS 5 1 4 on the Model I with RDUBL I attempt to formatan 80 track DSDD disk ette with the command Format 6 Sides 2 Cy1 80 DDEN and I end up with a single density 80 double sided diskette Do you know why the double density parameter is being ignored Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Daniel Probably because you have the drive over there in 6 I seem toremember something about this Is it up there because of a hard disk If so you may need to rebuild your configuration by moving everything around with the normal DCTs and then exe cuting RDUBL afterward If you dump the contents ofall your DCTs for floppy drives you ll probably notice a difference in the driver addresses If so you may be able to patch directly in memory and re SYSGEN Fm Daniel L Srebnick Yes it is up on 6 because of a hard drive Are you imply ing that if I move i
66. 128 This requires some explanation Under Dots per Line the manual shows for Compressed 12 CPI a total of 1900 Under Characters per Line this typeface is listed as 158 Dividing total dots per line by total chars per line gives us 12 dots per char as near as matters which is shown in line 160 as a multiplier for G Obvi ously any other pitch typeface 0 printer might require recalculation based on data in the pertinent manual Lines 180 and 190 calculate the number of dots to be added per space when the result is fractional in line 180 it will be rounded downward by INT in 190 but that may leave us with insufficient dots So we make up the number by adding the shortage starting at the beginning of the printout line F line 200 Lines 210 250 print out the line character by character Line 240 compares each character with a space and when a space is found and provided there are dots to add GOSUBs to 350 which prints out the padding dots M dots per space Line 360 checks the available unused num ber of dots P and when there are no more closes the loop by making the TO value of the loop one larger than on line 350 and then jumps to the NEXT instruc tion at 390 which Will close the loop and exit cleanly without leaving any stray loop pointers in the system Once the dot count becomes zero by repeated decre ments in 380 the P gt 0 on 240 will test untrue and there will be no more GOSUB 350
67. 3 or M4 495 S amp H 40 Megabyte kit M3 or M4 645 S amp H Hardware clock option 30 Joystick option with joystick 20 Host interface cable 20 Additional software interface 30 Note S amp H prices are UPS ground to continental U S TT512P 1200 bps modem for 4P Full AT command set Speed up your Model 4P s communications capabilities with the only full feature 300 1200 baud internal modem for your 4P available from MISOSYS Features On board AT command set Automatic Answer Automatic Dial Automatic Fallback Adaptive Equalization Dual RJ11C modular telephone plugs High speed signal for use with BBS Call Progress Messages Analog loopback self test mode TT512P H 4P 512 89 95 5S amp H Miscellaneous parts Ribbon cables We custom manufacture and test using Cirris Systems cable tester DB25 Printer 36 edgecard 34 amp 50 header 34 etc Call write for pricing DRAM 64K 150ns 2 chip 256K 150ns 4 chip U72 PAL 8 PAL PLD PROM programming call write Kel Am 34 pin male edgecard for DEN Mad MS weg Seele ell and Software PRO WAM Version 2 Window amp Application Manager Our applications turn your 128K Model 4 into a sophisticated business or personal machine rivaling the best of them Because easily installed PRO WAM comes with many useful and powerful menu driven time savers and work organizers PRO WAM is accessed with a single key stroke its export and imp
68. 80 MICRO 80 US INFOWORLD POPULAR ELECTRONICS FAMILY COMPUTING Creative Computing amp more The King of Utilities Reads repairs and works with all the popular TRS 80 operating systems Models I IM 4 Allows you to set up two drives for two different DOS s and copy between them easily If you use a TRS 80 with disk drives then this is a must have program that you will wonder how you did without for so long Super Utility has won numerous awards has received many 5 Star reviews and this could be your last chance to purchase a copy at this unheard of price Super Utility does so many things you will never use its full potential but it isn t that hard to use since it is completely menu driven with the most common defaults built right in It is configurable for all the popular TRS 80 operating systems and will even allow you to set one drive for one system and another drive for a different operating system and copy files easily between the two Even between Model I and III or 4 regardless of density track number number of sides or system used We have thousands of letters in our files over the years about how Super Utility has saved the user from various problems Super Utility removes or decodes passwords strips them right off a disk in one pass reformats a disk without erasing the data fixes problems backs up most protected disks etc This was the very best utility ever written for the TRS 80 and now is the time to get your own copy
69. AND MIDS A B 1 lt gt THEN B B 1 GOTO 80 The IF would then test true and loop back to 80 if neither space nor hyphen were found but would test as untrue and jump to 90 for printout when either a space ora hyphen was found If necessary other or additional line end characters could be added in a similar manner This arrangement would relieve the pres sure on variable B as now it must only be larger than the longest word portion be tween a space and a hyphen comma or whatever on such unusually long words You will of course set M margin and L lines per page in line 20 to suit your job Reading the above the whole setup may seem very slow in operation I find in practice it is faster than my printer so there is no noticeable slowdown Adding headings and page numbers on BASIC printouts Many word processors will print headings titles page numbers dates etc at the top of each sheet but when it comes to BASIC printouts it s quite another matter The question is how the BASIC program will know when the printer is at the top of the sheet so the heading title or whatever may be printed On the model III there was a memory location in the manual which could be PEEKed for line count referred to herein later but that vanished on the model 4 But there is a way to do iton LSDOS 6 3 provided the model 4 FORMS FLT is installed DOS commands SET FF FORMS FLT and FILTER PR FF There is amemory l
70. Charles Ainsworth regard ing the MULTIPLE FILES ON A DISK ETTE problem discussed in TMQ IV 1 I really hate to burst your bubble as you will see in the letter To Charles Ainsworth Just re ceived TMQ IV i and noticed your con tinuing correspondence with Misosys on pages 26 30 I have to be one of those few other folks mentioned on P 27 col 2 After reading and re reading the ar ticle I tried to call you directly that eve ning There are 3 Ainsworths listed for Woodbridge and I d have to guess that you are the unlisted one mentioned by the long distance directory operator since the other 2 numbers didn t Snow of you I have several model 4 s None of them is a gate array nor do any of them have until recently the XLR8er Two of them are Rev C and one a Rev A All of them have the malady I use Powerscript s PSCRIPT modifications to model 4 Scrip sit One of the machines has a R S Mod M FDC in it the others use non R S FDC boards I forget the brands but they do use the W D 1793 or its equivalent Mit subishi 8877 uses only 5v runs cooler floppy controller Still I have seen as many as five copies of the same file on one diskette on any one of the machines While I don t have auto save I do save often I did send that original diskette to Roy after picking out the best of the five via HyperSoft s diskette duplica tion program and additional gyrations With this was a le
71. Clubs amp BBS systems Fm MISOSYS Inc If you are a repre sentative of a club or BBS catering to the TRS 80 users and are not yet on my list please submit your information In addition I am including an ongoing list of company addresses and telephone numbers for those establishments still catering to the TRS 80 Advertising in TMQ is not a prerequisite to be included in this list Contact MISOSYS to be in cluded Resource Bulletin Boards The Midlands Plaza BBS Columbia SC 300 1200 24hrs 7 days 803 776 9600 TRS 80 Model I 10 Meg HD MOTHERBOARD 415 352 8442 8 N 1 94545 SIG 2 for TRS 80 s West End BBS 300 1200 baud 24 hrs 914 858 8722 Model UL 10 Meg HD TBBS 1 3 hello world 817 840 2140 300 1200 2400 8N1 2A hrs day 7 days week Stone Mountain GA 404 292 7603 1200 baud 8N1 8 Bit Tandy BBS San Diego CA 300 1200 2400 8 N 1 Model I 111 4 100 102 200 OS 9 619 571 6366 24 hrs REMS 80 001 505 624 0811 DataServe 204 239 7103 Resource Computer Clubs Mid Cities TRS 80 Users Group MCTRUG P O Box 171566 Arlington Tx 76803 National Amstrad Tandy amp General User Group Oakfield Lodge Broad Lane Ram Hill Coalpit Heath Bristol BS17 2TY Great Britain NY BBLERS CHABOT COLLEGE 25555 Hesperian Blvd Hayward CA Adelaide Micro User s Group Inc G P O Box 214 Adelaide South Australia 5001 AUSTRALIA TRS 80 SYSTEM 80 COMPUTER USERS GROUP INC 41 Mont
72. D20INIT or HD4OINIT can be applied to automatically establish your hard disk I would recommend trying one of these to save some time and see how it is done HD20INIT and HD40INIT both contain options to allow DUAL both Model III and Model 4 systems to use the hard disk and FORMAT which contin ues to perform the high level format on the partitions Care has been taken so that performance of Model IM HDxxINIT does not interfere with the Model 4 HDxxINIT if DUAL is requested This is about a half a cup a coffee task At the con Clusion of this step a SYSGEN as de scribed in the JCL file will save your new configuration 3 Now the data from all those floppies that you can never put your hands on can be placed on the various partitions or SUB disks SDFORMx SDx which you make A Few BONES to dig 1 I found that I must I have a 4p which Irun in both Model ITI and Model 4 mode containing the MISOS YS XLR8er 256K card pay careful attention to the POWER UP SEQUENCE I have effectively LOCKED OUT access to the hard disk system if I turn on the computer FIRST even though I don t boot it up The mes sage I receive is that the clock is either not installed or the battery is dead Further access to the hard disk for read write appears to be impossible I did find that while I couldn t read write programs I COULD RE FORMAT low level and would get a hard disk error 2 While I can build a SUB disk
73. DOS parameter error when setting the margin margin without line length Watch for any possible problems on print ers with platen width close to paper Width where the machine s built in platen end return might undercut the value set for B so keep B below that limit In summary keep B in control of line length Within such constraints you can make B larger or smaller to obtain a different printout width but be aware that if it were unduly small line 80 would choke on a word longer than B as it wouldn t find a space the resultant repeated decrements to B would eventually reduce it to zero producing an illegal function call error in Applications for the User 42 Applications for the User A To ENEE el EE 225 Sa ai Volume DN 0 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii MID causing a jump out of the program Therefore B should always be larger than the longest printed word which should be no problem whatsoever in normal text at usual printout widths Now if you use unusually long words you have to watch word length closer Certain sciences chemistry for one use very long compound words such as names of complex formulations which usually include commas or hyphens but may not include spaces In such cases you may decide on an additional acceptable line end character such as comma or hyphen and include it in line 80 For example for hyphen 80 IF MIDS A B 1 lt gt
74. H 7 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY In this issue Se Printing from BASIC without cutting words by C A Ainsworth Gr Se LOAD100 for Model 100 e Model III by Mark Allen Reed e Generating date time stamp by Jane A Layman ts Favorite recipes from our CompuServe forumites ts Some BASIC routines by Murray W Diller Ge MISOSYS acquires PowerSoft Products SS Resources Bulletin boards Clubs and Companies ts The Cornsoft Group games from MISOSYS t and All the way to FIVE TWELVE K by Richard King FLASH MISOSYS acquires publishing rights to DoubleDuty MISOSYS will be closed December 22nd until January 2nd Volume IV ii 10 Winter 1989 90 a TRSCROSS Pronounced TRISS CROSS TRSCROSS runs on your PC or compatible yet reads your TRS 80 diskettes Copy files in either direction The FASTEST and EASIEST file transfer and conversion program for moving files off the TRS 80 and over to MS DOS or PC DOS or back TRSCROSS Copyright 1986 by Breeze QSD Inc All rights reserved 1 Copy from TRS 80 diskette 2 Copy to TRS 80 diskette 3 Format TRS 80 diskette 4 Purge TRS 80 diskette 5 Display directory PC or TRS 80 6 Exit Shown above is the Main Menu displayed when running TRSCROSS on your PC or compatible TRSCROSS is as easy to use as it looks to be The program is very straight forward well thought out and simple to operate TRSCROSS has several help features built into the program to keep ope
75. I m going to do it that way as well but add a patch to the DOS CLOSE routine so that the time is updated on every file close I doubt that anyone will ever see the small time taken up for that The FIRE button as well as any of the 4 Stick positions can be dynamically changed after the filter is installed I m including a SETJS utility which can change any of the 5 key codes generated as well as alter the repeat time interval Fm Jim Beard Roy Pete put his finger on it The clock in the chip tends to lose time particularly in unheated rooms in the wintertime It s apparently the price of the very low cost and extreme com pactness of the chip Given a choice I would pay another 5 for a better XTAL or CMOS chip or replace a battery every year One of the things I am looking forward to in your HD clock is a higher quality crystal chip Hard disk parts Fm Michael Strait Roy I hear that your Model IV hard disk upgrade has been available for a while now I have a hard disk in my machine but am using an 8X300 controller board I am wondering what controller is in your hard disk kit hopefully WD 1010 or similar and if it is available separately and how much it would cost Fm MISOSYS Inc I m using a Xebec 1421 controller and a proprietary read as own design host adaptor I have not priced them separately yet but will soon The host adaptor will be approximately 75 with software Controllers will be in the
76. James BACKUP leaves all the files it has moved with the flag off which sounds reasonable on both the sending and receiving disk I keep two backup disks and usually do it DOS Subjects this way BACKUP 2 3 MOD change the disk in 2 at the end of BACKUP BACKUP 3 2 An image backup of even a DS 80 track drive is quicker than a by file backup of more than a couple of files Doing it that way gives me an immediate check on the readability of the first backup disk as well Fm Bob Haynes Jim the BACKUP command turns off the mod flag on both source and destination files if backup of that file is successful When looking at a particular disk the idea is to ask for each file Does a backup exist for this particu lar file If you re looking at the source disk the answer is yes on the destination disk If you re looking at the destination disk the answer is also yes on the source disk Thus disabling the mod flag which implies there is NO backup for this file is appropriate on both ends If you don t like this arrangement do a SYSTEM DRIVE x WP command on your source drive before performing BACKUP where x is your source drive Do a SYSTEM DRIVE x WP OFF afterwards You could stick them in JCLs for convenience if you like Examples DO WPOFF DO WPON Fm Frank Slinkman James When you do a DIR ofa disk look for the sign by the file name This tells you
77. LP TH be very embarrassed when we all find out I ve done something foolish but I still don t see what that silly error 1S Fm MISOSYS Inc Mike you got my curiosity up Send me a copy of your master disk which PATCH reports the find line mismatch Also include on that disk a copy of the SYS3CLK5 FIX file you are trying to patch Cure for SYS3CLK5 FIX o Fm MISOSYS Inc Mike I must apolo gize for my oversight but I found the problem with SYS3CLKS FIX Not ev eryone has the problem of course I intro duced the bug when I expanded the front end comments to ensure that folks did not apply the patch to the current system disk I changed the Apply via line to use a full file spec as in SYS3 SYS SYSTEM d noting that the d should be a drive other than the system 57 drive But LDOS Model HI PATCH utility uses a colon as a logical line separator whereas LS DOS uses a semi colon as a logical line separator The d of the comment was being inter preted as a new logical line with the first character a d implying a direct patch That threw off the whole patch construct I never checked as to why the mismatch message showed the next D patch line Suffice it to say just remove the from the comment line and the patch will ap ply Am I red Fm Mike Harrow Roy Glad the mys tery is solved It was really driving me crazy there for a few days Since David was ab
78. LS DOS We ll still support it for as long as we stay in busi ness I expect that s for many more years Technical support for your Model 4P computer rests with Tandy Corp support for LS DOS rests with us MISOSYS does have MS DOS products but there is no concept for LS DOS to be PC compatible the two are mutually exclusive environments Home Accounting Fm Frederick B Heitkamp Jr 70 Elm Ave Larkspur CA 94939 Dear Mr Soltoff I have been meaning for some time a little over a year to comment on issue I i Summer 1988 On page 23 there are queries from Patrick H Larkin and Walter Royal Jones Jr both inquir ing about programs for the Model 4 which are comparable to The Home Account ant In 1985 I wrote a PERSONAL LEDGER set of programs both to do my own personal accounting and to offer for sale It is a souped up version of a PER SONAL FINANCES program which I wrote for the Timex Sinclair computer which in turn was a subset of a system I have been running on various computers usually mainframe for over 20 years But by the time I had finished a user manual with time out for various bird in hand moonlighting assignments two things had happened to dissuade me from attempting to market this product 1 The Model 4 had become obsolescent 2 I was drawing Social Security and was thus limited in the income I could earn without penalty I have two extra copies of the user m
79. MTC UNREMOVE command I don t know whether I was mixing up hexadecimal and decimal but the prob lem was that UNREMOVE was supposed to be able to display a 22 long list of candidate files 16H but the internal ar ray space was allocated to support only 16 decimal entries Either way the only solution short of reassembly to expand the array space is to offer the following patch 55 DIRCHECK amp MISOSYS HD Fm David Huelsmann Roy Another question about using your drive package boy I m full of questions this last couple of days When running DIRCHECK from the GO package what hard disk option should be used With just H the GAT error for cylinder X 77 pops up When using R GAT Re allocation gt Cylinder ddd Gran d pops up but the re allocations listed are for the same files i e SYSO is Re allo cated to itself When using L no errors are found I am assuming L isthe correct choice Fm MISOSYS Inc Ah process of elimi nation But both R and L are incorrect According to the documentation I would suspect that H would be correct TU have to check the DIRCHECK code to see what it does for that I would almost guess that perhaps H 0 would be the correct entry but I ll have to check the source code as the docs imply the parm to be H or H ON which are equivalent to H X FFFF Fm David Huelsmann H 0 won t work as the program doesn t recognize zer
80. PEND Most newer BASICs and C are able to do this but all I can find in the manual suggests that I have to write a new file then call the APPEND command in the OS Ideas I m using LDOS 5 1 4 Fm Bob Haynes For random access open the file use LOF x to find the last data record bump it and PUT to your heart s content For sequential access open the file with the OPEN E extend command Hope this helps it s been AGES since I ve touched LBASIC DOS Subjects 19 DOS Subjects Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume DNA Fm MISOSYS Inc Use OPEN E for open to extend a sequential file When in doubt turn to the manual on page 5 61 of the edition I am looking at If you would be using LDOS 5 3 asimple HELP BASIC OPEN would have given you the answer if you invoked that from DOS Ready or via CMD HELP Some BASIC routines Fm Murray W Diller Phoenix AZ Gentlemen A short note to let you know how much the Misosys Quarterly is ap preciated It usually requires a much as four readings before most of the material sinks in and even then much is over my head or has no application with what I do There have been many ideas and programs that are worth several years subscription to me Especially ERAMLD and PEXMEM which has been a life saver It has occurred that many readers are in the same position where they program in Basic for their own need
81. RAS Assembler Fm MISOSYS Inc I recently had occasion to generate about six inches thick of assembly printouts when I wanted to get listings for every module making up the Model III and Model 4 MSCSI soft ware which accompanies our hard drive package Certainly that volume of print outs would have taken a great deal of time even on our fastest dot matrix printer not to mention the wear on the printhead and printer itself So I decided to use my NEC LC890 laser printer One thing about a lot of laser printers is that they generally cannot print to the extreme edges of the paper But there is no way to adjust the left hand margin within the printer itself Another problem is that MRAS was de signed to expect the paper be positioned five lines from the top of form This also would conflict with the LC890 s inability MISOSYS Products Tidbits 60 MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV 1i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1i to print within the top 1 4 of the paper So to correct all of the problems I devel oped a small patch to MRAS which changes its expectation of printer page alignment to expect the paper to be at the top of the form The only hitch is that the source file s must use a TITLE pseudo OP Here s the patch SET FF FORMS FILTER PR FF then use FORMS to set ADDLF FFHARD CHARS 20 and MARGIN 10 I use my laser printer in its Diablo 630 emulation mode at 15
82. REL module librarian and our SAID advanced full screen text editor EDAS 44 95 4S amp H Powerful disk based line editor and Z80 macro assembler assembles from nested source files or memory buffer nested conditionals with ten pseudo ops nested MACROs with parame ters both positional and by keyword cross reference listings and a separate full screen text editor MC 79 95 5S amp H a complete C compiler which adheres to the standards established by Kernighan and Ritchie The package is supplied with the compiler pre processor an optimizer assembler macrofiles C libraries a Job Control Language file the header files and a 400 page user manual MC requires the use of either M 80 or MRAS available separately 2 disk drives and upper lower Case EnhComp 59 95 4S amp H handles most of Microsoft B ASIC floating point single and double precision functions random file access X mode reclens to 32767 turtle graphics pixel graphics keyed array sort multi lined functions user commands REPEAT UNTIL line labels and more Built in Z80 assembler to easily create hybrid programs of BASIC and in line assembly code DSMBLR 24 95 2S amp H Direct disassembly from CMD disk files automatic partitioning of output disk files data screening and full label generation It even generates the ORGs and END statement HartFORTH 49 95 3S amp H a full 79 STANDARD FORTH is designed to run under an operating system
83. Race Slots 3 with Sound 7 95 Kim watt author of Super Utility and other famous programs wrote some games that Adventure Intemational published back in the early 70 s They are interesting in that most people have never seen these as by the time SUPER UTILITY was established in the market these games as well as Adventure were gone Originally these were sold on three separate diskettes or tapes but we have combined them all on one disk for you collectors LANCEMICKLUS GREATEST GAMES 3 Disk Set 17 95 This is a great collection as it features space games Space Trek adventure games Dog Star Adventure gambling games The Mean Craps Machine which also includes a Craps tutorial booklet on disk board games Mean Checkers Machine as well as some dam useful programs that you might use forreal purposes Also has some educational games for the kids You will enjoy owning this set of programs by one of the early pioneer programmers for the TRS 80 Lance Micklus Special All3 Game Disk Sets for only 29 95 Five disks crammed full of games that youand your family will really enjoy If ordering the single density Model I version of game Set the price is 34 95 j BONANZA SPECIAL UNTIL 12 31 89 For every PowerSoft software product you I I purchase from MISOSYS take any MISOSYS software product ofequalorlessvalueFREE I The Cornsoft Group s arcade type games Now available exclusively from MISOSYS Great Bouncing Boulders It s
84. S s If you examine the directory sectors with Super Utility you would see that the file names are in fact only recorded once The HIT errors are intentional we put them there our selves to keep locked out all unused direc tory entries and should have no effect on ones ability to backup the disk or copy files from it I can t guess as to why you are getting a Close Fault Error when trying to print as we don t get such an error here However if you wish to send us an example on disk using the procedure outlined in the Trouble Report Form we would be happy to check it out for you To get a copy of LeScript 2 00 the cost would be 30 00 plus 3 00 if the LeScript master disk is not returned plus 6 00 s h There are only two types of LeScript document files LeScript 1 document files and LeScript 2 document files includes version 1 9 LeScript 1 90 and 2 00 will automatically convert LeScript 1 docu ment files to LeScript 2 document files when loaded in and saved back to disk There is no method of converting LeScript 2 document files to LeScript 1 document files other than saving them out of LeScript 1 90 or 2 00 in ASCII and loading them into LeScript 1 8 There is no patch that could make LeScript 1 9 2 0 work with the Radio Shack hi res board because those boards can t super impose text and graphics Please let me know if there is anything more I can do Fm H L Smith to Anitek Software Prod
85. THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume DNA paper should be advanced for top of next page Here is a typical example of setting XX and YY for autofeed continuous paper Assume 11 long paper printing at the usual rate of 6 lines per inch 66 lines per page You may decide to print 55 lines per page which will give a shade less than 1 margin top and bottom So set XX at 54 we are counting from LIN 0 line 25 When LIN gets to 54 line 220 activates the loop in 230 the loop counter one would think should be set to 11 55 printed lines plus 11 blank ones on 66 line paper however as far as I can figure it out a return sneaks in at the end of 230 somake YY one less Le 10 Users of hand fed cut sheets may set YY at whatever value suits them for proper page eJection as the next sheet will be positioned manually whatever the value of YY Obviously a number of lines per inch other than 6 a different number of lines per page or different paper lengths will require other values of XX and YY METHOD NUMBER THREE Printing with justified right margin monospaced padding between words This method provides right margin justi fication on monospaced printout and is an extension of the general principles out lined for method number one and may also be adapted to the line count system of method number two by some slight changes It is assumed that method num ber one and number two if applicable have been
86. TRS 80 double density formats TRSDOS 1 2 1 3 TRSDOS 6 2 LDOS 5 3 DOSPLUS NEWDOS 80 amp MultiDOS DOS formats listed above flagged with signify that earlier versions of these DOS s are readable as well but one or more sectors may be skipped due to a format problem in that version of the DOS Disks that were formatted with SUPER UTILITY or SUW4 4P do not have this problem TRSDOS 6 02 01 or higher should not have this problem Disks formatted in any 80 track format or single density are not supported TRSCROSS Requires PC or compatible computer 128K and a normal 360KB 40 track PC or 1 2MB 80 track AT drive Double sided operation is fully supported If you have more than one disk drive fixed drive or RAM disk operation will be much smoother TANDY 1000 requires more than 128KB memory DMA TANDY 2000 is not supported at this time due to a difference in disk controller and floppy drives Special data files like PROFILE would need to be converted to ASCII on a TRS 80 first before they would be of use on a PC or compatible If you use both types of computers or you plan toretire your TRS 80 this is for you TRSCROSS will allow access to your TRS 80 diskettes for years to come Copy your TRS 80 word processor data files as well as your Visicalc data files over to MS DOS and continue using them with your new application Only 89 95 Plus 3 S amp H U S or 5 Canadian or 12 Foreign Virginia Reside
87. YS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN Oo Points to Ponder I sometimes wonder why the smaller mini floppy disk drives get referred to as 3 5 inch The case is actually 9cm not3 5 inch Ever try to find a screw that fits ina floppy mounting hole Try 3mm not 4 40 or 6 32 And those who say the United States is not going metric ought to begin wondering why the size of an automobile engine is now measured in liters that s metric folks Soltoff s prediction Before the turn of the century that s January 1 2001 for those who may have missed the thread a few years ago on our LDOS forum CompuServe PCS 49 we Americans will be buying our gasoline measured in liters or half liters assuming we still have any of the stuff left Why do I begin to get calls this time of year asking if the Quarterly is out know that guesstimating a three month period takes getting used to but this issue is on _ target according to my publishing sched ule Perhaps folks are just anxious to receive the good news and information crammed into each issue I hope its not because some folks think that MISOSYS has vanished the way other companies supporting the TRS 80 may have van ished But believe m getting each issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY published is taking its toll on me Don t be surprised if the content and style change for the next issue As anote to folks contributing a program please be aware that I prefer to pu
