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SOLUS NEWS, Vol 1, No 3, April 1978

1. REPRINT Address Original Change 034C 41 4E 034D 46 20 034E 20 43 034E 46 41 0350 55 46 0351 4E 4C 0352 43 00 EOM 0353 54 F5 NULL PATCH 0354 49 AF 0355 4F D3 0356 4E FB 0357 20 Fl 0358 43 06 0359 41 01 035A 4C FE 0358 4C FA 035C 00 C9 OUTPUT 0801 DB F1 01002 00 C5 0E03 E6 47 OE04 80 CD 01005 C2 19 OE06 01 co OE07 OE 78 OE08 Fl CI 0E09 D3 B7 OEOA 01 C9 PATCH FOR CNTL C TEST OEOB F5 E6 PATCH OEOC 00 TE OEOD 00 C3 OEOE F1 C6 OEOF C9 OF MAIN INPUT ROUTINE 0E10 DB CD 0E11 00 1F OE12 E CO OE13 01 CA OE14 C2 10 OE15 10 OE OE16 OE 00 0E17 DB 00 0E18 01 00 INPUT TEST OEAD DO CD OEAE 00 1F OEAF E CO OEBO 01 00 0EB1 CC C4 0E82 C3 OB 0EB3 OF OE INPUT TEST OFBE DB CD OFBF 00 1F OFCO E6 CO OFCI 01 C8 OFC2 CO 00 CASSETTE INPUT NOT CONSECUTIVE 22F7 06 FA 22F8 01 50 22F9 EZ CA 22FD 07 FB Number 18 21 CASSETTE OUTPUT NOT CONSECUTIVE 2304 06 FA 2307 C2 CA 230C 07 FB CALL NULL ADDING ROUTINE 230E 06 CD 230E 01 53 2310 FE 03 2311 F4 00 Amateur Computing 78 July 22 23 Sheraton National Motor Hotel Arlington Virginia CALL FOR PAPERS This is to invite you to present a paper participate in a panel discussion display an amateur computer system or sponsor a tutorial at Amateur Computing 78 This will be a weekend microcomputer festival with attendance of several thousand people intere
2. T oad Extended Basic 2 Load Read program 3 GE first program from tape be sure to note end address 4 ENTR CB00 10 DO This skips the word LIST 5 ENTR End Add 42 2E OD 80 OD This will return to SOLOS at the end of the listing 6 EXEC 0 7 SET IP 3 Program will now list itself then return to SOLOS 8 EXEC 0 9 Modify the program as necessary and SAVE 10 Repeat from 3 as necessary This whole process is not as bad as it sounds and sure beats retyping and debugging 500 line programs Some of the areas that require modification are 1 PTC does not support 2 letter variables Formatting is different 2 3 PTC does not have a 0 element in an array 4 String manipulation is different and string arrays are not permitted 5 PTC will not take a negative number to an integral power or SOR 0 6 RND will usually require a 0 argument while MITS wants a positive not zero number INPUT statements require a comma after a string not a In print statements commas or semicolons must be used before and after strings It may sound like a hassle but I have found that it is worth the trouble 38 WRITE PROGARM CA00 F5 E5 D5 C5 2A 00 CB 70 23 22 00 CB 3E 00 EB FC O0 CL DL ET FL C9 7 CB00 00 DO READ PROGRAM CA00 E5 2A 00 CB 23 7E E6 7F B7 CA 04 CA FE OA CA 04 CA 22 00 CB El C9 CB00 10 DO As
3. 17 5 tok PE 4 TEST Pia NEAR o O O O HH 0 2 3 y 8 O O CHIP SELECT 3 0 4 0 2 Jo MEMORY O 3 ARRAY 0 1 FIGURE 2 Cigcor MOD FOR SEATTLE Comporee 6K RAM BoseD Foe PARALLEL ADPPRESSIAG OF COLUMMS d 2 18 provisions in Jerry Lenz wro Micropolis bu together to fi more info is r about this On page 3 of the SOFTWARE NOTES Dec issue te tha t not the casset gure out how to LE The driv El Lord complained about the the Micropolis disk opera ting s t he has his printer working under the two of them are going lack of ystem for peripherals to get equested to let us know t is incredible tha H anything other that might hel well we do 94205 In iss Calaway gives reproduced the great journal free to critic advertizing re reproduced her Processor Technology is th The device wh pair of Sol s including hard and a ribbon c Sol Software would pinpoint intended the p demand they wi computer cente of these If Mention you re Robert Frase than the disk and G p him TETS ue nu the 1 article here for You really shou ize any manufactu venue It s on our side e for your convenience TN TS 8K 4 ermantown get his MI Called Dr mber 1 of th ld PIC MAY PRO DUCE SOL HAR