88. a cable be tween a hard drive unit and a computer However intermittent problems may go unnoticed because I don t perform a wiggle test of each connector I have not had any further reports of cable prob lems except for yours your unit was shipped after cables were being 100 tested In any event I m sending you a replacement cable Please return the bad cable so that I may evaluate it A return address label and postage is provided for the re turn Any problem with reading the clock in Model OI mode of LDOS 5 3 must be attributed to a problem with your copy of the DOS One thing to look out for though is that the patch to SYS3 must be applied to a system disk which is other than the current drive 0 You could switch to the hard drive patch the boot floppy switch to the boot floppy then patch the hard drive If the patch does not apply without error something is wrong If you con tinue to have a problem with the Model IH mode send me a backup copy of your LDOS master disk for me to evaluate If you want to go ahead and get your master refreshed send that disk the charge is 10 2 S amp H for a disk refresh In order to enable your external drives you need only employ a function which is documented in your LDOS manual To enable drive 6 for example try the fol lowing SYSTEM DRIVE 6 DISABLE DRIVER MOD3 At the driver prompt enter a 3 to select the first external drive Then
89. about 10 o clock and 2 o clock are used to gently rotate them Usea mirror to observe the front of the screen HORIZONTAL HOLD The horizontal hold is the adjustment on the horizontal oscillator coil L501 Fm Jim Beard Ralf There are several reasons that the video board could react The Hardware Corner Volume IV 11 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1i i differently to the Model 4 board The synch signals are different so the center ing of the vertical and horizontal hold might be different So a perfectly good board would need readjustment After readjusting the vertical hold the vertical size changes The verticals size control changes the vertical position This is probably the main reason that Tandy does not consider the upgrade to be user instal lable Other possibilities are problems with the power supply cable fuse or video board that come to light with the mechanical jiggling involved with rebuilding the whole computer Or one or more of the video board controls might have been disturbed somehow But your experience is not to different from mine except that I just piled right in and reworked the video I have some TV repair experience includ ing replacement of picture tubes Fm Ralf Folkerts OK I thought that something gone TOTALLY wrong with the board It refused to work first be cause of a loosen cable one of those that are wired wild over the pcb I had a
90. among others of mineral and vegetable oils surface active agents and lubricating oil additive They also possess a high degree of lubrication and absence of gummy residues all of which favors operation of the pins BUT let s keep it that way No one says we can mix paper lint in with it A ribbon contains about a thimbleful of ink so it only requires a small amount of contaminant such as paper debris to affect it appreciably Bear in mind that whatever ribbon re newal system you may use and however good the paper you still have to clean the head from time to time as part of aregular printer cleaning schedule XLR8er Possible fix for 26 1069 Richard King 808 Orleans Place Raleigh NC 27609919 872 5846 While debugging XLRS8er installation problems on my favorite Model 4 with Revision C board modified to use 256K Chips I decided to test it in a second unmodified Rev C machine I have The following observations may be helpful to others who have tried to install an XLR8er and have failed or who are not sure if they should try Mechanically speaking the XLR8er has one of the best printed circuit boards I ve seen in a long time It appears to be constructed in four layers compared to the usual two layers found in the likes of Model 4 s and most commercial prod ucts IBM uses this multi layer technique for their large computer products In this type of construction the two inner layers carry the
91. anda DOS Subjects 27 DOS Subjects Volume IN u 1772 Bend up pin twenty on the 1770 chip careful this isn t a forty pin DIP and stick the chip in so that pin 20 is a no connect The machine should boot and run fine but won t have any pre comp on write so don t try writing If that works re do the FD driver so that it uses the chip s internal pre comp capability Run the infamous torture test and see what happens If it works fine do a new version of 6 3 that turns on both the chip precomp and the old precomp the only side effect should be loss of side compare on half the disk no biggie If that is unacceptable do a special version for the 1770 1773 only and package a new FDC chip with it as an upgrade Note that if this works we haven t actu ally proved that it is in the 1770 or in the GA floppy support chip since we have replaced both but if it works who cares The 1772 should work identically except that it is available in a 02 version that has an enhanced data separator and provides faster step rates 2 3 6and 12 ms Handy for drives that like to step at 3 ms I don t have a GA machine so I can t test this myself Any volunteers Fm Bob Haynes Adam Finally got around to trying that modification you requested Here s my current variation on Roy s test program DOS Subjects THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 _ And here is the result of today s ru
92. anual which is slightly outof date due to minor enhancements made since 1985 I would be willing to sell these together with the programs naturally for 25 00 if the purchasers will offer comments and criti cism If the system generates any interest then perhaps I will update the manual and take out a small ad in the MISOSYS QUARTERLY Ino longer have any fear that I might exceed the Social Security earnings limit Fm Richard R King Would you in I can now run XLR amp er at 0 software wait states successfully There s still a hard ware wait state built into the board a la SB180 See Byte 9 87 P 94 bottom center IC15 The kbd strobe problem isn t the PAL the same PAL type is used for the 128 K feature its the MC14502B kbd input chips U44 45 p 4A with their utterly slow propagation times Using one Motorola 74HCT245A not pin compat ible MUST be an AT the problem literally disappeared Before my mod one wait state created trash when holding lt CLEAR gt lt SHIFT gt while pressing gt A and others zero wait states killed the entire keyboard immediately Glad to see the family column back With five of our own I ve travelled your paths Enjoy the times they pass quickly and there s no going back Letters to the Editor 15 Letters to the Editor Volume IV ii bm Samuel J Wells Dear Roy Ineed to report to you that the HUBCUG users group in Hattie
93. any as I have the time for 28 Volume V 1i Doubling SS PRO drivers UPS etc Fm Carl Berger Dear Roy Could you please send me a patch to LS DOS 6 3 TED CMD to make it work like the LDOS 5 3 TED CMD when lt BREAK gt is pressed while in the insert mode The LS DOS 6 3 TED leaves the cursor fat like it s still in the insert mode after pressing lt BREAK gt but it is no longer in the insert mode I was very intrigued by your article on the doubling of files in TMQ IV i Ihave seen this happen on my 4P about 3 times since I got the 4P in 1983 My 4P has no modifications except for the 128K mem ory upgrade that was put in by Radio Shack shortly after I got the 4P I think the first time ithappened wasrightafter using the 4P in TRSDOS 1 3 When I put a TRSDOS 6 x disk in drive 0 and pressed reset there was clunking noise coming from drive 0 and when I finally got into the Model 4 mode I found 2 copies af SYSTEM JCL on drive 0 I assumed at that time that I did something wrong or rebooted from the wrong screen Years later after installing a 40 meg hard drive I found another duplicate file name on a logical drive I removed it and figured that same program did it somehow but never knew how it could happen I have also found a text file in BOOT SYS caus ing BACKUP to abort until Ieither copied another BOOT S YS to that drive or refor matted that partition I have had no such problems now for a long time but I
94. at many more times then I care to count always successfully Fm Frank Slinkman David Not on my system Reinstalling ERAMDISK with out formatting always gives a directory The Hardware Corner Volume IN ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii with only BOOT SYS and DIR SYS The data is still in RAM and in emergencies I ve had to LDIR it from gt 0x8000 to below 0x8000 and then DUMP it A real PITA Fm David Huelsmann Boy that s a real drag What s different between yours and mine Fm Frank Slinkman I dunno When ever I try to use the FORMAT NO pa rameter I get a message something like ERAMDISK not formatted ERAMDISK not implemented or whatever Fm David Huelsmann OK Frank this is what I did to set up the ram disk First I created the disk in the regular manner and copied all of the files wanted into it In my case I was making it a system disk so I transferred all the SYS files plus a lot of others I wanted in aram disk Once I hadcompleted that I dumped the entire ramdisk out to a floppy file called XMEMDISK R AM From then on when I first brought up the system a JCL file would do the following eramld xmemdisk 0 1 bank 3 eramdisk d 4 b 3 f no move6 4 That would load my core image file into the ram bank areas and then initialize the eramdisk The move6 would then ex change DCT between drive 4 and 0 giving me a system ramdisk as drive 0 On a re boo
95. atted I am by no means handy with hardware I installed the bubble in my old Radio Letters to the Editor 13 Letters to the Editor Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume V ii Shack 5 meg case Can you imagine the thrill of looking inside the HD for the first time I even hooked up the orange white and yellow wires I tacked solder to the edge of the appropriate connector fingers of the edge cards I followed traces back a bit to try to find feed through pads but got lost in the traces twice so just tacked solder to the fingers a rather sloppy job and a little too far to the frontof the finger I feared but it worked I had to take the cosmetic black front piece off the 20 meg bubble and extend the yellow and white wires with more wire I have a Model II that I have modified a little drive 0 is replaced with a double sided 80 track half height 5 25 drive 1 is with a 80 track 3 5 cutie and Ihave added two 5 25 80 track external floppies and now a 20 meg bubble in my 5 meg hard drive I have to watch my floppy disks and label them accurately since they aren t inter changeable between 40 and 80 track drives without reformatting I have a hell of a time with your software on 80 track data disks My problem is the 3 5 drive as drive 1 and external 5 25 80 track flop pies that won t read 40 track disks My solution is neat I soldered four wires inside my Model III to the
96. bad case of clogging due to ink Actually this ma chine had never been cleaned or serviced When the head was removed and turned upside down the pins were visible in the portion leading from the body that con tains the electromagnets to the snout tip where they gradually converge towards the snout Well in that part there was also ink debris that had managed to work its way in and contribute to the clogging which was also easily flushed out with a small brush and alcohol Asit happened my friend got an easy and free solution If it had been a case of perhaps a broken pin or return spring he would probably have had to buy the complete head I checked in my own DMP430 service manual and find that parts for the innards of the print head are not listed If this represents the trend perhaps such inner parts cannot be ob tained for this or other heads and the failure of a small part means bite the bullet and buy the complete head And asking a shop to disassemble to change a small part even if available would un doubtedly be as expensive as changing the head due to the labor involved The last word Charles A Ainsworth P O Box 2107 Woodbridge VA 22193 Printer Problems In several letters some of which you printed in TMQ I referred to problems caused by pins on dot matrix printers jamming due to accumulation of ink resi due and I also described cleaning meth ods to alleviate this Maybe at this poi
97. be allowed to access the 4th quadrant of the mother board memory The circuit in drawings A and C monitors A17 When A17 isn t active port 84 controls the address ing of memory When A17 goes active it blocks port 84 control and allows A16 to take over In a similar manner when the 64180 activates address line A18 reads and writes to the motherboard chips are blocked and ram access is directed to the XLR8er memory chips Software con trols the 64180 s address translator so that the A16 line will never go active unless A17 and or A18 are active too This pre vents an addressing foul up in circuits AY and Cc If I haven t totally scrambled your brain yet consider this With the ability to control the 64180 s internal address trans lator we really don t need U72 and might be better off without it Houde s modifi cations do not allow controlling any more than 11 banks of memory cor rectly though he provides several utili ties which can work with up to 31 banks I guess he never felt some nut like me would come along and want to utilize that extra elbow room Frank Slinkmanto the rescue Frank wrote anew er BANK control routine which can manage up to 31 banks or one meg of memory in all He has graciously given permission to include his code with this article His design eliminates the need for U72 and simplifies even further the bank management process Since two of the three 64180 c
98. be wanting to order your host adapter and a controller to use with hard drives I already have for a 4 p computer I have not yet read the new TMQ so I apologize if this information is in there but what would the price be for those two items Fm MISOSYS Inc I thought I copied that info from the Postal regs Perhaps I used my noodle Let me check that out THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 and correct that Fortunately I currently have no class C subscribers to TMQ Here s individual prices as just announced to folks making a specific inquiry r ST225 drive 225 ST251 1 drive 375 Leadman case e w 60wt p s 125 MISOSYS SCSI host adaptor 7 Xebec 1421 controller 95 Adaptec 4010 controller 95 drive power Y cable 5 XT drive cable set 5 Note H A HDC cable provided when ordering both boards XT cable set pro vided when ordering both boards header connector to edgecard connector as needed for all standard PCXT machines and the Xebec 1421 HDC Shipping charges additional Optional hardware clock and joystick as previously advertised Note that the host adaptor comes with the MSCSI software which supports both the Xebec 1421 enhanced ROM and Adaptec 4000 4010 Some day Pil have a M1410 software supported for the generic Xebec 1410 HDC but it is not available at this time It s SYSGEN DRIVE d for LS DOS Fm Mike Harrow Great work on the Hard Drive Roy The installat
99. ber neighborhood party I think I will be pretty busy over Thanksgiving It s been amazing to see how much skill in printing and reading Stacey has acquired in the past few months She s really learned to adapt to first grade quite successfully Of course Brenda and I are both con vinced that Stacey is a Southpaw the only one in our immediate family of five It s funny that when I was growing up I never knew any lefty in my family and I had lots of aunts uncles and cousins my mom was one of a dozen and my dad was one of eight We ve noticed for years now that Stacey never favored one hand over another But the die is cast now She s definitely left handed Because of this I seem to be more attune to left Volume IV 1ii handedness than before Here s an offer Since Stacey at six is now at an age where she can read and write perhaps it would be interesting for her to get some pen pals If any of you have a six or seven year old who may enjoy corresponding with Stacey why not have him or her drop a line nothing fancy now just pencil or pen on plain old paper Might be kind of interesting Your child Stefanie has developed an extraordinary togetherness with Benjamin Talk about sibling anti rivalry They really enjoy playing together I haven t decided whether she plays with him as if he s a live doll or a playmate but they sure have fun romping around and he s only 17 months old
100. ble space after the period at the end of a sentence when about to begin another sentence in the same paragraph Our program looks fora space as line terminator in 90 which is discarded in printout by B 1 in 130 and 210 However if there were another space there at B 1 after line 90 has completed execution the program will treat it as any other character and may print it out at a line end which would make the line appear shorter and the justification incor rect If this were to cause any inconven ience circumvent it by adding 100 R B IF MID AS B 1 1 THEN B B 1 Applications for the User 47 Applications for the User Volume IV 1i Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 which would back up the line length to discard the additional blank space Then change B in line 270 to R The R in 100 will serve as an anchor for the value of pre decremented B to be used in 270 to prevent the second space avoided in 100 from being placed at the beginning of the continuation string in 270 Itis worth noting that two things are never justified First a stand alone paragraph appreciably shorter than one line if justi fied could print out so widely spaced as to be ugly For example if one prints out with an 80 character width and a short paragraph of 20 characters 4 words is printed that spread out to 80 would look strange indeed Second when a longish sentence or paragraph occupying mo
101. blish WORDS along with program listings I have received a good couple of handfuls of programs for inclusion in TMQ but without the words describing the tech niques and algorithms used it is difficult to include I really don t want to just publish page after page of source code Charles Ainsworth s article in this issue is a perfect example of the kind of article I think folks want to read So if you have some input please consider adding some verbiage to it As you will discover from reading this issue I have been a very busy beaver this year Getting our hard drive package ready for shipping has been a monumental achievement That did not come without cost I havea stack of mail on my desk that will not quit It will not all get answered The round file has been expanded these days Either I take up my time responding to all the input I get which would leave no time left for expansion of the products you folks keep asking for or just busy myself with answering the mail and close up shop in six months because there are no customers left I choose to keep ex panding the product line My solution will be to soon generate a form letter which will be sent to acknowledge receipt of mail received but to respond that there are insufficient resources to create a spe cific reply Certainly I ll get to some of them Sure I have offended some folks But since I can t be all things to all people something has to give I try
102. case would mean more than forty years Obviously the duration of a recording might be affected by storage conditions such as temperature stray magnetic fields and such In my case all recordings are carefully stored to avoid any such delete Volume IN 0 rious effects All my recordings on floppies have been made on reputable well known brands no cheapies and with properly adjusted and serviced drives the firstrecordings in my collection date from late model I days I have made a few random samplings of my older disks for readability and all check out perfectly but obviously that doesn t necessarily mean they are all perfect It would be nice to know what others think so I could plan to refresh my archi val disks if anyone could show such a thing is necessary Fm Dayton Sumner I have long wanted to upgrade my 4 P to double sided drives I am afraid to attempt the conversion myself Do you know anyone in the Washington Metro area who might do it for a price I m only an hour from the Washington Beltway and could hand carry it there most any time Fm MISOSYS Ine Why not check with NCTCUG T m sure you could find some one there Check into their BBS at 703 820 8969 or 301 469 8034 300 1200 2400 81N Or give the Model I I0 4 SIG leader acall That s Ron Schmidt 301 577 7899 LNDoubler Fm Mitch Jones I m trying to find an Letters to the Editor 16 Letters to the Editor eee 2 r
103. cause it cannot access the memory I m sorry to say that because this article covers multiple options it may appear to be somewhat hodgepodge in structure You should see what wasn t sent to TMQ WARNING READ AND UNDER STAND ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE YOU DO ANY OF THEM IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBTS CONTACT ME AND PLL TRY TO HELP YOU Create 2 test diskettes containing a fresh backup of LS DOS with utilities After removing the outer cover lift it carefully and straight up to avoid damaging the neck of the video tube and the radiation shield surrounding the motherboard lo cate socket U72 about midway across the bottom row If it has a 4 position jumper plug note that the plug engages sockets 6 9 and 12 15 then you may need the PAL chip based on the decision men tioned above F Y I Tandy s Mod A service bulletin 5 states that U72 should have the manufacturer s logo p n and date code in yellow ink or the Tandy part number must be 8075968 The bulletin says p n 8075468 causes problems For those who choose to continue using port 84 take the PAL or HAL chip out of socket U72 bend pins 9 12 and 19 away from the body see sketch socket lovers do this work on the soldertails not the chip pins so they will not enter the U72 socket when the chip is re inserted later Now solder a jumper across the broad shoulders of pins 9 and 10 of the chip For you technical types who have Model 4 See D ogics
104. clair Street Aspley QLD 4034 AUSTRALIA SYDNEY TRS 80 Users Group PO Box 223 Bankstown 2200 AUSTRALIA The Hobart Users Group Inc THUG PO Box 420 Moonah Tasmania 7009 AUSTRALIA Valley TRS Hackers Group VTHG 12240 Archwood Ave North Hollywood CA Eric Bagai 818 982 0467 Valley TRS Users Group VTUG 20920 Knapp St Chatsworth CA Lance Wolstrup 818 716 7154 San Gabriel Valley TRS Users Group SAGATUG 405 So Santa Anita Ave Arcadia CA Dr John Phillips 714 592 4178 Letters to the Editor 17 Letters to the Editor Volume IN 0 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume V 11 Resource Companies Aerocomp PO Box 223957 Dallas TX 75212 214 637 5400 Anitek Software Products PO Box 361136 Melbourne FL 32936 407 259 9397 Computer News 80 PO Box 680 Cas per WY 82602 Computer Reset PO Box 461782 Gar land TX 75046 214 276 8072 Cornucopia Software Inc 1625 Bev erly Place Berkeley CA 94707 415 528 7000 GRL Software Suite 209 1051 KLO Rd Kelowna BC V1Y 4X6 CANADA Are you still fussing with floppies for BACKUP Our QIC40 Hypersoft PO Box 51155 Raleigh NC 27609 919 847 4779 MA D Software P O Box 33 1323 Fort Worth TX 76163 Microdex Corp 1212 N Sawtelle Tucson AZ 85716 602 326 3502 MISOSYS Inc PO Box 239 Sterling VA 22170 703 450 4181 Orders to 800 MISOSYS Pacific Computer Exchange 1031 SE Mill
105. clearer Basically I don t think there s any free memory below 2400H except for the low memory driver region Incidentally when were you planning to do the OPEN INIT and CLOSE for the file your filter is reading writing As Shane pointed out if you do those inside a filter you have to restore the DOS overlay that was there before your operation That s pretty straightforward most of the time anyway Fm Shane Dawalt I thought I Hardin knew about the overlay problem I recall he did attempt to load in the last overlay by using that special overlay code at IY 1 when IY is pointing to the FLAGS base Oh well CONFIG of BUR Fm Bob Haynes Roy I seem to have found both a problem and a solution let s see what you think The DOCOMFIG program is wonderfully useful but I found it has a small quirk when used with PROWAM I know you ll say PROWAM can t be SYSGENed or Volume IV ii DOCONF Ged but I m not trying to do that in fact I m trying to do the opposite Sounds of Source pages being flipped Apparently DOCONFIG does not save BUR to its config file actually a limita tion of the sysgen module I realize so if PROWAM is installed used and later discarded by invoking a CFG module BURS does not get reset After two such occurrences more with gt 128K BUR is full PROW AM can no longer findan available bank and re boot is required to install PROWAM I considered pa
106. cpi I must say that the print outs spewed forth at great speed The only other hitch occurred when the message PRO WAM printing the 00000 errors caused a new page to be ejected that was not followed by a TOF So it would be useful to follow each printout with a TOF command PRO WAM needs one memory bank Fm Mike Anderson Portal ND Dear Sir We have the following software fora Tandy Model 4 computer PRO NTO Window and Application Manager Reg istration 00820 Before using the patched MRAS it is necessary to install the DOS FORMS fil ter with BT Sa Programmer s Journaldownloads are now available from M ISOSYS MISOSYS forum on Compuserve GO PCS49 HartFORTH 86 Here s the FINE PRINT HartFORTH is a full 79 STANDARD Any MISOSYS software product GE E e 3 pn oe Ge purchased directly from MISOSYS en n c rovides Gabi execution speed between 10 and 40 may gei PENE EA WIR SO GAYS faster than the classical Indirect of the invoice date for a full re Threaded Code implementation Hart fund of the product purchase cost FORTH is designed to run under DOS Returns must be ina like new so the Virtual Memory that it accesses saleable condition and be ac for sto SE fie j pina e ee tege companied by acopy of the origi HartFORTH pro can invoke other pro grams via EXEC and EXEC PROG Functions create new files from within HartFORTH and allow the current V
107. d be labelled C66 C70 C74 C78 C82 C86 C90 and C94 You can cut just one lead of each and move the capacitor aside or cut both ends to remove them completely The capacitors were needed for the 16K chips but they don tserve any useful purpose with larger memories pin 1 of most 64K chips is marked NC No Connection If left connected the ca pacitors will shunt chip signal A8 to ground Your resistor value is determined by re sistor pack RP4 located adjacent to U76 You should see a number like 270 or 560 stamped on the RP4 body The number means a value of 27 or 56 followed by zero 0 s i e 27 56 ohms Some units may be stamped 27 or 56 directly These resistors dampen oscilla tions in the signal lines The new resistor for signal A8 should be the same value as those in RP4 If you have installed the 157 chip the resistor will go between Z63 12 and E12 the middle of three jumper pins located above U77 memory chip If you are installing 256K chips on a stan dard 128K machine drawing N the resistor connects U72 12 to E12 or U72 19 to E12 to use the other half of the chips What I did was to remove the jumper from E11 E12 for 16K owners it jumps E12 E13 and pry up the metal pin cover seen when the jumper is on the pins to reveal one pin hole from the back side I bent one end of my resistor lead witha slight wriggle and pushed it into the exposed hol
108. d of the board with the three output connectors Fm Jim Beard Pete According to my schematic C15 is a 2200 uf 16v capaci tor C6 is 100 uf at 250v I don t have a board layout or other indication of physi cal size in my Tandy docs but the 250v capacitor would be about the same size it would seem My docs show C11 C12 and C13 to all be 1000 uf 25v capacitors These caps along with C14 330 uf 16v are the first smoothing caps out of the diode bridge The smoothing caps absorb all the ripple from the rectification opera tion which is very high on a switching power supply compared to a 60 Hz job These caps should be designed to take the stress of the circuit this is part of the design specification process However electrolytics tend to get fragile when the temperature gets too high 70 C or 160 F is very good for most electrolytics it might get just about that hot in there sometimes Better ventilation of the power supplies might be in order Fm Pete Granzeau Jim Thank you for the information I fear fixing power sup plies is really beyond me my expertise begins and ends with a screwdriver I think I have found a source for a couple of 38 W power supplies I plan to make an offer shortly Model 4 Video Problem Fm Ralf Folkerts I need Help with my Model 4 Video I ve just installed the Model 4 Upgrade Kit Kent Fasick had LOTS of trouble when he ordered it for me and then sent it to the FRG and it s Vi
109. d what the model of the power supply was I have a need for one or more of them Model 4 power supplies being what they are Fm Jim Beard Pete The Model 4 used 38 Watt power supplies which have three four pin output connectors Outputs are 5v regulated ground and unregulated 12v and 12v The Astec part number was AA11320 The Tandy part number was 8790021 I don t have the CS vendor but I hope this helps Fm Pete Granzeau Jim I gota PS out of an out of use Model IN a friend had which was probably fine as the disk inter face in my Model DI came out of that same Model III several years ago I could find c 1980 Astec Components Ltd and Made in Hong Kong on the front and a backward connected UR whatever that means and 042 0325605 on the back which doesn t seem very helpful Okay 38 W I want to buy some extras as this 1s like the third PS I ve had go bad No one in CS seems to sell anything but PC clones and parts any more Fm Bill Brandon Pete I believe the ad was from Jameco I noticed it because of my rampant fear of running out of PS for my 4D Unfortunately or maybe not the 4D uses the 65 watter We have an event here in Dallas known as First Saturday sort of a flea market for electronics com puter junkies which I regularly prowl looking for the 65w variety They do show up there along with the 38w ones Usual cost is about 15 less if I m having a good hoss trading day Want me
110. del 1 3 4 4D 4P so can make sure you get The Right Stuff Youcan call him to get the current prices for drives and the cable you ll need One last thing those eighty track 96 TPI disks you got make sure that they say Double Density or Quad Density rather than High Density The latter are not designed for these systems and will not be reliable Fm Bob Haynes A little help please I need to get put to a file from within a keyboard filter and need to minimize i o buffer space The file must be main tained as LRL 256 since it must be eas ily accessible by a text editor 1 Can the file be opened as LRL 256 with a 1 byte buffer if access is limited to get puts 2 Is it necessary to poke FCB 9 with an LRL 1 before access 3 It is entirely possible that filter invoca tion could occur during another program s i o Need I worry about this or will DOS automatically queue up the i o s correctly The filter has no El DI interrupt tasking code involved 4 Could I safely use the system buffer 2300H under these circumstances The LIB regionis out as invocation could also occur during a lib command plus some programs like SAID already use that area Fm Adam Rubin 1 No AU disk I O requires a 256 byte buffer 2 For GET PUT any LRL is accept able In fact the logical record length is completely irrelevant when doing byte U O as byte I O does not use logical rec ords 3 I
111. deo got mad It seems like it s out of synch In 64 Charac ter Mode I can read what s on the screen but it s on the screen three times In 80 Character Mode there are only a light and dark areas to see hope that someone can teli me what s to do with that problem Many thanks in advance The Hardware Corner 72 The Hardware Corner Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii Fm Jim Beard Howdy Ralf Always happy to helpaRATFOR customer Hope you can read this grin On the RCA board the vertical hold is R612 a trimpot mounted back in the corner Take the top off and lay it down sideways beside the computer The hori zontal hold is marked on the PC board down by the edge use a penlight Use a plastic alignment tool the screwdriver end to adjust the trimpot The other end is useful in adjusting the horizontal oscilla tor coil which is likewise marked HORIZ HOLD on the board edge Getting it right is just like adjusting an old black and white TV to get a steady picture If you have the TCE board it has chips as well as transistors the horizontal hold is trimpot VR301 and the vertical hold is VR201 They should also be marked on the board I think that this board was used only after the Model 4 came out so you probably don t have it Get the screen clear and stable in either mode Then switch modes and get it steady again You ll have to go back a
112. ding program on setting other variables such as B line 200 etc It is assumed that you have read and understood the previous program before moving on to this one as I shall only cover the differences here PRTDEMO2 BAS The PEEKs used in the previous version have gone and a variable LIN is intro duced at 70 and 90 for counting printed lines When the program run begins LIN is set to zero at line 25 which then jumps to subroutine 200 which now executes unconditionally as there is no IF in it for top of form activities for page 1 When the GOSUB jump is made from 70 and 90 it is now to subroutine 220 which checks the value of LIN against XX the desired number of lines per page If these parame ters are unequal the RETURN in 220 takes us back to printout If they are equal the IF on 220 is untrue anda jump is made to 230 which issues a number YY of LPRINTs blank lines with a FOR NEXT loop to take the paper to the top of the next sheet then LIN is reset to zero and GOSUB 200 handles top of page functions Line 210 then RETURNS to 250 which in turn RETURNS to the printout session in sub routine 60 Variable XX inline 220 has to bereplaced by the number of printed lines per page if printing double spaced also include blank lines in the count replace variable YY in 230 by the number of blank lines the Applications for the User s 44 Applications for the User Ne ie oe ee g Volume IV ii
113. ding this by 13 2 gives us 240 dots per line Do not get confused by references to pitch or CPI here or in the program I stated previously that pitch is meaningless in proportional what I mean when talking here of pitch is the typeface character size equivalent to nonpropor tional printout but not the space occupied by each character In PRTDEMO4 we establish the desired line length with B in line 70 But now in Applications for the User P G i Soto DG THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 5 Volume IV 1i Applications for the User Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii PRTDEMOS we must work in number of dots so lines 80 or 90 establish how many dots long our line must be variables We start out in line 150 and count dots from the beginning of the line in lines 170 210 line 160 sets a flag AF which we will use later We count dots at 190 with GOSUB 600 more on this in a moment until the count either gets to the end of our string by the loop terminating T A in 170 or until the dot count exceeds the line length V gt S in 200 whichever comes first If it gets to the end of the string before it gets to the allocated number of dots then flag AF will be unaltered by 200 and remain at zero and line 220 will print the string without more ado If the count gets past the allocated dots per line then line 200 will back one character X T 1 to set the number of dot
114. e Contrary to the belief that this cannot happen we believe that you can do this With MS DOS you have to build an autoexec batch file even though LS DOS does not have autoexec it does have auto is it not possible to build an auto file by building a DO file in LS DOS language We realize that this is a pretty tangled question however since TRS 80 s are not PC compatibles it would seem fea sible that this could still be accomplished Could you please inform us of the future plans for LS DOS Are you planning on going PC compatible And who do we go to for our technical support We would appreciate any information concerning this matter and could you also provide us with the listing availabil ity of books that reference the LS DOS language We feel the information that has been provided to us is limited and we ate interested in furthering our knowl edge of LS DOS 7 Thanking youin advance for your expedi ent reply and our apology for any incon venience this may cause Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Ms McCowan One good way of keeping in touch with the TRS 80 community of users is by purchasing a subscription to THE MI SOSYS QUARTERLY at 25 year forfour big issues that s a bargain I m enclosing an excerpt from a recent issue which addresses the very question of booting directly from your hard drive on a Model 4P Check with MA D Soft ware for a solution Future plans for
115. e These are exceptional games with great video and joystick support even the new MISOSYS joystick All games are for Model UL or 4 in TI mode The source code of each game has been groomed to ensure compatibility with joystick operation on an XLR8er equipped Model 4 as well as provide a normal exit to DOS Games are available on diskette only Had enough of our product expansion I m not finished I have been negotiating with Randy Cook for months concerning a license to publish DoubleDuty I can now report that these negotiations have been successful and a publishing agree ment is now in hand MISOSYS is now the publisher of DoubleDuty Our normal price is 49 95 but to celebrate this deal until December 31st 1989 I will offer a Double Duty package for 25 off just 37 46 plus 2 S amp H U S Finally it is probably safe to report that for many months now I have been dis cussing with Tandy Merchandising a means to ensure that all software owned by Tandy Corporation that has ever been published for the TRS 80 Models IMI and 4 will continue to be made available in some method of distribution I have a verbal acknowledgement that contrary to some folks opinion of Tandy they do listen the wheel has been turning Tandy is currently developing a list of all TRS 80software productsowned by them or 100 licensed to them as well as collecting the disk and documentation masters for those items even products long si
116. e and printing headings Here is a demo program for model 4 and LSDOS 6 3 also usable under MISOSYS EnhComp discussed below under several headings be sure you understand what NN line 200 is about discussed under Adding headings before making a test run This line includes all top of page features I built into my program but you may wish to delete unneeded ones I am adding further on suggestions on use with model IH and LDOS PRTDEMOL BAS Avoiding word cutting The demo pro gram shows a method which will handle strings of any length and will print them out without cutting words at lineend wraparound It does this by taking a por tion from the left of the string that will fit in a preset line length and working back from the end of it towards the beginning until it finds a space leaving the longest Applications for the User 4l Applications for the User Volume IN o THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii possible portion that will fit in that length without word cutting it then prints out that portion and repeats the procedure as many times as necessary on any remain ing portion of the original string Line 20 assumes that the printer paper is set to start printing at the correct place and sets the line counter of which more later to zero so as to begin counting lines cor rectly Lines 30 and 40 select AS at random of one of four different lengths from lines 300
117. e making sure that it didn t go all the way to the bottom of the jumper block to avoid possible shorting to a printed circuit land pattern The other hole of the jumper block was placed on E12 which connects to pins 1 of the first memory bank The loose end of the resis tor is soldered to U72 12 drawing N or Z63 12 If you don t feel too good about exposed resistor leads put a piece of spaghetti over each before you begin installing it Re Install U72 if used and Z63 if you ve chosen to socket it Install eight 256K chips in the left set of memory sockets U77 and below using proper CMOS handling techniques to avoid blowing the chips with static electricity I move to our stainless steel kitchen sink which has copper plumbing feeding it and block the sink drain so chips don t accidentally fall into the food disposer With one bare arm resting on the sink rim at all times I proceed to remove and or replace CMOS chips in a semi awkward fashion It works for me Install the NOTE CMOS equipped XLR8er board and hold it in its approximate covers on position Trim the A16 and A17 jumper wires to length and solder the micro test clips to them Leave yourself some reasonable slack with these wires their length is not super critical Attach A16 clip to XLR8er board chip U4 11 and A17 clip to XLR8er board chip U4 10 DOUBLE CHECK ALL WIRING THEN CHECK IT AGAIN TO BE SURE Especially ensure thatthe
118. e A LF ae ER a aere ae Volume IN u THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii LNDoubler as well as several more disk drives for my TRS 80 Model 1 with an LNW expansion interface Anybody know where I might find one Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Mitch you might find an Aerocomp Doubler still available from Areocomp LNW is long out of business but I believe that any body s double density mod should work in the LNW Interface SuperSCRIPSIT DWP 230 driver Fm Dave Krebs 124 Woodhill Drive Amherst OH 44001 1614 Dear Roy I just received TMQ IV i today and read a plea for a SuperSCRIPSIT driver for the Tandy DWP 230 from A Baracos of Winnipeg I DL d one to your CIS LDOS forum DLO that I wrote It supports the BOLD PS wheel and a Letter Gothic 15 in addi tion to the usual 10 and 12 pitch print wheels It also provided a TAB file for support of the same printwheel with AllWrite I was going to suggest that Mr Baracos DL the file but I looked tonight and the file is no longer in the DL There were actually 2 of them the latter dated 8 87 was a slightly revised version I can provide the CTL TAB and ASM files on a disk for Mr Baracos if he wants them If you can send me Mr Baracos s address PLL see that he gets a disk post haste A post card is enclosed Thanks for being a go between Fm MISOSYS Inc Thanks for the assis tance His address is on the card being sent back to you
119. e Blurb 4 The Blurb Volume IN u 64K 15 DRAM 2 chip 256K 15 DRAM 4 chip U72 PALI6L8 25CN 8 chip XLR8er Update Do to continued downward pressure on DRAM pricing I have again lowered the price of the XLR8er board with 256K of RAM by 18 The new prices are as follows XLR8er with OK RAM is 150 S amp H XLR8er with 256K RAM is 182 S amp H Ribbon Cable Assemblies MISOSYS has also acquired a Cirris Systems cable tester This interesting piece of equipment performs a 100 test for Shorts and opens on cables It handles many different kinds of connectors based on switchable test assemblies I have acquired an assortment of test assemblies to support the kinds of connectors typi cally associated with the TRS 80 micro computer Thus I m custom fabricating low volumesofcables according to speci fications as well as providing standard replacement cables for your needs These are all using unshielded ribbon cable I can provide cables using DB 25 M F 34 pin edgecard M F 36 pin printer 50 pin edgecard F 50 pin SCSI M F 34 pin Header M F as well as DB9 Male Need a replacement RS232 or printer cable Probably about 10 15 Note that I have 34 pin maleedgecard connectors in stock These are the ones previously known as the Kel Am connector now manufac tured by PCD Other Items Many other products new to MISOSYS are now available Please check other areas of this TMQ issue for announce
120. e ads however ads for our inside covers are printed in the same color as the cover TMQ alternates between PMS colors green 354 purple 266 blue 293 and red 199 If you would like to place your ad in THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY give me a call Subscribers please mention TMQ when you call or write to these advertisers I know there s fewer these days they deserve your support PD Software Librarian Vic McClung has volunteered to be the librarian for the collection of TRS 80 public domain diskettes Henceforth all requests and contributions be directed directly to him at Note that if you upload a public domain file to our Compuserve forum PCS 49 and want it to receive general distribu tion please also mail a copy on disk to Vic There is no legal provision for down loading files from Compuserve and re distributing them Some of our readers who do not have access to our forum have an interest in those submissions So if you want to help out the most numbers of fellow users don t limit your submissions to just one source DISK NOTES 4 2 Each issue of THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY usually contains program listings patch listings and other references to files we have placed onto a disk DISK NOTES 4 2 corresponds to this issue of TMQ If you want to obtain all of the patches and all of the listings you may conveniently purchase a copy Note that I have also placed on this disk any assembler source code fil
121. e associated with the patches pre sented in Richard King s article appear ing in The Hardware Corner DISK NOTES is priced at 10 Plus S amp H The S amp H charges are 2 for US Canada and Mexico 3 elsewhere If you pur chase DISK NOTES 4 2 with the coupon which accompanies this TMQ issue you can save 2 50 the cost then being only 7 50 S amp H Out of print TMQ s available For out of print issues we are providing back issues of THE MISOSYS QUAR TERLY via copier reprint The price is 12 50 plus 2 75 S amp H in the U S and CANADA For foreign zone D the S amp H rate is 5 50 zone E is 6 50 The price for regular back issues still in print is 10 S amp H We are currently out of print on all issues of Volume I and Volume II Here s a synopsis of past issues Volume I II See the index in issue Volume II See the index in issue III tii TIL Reading NEWDOS 80 disks An LB archival utility Popup Application Window XMODEM in C Getting into computer math part I TMQ Volume I index HMLii Getting into computer math Part2 Writing interactive RATFOR FORTRAN programs PRO EnhComp a review Desktop pub tishing and the Model 4 A better TERM APP adding floppy drives and a new XLR8er interface HLii The CRC program PG a page display program Locating high memory routines FIXMA3 Jumbo tape backup for PC clones New style for TMQ using Pagemaker and an Index to Volume I Liv Checki
122. e from panick ing Fm Adam Rubin Thanks for the com ment Shane Unfortunately if bubble replacement does become necessary I think my budget s gonna limit me to a Tandon 5 10 or 15M bubble Sigh A used IBM 3380 might be nice but finding a controller is difficult Is that an external HD or do you usually leave the whole system on all the time I asked about that a while ago and I now generally turn the whole system on and off once per session typically once per evening It seems to me that mechanical things like the HD and printer are slowly wearing out every minute they re on whether active or not Comments any one Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Adam Sounds like you ve got it licked at least for now RE low vs high level formatting yes the low level format is writing the tracks filled with gaps and sectors The high level formatis writing the directory cylin der complete with HIT GAT and DEC sectors plus the BOOT sector s So a low level format will help with sector not found errors but a high level format won t Most of the stress on a device like these occurs when itis goes through the process of being powered up from the off state A hard drive is also stressed when it goes from the power on state to the power off state As long as environmental condi tions do not suggest otherwise leaving things on is generally no worse than cy cling power and often can be less stress
123. e joystick Fm MISOSYS Inc I implemented a keyboard filter so that the joystick gener ates keystrokes one for each of 4 posi tionsand 1 for the fire button The keys default to the four arrow keys and the ENTER key They are user configurable I also added a provision to dynamically switch the repeat rate as a user special entry The joystick I m providing has a blocking lever for 4 or 8 position The 8 position movement activates two switches at once So I use a corner toggle with FIRE to increase the repeat rate while the opposite corner decrements the rate over a range of 0 9 Any program which uses ARROW keys such as an editor can be useful to work with the joystick with no re programming required It s a little fun with S AID but typically the joystick will be targeted for GAMES The clock works great Fm Jim Beard Roy It does sound like the joystick can be used as a mini mouse with some software particularly the screen draw programs If the fire button can be mapped to the space bar in hardware it would be a killer with 13 Ghosts SmartWatch tends to be a little inaccu rate as Clocks go I m looking forward to a MISOSYS clock for my 4P Fm MISOSYS Inc Why should the Smartwatch be inaccurate The software interface may just read the clock on boot and thenrely on the RTC timer Actually that s the best way to do it since clock access just slows the computer down more On the other hand
124. e listing If you examine the rightmost eleven characters in the first of each pair of rows it may contain a file name and extension Make note of any non blank specifications There also ex ists a single bit in the first byte of each entry s data record which indicates whether that directory record is active or inactive If you know anything about hexadecimal bit four of the first byte will be a 1 if the record is active For invisible non system files with no protection the value for an active file is typically a 10H Look at the first two row pairs in eachof the first eight sectors on the printout For any file speci fication you see that is a file you should copy to another disk then delete If you don t know hexadecimal don t worry if you try to copy a file that is inactive you ll just get a File not found error After you eliminate any file whose direc tory entry conflicts with the system slots you should then be able to BACKUP the floppy system disk to the hard drive Al ternatively you could purge all files on that drive then BACKUP the DOS then restore the purged files but it is not nec essary to remove all of them Just to re emphasize one point both LDOS and LS DOS behave identically in this feature The reason was to provide an additional 14 directory entries on all drives but system drives the restriction was that you had to create the system drive before you started moving non system fil
125. e subscribed to THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY from the firstissue and I eagerly look forward to its arrival As of today s date I have not received a reply from Cornucopia re upgrading my Electric Webster for use with LeScript V1 9 Past experience with them suggests that I will be unlikely to get a reply I have sent a disk to Anitek with instruc tions for duplicating the printing errors I am experiencing with LeScript V1 9 As mentioned the CLOSE FAULT ERROR THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 is intermittent I have no doubts that will receive a reply from Anitek Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Bert This is in response to your letter of September 17th concerning your dialog with Anitek The message CLOSE FAULT DRIVE NOT READY PRESS ENTER TO RETRY BREAK TO ABORT is issued when a program calls the CLOSE rou tine to close a file and the DOS finds that the designated disk drive is not available This can occur for two reasons 1 the operator prematurely removed the disk ette containing the file which was opened from the floppy or 2 something cor rupted memory causing the program to either incorrectly issue an CLOSE or the open FCB was corrupted altering the drive number recorded for the file In either case it is not a bug in the DOS On the other issue of 2 copies of each of the files recorded cannot imagine what chain of events cold cause that Obvi ously if that is
126. e the assembler needed to generate the CMDs and support library doesn t support conditional code One day I m _ going to add that support so I can re groom the source files into one set Other wise it s a real headache ensuring that both sets of source files get the proper updates Pro EnhComp amp USING Fm Michael Dauphin Roy this pro gram shows a problem I have been having with Pro EnhComp s USING It seems to me that lines 50 and 60 should produce 0 006 I can live with the rounding error but the extra places in line 60 really mess up my output Mike P S I just checked my TMQ s should have done that first J N Grindley mentioned the same problem on page 62 of Un I m not sure if a fix for this was to be in release 2 6 You only mentioned a fix for the MISOSYS Products Tidbits 54 MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV uo THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN 0 Fm MISOSYS Inc I ll investigate and report back Seems to me we covered that a long time ago Now after checking what was covered was a fixup where certain powers of two would print incorrectly with a USING That was discussed in TMQ Liv page 101 and corrected with a patch But I think I overlooked Grindey s statementin TMQIL iv page 62 where he said while using the format H H if the number is 0 to the 2nd decimal place Oe 0 00345 that is what gets pri
127. e to make mi nor corrections would save time Fm MISOSYS Inc Danny As far as LB is concerned the two functions you are asking for are already in LB Using the Input Editor is discussed in the installa tion manual In the TRS 80 manual that s page 7 It fully discusses how you can use lt F1 gt to invoke insert mode Backing up to a previous record during an ADD operation is not as straightforward but easily accomplished Before you Start your ADDs turn on the ADD INDEX This establishes an index file for the rec ords being added When you are finished turn it off If you want to edit any of the records you just added go into the update function and use the ADD index Then you can just step through until you find the desired record MISOSYS Hard Drive SYS3CLK5 FIX Fm Mike Harrow Roy Has anyone reported a problem applying the SYS3CLKS5 FIX for LDOS 5 3 The patch utility starts then exits with the following message Reading input D00 43 CD Al 50 FIND line mismatch The strange thing is that when checking SYS3 SYS on the floppy using FED both of the F format lines do match the file content Any ideas This doesn t make sense to me should I suspecta bad copy of the PATCH utility Fm MISOSYS Inc There is no known error in the SYS3CLKS5 FIX What is needed is to ensure that the patch is ap plied to SYS3 SYS on something other than the current system drive then switch system disks
128. ecently that after I have compiled a BASCOM program or run one running with BASRUN Support the result 1s the following A window will open but any data file needed will not appear in the window This leaves the data file OPEN and hangs the CPU BTW the machine is a 128k old model 4 with a R S 5 meg RSHARD and an ALPHA speed up unit Fm Kyle DiPietropaolo Dave I have n t heard of any specific problem but there s always a chance I don t suppose that the BASCOM program could be overlaying high memory eh Sounds like something Microsoft would pull You might check to see if the high memory chain is barfed after exiting the BASCOM pro gram Fm Dave Krebs Joe I really didn t get too deep into that I DID look at both the BASCOM and BASRUN file with a pro gram called MAD to see where they loaded exec and end of the program was They both looked OK in that inspection At first I thought one of them used memory below 3000H but both ORG at 3000H DU look into them not behaving and look ing at HIGHS let you know FED APP bug Fm Bob Haynes Roy I finally got round to merging my Mr Ed package into WAMO0 APL Amazing how we can overlook the most useful things Anyway the distribu tion disk is dated 2 10 86 README TXT is 3 18 86 FED APP is 2 18 86 I find that under WAM 2 though FED closes modified files OK it leaves un modified files in an open condition re quiring a RESET afterward A
129. ement Applications for the User Applications for the User Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii LOAD100 CMD Soon after I bought my TRS 80 Model 100 I realized I needed some way to transfer files from it to my TRS 80 Model lil The conventional file transfer method connecting the two machines with a null modem cable wouldn t work because my Model III doesn t have an RS 232 port The only thing to do was write a Model III assembly language program to read Model 100 cassette files and transfer them to disk LOAD100 reads any Model 100 cassette file that has been saved in DO format It strips out all excess line feeds from the file as itloads Then after the cassette has been read LOAD100 creates an ASCII file on disk suitable for loading into any text editor or word processor Be sure to run HITAPE CMD from the LDOS Ready prompt before using LOAD100 If you don t you ll spend several minutes staring at the sign on message wondering why nothing is hap pening I know that from experience You ll be amazed at how much more useful your Model 100 becomes once you re able to transfer its files to your Model II Applications for the User 53 Applications for the User Volume IV ii EnhComp BASIC Compiler THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN o EnhComp amp DIM Fm Michael Dauphin Roy The last
130. ents on refills do not apply to the ones provided by Computer Friends which I have not yet used but will proba bly try if I ever need them The problem in all this is that once one discovers or suspects that the paper ink paste is the villain and one s ribbons are contaminated with it one has to get rid of the contamination on all ribbons which were exposed to it The possible solutions are First if you have the time patience dirty old clothes to wear and a suitable place to do it and are not averse to messy jobs remove the ribbon from the cassette Gif your type of Cassette so permits or pull as much out as will come if you cannot open the cassette and dump the ribbon in a container of isopropyl rub bing alcohol and alternately let it soak and swirl it around changing the alcohol as necessary until reasonably clean Be careful the alcohol is flammable also take care not to splash it around to avoid stains then hang the ribbon up to drain and dry thoroughly and rewind into the cassette and reink the alcohol container is subject to staining so use something discardable like a clean tin can Or sec ond if youcan get good refills without the above faults use them Or third simply dump your existing gummy ribbons and get new ones and reink them or use good refills as they dry out And obviously quit using linty paper As acommentonall theabove Specifica tions for good quality ribbon ink show the presence
131. es much of Steve Ciarcia s SB180 computer design featured in BY TE maga zine 9 85 with only minor modifica tions XLR8er uses the same M1 wait generator BYTE p 94 IC15 for those who are trying to figure out why your timing tests don t match your calcula tions and the same addressing and re fresh circuits p 95 1C14 The XLR8er designers replaced Steve s boot ROM with the ability to access the Mod 4 s mother board RAM In other words all addresses to the first 256K of memory are ignored by XLR8er s memory Trouble is there aren t any spare pins in that Z80 socket to transport address lines A16 and A17 to the motherboard Once we access them via the jumpers we need to control how they manipulate memory and interface with port 84 s and U72 s memory con trol That s where these changes come in working in conjunction with the software modifications Drawings A and C continue to use port 84 but manipulate its ability to address the first bank of chips Drawing S abandons port 84 and proba bly improves machine reliability in the process Note that in drawings A and C address lin A17 is used as the memory row select A16 is used as the memory column select to allow the circuit draw ings to settle down during row address time Without port 84 s presence address line A16 is used during access to the 2nd and Ath quadrants of the 256K chips Ifport 84 is used A16 may only
132. es to it Fm Henry A Blumenthal First I want toacknowledgereceipt today of the cable I willreturn the oldone ina couple of days after I see whether the old one will con tinue to stay put now that I have found Volume IV ii through trial and error that the righthand side looking at the drive housing from the rear should be pushed in slightly farther than the lefthand side After a little tug ging I was able to get it to clamp in that position I want to make sure once and for all that it s the cable and not the drive hardware Just today I traced down the problem of the date and time garble in LDOS and this is something you might want to alert your customers to You may recall from earlier correspondence that I was using an Alpha Products Newclock 80 clock and calendar board One of the command files that came with it ensured if invoked that the computer would continue to read the clock and not drift with I O use Well when I reconfigured the machine to handle your hard drive and its clock I did not know that a previous sysgen operation had read that command file into the configuration So what I had were two competing clockreading operations going on When I realized this I did a system sysgen no to clean out all previous residue rebooted and just started all over again re entering cursor shape printer filter etc from scratch At long Last I m in business except that I still cannot pa
133. etter to Peter so thatheis aware of the problem Incidentally LDOS would give you a directory read error as its FDC driver doesn t have the memory space to check if the drive is 2 sided after the sector number adjustment it s trying to read the second side DOS Subjects 37 DOS Subjects MISOSYS Hardware XLR8er Memory expansion amp Speedup e Faster Hitachi 64180 up to 8 MHz Z80 equivalent e Expanded RAM 256KB additional memory e Software LS DOS 6 x LDOS 5 x or CP M e Simple plug in installation New lower price XLR8er 256K Ram R MB 004 182 5S amp H Specify Computer Model amp Number 26 and if Hires graph ics board installed Floppy Drives and Accessories 5 25 360K 1 2 height 75 4 S amp H 3 5 720K in 5 25 frame 85 3 S amp H 3 5 1 44M in 5 25 frame PC AT 99 3 S amp H Our Model 2SV5 dual half height vertical external floppy disk drive enclosure will hold two 5 25 half height disk drives or one standard height drive 2SV5 drive case PS 60 5 S amp H 8 Dual floppy extender cable 15 four foot connecting cable 10 Hard Drive Pre assembled Kits Our kits come assembled in a cabinet holding up to two half height drives 60 watt p s fan SCSI controller and host adaptor Software includes driver format ter archive restore and sub partitioning all for one DOS Give us a call to discuss building one for you Individual parts available 20 Megabyte kit M
134. for that entire length of time Which is why I was looking for a source for replacements in the first place Fm Pete Granzeau Bill I assume your 4D and HD both have 63W power sup plies This was the smaller one from the older machine I think I splained it above somewhere On looking at the bad one C13 is loose so I assume that s the prob lem However as the guy I would have depended on to do something sounded so diffident about it when I talked to him I have just decided to try to buy The Hardware Corner aT The Hardware Corner Volume IN ug THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV i1 Fm Bill Brandon No problem Pete Glad to help if I can I meant to mention this too Those power supplies can usually be fixed If you look at a failed unit closely you may find that the top of one of the capacitors is de formed Replace that one with an identi cal capacitor and you will have a work ing spare I m referring of course to the cylindrical can type capacitors clus tered in the center of the board Some power supplies have also been reported as failing due to defective materials in a trimmer pot on the board David Dalager who fixes my gear when it fails has mentioned this problem several times in his columns in TRS Times and TRS Link The power supply now in my 15 meg HD used to be in my Model 4D David re placed the blown capacitor and away we went The one now i