4. IHE SONOMA COUNTY COMPUTER CLU B WILL HOLD REGULAR MEETINGS AT 7 30 P M ON THE LAST MONDAY EVENIN G OF EACH MONTH EXCEPT THURSDAY APRIL 27 AND DECEMBER DATE NO I YET SET OTHER BAY AREA MEETINGS MARIN COUNTY COMPUTER CLUB 1ST WEDNESDAY OE MONTH AT 7 00 PM AT MARIN COMPUTER CENTER ABOVE APRIL 5 HOMEBREW COMPUTER CLUB 2ND DIRECTIONS 415 472 2650 NEXT MEETING STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR CE CONTACT HOMEBREW COMPTUER CLUB WEDNESDAY OF MONTH AT 7 00 PM AT NTER 2575 SAND HILL ROAD MENLO PARK POB 626 MOUNTA NEXT MEETING APRIL 12 N VIEW CA 94042 SONOMA COUNTY COMPUTER CLUB NE WSLETTER INFORMATION Oki CALL EARL HERR AT 707 632 5425 Extensys was not able to demon the March meeting of the S F at the April 16 meeting Cons place strate their SOL compatible products at Peninsula chapter They plan to do it ult the last issue for the time and AXIOM PRINTER DRIVER FOR BASIC By Bruce Barron Processor Technology s long awaited Extended Basic has finally made it out This is an excellent Basic and has built in functions to use the SOLOS pseudo ports I have an Exiom EX 800 printer which requires a short output driver to handle timing and to provide CRT output in parallel with t
5. D000 users with small through FFFB and uses e most other PT software ced this to switch memory man 0000 2FFB in fac oe ngly with relocation to any 1K boundary is possible software that uses ALS8 utility or return entry point the information given ts must be necessary relocation is accomplished by subtracting an offset as distributed on CUTS tape ually ALS8 may be relocated to A note of warning RAM from the high order byte of each address The offset is given by Offset D016 High order byte of origin of ALS8 system storage The information for the steps below was collected through several evenings of listing changing and testing aided by a disassembles simulator package that wrote last fall and an automatic relocator that was published in BYTE The steps in the relocation process are 1 Load ALS8 at address XX80 XX is the high order byte of the start of ALS8 system storage plus OF hex 2 Relocate blocks of code listed below DF80 E3E5 E47D E7F0 ESOB EEE4 F022 F62B F634 F9DE FA00 FA64 FA9C FB45 FB57 FBC6 FBC8 FFFB An automatic relocator program should be used for this step 3 Manually relocate addresses in the following tables E3E6 EA7C Six byt ntries last two are high low address FA65 FA9B Ihr byt ntries last two are low high address 4 A
6. AR oa Ne GSA oe val aye atte RE PRINT A N 1 X 1 A N 2 X 2 A N N X N B N INPUT NUMBER OF EQUATIONS N DIM A N N X N 1 B N 1 A1 N N FOR I 1 TO N FOR J 1 TO N PRINT INPUT A I J INPUT A I J NEXT PRINT INPUT B I INPUT B I 1 NEXT MAT A1 INV A MAT X A1 B FOR I 1 TO N PRINT X 1 X I 1 NEXT This program shows the power of PTC s Extended BASIC matrix statements Bruce plans to send us an electronic circuit frequency response analysis based on it DUES REMINDER a a a A e 1 NEW BORMAT tt AAA Rg OW RN E 1 2ud WEST COAST COMPUTER EA TERES A e uen p A 1 NEW CHAPTERS y A A 2 DOCUMENTATION NOTES e EI ER EE RU AS ote wlohe salah anette 2 HARDWARE NOTES ku a Ese ror Ee a ee up cese oH P ENS W 3 MY SOL AND CP M AND A HELIOS Ron Parsons 5 SOLUS HARDWARE REVIEW ssis a ial a eo A T Atey 6 A MINI REVIEW HE DOS MOVER 44 4 4 Sa at Bi