135. for that particular line of printout Line 370 uses LPRINT CHR 27 CHR i to send one dot space to the printer each time the loop encoun ters it Consult your manual your printer may perhaps use some other code for this The dots in F line 200 are added at the Volume IV ii PER RERE RITE RRR ER R A rate of one per space in 395 until ex hausted That means that however many dots are added per space by the loop in lines 350 390 there will never be more than one dot difference between the pad ding of one space when F gt 0 and an other when F 0 which avoids large differences in width from space to space which might result from other algorithms for distributing dots over spaces You may think as I did originally that it would be simpler to round upward by making M one higher in 190 saving ourselves the additional task of distribut ing in line 395 the shortage Fr calcu lated in line 200 But if we did that the numbers may be against us For example assume that we have 14 spaces to pad with 72 dots which gives L 5 142 in line 180 If we were to round that u to the next integer we would get6 dots padding per space Line 360 would stop padding when the 72 dots have been used The result would be that of the 14 spaces 12 have been padded with 6 dots each and two have not been padded at all and the difference may be quite visible and even unacceptable to some persons Some operators type a dou
136. hack Technical manual The select bit 1 0 and Fix Upr memory memory bit 1 0 etc with no explanations Fm MISOSYS Inc Danny If you look at the Radio Shack HARDWARE portion of their TECH MANUAL you should see a figure which identifies the specific memory mapping associated with various configurations of SEL1 SELO0 and DOS Subjects Volume IV ii FXUPMEM MBIT1 MBITO The OPREG portis used to establish a particu lar configuration Spend some time and analyze that portion and you will elimi nate the baffle Of course you should not need to bother with any of that unless you are writing your own DOS System slots in Directory Old clock patches Fm Henry A Blumenthal Dear Mr Soltoff Ireceived your 20 meg harddrive this week It s now on line fascinating me and challenging me as I work my way through understanding its software and hardware I have a continuing problem in Model IN LDOS 5 3 mode I cannot get LDOS to post a date and date that are anything else than garbage This is true whether or not I use an LDOS disk that has been SYS GENed to recognize the hard drive and whether or not the hard drive is even turned on It s as though there is some thing in the drive hardware that is sending a bad signal to the I O bus or shorting out some critical pins Sample screen dumps are enclosed You can see in one instance where I have entered a time even on a disk that knows nothing about an onli
137. have been in the process of attempting to install a double sided drive in my Model 4 26 1069 which is one of the original models of the 4 s purchased a drive which when I tried to instali it was too long for the space that Tandy sets aside for it s drives further more the height dimension was 1 6 as opposed to Tandy s 3 38 which left some unoccupied space in the front of my computer At this point I opted for a Tandy drive In investigating this I was informed that Radio Shack does not in stall DD DS drives in the Model 4 and the explanation for this was that the control ler would have to be changed editor s note Not a true statement It was then suggested on two different occasions that I would be better off buying a Model 4D which incidentally happened to be on sale for 599 I still have the half height drive which I intend selling or whatever I was reading IV i and saw that John D Williams was able to accomplish what I had not I wouldappreciate itif you would give me some information where I can get a drive without too much of a hassle or expense THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Fm Pete Granzeau Walter Look for a hamfest or computer show in your local area Most any full height DS 40 track drive will suffice I have a pair of MPI B 52Bs for instance You need to replace the drive connectors If you look at the connectors on your cable you will notice missing pins One of the missing pins is
138. have to write protect the diskette first so the flags don t get reset The MOD flag tells the system or you that a file has been changed or is new since the last time BACKUP was run After you run BACKUP on a diskette there are no longer any files marked as MODified I hope this is clear In other words this is a feature not a bug Fm Shane Dawalt James The MOD switch in BACKUP tells the operating system to backup any files on drive 1 which have been modified since the last backup The first time you invoke this command all modified files are backed upas you expect After each file is backed up the MOD flag which denotes the file as being modified is reset by the operat ing system Hence when the backup is completed all files on drive 1 are un modified When you invoke the BACKUP 1 2 MOD again nothing is done be cause all files on drive 1 are originals and have not been modified Fm James R Pitney Mark and Shane Okay thanks for that info I had been under the impression that the disk being written to was the one had had the flags set not the one from which the file was being backed up So please correct me if I m wrong when the file is modified on a disk the mod flag is set Once I run BACKUP the mod flag is reset Yes And then the following question ensues when the file is backed up to the new disk is that file marked as modified or not Thanks again Fm Pete Granzeau
139. he default interleave provided by the format ter He tried a bunch of different inter leaves and only a few operations would DOS Subjects 22 DOS Subjects mm mn re ee ee Me Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV i1 accepta tighter interleave with a perform ance improvement Perhaps Adam remem bers his test results in more detail or has the information on file Fm Shane Dawalt Although I do not have a hard drive I do have floppies I too realized the ravings of disk optimizers in the MSDOS world I use a shareware optimizer on my MSDOS HD but noth ing was said in the LSDOS world In fact I cannot understand why I have a couple floppies I d would dearly like to opti mize I m sure LSDOS HD s get just as fragmented as MSDOS HDs Before people holler the obvious yes I know I can formata new disk doa backup reconstruct and I m done but a backup reconstruct takes a good deal of time to execute And don t forget I must format AND verify a disk That is not a fast process either I m sure an optimizer could do the job at or under the time taken to perform the two preceding actions given that fragmentation wasn t as bad as 8 fragmented blocks per file HP Laserjet Fm John J Kennedy Have replaced honorable NEC pinwriter P3 with HP laserjet using parallel interface connec tion from 4P Find unable to print any thing except one line even when redirect
140. he DIRectory command scans through the HIT looking for non zero entries When it finds one it examines the corresponding directory record to see if that is active Because all unused positions are non zero the direc tory command issues directory reads for non existent sectors sectors numbered higher on a cylinder than actually exists However the disk driver makes an adjust ment to the sector number requested if it exceeds the number of sectors on a track Thus an attempt to read sector 18 the 19th sector actually results in a read of the first sector Since the driver knows that the disk is not 2 sided it doesn t attempt to select the second side of the disk which isn t formatted anyway So because the LeScript disk has all unused HIT positions set non zero each sector in the directory is read twice once for the HIT positions corresponding to sectors numbered 0 17 and once again for the HIT positions corresponding to sectors numbered 18 31 The second time around the active directory records are again included in the directory listing Since the listing is sorted the entries are all alpha betized and appear twice in succession If you set the O N parameter you will see the unsorted entries appearing as two successive lists If you want to cure the problem on that disk just ZAP to X 00 all entries in the HIT which are a value of X FF none of them are correct I m sending a copy of this l
141. hes on especially while on line and if you re not running at least 1200 baud your con nect charges have got to be way out of line Go for 2400 if you can manage it but if not the latest DAK closeout flyer shows their 1200 baud external Hayes compat ible modem clearance priced at 49 90 6 s h This upgrade to your sysh5 could pay for itself in a month The unit seems quite reliable I ve been running one for 2 years and I m quite satisfied DAK is a large well known mail order house in CA they accept AMEX VISA and MC Be sure to specify the offer 4955 the order takers won t understand anything else Orders 1 800 DAK 0800 Technical 1 800 888 9818 Thoughtsome of youmightliketo know BACKUP and MOD flags Fm James R Pitney Does anyone have a similar problem When I do BACKUP 1 2 MOD more than once the second time I do it nothing is updated It always works the first time but never the second I m really confused Using LSDOS6 3 Thanks for any help Fm Mark P Fishman James If you haven t changed the disk in drive 1 when you do the second BACKUP 1 2 MOD nothing will be copied to drive 2 because DOS Subjects 30 DOS Subjects at a a a aaa o i ieee a ie p Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii all the MOD flags on drive 1 were reset by the first BACKUP If you want to backup the same modified files to more than one copy you
142. hich for example on a 5 1 4 80 track floppy operating at 96 tracks per inch means stepping 1 96 between adjacent tracks It is this flexi bility in spacing in small increments which allows printers to cope with a number of pitches and or typefaces and with the resultant variety of spacing requirements Now back to right margin justification If the length of a line to be printed does not reach the desired right margin a program can insert dot spaces to pad the line until it exactly reaches the margin Dots can be inserted only adjacent to blank spaces between words padded spaces or they Applications for the User Applications for the User Volume IV i1 can be inserted both adjacent to blank spaces and between characters in words padded spaces and characters On the various word processors I know the trend is to pad only blank spaces between words on monospacing and both blank spaces and character spacing on proportional This method number three pads blank spaces only andis usable only with mono spaced printing If one wishes to justify proportionally spaced material one can no longer use the present system which employs a character count as a measure of line length The program counts the spaces and dis tributes the dots over them alone This means that if one is using a very narrow printout width the additiona spacing may become somewhat excessive as there is a greater chance that a long non fitti
143. hip versions have an A19 address line to access a full meg of memory Frank s code is prepared to handle it Drawing S for Slinkman can then be used instead of drawing A or C NOTE that U72 must be removed and a jumper placed between socket pins U72 8 and U72 13 A15 to MPA15 U72 9 Must not be jumpered to U72 12 since CAS is wired through U52 And yes my de sign can be expanded to put another set of 256K chips in those empty motherboard sockets though the XLR8er does not address beyond 512K Two questions The Hardware Corner 66 The Hardware Corner Volume IN 3 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii R REFRESH CAS BANKL G amp U72Z712 SOCKET PIN CASS 4 uer ze PES 50 NO REV LA A rrer a U7Z 2 CRSSL CASS2 A Da CUT 8 CAPACITOR dl F I i i l 4 l i l I I CHIP PIN gg XLRBER A17 ES UY 10 l AIT 2 A NURO w C REV BFC NuRow i XLRBER l Seel ALT 13 i 72 UZ05 E CHIP PIN GASS ae LS Nucob XLRBER_ ALS i UY S XLRBER Arg gt NUCOL U72 Z443 Ud V i XLRBER ALT NUROW S 7 g TC NORMAL Cene LEGS l U72 8 Al5 MPALS u72 13 LES eg SPECIFIED Ad e NUROW NUCOL MENAS 12 i rA I IEN i U 3 5 GN RT aa CUT amp i prr E R U63 8 GND T l W U T 2 Ie De ees SC CASS1 OR CASS2 MEMAS E2 j CHIP PIN CONN i i i
144. ia The Hardware Corner 67 The Hardware Corner Volume IN uo THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN u remain which will affect your decision to use A C or S 1 has anyone writ ten a commercial application which uses one or both of the oddball addressing combinations available via U72 2 does any application bypass the BANK svc and manipulate the bank control port and flags directly Only time and testing will tell I ve modified Frank s patches to turn on the original memory management s bits at BAR amp BURS in an effort to trap anyone not playing by LS DOS s rules Frank s code XLBOOTS FIX and XLSYSOS FLX completely releases low memory starting at x OFF4 for use by drivers and the like There is a caveat however It appears that neither Michel nor Frank test for the presence of memory chips on the XLR8er board during boot or in the BANK code If forexample you pointed PRO W AM to a phantom bank 8 you could wind up with a vegetable XLBOOTS FIX identifies the byte to modify if you will be using only 256K on the motherboard Frank s code will need several changes to be useable with a normal 128K Model 4 one without an XLR8er and hardware modifications A C or S installed That ball is in your court Using Frank s banker as a model I ve modified that portion of Michel Houde s code which controls bank switching Fra
145. ich transfers control to 200 for addi tion of W to V the progressive dot count Phew I hope you got that Admittedly that s a long way around to go and rather slow in fact it seems like molasses in January at times maybe someone will think of a shorter and faster way Personally I prefer this method to the others despite its slowness as pad ding in proportional seems very much less noticeable than in monospaced The character widths in lines 470 530 are from my DMP430 printer manual tables which show the dot measurement of each character for my printer these go from 8 to 20 in increments of 2 including 3 dots for spacing Characters ASC 32 to ASC 126 lines 600 620 are the ones most commonly used in English and perhaps would satisfy many users I have how ever added ASC 160 to 23 lines 630 Applications for the User Applications for the User Volume IV ii Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 640 which include a number of special and foreign characters I sometimes use The tables in the manual specify that the widths in dots are for the absolutely bare characters but that for practical use three dots must be added to each for interchar acter spacing which of course is a mini mum which may easily increase as we Justify the right margin by padding with extra dots Lines 600 640 assume that only charac ters within these ranges of ASC values will be presented for calculatio
146. igh and low memory the system flags are loaded directly onto the system flag table the VERIFY flag is loaded right onto the VERIFY flag ICNFG is loaded right onto ICNFG and so on There s one thing we can t overwrite while the system is loading CONFIG SYS though the DCTs If the first part of the DCTs pointed to one driver but the rest of the DCT referred to another ecch So the SYSGENed DCTs get loaded into 43xx and then copied to the actual DCT tables As I mentioned when the system loaded CONFIG SYS the ICNFG that was SYSGENED was loaded right into the ICNFG location So the system can now call ICNFG and what happens Well ICNFG is a jump to somewhere in CL so it jumps there It resets the UART sets up the appropriate interrupt etc and then executes what had previ ously been the ICNFG vector Eventu ally it gets to the first module that was installed in the ICNFG chain and exe cutes what had been ICNFG before that module was installed namely RET So control returns to 43xx and booting is almost over Just a few more details and then either execute the AUTO command or ABORT if there s no auto command Fm James Riddle I have a Model 4D computer and I m using Compuserve s VIDTEX for a Model 3 TRSDOS 1 3 to access programs in the LDOS TRSDOS6 libraries I m having some problems run ning the programs mainly the ones that are graphics programs after download i
147. ing if you are using line 200 change GOSUB 200 in lines 70 and 90 to GOSUB 200 LPRINT GOSUB 200 If you do not use line 200 insert LPRINT in place of GOSUB 200 If you have specified an odd number of lines for the L parameter in line 20 the resultant spacing will generate a blank line at the top Or bottom of a sheet so in some cases lines THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 may not be in the same position from one page to another when you compare them side by side but aPart from that lines or pagination shouldn tbe upset If you want every printed line on each page in the same location specify an even number of lines per page In setting FORMS for lines per page you would still reckon in terms of single spaces on a page as the blank lines will also be counted the same as printed lines Use of the method with model I and LDOS As stated my program is for the model 4 with LSDOS 6 3 but model II LDOS users should be able to convert it with slight adaptation bearing in mind that the PEEK location NN in line 200 should be decimal 16425 and that the value stored therein resets to 1 at topof form instead of the model 4 zero so the beginning of 200 would change to IF PEEK 16425 1 THEN etc See Notes re PEEKing NN below Notes re PEEKing NN In the above uses of PEEK NN the PEEK at 200 origi nated by GOSUB in lines 70 and 90 takes place after each individual line is printed even when a string spans
148. ing of the hardware and 2 soft ware disks containing 1 Model III soft ware and 1 Model 4 software as re quested Careful reading of the documen tation indicated the following support software was included x 5 for Model I 6 for Model 4 ARCHIVEx CMD Utility for backing up files disk to floppy disks ERRORx CMD Descriptive display of last error encountered FSCSIx CMD Low Level formatter HD20INIT JCL JCL file to install a 20 MEG hard disk system HD40INIT JCL JCL file to install a 40 MEG hard disk system HDCHECKx CMD utility to test all sectors of the hard disk JSTICKx FLT filter program to enable the JOYSTICK MALARMx CMD operates hardware clock alarm option MCLOCKx CMD set read hardware clock MSCPARKx CMD head parking util ity for 20 MEG hard disks MSCSIx DCT system interface for the hard disk MSCSIFx CMD high level formatter README TXT additional information over and above manual RESTOREx CMD restore hard disk from floppies 59 Volume IV ii SDFORMx CMD partition hard disk into smaller logical devices SDx CMD assigns logical devices created by SDFORMx CMD SET JSx CMD alter joystick keystrokes after installation SWAP CMD swaps logical devices af ter installation SYSOCLK x FIX patches operating sys tem to access real time clock on power up and notrequire inputting on initialization SYS3CLK x FIX Patche
149. ing running for days on end many times According to the PC board the loose thingum was C15 Yes like a little oil tank I have taken to turning it off every night now Fm Jim Beard Pete According to my book C15 is the biggest cap on the board 2200 uf between 12 and ground at the output This cap absorbs all the 12 ripple as AC current Also current surges from this cap start your floppies It it likely that the video loading puts a lot of AC current loading on this cap too The cap probably ran hot after it started to dry up But the hours on the cathode of the CRT are the best reason to turn the computer off when you re not using it If you have a hard drive hours on the bear ings and the fan are also a consideration I would have changed C15 Fm Pete Granzeau Well Jim I found about the HD last spring when the bear ing froze I now park the heads and turn it off every night And now that I know it will boot when I turn it on the next eve ning turn off everything else too have a screen blanking utility as well but the CRT seems fine so far I ve only had this one for about a year I don t think any video loading was on the capacitor in question though The power supply was on the disk interface not the motherboard But the biggest cap on the board is C6 at the other end of the board And I mistyped as the loose ones seem to be C11 C12 and C13 not C15 three identically sized ones to the en
150. involv ing large I might even say huge amounts of word processing requires that a perma nent record be kept of my output By permanent I mean five ten or more years as required by each specific job Currently I have many hundreds of disks of such stored data and my concern is the possibility of fading and the consequent necessity of refreshing such disks by copying to newly fo matted ones before fading takes place a rather formidable task at the thought of which I sometimes shudder As an old timer I became involved in magnetic recording when the first tape recorders became available to the public perhaps some time in the mid fifties In those days it was said that coating tech nology was such as to make recordings permanent and of indefinite durability except for the polyester base which might dry and crumble in time That polyester soon was replaced by mylar for tapes and then the recordings were guaranteed as Completely permanent and of archival quality I still have audio tapes I recorded in the fifties and they operate perfectly Of course the demands on recordings for computer use may be more stringent than for audio I would believe that audio tape technol ogy eventually found its way into the early creation of computer floppy tech nology possibly with many improvements so a first approach might reasonably be that computer recordings should last at least as long as audio ones which in my
151. ion was a snap I venow gotLS DOS 6 3 andLDOS 5 3 installed on the Drive Noticed small typo in HD20INIT and HD40INIT JCL LS Dos 6 3 versions the command that was flashed on the screen to sysgen was SYSGEN DRIVE 4 Since my brain was off at the time I entered that command verbatim Then tried to boot up and no HD Read the Volume IV ii MSCSI documentation page 25 and immediately realized my error For those people like myself who occasionally have their brain in automatic the command should be SYSGEN DRIVE 4 More than likely you noticed this typo the day after shipping ch Fm MISOSYS Inc Actually I noticed it after the first call The Model 4 JCL s were upgraded from an earlier inhouse version after the Model IM JCL s were finalized Note that in LDOS 5 3 the command would have been SYSTEM SYSGEN DRIVE 4 The Model 4 JCL was edited with text inserted from the Model III version That s why that error crept in there It will soon be corrected on the master disks Um waiting for input from folks who opted for the clock most of them to see what they think of the alarm That was really a last minute addition I had not known about the alarm function of the module as the clock chip was chosen by the engineering company Once I knew about it I really didn t give it much thought as to usability in the TRS 80 environ ment One day I was talking to Bill S and mentioned it to him He suggested
152. irtual Memory file to be changed for another and manipulated at the individual block level Provides the recommended 79 STANDARD DOUBLE NUMBER STANDARD EXTENSION word set that implements 32 bit operations CASE and SWITCH functions allow multi way branching decisions to be taken with execution continuing in line once the word branched to completes _iinal invoice String manipulators include VARIABLE Se SE See Vo REH K d LEFT RIGHT MID COMPARE and gt tions to call the DOS file handling rou tines so that other files may be created and accessed if required A library of AN standard screens is supplied with ZZ HartFORTH to provide often used ex E E tensions to the language such as double MISOSYS Inc length and floating point math editing P O Box 239e i of source screens string manipulation e A arrays etc 200 tor access support via GET VECTOR PUT VECTOR THIS SEG DI and EI AN V24 program input output and interrupt input Support Over OVLYNAME SAVE OVLY NEW OVLY RUN OVLY and LEAVE OVLY I Screens provide trigonometric functions SIN COS TAN SIN COS and TAN 59 95 5S amp H US ement words FORGET OVLY PUT DATA OVLY ENTRY CORRECT LOAD OVLY MISOSYS Products Tidbits MISOSYS Products Tidbits 61 Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Vol
153. itical decision Regardless of the path you choose you will be making modifications to the logic of your model 4 board and later to the supporting software Hardware wise you must decide if you want to continue using Radio Shack s design for mapping the first three banks via Port 84 Advan tages all software should work as though you did not make these modifications Disadvantages Use of low memory from x OFF4 through x 106E one byte more than Michel Houde s code more wiring to the board than your other choice con tinued use of the PAL HAL chip in socket U72 The Hardware Corner 63 The Hardware Corner Volume IV u THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii Your other choice is to abandon Port 84 and let the HD64180 manage all memory banks Advantages less wiring to the board than the above choice relocation of Michel Houde s code to lower memory releasing x OFF4 et al the PAL HAL chip in U72 not needed Disadvantages none unless some application program that you use is bypassing BANK code and doing its own bank switching edi tor s note I believe that LeScript access extra memory directly via hardware port manipulation rather than through BANK Model III bank switchers may fall in the category The supporting code for this choice attempts to halt such ac tions by marking banks 0 2 as in use hopefully causing the renegade program to belly up be
154. just long delays in access with the green light out Tandon bubbles TMS501 5 Meg 2 heads 306 cylinders TM502 10 Meg 4 heads 306 cylinders TM503 15 Meg 6 heads 306 cylinders TM602 5 Meg 4 heads 153 cylinders TM602S 5 Meg 4 heads 153 cylinders TM603 7 5 Meg 6 heads 153 cylinders TM603SE 12 Meg 6 heads 230 cylinders Replacing the bubble with anything will require tack soldering three wires onto the replacement bubble As far as alternate bubble changes go price is your biggest selection factor If you are looking for minimum out of pocket expense you can find refurbished Seagate ST225 s for under 150 That would get you twenty megs and the drive could be used later in a PC Unfortunately twenty megs is unaccepta bly small in today s PC market If you can swing 400 the Mitsubishi MR535 is a nice fast under 30 ms vs 85 for the T225 drive that formats out to 44 Meg MFM and is RLL rated resulting in about 65 Meg formatted It s half high low power and considered quite reliable This size drive with an RLL controller is the minimum drive size I d recommend nowadays My drive is this size and it is full without trying hard at all If you need to stay well under 300 about the only choices are the Seagate 225 and its three inch cousins For about 300 the Miniscribe 3650 can be had it s slightly faster than the ST225 65 ms though not as fast as the Seagate three inchers and has a formatted capacity of
155. ldn t get through a TEST JCL setup file I was using for this debug session Must be U58 Swapped it with one in another machine I have access to ano Revision unit Runs like a champ Restoring the remaining original chips did not degrade performance What re the big signal lines on U58 CAS MRD and MWR All have to do with reading and writing memory Permit me to bore you with some diagnos tic observations Each of the 20 pin sock eted chips is either a HAL type ora PAL type Most of them have a mask code stenciled on the belly where you don t normally look for it If it s a PAL the code will start with a P HAL codes start with an H In my machines here are the codes I saw Socket No Rev 512K Rev C 128K Rev C U3 P326F P326FV P326FB U4 P320F H5403A H5403A U58 none H5373B H5373C U59 P820F H5370A H5370A U72 none H5721 Yellow ink on top surface Dates stamped inside my two Rev C machines indicate that they were proba bly built within 30 days of each other Hey take it for what it s worth It appears that these HAL s and PAL s may be working at their limits touch them at 4 mhz they re running hot and a marginal chip may be causing some problems Tandy may have felt some uncertainty about these chips too Why else would they be socketed when Tandy cut corners in so many other places Since TH probably never install an XLR8er in the no Rev machine you know where
156. le to apply the patch I was con vinced I was doing something wrong He obviously has a patch file without the d in the comment line I totally ignored the comment line as the possible cause of the problem Thanks for restoring my sanity Fm MISOSYS Inc I did too since the patch error message didn t reveal the exact line in error Sure had me stumped I even was going bananas when I was trying out the patch on someone s disk Hard Drive JCL Fm Hans von Briesen Roy my 20 meg disk is up and running and it s great to have it You might encounter inquiries of trouble using the file hd20init jl There is a blank line in my copy of the file where there should be the number 154 This messes up the partitioning and during high level format one gets some thing like driver incompatible Some how that line got lost in duplication I hope that I will sometime be able to boot up from the HD directly from my 4P but the boot disk is a rather minor inconven MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN ience Thisis my first time on CIS foravery long time I shall wait for MSQ rather than checking in CIS You might be interested to know that I was looking seriously at an Aerocomp 5 meg drive but I wanted to partition it In MSQ I found that DiskDisk wouldn t work with that drive because Aerocomp s soft ware didn t respect the LS DOS proto cols
157. les from now defunct manufactur erg I also do not know how much it really matters What are the consequences of not optimizing the stepping parameter in RSHARD Also as a curiosity I have noticed much ado in the MSDOS world re interleave and disk optimization while almost no mention in the LDOS LSDOS world Is interleave an issue in RSHARD Just invisible to the user Or did the DOSers invent the topic Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Most drives built after 1981 or so fully support buff ered seek This means that within certain limits you can set the step rate anywhere and the drive will work fine Best per formance will generally be at the highest step rate available from the controller The drive itself will accept the step pulses and when it has received all of them it will move the head the total distance indicated but at the fastest rate it can regardless of the speed at which the step pulses were received That said there are a few drives that have a very tight window on their buffered seek operation That is the pulses must come in at the actual step speed of the drive very slow like 3 ms or very fast like 10 us Anything in between results in very poor performance It is very un likely that you would run into one of these as I recall they were all very high capacity drives RE interleave Adam Rubin and I went through this once some time back I be lieve that the answer was to accept t