7. Your readers may be interested in a Canadian addition to the support available for Sol and VDM The attached sheet describes a graphics package that is available from Micro Ware Ltd in Toronto 27 Firstbrooke Rd Toronto Ont M4E 212 I purchased the GraphicAdd kit and I am extremely happy with it the piggyback PC board was easy to assemble and install Everything worked immediately The documntation is good and the graphics driver supplied on CUTS tape is easy to use All in all I regard GraphicAdd as a satisfying addition to my system acquired at a very reasonable price Yours sincerely Arthur L Close VANCOUVER B C CANADA Editor We ll have a review of GraphicAdd and another graphics add n for Sol in a future issue O Congratulations on a fine job with SOLUS NEWS up to now keep up the good work To help you keep it up 1 am enclosing my 10 membership dues for 1975 as indicated in the October November issue Also enclosed with this letter is a brief description of my adventures with relocating cassette ALS8 to a more convenient location in my SOL system if this information might be useful to other members please include it in a future issue Also any additional information or corrections would be appreciated By the way do all ALS8 tapes contain the same version Users who attempt the relocation should check my information against their actual code before changing anything I a
8. their peripherals Anyone with Has anyone asked Micropolis O BASI Ther they would not provide for the terminal asked if we know any little secret C to run on his SOL Dobb s Journal is publication isting of all of the needed patches those who don t yet subscribe to this It takes no advertizing rer without feat of being cul Box E Menlo Park CA a letter from Jack L We ve so it is t off of tion form e s a subscrip DWARE DEBUGGER ich they pro to make it work ware and software Parasol would consist of a board that to connect to the paral able in the doctor woul malfunctions in the roduct for their deal 01 ers fo llel t th plugs into the contemplating the production of a device at would let one SOL diagnose hardware problems in another SOL udly call the ParaSol would sell takes a tail because it r about 150 re sick Sol port of the doctor patient only 11 make it generally rs you would like one ad about it RUMORS availab and other clusters of Sol le s let PTC know you ar in SOLUS NEWS user perform tests that They originally but if there is enough SOLUS chapters may want to share one interested Processor Tech is putting the finishing touches on their FORTRAN The disk versi on will be released firs will not be fa with Helios to In exchange th Pasca
9. CB CB CA CB CB CB CB CB CA CB CO CA CB CO CB CO C8 CB CB CO CA 43 35 0660 0670 0680 0690 0700 0710 0720 0730 0740 0750 0760 0770 0780 0790 0800 0810 0820 0830 0840 0850 0860 0870 0880 0890 0900 0910 0920 0930 0940 0950 0960 0970 0980 0990 1000 1010 1020 1030 1040 1050 1060 1070 1080 1090 1100 1110 1120 1130 1140 1150 1160 1170 1180 1190 1200 1210 1220 1230 1240 1250 1260 1270 1280 ORA A JNZ FIRST IF 1ST CHAR BARRING SOME MOV A B CPI CR JZ GOTCR IF CARRIAGE RETURN OUT LDA TAPEF ORA A JZ DISPL IF NO TAPE FLAG DISPLAY TAPE STA TAPEF ENSURE TAPE FLAG SET LDA FLSTS FILE STATUS ORA A CZ OPEN IF CLOSED MVI A UNIT CALL WRBYT WRITE B TO UNIT A JC EXIT RIN POP B POP D POP H RE GOTCR MVI A 1 STA NWLNF SET NEW LINE FLAG JMP OUT SEND WHEREVER LINE WENT FIRST MOV A B DON T JUDGE LINE BY CERTAIN CHARS CPI EXCLM JZ CLOSE IF EXCLAMATION MARK JM DISPL IF BLANK LF CR NULL EIC CPI RUBOT JZ DISPL IF RUBOUT CLASSIFY AS TAPE IN DISPLAY LXI H NWLNF MVI M 0 CLEAR NEW LINE FLAG CPI is JM DISPL IF lt ASCII ZERO CPI