158. ll me how to modify it to read any drive from 0 to 7 I would appreciate it Yesterday at work I was moving files around on the hard drive and I found that a tiny 1 record text file that was created by TED CMD had 10K bytes allocated to it I listed it and there was at least 1 other unrelated program appended to it I re moved the text file and went home Now I wonder if another file is going to be missing or trashed What would cause a text file to get attached to another file Wasan EOF marker missing If so where did it go The system I use at work is a 128K green CRT 4P hooked to a Smeg Radio Shack hard drive configured as 6 logical drives with the 2 floppy drives as drives 6 and 7 running under LS DOS 6 3 using Power Soft RSHARD drivers On 4P power supply problems When my 4P power supply started hiccupping when I turned it on after it was off for a couple of days I just stopped turning it off My 4P has been running 24 hours a day for years I just turn off the hard drive when I m not using the computer By the way I have the 4P hard drive modem and printer plugged into a Clone SPS 300 stand by power supply to eliminate those annoying power failures we have here in Florida during our thunder storms and even when the sky is clear Does every one everywhere have power failures Probably so It gives alot of peace of mind when I don t have to worry about losing a letter or program that I am writing be cause the
159. m not quite sure of the question A keyboard filter would only be invoked when something requests keyboard I O If the question is Can I use GET PUT for disk I O within a filter I m not sure The answer is probably somewhere in Programmer s Guide 4 No The system buffer at2300H is used by several other disk J O routines such as Mem Disk or allocating another extent to a file or several other things Fm Shane Dawalt Adam Hardin Brother s The Next Step in 80 Micro presented a simple windowing system for the M4 It was in 3 consecutive articles Two of the three files presented were filters The other I believe was an opera tor interface These filters had to perform disk I O to bring up a menu type system in one of the windows while accepting keyboard input He found that when disk I O was performed after a key was struck around 512 or so bytes of system area RAM were destroyed for some unknown reason Unfortunately I donot have those issues anymore I recall one of the titles was Windows Open Wide or some thing near that Seems they were Summer issues Anybody else recall this problem His solution was to save the 512 bytes or so somewhere do the disk op then move the block back Fm Bob Haynes Thanks for the com ments Adam 1 2 Really forgot my thinking cap there DOS ofcourse must do full sector PHYSI CAL i o regardless of i o mode or Irl And that requires a 256 byte b
160. ment 20 meg HD drive from Roy Am also sending the RS drive out for repair and will use that eventually with another mod 4 I have just upgraded with 128k memory DOUBLE SIDED DRIVES Fm Walter P Sullivan Radio Shack has quit selling single sided 5 1 4 disks They have the double sided disk for a bit more money that will work in a single sided drive I feel if I am going to double my expense I should double my capability Because Iam not sure how a double sided drive works I have a number of ques tions Is a double sided drive hardware or soft ware modified In other words will I have to replace my drive or write a program When I received may LS DOS master disk from LSI I also received some litera ture which had a JCL program and a Format cmd patch fora DD DS 40 disk I made no effort to use this information because I came to the conclusion that DOS Subjects 23 DOS Subjects Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii there was a double sided drive already in the drives they were talking about They were speaking of the DISK only Incidentally I went to a Radio Shack Store not a computer center and purchased some 5 1 4 Double Sided Diskettes and I received them with these specs 96 TPI 80 Track Later Ireceived a gift which were Double Sided Certified Diskettes with specs 48 TPI 40 Track and they were both Tandy Products If I have to install a ne
161. ms filter with margin at 10 and chars at 120 along with FFHARD That sure ran out the paper FAST I had started to bang out the print outs for the MSCSI softwarepackage on the old DMP500 but the LC890 was the way to go Why set margin at 10 Well my LC890 as is common for a lot of laser printers does not print within about 1 4th an inch from the paper s edge That left margin ensures that I don t cut off the left edge of the text and it also gives me some hole punching space Fm Jim Beard John Joe didn t usurp me I was just slow to get back I ll second his opinion on using the printer filter it was supplied for just such tasks The missing LF is a typical CP M compatibil ity problem and the solution has been around in PR FLT since you tell him Joe I will go one step further than Joe on the HD Get Roy s deal Roy s price new bubble and guarantee will beat the value of anything short of just replacing the bubble with a Seagate That option is what Joe is probably looking for since it IS your lowest cost alternative So you save the money for a new controller but don t get Roy s drivers and support Me I d take Roy s deal in a minute Fm John J Kennedy Joe Green light stays on as well as the write protect light which is not controlled by state of the button 15 meg bubble makes grinding sounds which would indicate bearings have gone to happy hunting ground I have ordered replace
162. n FDC Status AO Iteration 332 Final FDC Status AO ERRS 24 File not in directory Ready As you guessed FDC status before itera tion 1 can be anything in my case since I ve created a floppy boot disk just for this test I always get 0 but a break in the program and rerun can give most any thing in the MS nibble What is most interesting is the Final FDC Status always seems to be AO not Al as you expected Do you see anything in the program that may have skewed the results Maybe the FDC busy bit 0 you are looking for is timing out before the INP can get to it Toss another routine my way if you like I m terrible at interfacing ASM to BASIC Fm Adam Rubin Joe Replacing the 1773 witha 1770 or 1772 is an interesting suggestion I don t see how that would getrid of the floppy support GA though TU have to think about that for a while Unfortunately all Ihave is one NGA 4P so we d still need a volunteer for the project Fm Adam Rubin Thanks for trying that modification to the FDC torture test Bob There goes that theory I guess I ll have to think about that some more and see what the next step would be I apologize for the delay in replying but this is rapidly becoming an extremely busy semester Among other things I have to write a multiprocessing operating system in a high level language TH still be reading all public messages in this forum though and replying to as m
163. n alphabetized directory without exiting the program seeing how much free space you have and others This has been one of our most popular programs and we have received many many complimentary letters on its performance It works on the Model I ID or 4 versions of SCRIPSIT It will even make a Model I version of SCRIPSIT work on a Model III or 4 in the III mode Lastly PowerScript removes the limited copy feature of SCRIPSIT so that you may make as many Copies as you need or copy it to your hard disk without hassle PowerDraw animated TRS 80screen graphics Easy touse Great for kids or adults 19 95 gt Original 1986 price 39 95 by Kim Watt INFOWORLD 80 MICRO and 80 US magazines really loved this program when they reviewed it It does many things and is fun to use as well First PowerDRAW allows you to create graphics mixed with text if desired and save them to disk lt also allows you to create up to 33 frames of animation and play them like a movie It also allows you to save the graphics in several modes including BASIC listings CMD file format and others These can then be merged into your own programs etc either in BASIC or machine language Many of PowerSoft s opening screens were created with PowerDraw In fact it even creates animated opening screens like we use in Super Utility PowerTool etc to really pep up the program It also allows you to print the screens on Epson type and several other type of printe
164. n of dot values Although I can t imagine anyone USing any ASC value outside these ranges it might just be possible in special cases for a value to come along which isn t included In such a case lines 600 640 would all test untrue and the program would fall through andend Anyone likely to face such a situation might wish to add a new line such as 650 to handle it as necessary Lines 380 400 420 440 and 460 in specifying the ON GOSUB deduct a fixed amount from the ON amount such as 31 in line 380 64 in line 400 etc That may not need explaining for those who are familiar with ON GOSUB but for those who may not be accustomed to it let me remind you that ON GOSUB counts from 1 up and then goes to the corresponding subroutines in the line As the first GOSUB on line 380 for example is to 520 the statement will go to iton 1 Hence the need to reduce the ASC value of the char acter by 31 so the first subroutine in the line will be accessed by 32 31 1 the second subroutine by 33 31 2 and so on Lines 370 640 aren t in a very logical order blush they are simply in the order in which the program came to gether and some reorganization might make them clearer and easier to follow If you do reorganize their sequence con sider as mentioned above that the pro gram might conceivably fall through all of what are now 600 640 and perhaps crash into the next line unless stopped by a trapping line or an END stat
165. n reset the counter without moving the paper by changing 12 to 6 in the command which the demo program does in line 20 You can also reset paper and counter from DOS with TOF Incidentally it s a good idea to end any BASIC program involving printout with LPRINT CHR 12 to e ect the paper and reset the counter to zero If you use certain tractors with fanfold paper it might be better to use this LPRINT twice so as to eject the paper to the point where it is easy to tear off sheets You may also wish to close out your program with a reset of the FORMS parameters to your usual values The value stored in location NN advances by one for each line printed out When the number of lines which have been printed on a page equals the value established when parameters were set with the FORMS command FORMS FLT issues a top of form to the printer which advances the paper to the beginning of the next sheet which is precisely where you want to print your heading or title at the same time the value in location NN is reset to zero which is your program s cue for top of form printing This allows you to include a subroutine in your BASIC program line 200 so that each time a line is printed out line 70 or 90 does aGOSUB 200 the same happens for line 25 but before any text has been printed to take care of page 1 line 200 tests the value at location NN for zero and when the test is true the heading is printed LPRINT DATES etc
166. n the Model 4D was provided by Bob Snapp who has lots of these Power Supplies both good and not good I am now down to one spare but knowing that a fix is possible makes me feel much better If you know Bob Snapp hangs out on the TRS80PRO forum owns and operates SNAPPWARB or even if you don t leave him a message He generally has PS s available for less than what Tandy wants The 63 w supply is about 60 from National Parts no telling what the 38 w is See why I hang out at flea markets Fm Jim Beard Pete By a loose capaci tor I presume you mean an electrolytic can capacitor mounted flush against the board like a little oil tank When those are loose the leads have lost mechanical in tegrity inside the capacitor which can happen with aging It is a symptom of high heat Are you keeping your com puter sitting up on its 3 4 feet Is the back at least 4 from the wall The grille on the top MUST be clear and at least 4 from any shelf above the computer If so the computer should run plenty cool without a fan Fm Pete Granzeau Bill No way I go to National Parts for something like this PH buy an out of use Model II first But it appears I have a source here First how ever check out the hamfest computer show Fm Pete Granzeau Jim The pooter is up on its feet no shelves about nothing on the top except the plastic keyboard cover which does not extend back to the air Slots but I have left the th
167. n with SYSO but I can t find a trace of ICNFG modifying code in SYSGEN anywhere What s happening here Fm Adam Rubin Bob I can see why you re getting confused Let s start by taking one step backward and see how ICNFG gets set up in the first place Okay you have just booted up your work ing copy of TRSDOS 6 2 on your Model 4 4P 4D and it may or may not have a CONFIG SYS file on it Anyway you decide that you would like to add CL to your system So you SET CL TO COM DVR Nothing specific about COM DVR but it makes a nice example Now the COM DVR file has two parts the actual communications driver and the program to install it in memory The installation program figures out whether the resident driver should go into high or low mem ory relocates any addresses and moves it Of course every time the computer is started up CL will need to reset the UART set the interrupt vector and inter rupt mask and so on How do we make sure this gets done We chain into ICNFG We get the existing three bytes of ICNFG and store them you ll see where in a moment take the address of the com init routine that s in CL and put a JP to the com initroutine into ICNFG So ICNFG is now a JP to the routine inside CL that does all the com imit and CL is in either low or high memory The last instruction of this routine is the three bytes that were previously in ICNFG so the last step of the com init is to
168. nce discontinued Once the collec tion process is complete Tandy will be able to officially activate the distribution of these products MISOSYS will insome capacity be part of the retail effort to ensure that Tandy s TRS 80 software whether currently active or discontinued will be available for purchase to those interested in acquiring a useful product THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 What does all this mean Essentially MISOSYS is entrenched in the process of ensuring longevity to your machine Hardware is only useful to you as long as you have the software necessary to turn it into a productive tool To continue along this vein I will be continually searching out the useful and recreational products of companies who have vacated the TRS 80 scene and taken the legal distribution of those products with them Most compa nies have folded making it difficult to root out the ownership and source to these products For this I look to TMQ readers who may know of the whereabouts of entities such as Victor Andrews of Soft Sector Marketing Bill Hogue of Big Five software and others Know asource drop me a line p s I m still accepting your favorite rec ipe for future TMQ s see Letters to the Editor Note on Holiday Schedule MISOSYS is a small shop and family oriented Our regulars know that We close up shop here during the festive time around Christmas Chanukah and New Year s the Bis will
169. nd forth a number of times to get a good adjustment that is clear and steady for both modes And you ll need to adjust the brightness and contrast the thumbwheels under the left side of the computer when you switch modes Fm Ralf Folkerts Jim I ve just done the adjustment R612 I the got a steady 64 Character picture but the 80 Char Dis play still was garbage Then I remem bered Fred Oberding s hints I read in TMQ ILiv p 82 I ve adjusted C 210 and got a good picture But In 80 Char Mode the last line too low to be read In the 64 Char Mode everything is OK Can this be adjusted by R524 Focus Hope that was the last problem I have Fm Jim Beard Ralf About the same distance from the plug to the cable back to the main board is another trimpot R617 This is the Vertical Size it is also marked on the main board if you can find it with your penlight and mirror If I remember The Hardware Corner correctly this control affects the bottom of the screen mostly This is good be cause I don t think that there is a vertical position control You may need to read just the vertical hold When you are through fiddle with thecombinations of thebright ness contrast and focus to get the best performance in Model 4 mode I wrote a BASIC program to fill the screen with 66 333 periods x s s etc to do that Fm Ralf Folkerts Jim OK R617 worked I got all lines on the display But is to
170. nd a hundred bucks they may still have some left 2 RE lowercase If you order the lower case mod from Radio Shack National Parts it isn t too hard to put in One trace cut replace a chip If the chip isn t sock eted some weren t you need to desolder the chip and install a socket There s the Electric Pencil lowercase mod too that requires a switch 3 TRSDOS 2 3b is weird so is RS s DD system TRSDOS 2 8 so get LDOS in stead 4 LDOS is available from Roy call him at 1 800 MISOSYS 5 You don t want the doors they just make the cable connections even less reliable Hard drive booting Fm Ms Shirley M McCowan In refer ence to LS DOS 6 3 We understand that your company has purchased and how supports the LS DOS 6 3 We are owners Letters to the Editor L Letters to the Editor Volume IN o THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1i of two 2 TRS 80 Model 4P s and would like to know what will be available to the user s of LS DOS now We have enjoyed using the TRS 80 Model 4P s and really didn t want to go MS DOS we have put our Model 4 s on hard drive and would like some technical information We still use a floppy boot disk to bootup What we would like to do is to put the floppy bootup disk on the hard drive to do an automatic or auto in other words we want to turn on the computer and it go directly to the hard driv
171. ne clock only to see the time become gar bage The uneven margin on the printout is due to the fact that one of the LDOS disks has forms parameters set with an eight character margin and the other one doesn t There is no such problem whatever in Model 4 LS DOS mode When I first powered up the hard drive I couldn t get the computer to read the clock and could not get the drive to for THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 connection behind the drive repeatedly before I got satisfaction so you might want to look at the workmanship in this area Since the clock works fine in Model 4 made I doubt that the connection prob lems I had would have any bearing on my continuing problem in Model IN mode What do you think Next I have two outboard floppy drives that I am not been able to enable when the DOS disk is SYSGENed for the hard drive using the HD20INIT option with out parameters I elected to keep DOS files off the hard drive in order to save precious directory slots and I SYSRES 2 3 10 and 12 to speed up operations Here is my setup only hard drives 2 3 and 4 are enabled in LS DOS mode as 5 con tains LDOS files Likewise in LDOS mode 2 3 and 4 are unavailable and only 5 is enabled How can I get DOS to recognize the two outboard drives in both DOSes and have them designated as 6 and 7 in LS DOS and as 2 and 3 in LDOS If I need to alter HD20INIT JCL giving ita different file name of c
172. neighborhood of 100 probably under not over I also have Adaptec 4010A controllers and a few handfuls of Xebec 1410s Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Michael The controller and host adapter Roy is using is not directly compatible with the Radio Shack compatible drivers but Roy has the proper drivers available The controller is 5 25 drive form factor and the required host adapter is quite small all in all much smaller than your old 8X300 controller which has an 8 drive form factor If you want a real Western Digital controller that is compatible with the RSFORM6 and RSHARD6 programs you could order a replacement WD1010 controller from Radio Shack National Parts 817 870 5662 as a repair part for a 26 4155W W series 15 Meg HD This is a software compatible 5 25 drive form factor controller I expect it will be very expensive Mixing drive bubbles Fm Kevin R Parris I have a Tandon TM 502 ten meg drive currently con nected to a not working controller and interface for a TRS 80 Model 4 I also have aSeagate ST 225 twenty meg drive out of a pc clone Would it work if I ordered your host adapter and controller for a Model 4 p to connect both of these drives to a single system Fm MISOSYS Inc With our controller and host adaptor you could connect both of those drives I m using an auto config urable controller Thus it s easy to inter face two dissimilar drives Letters to the Editor 11 Letters
173. ng I m coming up with a direct state ment in file error when attempting torun them Any help you can offer will be appreciated If you can suggest a particu lar graphics program that will run reliably on my computer please do so Fm Jim Beard The message direct statement in file appears when you have a line without a line number This can happen when a carriage return appears in a line when it shouldn t which can hap pen when you use BASIC programs with lines longer than 80 characters List the file exactly as downloaded to the printer using list lt filename ext gt P and look for long lines in the BASIC program Then load the file into BASIC and do a LLIST command Compare the printouts and use the line editor in BASIC to get the file as loaded into BASIC to agree with what appears when you use the DOS list command Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo One other thing James make sure that the program you are trying is in BASIC Many of the programs available here aren t so there might be a bit on confusion Why don t you give us the names ofa few of the ones you are having trouble with and let s see if we can get you going RSHARD and step rate Fm Theodore Masterton I am still considering replacing the bubble in my RS hard drive RSHARD mentions a step ping rate I am not sure how to acquire that info for the take outs and rebuilts I am considering some of which are DC d bubb
174. ng for a file from Model 4 BASIC Surviving the Hard Disk crash An interview with Niklaus Wirth Keep your printer clean and oiled On line HELP with PRO WAM MISOSYS announces availa bility of Hard Drives Logic in the C language IVi Cataloging files with a word processor Page display PRO WAM application File undating with FUNDATE Array load routine for BASIC XLR8er and the GT 180 graphics board _ MISOSYS Hard Drive Since September MISOSYS has been shipping its long awaited hard drive pack age with Hardware real time clock and joystick options Details on this package and its various options were printed in TMQ 4 1 specific information is avail able on request DRAM and PALs DRAM prices have bottomed out Be cause I now keep a supply of 256K 150ns DRAMs on hand for our XLR8er board and 64K 150ns DRAMs for motherboard replacement I m making these chips available for separate purchase Note that we generally stock DRAM Pulls chips used previously in sockets but pulled refurbished and tested All DRAMs are 100 tested again by us before shipping In addition MISOSYS has acquired a BP Microsystems Logic Programmer to pro gram the Programmable Logic Device PLD for our SCSI host adaptor As this piece of hardware can also handle a wide assortment of PALs and PLDs I can bea source for the memory expansion PAL U72 needed to upgrade a 64K 26 1069 Model 4 to 128K Prices as follows eg Th
175. ng word may get forced to the next line and there are few blank spaces to receive a given number of padding dots as also happens on a word processor In extreme cases for instance if yourun the program witha line width B program line 70 of 20 chars you will find that the word PRTDEMO BAS in the printout strings will occupy a whole line to itself and there will be a substantial amount of blank space to the night of it to the extent that the margin will not be justified at all on that line as there was only one space to take all the dots Such a case 1s an exag geration for the sake of illustration and may never occur in actual practice at usual printout widths Probably the reader who has understood method number one will be able to follow PRTDEMO3 however here are a few points which may not be obvious Lines 130 150 scan the line to be printed to determine the number of spaces H over which dots should be spread that s a single space between the quotes in 140 Line 160 calculates the total number of dots to be added as a function of the number of characters backed in line 90 G line 110 Note carefully that the number of dots per char 12 in the ex ample is entirely dependent on the printer and typeface and I have based mine on the THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 nt ae a oe ee a ow d d EAO BE d wd E AEN NNN Ke Aaen ei we ie eet a ke Paar ae 8 ei Tandy DMP430 manual pages 127
176. nk s coding techniques are beautiful Using them helped me keep the expan sion of Houde s code to only one byte while expanding bank control to be able to handle up to 768K of memory My modifications are in XLBOOTK FIX Use the remainder of Houde s FIX files to round out the code changes MEMORY Here s a partial list of chips purporting to use CAS before RAS refresh according to the manufacturer s data books that I have access to Motorola Fujitsu Na tional Texas Instruments Intel Samsung Hitachi NEC I m told that most brands of chips are designed to use this refresh mode but ask ODDIE before you buy and be sure youcan return them if they fail OKI does not work unless they ve changed later production runs The NEC data book claims to have the feature When I tried their D41256 15 I had problems on both the mother board and the XLR8er The NEC chips on the motherboard failed to maintain an IPL so I borrowed Samsung chips from my son s messDOS machine Three hours and no failure later I replaced U77 with one NEC and re booted then created a memdisk in the upper banks I backed up the system to it then started monitoring SYS13 SYS via LIST SYS13 SYS LSIDOS H lt ENTER gt Sectors 2 amp 3 should contain mostly x 00 but after a while I would see 00 00 80 80 00 00 80 80 etc Swapping NEC chips didn t help I m using Samsung s KM41256 15 Intel gets their dies from Samsung Care t
177. nt you will think I am beating the subject to death well the subject has almost beaten me to death so I hope I have finally got it straightened out and that this will be my last writing on the subject Until recently I thought whenever I en countered the problem that pin jamming could be due to overinking of the ribbon now I have found after considering my latest experiences and the experiences of several friends that there may well be still another cause particularly when fre quent head cleaning is necessary There are various kinds of fanfold paper on the market and I have found wide variations in prices and qualities There are cheap ones sold at discount I have seen some at around 10 per thousand 8 1 2x11 sheets 20 1b and from there on prices and qualities increase over a wide range Some cheap papers shed debris in the form of a white powder which after a few hours use can be seen deposited in the printer There are several ways to renew ribbons Buy a complete new one with cassette each time expensive buy ribbon refills if your cassettes are refillable not as expensive but perhaps around 5 each or something like that or reink existing rib bons the cheapest method if one has a reinker about five cents each time I prefer the latter method and use a reinker supplied by Computer Friends Inc 14250 N W Science Park Drive Portland OR 97229 503 626 2291 which works very well In order t
178. nted not0 00 I tested your example and repeated the results thus there is a bug when using USING I did note that using that same edit mask if the number being converted was greater than or equal to 1 0 the conversion was correct So the bug pertains only to num bers less than zero converted using an edit mask Because of the complexity of the SUP PORT DAT code involved in the floating point to ASCII conversion under an edit mask I have referred the problem to EnhComp s author while I continue to work on this TMQ issue Buti may not get a resolution in time for it to appear in print It will be corrected for the next issue GOBBLER Fm MISOSYS Inc The MISOSYS hard drive recently released has a joystick option The joystick port provided with the op tion emulates the Alpha Products joys tick one quite common on the TRS 80 some yearsago As readers of TMQ know access of the joystick port requires some specific coding on machines equipped with an XLR8er see TMQ IIL iv pages 42 48 Now that I have a joystick to use I discovered that our GOBBLERJ pro MISOSYS Products Tidbits gram the one with the joystick support will not work on an XLR8er equipped machine Here s a patch transparent to non XLR8er equipped machines to cor rect the problem Golden Oldies Fm MISOSYS Inc While unremoving some files off ofa hard drive was playing around with I came acrossa small bug in the GO
179. nts must add appropriate sales tax MISOSYS Inc 39 P O Box Sterling VA 22170 Phone 703 450 4181 Orders only 800 MISOSYS 27 1 S9 l AAi Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume DNA Table of Contents The Blurb 2 Note on Holiday Schedule 3 PD Software Librarian 4 MISOSYS Hard Drive DRAM PALs new XLR8er price 4 The family corner 5 Letters to the Editor 9 Favorite recipes from our CompuServe Forumites 9 Resource Bulletin Boards 17 Resource Computer Clubs 17 Resource Companies 18 DOS Subjects 19 Some BASIC Routines by Murray W Diller 20 More CKDRV data 26 System slots in the directory 32 Vacant Hash Index Table entries 36 Applications for the user 39 Generating date time stamp by Jane A Layman 39 Printing from BASIC without cutting words by C A Ainsworth 40 LOAD100 for Model 100 Model III by Mark Allen Reed 53 MISOSYS Products Tidbits 54 PRO EnhComp and USING 54 MISOSYS Hard Drive software 56 Product Report MISOSYS HD by Ken Strickler 59 Adapt MRAS for laser printing 61 The Hardware Corner 63 All the way to FIVE TWELVE K by Richard King 63 Model 4 power supplies 71 Model 4 video alignment 72 Printers continuing saga by Charles A Ainsworth 76 XLR8er possible fix for 26 1069 by Richard King 78 List of Advertisors Gooth Software MISOSYS Inc IFC 6 7 8 18 38 61 RC Pacific Computer Exchange IRC The Blurb oe WE _ The Blurb Volume IV ii THE MISOS
180. o guess where sixteen NEC chips now do their thing Wd Ailing Hard Disk Fm Adam Rubin Can anyone help me with a hard drive problem My recently ailing Radio Shack 5 meg hard disk now takes about 10 minutes ofattempts to boot up if it boots atall and doesn t last more than a few hours at most before returning to its non working state It s a succession of ERROR 11H at both the start and the end with the green light staying out i e drive active for several seconds or more for each error message Yes I tried cleaning the air filter Not only that I opened the case up scraped some more dust out of the fan and got any other loose dust out That helped for a day or so This started as an intermittent prob lem a few weeks ago and I m now almost reduced to a floppy disk system The Hardware Corner 68 The Hardware Corner Volume IV o THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii Does anyone know what the problem might be and what I can do about it Is it the controller bubble cable or what Thanks very much in advance for any sugges tions Fm Bill Brandon Adam I had a similar problem with my 15 megger Turned out to be a failed power supply Fortunately the HD uses the same 65w supply as the Model 4 Before changing out power Supplies you might do the Pink Pearl thing on the cable connectors at both ends of the cable to the HD Dirt will some times emulate a host of other