10. became apparent speci onboard SOL generated port Dutronics was n author s home bringin symptoms Just before ications After some use several problems fically pertaining to proper response to the wait states and writing to the parallel output otified and Mr Dutra personally visited the g along his own test equipment to observe the Thanksgiving 1977 Dutronics supplied a new board with several mo all known problems wit made the same modifica still had and gave th in his SOL difications installed which supposedly fixed h the DZ80 80R when used in a SOL The author tions to the older prototype board which he e new board to Mr I Hartley Wurkz for testing Mr Wurkz reports that the Dutronics board worked in his SOL with tatic memory boards u eliably when using th ended to blow up wh the same time The 080A The parallel utronics Mr Wurkz SA n a sing 21102 type memory chips It did not work e Extensys memory board however Programs en using the Dutronics board and Extensys board Extensys board worked reliably with an Intel port worked OK with the fixes made by uses the parallel port for interfacing his SOL as a terminal to his MSAI Mr SOL whi 7 Wurkz also reports that before he could read tapes with his le using the Dutronics board he found it necessary t Mr read and write
11. pass along my thoughts on it after I work with a while I wish that all my BASIC5 tapes could he used with it but no go I ll have to enter all of my programs again by hand Oh well I can rewrite and improve them at the same time Now let s see what did I get for my 45 00 Be advised that I am plugged into the Pascal News and hav ven ordered Z 80 8080 Pascal for my company HPR from the University of California at San Diego I ll in report when I met it working it costs 200 copy Sincerely Rod Montgomery 23 THE ENCLOSED CIRCUIT MAY BE WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IN ORDER TO REMOVE POWER LINE HASH IN YOUR SOL TOO HAD TROUBLE WITH POWER LINE GARBAGE ESPECIALLY WITH MY VIDEO MONITOR SINCE THAT WAS VISIBLE THE CIRCUIT SHOWN IS NOT CRITICAL AT ALL BUT THE VOLTAGE RATINGS OF THE CAPACITORS MUST BE OBSERVED IHE INDUCTORS WERE HOMEMADE USING 16 GA WIRE INSULATED AND WOUND ON A HALF INCH ROD IHE NICE THING ABOUT THIS CIRCUIT IS THAT I IS CHEAP ALSO NOTE THAT IT S NOT DESIGNED TO PROTECT AGAINST A NEARBY LIGHTNING STRIKE AS ARE THE UNITS EQUIPPED WITH G E MOV UNITS RATHER I FILTERS THE HASH ONLY IRY ONE YOU MAY DO AS DID AND P
12. supplied onboard b allow eas write another bootstrap program which works The author has not tested th There This precludes us with the complete k ootstrap function o y selection of the e onboard bootstrap ing the standard bootstrap PROM which is lts The author did not implement the n his board The board does however port addresses so it is very easy to either in his Altair or his SOL is one input port circuit which Tarbell calls WAIT in which th the bi da tri state gating 1 rectional data bus operate p roperly It is very ogic does not include PDBIN Because of in the SOL this WAIT port may not straightforward using spare gate circuits already on the Tarbell board to correct this omission