181. o any problems you are having Finally although IFC is an excellent tool I don t unbundle it from the GO CMD package That package is well worth the cost If you choose not to obtain it bear in mind that BACKUP turns off the MOD flags after copying a file and you can instruct BACKUP to copy just files with the mod flags set by using the MOD parameter Consult your DOS manual for assistance Fm Henry A Blumenthal Dear Mr Soltoff Here is yet another follow up to my previous letters spelling out my prob lems with LDOS Apparently the prob lem is with my LDOS 5 3 disks inability to post the time and date and for the life of me I don t know how it happened unless something from your hard drive or related software has zapped them I had n lem until I in ive Only a coincidence Also I did NOT patch any system disk while it was in floppy drive 0 As you can see from the enclosed LDOS reads the hard drive s clock just fine through MCLOCKS but not through its own time and date commands Also do you have an explanation for my inability to put LDOS system files on the hard drive so that I can sysgen over to it See second enclosure I was able to do so without difficulty with LS DOS since my last letter to you and I see nothing in the manual that suggests I cannot do the same thing with LDOS but maybe I can t Do certain cylinders on the desti nation disk have to be free I notice there is no swa
182. o as a valid entry 1 is ok though If I use 1 or even just H for the default I still get the allocated but not used error for X 77 Fm MISOSYS Inc I checked the source code Itappears that the code is not neces sarily correct for common drives I never changed the piece of code dealing with the hard drive parameters ever since I took over the code from LSI because I never had any report of malfunction One thing the code does not do is pick up the actual directory cylinder and show it totally in use if the drive isa hard drive In addition the code does not properly check MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii for valid H parameters an entry of H TRUE value of X FFFF is passed as legal even though it should be rejected The value of H is used in DIRCHECK to pass the number of a maintenance cylin der I suppose back when LSI generated the program drives they were accustomed to used one The piece of code which tests for a valid cylinder entry tests for a range of 1 202 but a value of X FFFF is sensed as no entry The reason why you get a constant error on cylinder X 77 is be cause the code then erroneously falls through the test for the L parameter that was for a Larado drive remember them Larado always reserved cylinder _ X 7T for diagnostic purposes The end result is that entering an H as the parameter will alway
183. o duplicate this fault load V1 9 from the enclosed disk use lt CLEAR G gt to load the file TEST LS which is on the working V1 9 disk and use lt CLEAR P gt to print the file The result is attached to this sheet Ihave also tried printing the FOOT NOTE TXT file that comes with V1 9 Although the K79 driver was specified rather than k0 the wrong error message Printer Driver not Found is seen I would vi Had I known that V1 9 is incompatible with my existing versions of Electric Webster including Grammar amp Style Checker and hyphenator I would have specified V2 0 when I upgraded from V1 81 I have written to Cornucopia re upgrades for my Electric Webster disks but I am pessimistic about getting a reply Their customer Service has failed to reply to me on previous occasions Currently A1 00 US0 76 and I simply can t afford to get LeScript V2 0 as well as V1 9 p s My LS DOS 6 3 is unpatched Pass word checking has not been disabled Drives 2 and 3 have been enabled and the time prompt turned off Fm H L Smith to MISOSYS Inc Dear Roy Greetings from Australia I wonder if you could find time to read the attached correspondence to and from Anitek who produce LeScript My letter of August 20 should be read first then the Anitek reply and lastly my reply of September 16 If you could find time to write to me about the reported bug in LS DOS 6 3 it would be greatly appreciated I hav
184. o nail down the variables of the problem of gummed up pins several friends and I organized ourselves into a research team and conducted a series of tests using various papers and sources of ribbons Many dot matrix ribbons have a longish stationary cassette running almost the length of the machine At manufacture the rib bon has a 180 degree twist put in it so a given point on the ribbon the first time around may face the paper after the ribbon has gone full circuit through the cassette the next time that particular point emerges it is facing the opposite way towards the pins If a point strikes the paper on the first lap and collects paper lint under the pressure of the pin impact the lint may form a paste with the ink and on the next lap that paste is hit by the pins which get gummed up after several times around the ribbon may be coated on both sides with paper ink paste which could also reduce the yield of printable charac ters of the ribbon The tests we ran involved over one hundred pages of printout on each of five partici pating machines in an attempt to provoke failures due to jammed pins All tests began with a thoroughly clean head Here is a summary of the results 1 Brand new ribbon as supplied by the printer manufacturer Oe not yet used nor reinked good quality lint free paper No problems whatsoever Head very rea sonably clean after more than one hundred pages of printout 2 Ribbon supplied b
185. ocation undocumented I believe one can PEEK to determine on what line number the printer is I will call this location NN In a simple and straightforward DOS configuration without special demands on low memory NN is probably decimal 4097 If you issue the DEVICE B com mand from DOS with FORMS FLT in stalled you will find one item showing the printer linkage something like this PR lt gt FF X OFF4 Convert that hexadecimal OFF4 to decimal and you get 4084 Add 13 to get 4097 the location NN to PEEK In some DOS configurations where cer tain items must go into low memory first other items may get placed in higher locations and the above figures may change For instance in one setup 1 know of with a MISOSYS XLR8er board installed which requires apart of low memory for its own purposes RAMDISK driver the DE VICE B command shows the above location shifted from X OFF4 to X 11BA which converts to 4538 decimal and adding 13 gives 4551 the NN location to PEEK Another instance is MEMDISK which must be installed before certain filters or drivers which pushes the latter into a higher location than they would other wise occupy The value stored in memory location NN before you start printing is zero unless it was left at another value from a previous job you can reset both the counter at NN and the paper by getting BASIC to LPRINT CHR 12 the semicolon is part of the command or you ca
186. of the first 70 character portion of A until a space is found at which point the IF in line 80 is untrue the character isn t different from a space Le it is a space and there is a jump to 90 which prints out the left portion of the string ending ina space which is the longest string print able in 70 spaces without word cutting Line 100 makes A equal to the unprinted right hand portion of the original input string Then 110 returns to 60 still within the GOSUB 60 subroutine to continue as before on the unprinted part and to reset B which may have been decremented in line 80 on the previous round all of which repeats until the remaining string portion is equal to or shorter than the reset B i e 70 in line 70 when it gets printed and RETURN finishes with that string and exits from the subroutine The use of FORMS FLT is mandatory in this system at least to handle top ofform printing as described under the next head ing and line 20 assumes it is installed Ensure that the FORMS C parameter Characters per line is large enough to prevent it undercutting variable B other wise the method would be defeated as C if shorter would control line length instead of B and there would be cut words For demo purposes I have set it at 200 the maximum allowed is 255 proba bly sufficient to exceed most paper widths I originally thought of setting it at the default C OFF but that would return a
187. omization for your exact needs Text Merge Form Letter Module Create customized form letters and Labels with PowerMAIL 15 00 This optional module for PowerMail allows you to create customized form letters or custom labels lists etc with PowerMail Plus and any word processor that saves text in ASCH format Very easy to use and really gets the effect you want Allows completely definable report generating from your PowerMail data PowerSCRIPT A Major Enhancement for SCRIPSIT 4 IM and I not SuperScripsit 24 95 gt Original 1986 price 39 95 One of PowerSoft s very best sellers this modification for Radio Shack s SCRIPSIT program tums it into a POWERHOUSE Our program merges with your copy of SCRIPSIT to create a new program that outperforms most other TRS 80 word processors without releaming a new program PowerScript adds new features in two important areas The first area is in the printer control PowerScript allows you to add printer control codes directly in the body of your text Now it is easy to add underlining bold face the different sizes of print etc Initially set up for the EPSON type dot matrix printers it is configureable to just about any printer during set up If you have more than one printer type then just set up a copy of PowerScript for each printer you have The second area of improvement is in disk and file control PowerScript adds several neat features to SCRIPSIT including the ability to see a
188. on 640 x 240 in M3 mode with pure graphics 5 uL board is cheaper and better sup ported RS board costs more and there is no support Recommendation get the uL board pres ently on sale for 99 95 to get a better faster and better supported board than an RS board which they wanta mere 219 95 for Fm Jim Beard Frank The extra mem ory on the Radio Shack HR Graphics board is documented in the manual See the section on storing and retrieving pix els Continuing saga Charles A Ainsworth P O Box 2107 Woodbridge VA 22193 Printer Problems The following may be of interest to TMQ readers In past issues of TMQ and in other pub lications I have seen readers letters de scribing a problem on dot matrix printers where one or more head pins misfire consistently leaving a thin horizontal white line throughout the printout When a lower pin is at fault this spurious blank line affects underscore or descenders When it s a central pin the body of each charac ter is affected and when it s a higher one the tops of letters such as upper case ones are affected The problem is also very noticeable on graphics work This fault may be due to a broken or damaged pin a pin return spring which is broken or a jammed pin it could also be due to a fault in one of the electromag nets in the head traveling cable or in the electronics although perhaps less prob able Unless the printer owner is conver
189. on refills obtain able for some machines might be a good thing to use at times However some experiences I have had with certain refills from printer suppliers have rather damp ened my enthusiasm I and others have encountered the following on some brands First the refill ribbon comes packed in several layers of cardboard ifonekeepsa refill some time perhaps a few months the cardboard soaks up ink it is bare uncoated cardboard which is in contact with the ribbon and eventually when the refill is used the de inked part where absorption occurred prints out much weaker than the rest Second the refill has a ribbon leader outside the cardboard wrapping used for threading into the cassette during installation In several cases that leader came wound around the pro tective cardboard creased and crumpled around it all there is a usually tight rubber band After a time in storage that puts almost permanent creases in the fabric so when the creased part comes to the print head there is improper contact and printing is faulty and when the ribbon is put through the reinker it doesn t make proper contact with the inking head at the creases and again produces defective print ing So I have quit using refills and now use only new ribbons as in item 1 above and reink per item 2 as needed A ribbon will allow so many reinkings that with only a few ribbons on hand one will probably have enough for several years These comm
190. on the printer and or by codes sent to the printer from the program In the case of a Basic program operating commands for setting or Changing printout parameters can usu ally be sent by statements like LPRINT CHR3 a CHR b the semicolons are part of the command where a is an escape code often 27 decimal which forewarns the printer that an operating code instead of a printable character is on the way and b is a code number repre senting the actual instruction Many manuals show printer control codes both in decimal and in hex For use with the CHR Q commands the decimal codes are used An uninformed observer watching a machine print may get the impression that a character is printed the head makes a single jump to the next character and so on But there s really more to it than that Many modern printers have astepper type motor which advances the print head via a belt or cable according to instructions received from the electronics Actually every spacing operation is the aggregate of one or more of what manuals variously refer to as microspaces dot columns dot spaces or dots These spaces are minute fractions of an inch So when spacing the head is moved a number of dot spaces as necessary Those who are familiar with the innards of floppy drives will recog nize the similarity with the stepper motor which moves the read write head a min ute fraction of an inch when stepping from track to track w
191. op 1 2 ofa medium onion medium fine Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor Volume IN 0 THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN o Brown meat and onion together then drain Add I 4 02 can of sliced mushroom tops 4 tsp of Guilder s mustard 1 2 tsp salt amp 1 4 tsp black pepper Cook until meat is done Add J cup sour cream mix thor oughly until entire mess is hot Serve over wide egg noodles optionally buttered and you have Slinkman s Stroganoff Creamed spinach is an excellent side to this Hot Buttered Rum Fm MISOSYS Inc This recipe for Hot Buttered Rum was given to me by my old friend Ray Ridgeway It was a favorite on the many parties commemorating the upteenth aniversary of his 29th birthday as well as his annual Christmas party It s great for those cold winter nights Don t skimp on the ingredients and no substi tutes please Dieters stay away Ingredients 7 pound of butter softened 1 quart of French Vanilla ice cream 1 pound of dark brown sugar 1 pound of powered sugar 2 teaspoons of ground nutmeg 2 teaspoons of cinnamon Myers dark rum cinnamon sticks whipping cream as desired In a large bowl let the ice cream sit at room temperature until soft Mix together with softened butter a blender or good power mixer works well Mix in sugar and spices Blend until smooth then freeze in an airtight container mixture will remain spoonable Can be kept for
192. oppy drives I assume however that I would have to disable one of them whenever I mat so I knew that I didn t have a firm 5 wanted a SubDISK cable connection I had to wiggle the Problems DOS Subjects 32 DOS Subjects Volume IV 1i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume V 1i And my question also stands as to the adequacy of Level J of LS DOS Here s a fresh question I see IFC4 as ideal for backing up modified files to floppies because the mod flags can then be turned off so that I can keep track of what s been batched over and what hasn t I want to buy it but I don t need another thing that comes on the same disk be cause I already have them in one form or another from other packages What would you charge to sell me that one utility along with a copy of the repaired LDOS SYS track if indeed that s the problem I look forward to your responses and hope that you aren t so super efficient in handling your correspondence that you already had answered my previous letter Chalk it up to a learning experience Fm MISOSYS Inc Henry This is in response to your letter of October 14th and its followup on October 17th which was received today Be aware that after about the first 20 drive units were shipped I have been testing all cables 100 in fact a 1200 Cirris Sys tems cable tester was acquired to perform a more exhaustive test than would be performed just by trying out
193. ore cases Of course operating primarily in a hard drive environment you would not be frequently exposed to the problem as it occurs only with flop pies The other problems you noted are random events without any method of determin ing the root cause A 26 1080 is a PAL based machine a26 1080A is a gate array Perhaps Ill give a brief synopsis of the differences in a fu ture TMQ If you want to know a good deal about PALs from an entry level stand point dig up a copy of BYTE magazine 1 January 1987 Thathad a series of articles covering PALs Makes good reading Gate Array chips are just a greater degree of integration and are typically mask pro grammed at the factory although field programmable gate arrays are available Any file can appear to be attached to another file by a simple corruption of its directory record With your experience with extended files you really ought to have a directory checker and mapper program I personally would not just REMOVE a file that appeared too big especially if the contents included some other file s contents A directory checker such as DIRCHECK which is part of our GO MTC package would let you know if the directory was corrupt It also can repair certain problems Now how can these things get corrupted Ever had a program crash Ever had a program lockup Ever had a power failure while the ma chine was on and executing a program Any of these problems c
194. orner Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii fergit ta FORRRMAT SYSTEM after TRRSFORRM6 to collect yurr frrree bonus cylinderrrs Tandy s service cyls reen abled sound of pipes playing in back grround Bob Fm Adam Rubin Yes Bob but will that work on the U S version of the HD lt grin gt Actually I d just as soon leave that diag nostic cylinder disabled I don t know who ll beservicing my HD next andI can afford to reserve 32K for that Thanks for the suggestion though I figured that FORMAT SYSTEM had a use some where Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Adam Making bearings survive the power on hours is a known low tech technology hopefully the hard drive manufacturers have done their homework Heads vs platter surfaces is still proprietary black magic Bigger speakers and a bigger amplifier will allow you to make the stereo audible but won t solve your missing dynamic range problem Acoustically isolating headphones will do the trick with no power increase An external antenna on top of the house with coax lead in will kill the FM noise problem Model 4 power supplies Fm Pete Granzeau A year or so ago someone pointed out here that someone then advertising in the Computer Shopper was selling 32 W Astec power supplies cheap which would do admirably in an early version Model 4 with the two power supplies Can anyone remember who was selling them an
195. ort functions allow you to move data across windows between programs e Address CARDS LABELS and HEAD display amp export e BRINGUFP tickler file new PRINTING and sorting e CALENDAR flags BRINGUP items visually on screen e Ten3x5 CARD files with FORMS and FIELDS e Virtual PHRASE access for export e New TODO list manager with who does it e Plus many other vital applications PRO WAM M 51 025 74 95 5S amp H LB Data Manager A flexible data manager LB is easily used by anyone for managing their data It s menu driven for ease of use absolutely no programming needed Requires a Model 4 with 128K or a hard drive LB86 an MS DOS versionis also available Now activate PRO WAM from newly compiled LB beta release hard ware restrictions apply e Store up to 65534 records per data base e Upto 1024 characters 64 fields per record e Nine field types for flexibility e Select and sort on up to 8 fields multiple indexes e 10 input update screens per data base e 10 printout formats per data base e Extensive on line help available LB L 50 510 74 95 5S amp H TRS 80 Model I Ill 4 Language Software MRAS 59 95 4S amp H An advanced Z80 assembly package for the programmer who wants a powerful and flexible development sys tem Includes a macro assembler which generates either relocatable object code modules or CMD files directly a linker across reference tool for directly generated CMD files MLIB our
196. ot seen a Rev B board but the logics for Rev C imply that B has only minor vari ations in some component ID s and val ues and that U201 through U206 do exist on the board near cable socket J 7 upper left corner I have not the Rev B or D logics can someone help me If you ve followed my changes this far not very complicated are they you should be able to do the work shown in the appropriate drawing so I won t waste more TMQ space here NOTE the input signal lines marked A16 and A17 These wires must be attached to the XLR8er board I ve chosen to make my connec tions with Radio Shack s micro test clips p n 270 355 don t use 270 336 flat test clips they won t lay as expected sol dered to lengths of wrapping wire which are in turn soldered to the motherboard chip pins shown in the drawings To pre vent pulling the test clip leads off the soldered joints I wrapped the insulated portion of each lead around a nearby motherboard component lead several times a form of strain relief Make these two leads about 12 long then cut toaconven ient length later and solder a micro clip to each After installing circuit A D or S a resistor must be used in the line which drives pin 1 A8 of the 256K chips and eight capacitors must be disconnected from pin 1 of the first bank of memory chip sockets The capacitors are to the left of the first bank of memory chips and shoul
197. ould cause cor ruption of data As far as others having power failures yes I m sure a lot do But from my experience most folks do little about it but complain when there machine goes down Some folks frequently write up dated files to disk to guard against losing too much when a simple UPS or SBS would cure the problem I addressed the subject of backup power in the summer 1988 issue of TMQ Think many folks went out and did something about that problem No sir But I m okay I have a standby system on twocomputer systems I just lose my phone system But then who wants to continue talking on the phone when the lights go out As far as the solution to your linking the CL to screen printer and disk file the solution is exceedingly simple It just takes a little thought Why not just bring up the computer and invoke COMM Then you can either print and FR to disk DOS Subjects 29 DOS Subjects Volume IV ii while you still see what s going on Sort of couldn t see the forest for the trees COMM is more useful than just a terminal program As far as turning TMQ to a monthly Forget it I rarely have the time now to produce it every quarter Don t forget it s just me here I don t have a staff of thousands I ll stick to quarterly Incidentally MISOSYS now sells Power Soft s PowerDrivers one is available for the Epson printer you mentioned Fm Walter P Sullivan I
198. ourse where do the changes need to be made in each DOS version to put floppies 6 and 7 or 2 and 3 in the case of LDOS on line and will running an altered initiali zation cause loss of data on the hard drive Next Because directory slots are limited I know that I am going to have to use your SubDISK routine if vast chasms of the drive aren t to remain vacant But I am having trouble visualizing how to go about it Knowing my configuration please lead me through the steps of emulating a stan dard 40 cylinder SSDD disk on say drive 0 and doing a straight backup of a data disk to it from drive 1 Then show me how to work on and update a file on that emulated disk copy that file to the floppy so that the floppy will be my backup then get out of that emulated disk so that I can do other things At present I have a disk on drive 3 with 184 576 bytes available and I don t know what to do next Which brings up another question Can a Sub DISK be renamed Next I have Level J of LS DOS CS 14927 What does Level L fix Anything that might be a factor in some of my Volume IV ii I m sure you will solve my problems in your usual enlightened way Knowing that you probably are swamped with questions like mine while trying to meet promised shipping dates I hope that you nonetheless can give me priority attention because of the nature of my problems Meantime I love the speed and conven ience of the hard
199. overlays The differ ence between the 254 maximum entries available on a data drive and the 240 available on a system drive are the 14 additional reserved slots for SYSO SYS through SYS13 SYS When you format a disk drive neither LDOS nor LS DOS reserves the system slots If you move files to a data drive it is possible that one or more of the system slots will be used to store the directory information for the files so moved It is then impossible to create a system drive on that disk unless you remove the files occupying those necessary slots This appears to be the case with your drive One solution is to copy to another disk the files which occupy those positions then remove the interfering files It s easy to know which files are the offending ones by a simple examination of the directory The directory can occupy up to 34 sec tors the first is the Granule Allocation Table GAT the second is the Hash Index Table HIT the third through last THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 contain directory entries for up to 256 files Since the system entries are in the first eight sectors containing directory entries it is sufficient to examine those Try listing the directory to a printer with the command LIST DIR SYS d P H R 2 It is only necessary to list the first eight sectors printed with this command so you can lt BREAK gt after record 0009 has been printed Each entry occupies two rows of data in th
200. p command in Model III mode either What was originally labeled hard drive 5 is disabled in Model 4 mode and is the only hard drive enabled in Model IN mode on the hard disk and floppy drives 1 and 2 I look forward to getting my LDOS prob lems resolved DOS Subjects 33 DOS Subjects Volume IN u Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Henry This is in response to your letter of October 19th concerning further clock problems under LDOS My October 20th letter specifically stated If you continue to have a problem with the Model III mode send me a backup copy of your LDOS master disk for me to evaluate Obviously you have not re ceived that letter yet so I will render no further comment concerning your clock problem Obviously you need to send me a copy of your Model III DOS disk Incidentally you may want to explore not using the clock patches in the Model III mode until you get the problem straight ened out I cannot imagine that you have tried to just turn off the date and time prompts and used an invocation of MCLOCKS to read the date and time as discussed on page 44 of the MSCS opera tor s manual because you never men tioned that in any of your letters Youmay just have something different with your LDOS disk making it incompatible with the patch Without seeing your disk I cannot comment further Both LDOS and LS DOS require certain directory entry slots to store the directory entries for the DOS
201. plex as we can no longer use the number of charac ters asa function of the desired line length as we did with monospacing In propor tional number of chars is meaningless as a measure of line length for justification as there are several character widths 1 e and m all have different widths for example So we can only workin number of dots and inches of desired line length so we begin by setting line length in inches instead of number of characters Be forewarned that this program is far from fast however it might be a good port in a storm as it was for me when I needed it and had nothing better I could use PRTDEMOS BAS First let s look at dots per inch of print out used in lines 80 and 90 200 or 240 dots per inch My figures are based on a Tandy DMP430 printer yours may be different and you should check your manual for appropriate values to use For normal monospaced i e non proportional 10 CPI characters per inch printout my manual lists the maximum number of printable characters per line as 132 which means that my machine will print a maximum line length or 132 10 13 2 Now for proportional standard a type size equiva lent to normal 10 CPI the manual lists 2640 dots per line So if we divide 2640 dots per line by 13 2 of line we get 200 dots perinch Similarly for what they call compressed proportional a typeface of similar size to 12 pitch we have3 168 dots per line Divi
202. problems the syphilis of the computer world Bet ter practice safe hex Fm David Campbell Adam Hada simi lar problem with my 12 meg My problem was aboguscable Seems that somewhere along the line it had been crushed and caused intermittent failure Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Adam The suggestions you ve got are the right way to proceed Disassemble everything Well almost I don t have to tell you to not take apart the bubble and clean all cleanable connections Inspect all connectors and cabling for cuts fractures and bent pins The HD power supply is the same as the 4P power supply so watch out for the power pin problems that Jim and others have reported I d re solder the output pins for sure Once you ve got everything spit shined let it warm up for a half hour or so with the case top on and re do the whole format including the low level format Take this opportunity tore configure your partition sizes as necessary If the hard drive does not become stable take this opportunity to replace the bubble Fm Adam Rubm David Thanks for the suggestion Dave I d never considered a cable problem since everything was The Hardware Corner working OK until a few weeks ago but DU definitely look over all the cables carefully I d never realized how many possible causes there were Fm Adam Rubin Joe Thank you very much for your suggestions I m not much of a hardware hacker so here s some
203. r one Although I d love to sell you IFC4 as part THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 of the Golden Oldies Command Utilities package I still would be remiss in not telling you of another parameter in BACKUP which you should be aware of If you want to copy only modified files but only to specific disks just use the command BACKUP s d OLD MOD Only modified source disk files which already exist on the destination disk will be copied BACKUP is much more flex ible than most folks imagine but you have to at least look at the parameters With that big hard drive on line now there s noexcuse for not having the DOS HLP help facility instantly available I also previously wrote you as to why you cannot put LDOS on that hard drive par tition which already had files on it That has nothing to do with the dual parame ter of the MSCSI installation JCL Only the number of free logical drive slots limits the ability to having subdisks on line If you had only one hard drive partition active you could have seven subdisks But in order to recover the sub disk linkage used to establish a connec tion to a subdisk after you disable a par ticular subdisk you have to disable them in an order reverse of what you used to establish them Personally I don t see the point of needing many active at one time frea differently than you That rectangular area can be used for a label But since I had no hopes to
204. ration as easy as possible Just pop in your TRS 80 disk to your PC and copy the files right to your PC data disk or hard disk It couldn t be any faster or easier Packed in tie PowerSoft binder is a typeset instruction manual with Index All steps are detailed Advanced features for those that desire to use them include executing menu options right from DOS or from a BAT file or macro This can really speed up transfers when similar operations are performed frequently TRSCROSS allows you to TAG all files to be moved in ONE pass TRSCROSS converts TRS 80 BASIC programs and SuperSCRIPSIT files in ONE PASS while COPYing to MS DOS Noneed to save your programs or files in ASCII orrun a separate conversion program first before transferring TRSCROSS reads your tokenized BASIC program or SuperSCRIPSIT file directly off your TRS 80 disk and performs the conversion allin ONE pass while being transferred directly to your PC or compatible computer Automatically converts most BASIC syntax and lines thatneed special attention can be listed to a printer Does not convert PEEKs POKEs graphics machine language calls or sub rou tines TRSCROSS will even FORMAT a TRS 80 disk right on your PC Handy for those who use both machines Former TRS 80 users who no longer have their TRS 80 but still have diskettes with valuable data this is exactly what you ve been waiting for TRSCROSS will READ FROM and COPY to the following
205. re than one line is being printed and the tail end that goes on the last line is also short that would be in the same situation PRTDEMO3 avoids such things by hav ing line 80 print out directly without any attempt at justification any such cases equal to or less than B characters long Admittedly all the maneuvers the pro gram has to execute don t make it a speed demon If your printer is very fast you may find the program lagging behind it at times but if it isn t so fast you may not notice much difference METHOD NUMBER FOUR Printing with justified right margin with monospaced with both blank spaces and characters padded Whether monospaced printing when jus tified looks better with only blank spaces padded or with both blank spaces and characters padded is largely a matter of personal opinion Some word processors seem to favor the former but anyone who wishes the latter may play around with my program PRTDEMO4 BAS This program is similar to PRTDEMO3 BAS but counts blank spaces and charac ters PRTDEMO3 counts blanks only and distributes dot spaces overall of them The differences are slight and anyone who has understood PRTDEMO3 should be able to follow PRTDEMO4 easily Applications for the User Applications for the User i een Ee EC Bebe TEE Volume IN ou Printing with justified right margin and proportional with blank spaces and char acters padded Here things get a bit more com
206. read and understood only dif ferences will be covered here There are probably various algorithms in existence for providing right margin jus tification some perhaps better than mine In any case mine worked for me Ingen ious programmers may think of improve ments Right margin Justification is usually a feature of word processors but that does not make this a word processing system It is only meant for perfectly plain text without the fancy features of word proc ee es PRTDEMO3 BAS Before going into details of this program let s review some aspects of printout which are probably familiar to experi enced printer users but may be unfamiliar to relative newcomers Note that I am not covering so called laser printers with which I am not familiar and which may or not have points in common with my descrip tions Methods one and two as we have seen scan text looking for a space by taking the portion of the paragraph to be printed and working back from the targeted line length 70 in the examples until a space is found which provides the longeststring printable in that line length without word cutting That line is then printed Obvi ously it would be highly improbable for every line to be of the same length which makes the right margin jagged In certain cases a justified uniform right margin is desired for esthetic reasons To see how this is attainable let s take a brief look at some of the
207. ring it useless for booting Thank God it was created specifically for this test Not all 256K memory chips are created equal In my article on taking the Model 4 to512K I mention that the NEC D41256 15 chips wouldn t work in CAS before RAS refresh mode That s not the only place they failed They would fade when used on the XLR8er board in either of my machines Changing refresh cycles to 10 T states and M waits to 3 didn t help With the XLR8er installed in my 512K machine about three hours into an IPL this time period varied the machine would just take off for left field The screen might suddenly go ape Sometimes it would appear to be in Model III mode other times it would add or delete characters Also the keyboard would go dead DOS commands would fail to execute and so on You name it and I may have experi enced it Determined to find the culprit I started by swapping all the HALs and PALs plus the video controller from the plain machine to the 512K unit since I felt that trying to shoot this one with a scope should be my last resort Ran 24 hours withouta hitch Interesting Who to blame first U58 and U59 are heavily involved in accessing all aspects of the The Hardware Corner machine so I restored these two chips In less than two hours I had the failure WOW Replaced U58 Ran overnight again Could there be an interaction be tween U58 and U59 Restored U58 re placed U59 Nope Cou
208. rs Lastly PowerDraw has the ability to load in many types of TRS 80 graphic s and convert them to BASIC listings like a BASIC program generator PowerDOT 2 0 for printers Mix text with graphics no problem Build new fonts 19 95 gt Original 1986 price 49 95 This program is similar to PowerDraw but quite different It allows you to create hi res type screen graphics combined with text and allows you to create drawings much larger than your screen The screen is a window to a much larger drawing area and you use the arrow keys to move about the drawing In a way it is similar to Macpaint for the Macintosh computer It also allows you to create custom fonts for ads etc Many of our early ads were created with PowerDot It creates the hi res effect due to each TRS 80 block pixel being printed as a single dot Please specify if EPSON Okidata Prowriter or Radio Shack printer PowerDriver Plus for SuperSCRIPSIT and SCRIPSIT PRO and Epson printers 17 95 Allows EPSON or compatible printers to be fully utilized with SuperScripsit This is a replacement driver for the ones you got with SuperScripsit It fully supports the various Epson and Epson compatible printers to the limits of their capabilities Model I IIE or 4 is supported in the same package Easy to install Once installed works without any extra thinking Thousands of happy customers TRS 80 GAME COLLECTIONS ON DISK for Mod I HI 4 in HI mode Special AH 3 se
209. rsels Drop by heaping tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet flatten dough slightly Cookies should bake to a pale golden brown in fifteen minutes If they cook faster or slower adjust oven temperature to correct cooking time to fifteen min utes Makes about seven dozen four inch cookies Serve warm from the oven with fresh ice cold milk or Diet Coke Middie Street Crumb Cake Fm MISOSYS Ine I cannot tell a lie this recipe is from Bon Appetit April 1988 But the Soltoff household loves it Typical Sunday morning fare Ingredients 7 1 2 cups all purpose flour 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon baking pow der 1 2 cup vegetable oil 1 4 cup milk 2 large eggs beaten to blend 1 3 cup firmly packed brown sugar 2 teaspoons cinna mon 3 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into 9 pieces Preheat oven to 300 F Mix first 3 ingredi ents in large bowl Add oil milk and eggs and stir until moistened do not overstir Transfer batter to ungreased 8 inch square baking pan Sprinkle with brown sugar then cinnamon Dottop with butter Bake until tester inserted in center comes out clean about 50 minutes Cool Slightly Cut into squares to serve Letters to the Editor 10 Letters to the Editor Volume IV 1i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1i Hard drive queries Hard Drive s Joystick Fm Jim Beard Roy Other than games such as 13 Ghosts what applications use th
210. s Enclosed are some things put together over the years that made programming easier and the appearance and operation of the programs neater Maybe one may be useful to someone As an aside Vol IV i pp 26 Doubling of Files Revisited caught my eye When the M4 arrived my M1 went Now there are an M4 amp MAD both gate array each wi 128k R S Graphics and R S 5Meg HD The M4 also has an XLR8er Tried one in the 4P and it would not work Each carries the same files amp programs in a different city There are some 200 data files all sequential except one Through all of the TRSDOS6 X releases trouble was experi enced with duplicate files atrandom from using the OPEN E 1 file ext dr but never with OPEN O 1 etc on the early PAL as well as the Gate Array s DOS Subjects 20 DOS Subjects Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 1i When LSDOS6 3 was announced two were procured immediately in hopes of the problem being corrected It was not A letter of inquiry to Logical Systems drew the response that they were aware of the problem but it was in BASIC and not DOS Strangely the problem has disap peared for the last several years with no changes in programing or equipment repair This was extremely aggravating as daily some 50 files are extended after which it was Necessary to check the DIR for lack of signs renaming of duplicates ap pending deleting etc before back
211. s Fellow Hardware Hack ers For purposes of testing a special CL filter Ineed to be able to connect two 4Ps via two modems at one location Straight The Hardware Corner 75 The Hardware Corner Volume IV 1ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN u RS232 connection via null modem is no help as the filter actually talks TO not just thru the modem and expects actual modem responses I have only one phone line here and am not about to install another even if I could the NYNEX strike being what it is Can anyone suggest a Q amp D way to simulate Ma Bell s central office between these modems Maybe TD have to write a modem simu lator program for the remote 4P and run null modem after all Any suggestions appreciated Fm Pete Granzeau Bob Just connect the two modems with the phone cord no central office necessary Use ATA at one end and ATO atthe other if the y re Hayes compatible to get them to talk to each other You need a term program at each end of course Fm Bob Haynes Huh As simple as that I figured the phone side of modem electronics had to be passive only modu lating the current provided by ma bell the way a telephone does Figured there had to be an external current source DU try it Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Bob That kind of thing connecting them together with a phone cord will work with real Hayes modems and most clones but not all Another thing
212. s generate an error on cylinder X 77 until Ican develop a fix An BR entry should imply that the drive under test is a hard drive and that the entire directory cylinder should be fully locked out Until a fix is developed the work around is to pass the directory cylinder number as the argument of H Souse DIRCHECK dir where dir is the cylinder con taining the directory LB Data Manage Fm John Tollini Roy I believe that I have run into a small bug in LB Beta 1 2 When attempting to create a sorted index file from the print module the sort fails with must enter through LB and drops out to LS DOS Ready The sort works fine when entered from Select Haven t noticed any other problems but it sure does load and switch between modules faster Fm MISOSYS Inc You re right We overlooked testing for that problem one of the purposes of a beta release Seems that there was a label in the wrong spot in the code I have a corrected copy of the LB 1 2 2 beta release Not only did Rich fix that bug but added a DOS shell capa bility to the main menu Anyone with a beta release of LB can send back their beta disk for a refresh to version 1 2 2 LB beta Fm Danny C Mullen Dear Roy don t know if I included any future wants for LB but two are Ability to insert delete in middle of field without re typing whole line and ability to backup to previous records during add mod
213. s makes no difference I worry about dirt collecting in the case In fact Ihave seen ASTEC power supplies with a little note on them indicating higher output if external cooling is applied Maybe one of the hardware hackers here could clarify things Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Sure I d like to see a file on this I would think that one of the small 35 watt supplies would also be adequate to supply the mother board as Tandy used to use one of those for the motherboard RS 232 and video plus a second for the FDC and two flop pies Fm John G Gelesh TED Sounds great to me Iam very tired of my Model 4D s flakey video Fm Ted Haigh Yeah it really is nice to have enough power to run all the added extras with some to spare Be sure to hunt for power supplies at other places than Radio Shack they are asking about 100 for anew supply for the Mod4 I think with a little shopping you could get a whole Mod for that price There is lots of extra room inside the computer so mounting the supply inside is no problem A good source for the supplies is the Pacific Computer Exchange in Portland Oregon 503 236 2949 Fm Ted Haigh Bill The Astec supply does state that with no cooling you get about 55 W of power for the full 65W you need to cool it this is also the same for the Radio Shack supplies So instead of trying to fiddle around with installing a fan I just put in another supply Like you said I don t know or want
214. s occu pied at or just below the allowable line length Then line 240 looks for the first blank space in the string similar to line 90 in PRTDEMO4 Every move that backs us away from the value of S dots keeps a count of the number of dots until we get to line 250 which establishes the number of dots per character we have to add for justification Line 260 converts the num ber to an integer rounding down if frac tional and line 265 and 585 take care of the dots lost by any rounding down same as lines 200 and 395 in PRTDEMO4 Returning for a moment to line 200 After the target number of dots per line is ex ceeded V gt S we establish the number of characters X by backing up one charac ter from T with X T 1 to get back within the allowable length S We also count back from V to deduct W the latest incre ment to V namely V V W We are now a few dots one character or a fraction of one inside S Now on the principle stated above of counting the dots we go back from S we have to count any dots skipped in moving due to X T 1 and V V W which line 200 does with Y S V which returns a number of padding dots which get added to the calculation of AA in line 240 by setting the initial value of AA to Y in 230 We also add an extra 21 dots there to compensate for two things The three spacing dots per charac ter on the lastcharacter of the printout line and 18 dots for the blank space on which the string ends by finding a
215. s operating sys tem to update the system clock from the real time clock after each disk access keep system clock accurate The 59 page Software Interface Package operators manual provided describes all of the options which can be performed by each of the programs Error messages are explained and technical information is provided to help all levels of interest in the system A 16 page MHD T34 Hard Drive Kit operators manual describes in detail the contents and location of the various hard ware parts in the box As you can see a significant effort was put forth to make the users that s us life with a hard disk much easier Step by step the installation is easy if you just take you time 1 Using the Low level formatter FSCSIx the physical characteristics of the hard disk are described to the system Informa tion such as the number of heads number of tracks and track to track access times are entered The hard disk is then checked by the low level formatter A good time for the First Cup of COFFEE This procedure has to be accomplished only once as the high level formatter will use this information to perform its task 2 Now the high level formatter will be used to describe the physical characteris tics of each of the partitions Any size partitions can be constructed The JCL H ba MISOSYS Products Tidbits Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii files H
216. sburg is defunct Too many college student members graduated and moved away We are presently trying to regroup and will advise if we are able to rise like the proverbial Phoenix from our own ashes Also for your info some inexpensive green phosphor CRTS 12 Green CRT for TRS 80 12 95 DJIZNK4 Zenith CRT are presently available from I ve received one bad tube in a lot of 3 which Fair Radio Sales has replaced post free Pretty good deal also comes with a hi voltage power supply board but works fine with existing mod 4 board yoke etc Thought you might want pass the word along I don t know how long this deal will last Thanks always enjoy reading TMQ and try to support your effort when possible Durability of data on flop pies Charles A Ainsworth P O Box 2107 Woodbridge VA 22193 Dear Roy In past issues of TMQ some slight reference was made to the archival durability of data on floppy disks and presumably someone believes that after a certain time in storage recorded data THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 may tend to fade although I don t recall any actual figures on the time that data will remain reliably usable on them This letter does not call for a specific reply but rather is written with the idea that the subject might be addressed in TMQ if anyone you know has reliable data on the subject Ihave acollection of many valuable archi val disks The nature of my work
217. scratching For 11 long autofeed paper have FORMS set up with lines per page at say 55 and your parer set to print about one inch from the top Then clear BASIC with NEW and type in and run the following program 10 LPRINT PEEK NN GOTO 10 where once more NN is replaced by your PEEK location if you have the correct location you will get aline by line print out from 0 to 54 then an advance to the next page when the PEEK will restart at zero You will of course exit with BREAK If you use cut sheets you may wish to test by taping 8 1 2 xll sheets together or you could use a single sheet and issue a FORMS command for a shorter paper length and fewer lines per page See Notes re PEEKing NN below Using cut sheets For those who hand feed cut sheets into the printer the pro gram uses the first part of subroutine 200 through CLS which will prompt for a new sheet to be fed in manually and will stop at LINE INPUT continuing when ENTER is pressed CLS unclutters the screen for the next prompt If you are a SOUND buff you can insert the com mand as the next one after lt ENTER gt to also obtain an audible prompt If you use autofeed paper you won t need this por tion of line 200 but you will of course leave IF PEEK NN 0 THEN if required for the rest of the line See Notes re PEEKing NN below Printing double spaced So far we have been talking of single spaced printout For double spac
218. sell thous nds of drives I didn t bother to get a label printed Trying to use an internally label generated from an in house printer just wouldn t cut it Volume IV Once I had become aware that applying the patch to the current system disk would result in a problem I changed one com ment line in the fix file emphasizing a drive specification and added another line clearly indicating not to patch the current system drive These two lines are Apply via PATCH SYS3 SYS SYSTEM d SYS3CLK5 BUT NOT TO THE CURRENT SYS TEM DISK 1 However I forgot to take into account the fact that Model ITI LDOS uses a full colon as a logical line separator Thus the PATCH utility treated the text following the as a new line and was quite confused from that point on As an aside LS DOS uses a semi colon as the logical line separator Suffice it to say all you need to fix the SYS3CLK5 FIX file is to edit it and delete the colon After that the fix can be correctly applied but not to the current system disk After you apply the patch to some other on line system disk switch to that disk using the SYSTEM SYSTEM d com mand then BACKUP S YS3 SYS 0 d S to copy the patched SYS3 SYS file over to th original current system disk Sorry for the confusion this has caused but the logical new line within the FIX comment caused a very imprecise error message to be generated
219. space in 240 Check these values with your own printer manual Applications for the User 50 Applications for the User Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii Lines 190 and 240 use GOSUB 600 to calculate character widths in dots This requires some explanation Buckle up your seat belt we are flying into a little turbu lence Subroutines 600 640 and the subroutines they in turn call are an attempt to split into bite size chunks what might other wise become something practically im possible to read understand and main tain even if writeable in Basic remem ber that Basic has a maximum line length and all the numbers in 380 460 wouldn t fit on one line Subroutines 600 640 in turn GOSUB to one of 380 400 as the case may be depending on the ASC value of the character Finally subroutines 380 460 in turn GOSUB to one of 470 530 which establishes the dots width of each character Here s an example of how this works Assume that line 180 has found E A which is ASC 65 decimal Line 190 GOS UBs to 600 which tests untrue so the program falls through to 610 which tests true so a GOSUB 400 is executed Line 400 calculates ASC ES 65 subtracts 64 and gets 1 soitexecutes the first GOS UB 530 which tells us that the width W is 20 Le 17 dots for the character plus 3 for spacing Now the RETURN in 530 takes us back to the RETURN in 400 which leads to yet another RETURN in 610 wh
220. t I would simply do the fol lowing batch file without loading the CIM file and I was back in business eramdisk d 4 b 3 f no move6 A Is that similar to your method Fm MISOSYS Inc Frank I tried to bring up a rebooted ERAMDISK using the F N parameter and had absolutely no problems I even copied a few files into it before I rebooted and verified that the files were there after reboot and reinstall of the ERAMDISK So anyone who can t get it to work must have some local problem One thing to do would be to hope that those with the problem have PRO WAM and MisterED Then after rebooting one could use Mis ter ED s MED utility to look at what is in the extra banks Perhaps that information would start pointing a finger But I have no problem and there is apparently none in the ERAMDISK software Fm Frank Slinkman Roy The data in the ERAMDISK is fine More than once I ve had to go into DEBUG LDIR the data from a high bank into low RAM below 0x8000 and dump it to disk I ve heard others complain of the same prob lem notably that character from the Peoples Republic of Marin County It is kind of a PITA though Fm MISOSYS Inc If the data is perfect then how can there be a problem If you have PRO WAM and MED then I would pop open a window and look at the direc tory of the area of RAM i e look at the area of RAM where the directory of the RAMDISK would be Check it against what it should be
221. t down to say 3 that the format will work ok It would sure be a pain to have to rebuild the entire configu ration off single density diskettes Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Well no just moving the DCT won t help The problem is this When you execute RDUBL or PDUBL for that matter the DCTs for all existing five inch drives are modified for double density operation Of course drive six wasn t a floppy drive when you executed RDUBL was it You had to put it in with MOD1 DCT right If so I believe that the driver address is wrong Drive four is what was the drive zero floppy right Try copying the DCT con tents from the 4 DCT to the 6 DCT and Lets then fix the drive select value and see if that works Fim Daniel L Srebnick I think I understand what you are saying now Do you know of a utility that will copy the DCT for me Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Not off hand but the addresses and format for the DCT is documented in the technical sec tion of the Model 1 LDOS manual and you can copy modify blocks of bytes in memoty with DEBUG Make a backup of your working disks and when you ve got a configuration that works you can just SYSGEN the change as SYSGEN does save the DCT areas Fm Daniel L Srebnick OK then I will pull out the manual and get to it sshed alittle light ontne su Dech Appending files in LBASIC Fm Michael Brady How can I open a file in LBASIC to AP
222. tally out of center I have a few cm darkness on the top of screen while the last line is just about the bottom of the CRT Is there any way to adjust the position of the picture from bottom to top I read about adjusting the centering rings in the Tech Manual but the Video Board is some thing where I won t do anything without having asked twice Hope that you can help me and that the Video will soon be OK Btw Is it OK when I have to bring down the brightness when going from 80 to 64 Char Mode With my 4p green screen that is NO problem Ahh How can that Video Problem arise It worked all OK when it was a Model III After being upgraded to Model 4 it starts with problems Fm Jim Beard Ralf Adjusting the screen brightness is normal on a desktop Model 4 when you go from Model III to Model 4 mode I also have less adjustment on my 4P when I do that I dunno why Maybe the 4P video has some compensation built in The centering rings are on the CRT You will need to loosen some clamp screws to adjust them Be VERY careful when messing with the neck of the tube OSHA safety rules would have you wear welder s gloves and a motorcycle helmet while messing witha CRT from the rear and for good reason That s why I didn t say anything about the CRT up to now But the centering rings and the front to back position of the yoke can affect focus and the uniformity of focus over the screen The docs for adjustment of
223. tch the SYS3 file in LDOS I still get a find error According to the directory SYS3 SYS shares the same date as the other unmodified system files I take it that you have received no other com plaints about inability to patch that file It s ironic that having removed one file that ensured clock accuracy I can t re place it with another Thank you for your reminder that mod flags can be removed on backup unfortu nately that doesn t work with a straight copy command which is preferable for meas all files being backed up don t go to the same diskette that s why IFC4 would be nice We ll see To answer another point in your letter I am no longer using SYSRES in Model 4 mode now that I have gotten LS DOS system files over to the hard drive But I still have not done so in Model II mode Unlike the Model 4 LS DOS version the Model III LDOS version won t let me copy the system files directory slots DOS Subjects 34 DOS Subjects Volume IV 1i in use to the hard drive In LDOS mode I have all hard drive partitions disabled except for the last and that s where I want to put the system files if LDOS would let me I guess I should have exercised the dual option way back when I was first formatting the hard drive but would it have worked since that drive is not a part of the LDOS configura tion In Model 4 mode all partitions are en abled but one and I ha
224. tching DOCONFIG but instead decided to fix SYSGEN by adding BUR to the save table I really can t think of a reason BUR shouldn t be sysgened can you BAR should not since that might vary depending on whether an XLR8er board is enabled or not Any way here s the patch patch LS DOS 6 3 SYS8 SYS to save BURS on sysgen DOC 38 01 00 00 02 FOC 38 00 00 00 00 op Your comments appreciated Fm MISOSYS Inc Since the configura tion portion of the DOS cannot deal with configuring memory beyond 64K there is no justification for it messing with either BAR or BUR What you do to your own implementation is your own personal choice Incidentally DOCONFIG does absolutely no saving of any configuration data on its Own it simply supervises the controlled invocation of the DOS library which handles the creation of the CONFIG SYS file thus you were correct in your think ing to NOT patch DOCONFIG By the way you could have used the BANKER program from TMQ Lii Fall 1986 to free up those unused banks DOS Subjects 25 DOS Subjects Volume IN ou THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN Fm Adam Rubin Bob I tend to suspect there s a potential problem somewhere but I can t think of anything offhand Pll have to think about this one I don t have DOCONMFIG but I think I have a pretty good idea of what it does although not how it does it Fm Bob
225. tempting the patch and here s the results Boot up using floppy which is sysgened for HardDrive Automatically swapping Drive 0 4 The HardDrive is now the system drive and floppy 0 is now Drive 4 PATCH SYS3 SYS SYSTEM 4 SYS3CLK5 Patch utility aborts with the Find Line mismatch error Pulled out another sys tem floppy put in drive 4 and tried patch again Same error I ve got to be missing something obvious but darned if I can see it Fm MISOSYS Inc Examine the S YS3 SYS file to see if any portion of the patch was previously applied If PATCH says there s a mismatch there is Fm Mike Harrow David This little problem is getting strange The thing that MISOSYS Products Tidbits bothers me is that I m able to patch sys0 sys on the data drive no problem The FIND Line mismatch occurs only when attempting to patch sys3 sys I ve successfully applied the Ls Dos 6 3 patches first try Then booted up in LDOS 5 3 applied sysOclk5 fix without error All attempts to patch sys3 sys with different variations results with the FIND Line mismatch error The final attempt variation was to dust off my old Model III Insert a backup of my LDOS 5 3 Master Use QFB to copy it twice Boot up with Ist copy Copy sys3clk5 fix to drive 0 from MSCSI5 disk Place 2nd LDOS 5 3 master copy into drive 1 Enter the command PATCH SYS3CLK5 SYS3 SYS SYSTEM 1 The same Find Line mismatch error oc curs HE
226. that I make it available So between the proto type PCB and the final board I asked the engineering company to give me some additional untested circuitry for the alarm They added a 7406 to tie the alarm inter rupt of the clock to the external interrupt on the bus I could not even test it until I got boards back from the PCB house I could have hacked up one of the proto types to do that but chose not to As it was the decision was to use itif it worked and not use it if it didn t It worked So it was really a late addition to the software development adding ALARM program and interrupt task Kind of neat I think Somewhere down theroad I may investi gate altering the task processor of the Letters to the Editor 12 Letters to the Editor Volume IN o DOS to be able to switch states on a particular interrupt That way a mas kable external interrupt could switch programs That would be a method of popping up a window when the alarm went off Fm Mike Harrow I noticed the similar ity in the JCL files and suspected some thing like that had happened Sounds like you re just a little bit over worked there The Alarm is a nice feature and the addi tional RAM has me interested too I tried out the alarm and it executed just as documented The DS1287 interrupts at specifically timed intervals independentof CPU clock speed is another feature worthy of investigation There is one complaint suggestion
227. the CRT are 13 on page 146 of the old Model 4 Technical Reference Manual 26 2110 Model I III 4 4D Video Service Adjust ments from P 146 of 26 2110 Observe standard safety precautions when work ing with any CRT eye amp face protection gloves and thick lab apron or other pro tective clothing CRT may implode with out warning or apparent cause Measurements should be made using a 12 0 VDC input The ground strap on the CRT is necessary to prevent normal tube arcing from popping the video board Lay the computer top sideways to the left of the computer and plug the video cable back in Check the 12v ground line and 2amp fuse before proceeding with adjust ments FOCUS Adjust focus control R524 for best overall focus VERTICAL SIZE Adjust vertical size control R617 to produce vertical scan of approximately 6 inches HORIZONTAL LINEARITY Loosen deflection yoke clamp observe precau tions and slide linearity sleeve a sheet metal magnet on the CRT neck under the yoke forward or backward to equalize character spacing on the left and right sides of the screen WIDTH Arfter adjusting horizontal lin earity adjust width control L504 to pro duce horizontal scan of approximately 8 inches CENTERING Adjust centering rings on deflection yoke assembly to center dis play on screen top to bottom and left to right The centering magnets are on rings attached to the rear of the yoke Small tabs at
228. the THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY is the last week of the re spective month as follows Spring issue in February Summer issue in May Fall is sue in August and Winter issue in No vember That puts this issue on target Note that your mailing label usually has the expiration date of your subscription For instance those with 90 02 com plete their subscription with this issue If you want to save me the cost of mailing arenewal notice send in yourrenewal fee quickly I usually wait about a month after TMQ is mailed before sending out renewal notices TMQ advertising if you are interested in reaching a dedi cated TRS 80 audience consider THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY If you have a TRS 80 Model III or 4 related product to sell you can reach these buyers by plac ing your advertisement in our publica tion TMQ is read world wide Our sub The Blurb 3 The Blurb Volume IV 1i THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV 11 scribers are predominantly in the United States however we do have a significant number in Canada Europe and Austra lia Current space rates are as follows 125 75 50 20 Full page Half page Quarter page Ninth page Note the ninth page ad layout designated The Marketplace which would have been the last page of this issue had I received any Marketplace ads I com pose this so you have no artwork charge Just submit your text We accept only black amp whit
229. the command line I thought the access level for the file would be in FCBFIL 1 Am I coming to the wrong conclusion here Fm MISOSYS Inc You re coming to the correct conclusion My head must have been elsewhere Good reason for not getting any access violation errors I will have to publish a correction Fm Adam Rubin Roy I can guess what you were thinking of the same code appears in 6 2 6 3 s RESET command Source v2 p339 bottom asked Virgil LSI about RESET a while back and got Volume IV ii a song and dance Your straightforward answer is VERY much appreciated as I was getting pretty confused about the whole thing Fm MISOSYS Inc That s probably where I grabbed the code from If I had known about that report a second mistake would not have been made Here s the correction Starting from the code following the undate the extended date time comment Old code FLAGS SET 0 IY S A OPEN RET NZ LD A HL AND 7 CP 5 Replacement Code FLAGS SET 0 IY S A OPEN RET NZ INC DE Point to FCBt1 LD A DE P u privileges AND 7 CP 5 Note that Disk Notes 4 2 was prepared with the corrected version Upgrading 5Meg to 20Meg Fm John M Lewis Twisp WA Dear Mr Soltoff Three days ago I received diskDISK RSHARD and the Seagate 20 Meg Bubble I am just now composing this letter with Scripsit with the bubble installed configured and form
230. the dirt in my sys tem or know what problems it might cause Great grammar You could run a fan on the desktop version of a mod4 but you may have to do some cabinet renova tion to get a good air flow it s much easier to just put another supply in the large empty space under the CRT Fm Ted Haigh Joe I don t know if anyone still sells the 35W ASTEC sup ply The Pacific Computer Exchange could probably let you know if any are still around since they deal with lots of old RS hardware That s where I got the sec ond 65W supply from But sure a 35W would run the mother board fine that is if you can find one and it will be a bit smaller too Ok T I get a file together about adding the extra supply and maybe if I get real ambitious I li add a few Hi Res drawings too I have uploaded a file POWERFIX ARC to the LDOS forum on Compuserve on adding a second power supply to the Model 4 It has been created using the new ARCA so the files are crunched you need to use XARC4 orthenew ARC4 to extract them Included is a text ASCII file on the addition and a Hi Res picture showing most of the connections use GLOAD CMD or some similar Hi Res picture loader to view this picture For the people without a Hi res board there is a program that will allow you to print a Hi Res file to an EPSON printer that I will hopefully find in my archives soon and upload keep checking Connecting two modems Fm Bob Hayne
231. the line end set with the FORMS com mand and I had to find a way to prevent such cutting The strings I was handling varied from about 3 to 250 characters in length I also wanted to add a heading and page number on each sheet aoe eee aie ee ee oe ee D D D PRR EVER If you want to go beyond the maximum string length of 250 characters I use model Applications for the User 40 Applications for the User Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii 4 BASIC will stop you at its maximum of 255 However if you need to go further try MISOSYS EnhComp compiler which allows lengths up to 32767 With string lengths like that you can really spread your wings and fly Workers who handle substantial volumes of printout probably use fanfold paper with a tractor or some other autofeed system but for those who reed cut sheets by hand I am showing how to arrange for a pause at sheet end for paper insertion Printing a heading on each sheet and or stopping for manual paper feed require a running tally of number of printed lines I have covered two possible methods of doing this WARNING The programs presented herein require the setting of certain para meters as described in the text these parameters must be set before running the programs otherwise unsatisfactory results will ensue METHOD NUMBER ONE Printout without cutting words at line ends stopping at page end for paper chang
232. to do the best job I can But everyone in life must make some compromise I must be doing some thing right because MISOSYS is proba bly at this time the longest remaining surviving company still catering to the TRS 80 market Is it either stupidity or devotion One day I may know the an swer to that question For now the best place to go for support of our products is to CompuServe Our PCS 49 forum has been supporting the TRS 80 community since CompuServe first began as MicroNet We have some dedicated and knowledgeable folks fre quenting the forum These folks myself included can usually get you an answer to your question or point you in the right direction Look at the various topics cov ered in the seventeen sections in our fo rum 0 General NewUplds 1 Languages 2 MISOSYS Products 3 M1 3 Programming 4 Mod4 Programming 5 LDOS 5 Support 6 TRSDOS 6 Support 7 Applications 8 Hardware Hacking 9 MS DOS Topics 10 Programmer s Jrnl 11 Communications 15 Beta Testing 16 Open Forum 17 Sysop Business Can t afford CompuServe Try some of the local bulletin boards in your area Don t know them Go out and buy one copy of Computer Shopper Each issue lists the thousands of BBS s around the country Or try acomputer club There are stili clubs around the country and around the world who have experienced TRS 80 users Speaking of products for those who may have missed the news another big reason why I
233. to pick any up for you next weekend Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Pete Try both Timeline and Jameco they have had them in the past though I don t believe they are in their current ads My current Computer Shopper has hit the bit bucket so I can t check for sure Timeline is at 213 217 8912and Jameco is at 415 592 8097 Note that the supply is nominally rated at either 35 or 40 watts depending on who you talk to Fm Jim Beard Pete The third Astec 38W to go bad You have another prob lem Astec 38 watters are not particularly failure prone Fm Pete Granzeau Jim That s four years and two Model 4s Jim And this is the first on this Model 4 Actually it seemed okay while running but took about five to ten minutes after power on to actually permit the disk interface to work Which was the only time I really use the disk interface of course as Ihave a HD Fm Jim Beard Pete What a pain Did you find out exactly what was bad in either of the power supplies Fm Pete Granzeau Well one of them had a loose capacitor which I assume needed replacement My skills are at the screwdriver level not the soldering iron level which means I trust myself to re move and install the PS but I don t at tempt to fix it I do know a guy who fixes them though he sounded supremely un interested in my problem when I called him about it a few weeks ago my solution in the meantime had been to keep power on the model 4
234. to print using the K79 driver or any other results in the message CLOSE FAULT DRIVE NOT READY PRESS ENTER TO RETRY BREAK TO ABORT This message has been generated incorrectly the drive and printer are ready If BREAK is pressed the program loads the DE FAULT printer driver rather than say K79 Thus I have a corrupt master V1 9 distribution disk I encountered this error message with V1 80 before I received V1 81 though the reasons for itare proba bly different in the 2 cases I was very surprised to find that my exist ing versions of Electric Webster Gram mar and Style Checker and Hyphenator were incompatible with V1 9 The Cor nucopia ad and the product news in The Misosys Quarterly made no mention of this incompatibility Although I want a working version of V1 9 what will you charge me to gain a copy V2 0 I have also found that there are some differences between the file formats of V1 9 and earlier versions of LeScript Is there a conversion program to convert between different versions of LeScript files A last query Can LeScript VI 9 2 0 be patched for use with the Radio Shack hi res board I would much prefer if areply was sent by AIR MAIL as I urgently want to use LeScript VI 9 2 0 with all its wonderful features Fm Peter Ray Anitek to H L Smith Dear Mr Smith The fact that TRSDOS 6 and LSDOS display each file name twice in the LeScript disk directory is in fact a bug in those DO
235. ts for 29 95 Leo Christopherson TRS 80 Animated Game Disk with sound Leo s Greatest Hits 12 95 This is one of the greatest values in games ever produced Leo Christopherson wrote the very first animated game for the TRS 80 and the country went wild for it Android Nim will make everyone laugh to watch these life like creatures as they shake their heads up and down or side to side and blink at you stupidly as they wait for you to make a move Then Leo invented how to make the TRS 80 produce sound and added it to NIM He then followed Android Nim with the other games even getting Radio Shack to sell Dancing Demons which is a real scream It alone is well worth the price of this disk but you get ALL of Leo s programs on one disk for one great low price If you haven t yet bought this disk do it now It is a classic Each one of these games originally sold for 9 95 19 95 EACH The disk includes the famous games ANDROID NIM BEEWARY DUELING DROIDS DANCING DEMONS once sold by Radio Shack for 14 95 SNAKE EGGS and ANIMATED LIFE All games feature full sound effects and some of them are even in 3 part harmony You and your family will just love this disk Dancing Demon even features saving your song and dance routines to disk and four of them are included The possibilities are endless and it is always entertaining A great way to show off what your computer can do and always fun KIM WATT GAME DISK Space Colony Symon Capture Horse
236. tt author of Super Utility PowerMail and many more great programs If you own a hard disk and use LDOS this is the perfect insurance policy for your data The LDOS TOOLBOX is like a Super Utility for hard disks Features Disk Check and Disk Repair Sector Modification plus many many other useful utilities that makes using a hard drive even easier Each program contains a builtin help command so many times you don t even need to look things up in the manual just press lt Enter gt for help A very wise buy for hard disk users Model 4 ToolBelt same for Model 4 TRSDOS 6 use OK for 6 3 Like a SU for hard disk 24 95 gt Original 1986 price 49 95 by Kim Watt author of Super Utility PowerMail and many more great programs This is similar to the LDOS TOOLBOX except it is for the Model 4 TRSDOS 6 operating system all versions gt gt gt gt BOTH LDOS TOOL BOX AND MODEL 4 TOOLBELT FOR ONLY 44 95 lt lt lt lt Back Rest Super Fast Hard Disk Backup and Restore Saves hours of time For I MI or 4 34 95 gt Original 1986 price 99 95 BACK REST has proven to be a great time saver for thousands of TRS 80 hard drive users When reviewed by 80 MICRO they gave it FIVE STARS perfect It saves hours of time and is very easy to use BACK REST can back up 10 megabytes in about 10 minutes and 20 meg in about 30 40 minutes It also tells you how many disks to have ready Works under LDOS or TRSDOS 6 both versions on same
237. tter and if I recall properly a copy of the DOS 6 3 diskette I was using at the time Now here s the kicker if I may How many times have you done a DIR or CAT on a diskette from DOS Ready and watched the drive light flash momentar ily then have D OS come back and tell eege DOS Subjects 26 DOS Subjects Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IV ii you NO DISK Pressing lt CTRL gt lt R gt torepeat the command causes the diskette to be read properly NOTHING HAS CHANGED except the ticks of the clock Iam far from a hardware guru but I do put my hands in the box now and again Like Roy I am puzzled but not to the extent he is because I have not tried to resolve it Somehow I believe that the two are sol idly related At one time I suspected a weak power supply but one of the 4 s has a non Tandy hummer that 11 carry the machine to the ends of the earth yes it s a switcher but rock solid I wonder if it has anything to do with the period of time when the disk ette motors turn on like a spike on the power supply that reflects back to the DOS somehow How s about giving me a buzz sometime nights are best to midnight and let s compare notes if you feel you can add anything more to it In the meantime I think PLL send a copy of this to Roy much as I hate to put a hole in his theory Guess I ll also try running his test pro gram to see how it fares on
238. uffer And since OPEN INIT both require a buffer pointer be assigned to HL that precludes their using a default sys buf of any kind What was I thinking of 3 Never occurred to me to question whether DOS Subjects 24 DOS Subjects a a arr rr a is oe Sse Be en ee hts ee a Se es ee Sei ee SC Volume IV ii get put would be valid within a filter can t think of a good reason why not What Id forgotten was that type ahead doesn t PROCESS a keystroke but sim ply stores it for the next keyboard call I was worrying about the filter s disk i o possibly interfering with the external program s disk i o I realize now that s not likely to happen Once again muddy thinking must have been a full moon 4 Yeah but wouldn t they be finished with the sysbuf by the time a keyboard call came around Could you expand on this a bit Still hoping to steal a 256 byte buffer from low mem somewhere actu ally 1920 bytes for a video buffer would be even better dream ON Fm Adam Rubin Thanks for the pointer Shane I found the article you were refer ring to in the June July and August 85 issues of 80 Micro What Hardin dis covered there was that if you invoke any SVC that requires a DOS overlay the overlay currently in the overlay region gets clobbered not very surprising There are easier ways to restore the old overlay than the way he used but the problem does have to be taken care of
239. uld work only if a parallel port printer was being used Other conditions where the test would fail to detect an available printer would be 1 if a serial printer was in use with ROUTE PR CL 2 the printer device was redirected to a disk file via ROUTE PR PRINT TXT or Applications for the User 39 Applications for the User Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Re EE REEEN E NN 3 if the DOS spooler was in use via SPOOL PR Because of these three cases it is useful in my opinion to dem onstrate to TMQ readers the best way to check for printer availability Those with a copy of The Programmer s Guide are directed to page 2 30 for a small discussion of the CTL 0 function of the PR device PRINTING FROM BASIC OR ENHCOMP WITHOUT i CUTTING WORDS AT LINE END sheteteteT tate IER eet seas OM state orotate ar yt ate KAN PRINTING HEADINGS PAGE NUMBERS ETC AND USE OF CUT SHEETS and PRINTING WITH JUSTI FIED RIGHT MARGIN Ineeded a program to input sort and print out strings on model 4 with LSDOS 6 3 I could have handled strings and printout with a word processor which however won tsort sol had toresortto BASIC and to MISOSYS BSORT CMD or DSM4 CMD for input sorting and printing Word processors won t cut a word in two at line end wraparound but a printout from BASIC will do so if the word straddles
240. ume IV ii We are not able to get PRONTO to load Keep getting the following error mes Sage No external memory is available for Pro nto We have not used the program for a long time and since then we have upgraded the computer to 512K with a Super Mem expansion board from Anitek We are wondering if that is the reason we can not load Pronto We would greatly appreciate any infor mation and advise you may have to over come the above problem Fm MISOSYS Inc Dear Mike Note first of all that the PRO NTO package was renamed PRO WAM 3 years ago to avoid a trademark infringement with Chemical Bank Also PRO WAM was upgraded to version 2 x about 2 5 years ago None of these changes affect the problem you are currently having The operationofPRO WAM requires one free 32K memory bank Installation of Anitek s memory expansion board in it self would not eliminate the two extra 32K memory banks normally available in a 128K Model 4 however if you are also using their RAM drive software and are using all memory in excess of 64K for the drive then you have no free memory for PRO WAM s installation I suggest you try to reduce your usage of RAM drive memory to allow at least one free bank bank 1 or 2 I would hope that their software permits such flexibility PROWAM vs BASCOM Fm Dave Krebs Joe Do you know of any conflict between PROWAM and BASCOM or BASCOM compiled pro grams I have noted r
241. unt for why I can trun in M3 mode that some jump vector or other value the OS expects isn t right So what s the answer Any of you hardware gurus have any suggestions The Hardware Corner 80 The Hardware Corner 4 ras 80 SALE aen RADIO SHACK TANDY OWNERS Find The Computer Equipment That Tandy No Longer Sells Computers DMP 130 EE EH WEE 245 DMP 200 ee ee Te ee 155 Mod 42 Drive e e e ee e 345 DMP420 eres teas Mod 4 2 Drive 128K 22 365 DMP 430 re EE E 365 Mod 4P 2 Drive 2cceece0 335 DMP 2100 24 Pin 395 i Mon 100 AK sealanna ees DWP Il eee ee ae Mee idee dente gege E A ace a oe a ne 245 Printers amp Hard Drives DWP 210 215 DWP510 395 Tandy 5MegH D 335 Line Printer 5 e 195 Tandy 12 Meg H D nu 395 Line Printer ssccocooosoo 135 Tandy 15 Meg HD e e 465 Line Printer Ill Kuer aot o Tandy 35 Meg H D e 875 410 Tractor New en e 95 All hard disks include cable amp software Tractor for 2100 cccsclevewssices 115 DM TS 66 655 46446 65 443660058 DW ll Tractor cccccccccses 125 DREES eee ee eee errr vo DW ll Sheet Feeder New 245 Software and Miscellaneous Mod 3 TRS DOS amp Manual 22 Mod 3 Personnel Manager 15 Mod 3 General Ledger pia Bee Mod 4 General Ledger oe 55 Mod 3 Accounts Payable 29 Mod
242. up The article reminded me of this and I hope it doesn t return This is of little use to you but thought would pass it along as the disappearance is most interesting Please count on my continued subscrip tion as long as youcan continue to publish the Quarterly For this person it is truly a bargain Model 4 BBS Software Fm Dennis Earl Copeland OK gentle men Enough beating around the bush Who or where can a good bbs program for Model 4 be obtained My patience grows very thin because my board members do too I need a good BBS for the M4 with ds floppiesand 15meg hd Need the required maintenance programs sample files main programs and also the always required DOCUMENTATION I don t mind buy ing itifitisn t too expensive It just seems that wherever I check that nobody wants to turn loose of one All I want is the skeleton bbs system to customize for myself If I had something you wanted I would certainly offer it up Now in another vein need to know if anyone has grafted the ymodem 1k and or 1k batch protocols into xt4 or a program gt like it If so the same parameters in line 2 are needed for that I Enjoy the forum Thanks for your help and comments DOS Subjects Fm Pete Granzeau You might try Mel Patrick s BBS Program I think he calls it FASTBBS or something like that His own BBS is 604 594 7398 His term program FastTerm 14 x is in the DL here and includes 1K XMODEM if that s
243. useful in 286 and 386 comput ers When used with our extemal JUMBO it lets you share your JUMBO drive between computers ga JUMBOhas custom chips high speed brushless motors automatic circuits no pots to vibrate out of calibration and fewest parts to assure long life and technical leadership for years to come Be using advanced Reed Soloman error correction JUMBO typi cally backs up more than 100 000 cartridges before encountering its first error of less than one error per 1000 years if the cartridge is fully backed up every working day Jumbo 295 5S amp H SOSYS Tape Adaptor 75 3S amp H O BONS Externa Adaptor 110 5S amp H Ji ina VA 2217 DC2000 tape 22 50 2S amp H eter AA eae M C amp VISA S amp H are U S only For the Tax Preparer Individual Lawyer C P A and the Buy only the disks you ll use Our llth Year of TRS 80 Income Tax Programming Last year there were 5 disks for Personal Taxes and 3 disks for Business Taxes for the Models III and 4 4P There may be another Personal Disk this year depending on how many new Forms are necessary There are twice as many disks for the Model I The Personal Series includes the 1040 1040 X 1040 ES all Schedules and Forms 2119 2210 2441 3468 3800 3903 4136 4137 4562 4684 4797 4835 4868 4972 6251 6252 8027 8283 8396 8582 8606 8615 and 8814 1040A 2106 The BuSiness Series includes the 1
244. ve made drive 3 a tiny partition an emulated floppy put on line by sysgen I read with interest the portion of your letter that said I could carry several SD disks at one time I have tried two there is no problem other than a warning mes sage that linkage has not been broken when I disable only one of them Am I asking for corruption problems if I ask for three on line at one time Finally thank you for your information on re enabling outboard floppy drives I _should ve known P S There is a place on the front of the hard drive for a brand name are you going to be coming out with one that we can stick on The drive certainly deserves to carry the label MISOSYS Fm MISOSYS Inc Henry I took the cable you returned and connected if up to my cable tester I found absolutely no problem with the cable I strenuously wiggled both ends of the cable while the connectors were plugged into the tester and under test The cable exhibited no opens nor shorts i e the cable is perfect Since you returned it TU assume you had no problems with the other cable If you do still continue to have a problem the only other thing I can susp ct is the cable assembly mounted on the cabinet which connects to the host adaptor Keep me posted I m glad you found the problem with the reading of the clock under LDOS as yours was an isolated case But then you may be one of the few folks replacing an older clock with our newe
245. w drive where can I get one other than Tandy and what is the cost of something like this with or without installation If without what does this entail I would appreciate any help I get on this Fm Mark Mueller Double sided drives are just that They use both sides of a disk Your single sided drives only use one side You can upgrade any Model 1 3 4 to double sided drives simply by buying the drives and making or buying a cable which has all its connector pins in it I have and others too flipped the existing cable over 180 degrees and used that Anyway you will need new drives at about 79 each depending on where you buy them Standard 360K IBM PC 5 1 4 inch drives work fine in a TRS 80 as well as 80 track 720K 5 1 4 inch and 3 1 2 inch drives A side benefit is that the new drives use less power and your computer can power more of them than the circa 1980 drives Tandy supplied As for the disks the 96 TPI 80 track ones were tested to operate in the aforemen tioned 80 track 720K 5 1 4 inch drives but will work in any lower track count drive too Confused yet In summary to do double sided you gotta buy new drives The Model 4 and LS DOS are already equipped to work with them Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo In addition to what Markhas said you can get double sided drives directly from Roy at MI SOSYS 1 800 MISOSYS He has pretty good prices and is very familiar with all the Tandy Mo
246. why it does it I still don t understand why it s necessary but now at least I know why it does it I think an error message and exiting to DOS would have told the user more than an unexplained reboot does If I remember correctly ORCH actually takes the command you used to invoke it Sticks a CMD on the end and tries to open that file Interesting technique Fm Ray Pelzer If I m not mistaken it was part of the grande scheme that helped the system to know what type of system it was running on Oe mod 1 s were always Caps only mod 3 s less likely or some similar weirdness More CKDRV data Fm MISOSYS Inc In the last issue of TMQ I presented a problem of duplicate filenames appearing on a floppy diskette the problem being experienced by a few folks My internal testing generated empirical evidence which pointed to a problem with gate array machines only The test program had failures on all three gate array machines at MISOSYS but no failures on any of the three non gate array machines Since I did not feel that the evidence was conclusive due to an insuf ficient number of machines being tested I asked others to run the program Here follows the feedback to date Note that I stili continue to ask for further tests Fm Richard R King 808 Orleans Place Raleigh NC 27609 919 872 5846 af ter the 4th ring you hit an answering box Enclosed is additional documenta tion letter to
247. y the printer manu facturer reinked after it had run dry one pass through the reinker good quality lint free paper Same results as item 1 3 Ribbon same as item 2 but reinked two passes through the reinker instead of one good quality lint free paper Same results The Hardware Corner 77 The Hardware Corner Volume IV ii THE MISOSYS QUARTERLY Winter 1989 90 Volume IN 0 as item 1 but some sheets printed slightly unsharp and tended to smear in handling revealing some ink excess Heads some what dirtier than in item 1 4 Brand new ribbon as in 1 cheap lint shedding paper Head quite dirty and gummed up with ink debris several prob lems due to jammed pins 5 Reinked ribbons as in items 2 and 3 cheap lint shedding paper Same results as in item 4 All reinking was done with black ink supplied by Computer Friends which judging by its specifications is among the best available These results seem to indicate that con trary to my previous suppositions the problems with pin clogging are due much more to the ink paper paste produced by the cheap papers than to excessive reink ing so the villain may well be cheap linty paper In any event even when using good paper careful judgment should be used when reinking so as to have enough ink to work properly but no more Evi dently an overinked ribbon will neither help the pins nor contribute to a sharp printout I used to think that ribb
248. you will rarely have to perform this step I don t know what the root cause of Ken s problem in the power up sequence was but I have not had any problems in pow ering up with any sequence The message that the clock is not in stalled is displayed when the MCLOCKx or MALARM x software cannot see the clock This would occur normally when the battery is exhausted or if you have the hard drive turned off or unplugged from the computer and you invoke either of those programs Incidentally the clock patches are designed to bypass any gar bage initialization if the added code does not see the clock This is important in the SYS3CLK fix which reads the clock time during every CLOSE operation If it doesn t see the clock hardware it does no updating of the system time The Model III version of SDFORM is no more prone to being unable to create the requested subdisk file than the Model 4 version A limitation of subdisk as is with diskDISK is that the DSK file cre ated must be allocated to no more than twelve extents that s three directory rec ords If you attempt to SDFORM a large subdisk on a very fragmented disk one with many small holes of unallocated granules as observed from a FREE com mand SDFORM may be unable to complete the creation The exact code is used on Model 4 and Model III I suspect that Ken s attempt to create a subdisk using SDFORMS was targeting a frag mented disk drive M
249. ything the first iteration AO hex the rest of the time and A1 hex just before the file not found error Incidentally what does PRINT ERRS print DOS error message give you after BASIC s file not found error If you have a few minutes I d appreciate the results very much Thanks Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Adam I think that Roy suspects the IP problem to be internal to the 1773 Myself I still don t like the looks of that ready plus something else I forget without my book handy line connected to that floppy support gate array chip Fm Adam Rubin Joe That line is Ready output from FDC or Enable Write Precomp input to FDC I side with Roy on that one An early report on the troublesome HDBOOT said that there were no problems if there was something in floppy 0 that returned an index pulse An unformatted disk was fine A 6 x disk with the index notch covered Over was not The 4P boot ROM sends a restore with verify to floppy 0 and the FDC in the GA machines would never go un busy unless there was an index pulse one five nine don t know how many it wanted on that drive or that drive was already at 0 In any case did you realize the 4P was warranted for I think 90 days against defects in materials and workmanship but no time limit was given for defects in design Heh heh heh Fm Joe Kyle DiPietropaolo Well the next step I d say is to get a 1770

TMQ Vol IV.ii - tim

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