One more th always in and alway instructi personali modified Late cir serts one wait stat ing that may prove to be a problem is that the SOL e for every onboard memory read or write S inserts a wait st on onboard or not ty module has defe the I O wait state ate for every input and every output The author who is using a 2708 ated all memory wait states and has circuit so that only onboard input and cuits is critical f S interface must run The k circuit Also al output addresses insert wait states Proper operation of the wait or pro
13. C8 32 00 00 42 53 43 R OF H CB B7 16 CB CO DA 78 FE C2 32 33 21 F9 45 CB CA FIL EADER IS B CA CB C1 2E CB 36 CB CD DA 33 45 CB 35 54 S to permit display of underline 00 1C CB 32 00 Mods to SOLO Backspace is DEL only Shift DEL is underline Programmer Ronald G ORG OC1FEH DB 7FH BAC ORG OC28BH DB 7FH pac CO cl 44 D4 30 C3 CB 7FH e Warning This change may affect other software Parsons kspace TYP UILT ELS EWHE KS is now 7F only 5FH A PATCH TO EXTENDED CASSETTE BASIC TO PROVIDE NULLS AFTER EACH OUTPUT LINE 31 By Processor Tech 10 REM 20 REM CHANGE CRLF ROUTINE IN BASIC TO JUMP 30 REM TO THE CRLF ROUTINE IN SOLOS CUTER 40 REM WHICH WILL OUTPUT A NUMBER OF NULLS 50 REM EQUAL TO THE NUMBER SET IN SOLOS CUTER 60 REM 70 REM FOR SOLOS AND FOR CUTER LOCATED AT 0C000H 80 REM IHE ADDRESS OF THE MEMORY LOCATION THAT 90 REM CONTAINS THE NUMBER OF NULLS TO OUTP
14. Dutronics board to tapes are writ the parallel output port did not work properly in his SOL the tape interface UART fine with the 8080A with a TI TMS 6011 which then allowed tapes properly Mr Wurkz was unable work He replaced a GI AY5 1013 in his IMSAI 8080 which to get o replace worked him to the Wurkz then gave the Dutronics board to Mr Bugs for further testing Mr Bugs found that the right when writing tapes found that Mr Bugs agrees that when using the Dutronics The author has found SOL It now works wi board control ch Dutronics board doesn t act quite For some reason the screen display is altered during the writing process although Mr Bugs says that the ten correctly and can be read in correctly H e also the Extensys board does not work reliably that the Dutronics board the old one updated with the same changes as the new one works somewhat in his the parallel output port which he uses for ling his I O Selectric typewriter He was able to read tapes which had been previo SOL display did strange Dutronics board Fur usl ch read in without error The author has succeeded in getting the Tarbel l controller to operate having had no success in getting it to operate in the Dutronics board in y written with an 8080 but found that the things wh
15. been typed using Michael Shrayers Electric WA 2 99 Pencil Word Processor CASSETTE INPUT NOT CONSECUTIVE PATCHES TO ALTAIR CASSETTE VERSION OF LEVEL 4 0 BASIC 1145 os ES FOR USE ON A PROCESSOR TECHNOLOGY SOL WITH SOLO 14 do ER LOAD THE ORIGINAL PROGRAM MAKE THE CHANGES AND SAVE 1148 07 A A COPY BEFORE RUNNING IT CASSETTE OUTPUT NOT CONSECUTIVE ADDRESS ORIGINAL CHANGE 114E 06 FA 8K V 4 0 1152 C2 CA DISABLE TERMINAL INITIALIZATION SET UP CUTTER Tom PZ EB ze e a CASSETTE INITIALIZATION ee a Le 1159 06 F7 RST 6 z 115A 01 00 193D FO FA 193E OF C9 Extended Mods DISABLE CONSOLE SWAPPING FUNCTION SEND NULL CHARACTER ON CSAVE SO CLOAD WORKS OK 3A43 FE 00 0030 00 F5 Gd 1 Ue AE 3A44 43 C 00 0032 00 D3 PREVENT TERMINAL SETUP AND INITIALIZE 0033 00 FB LUTTER 0034 00 Fl z 0035 00 06 z 0036 00 01 TA T 0037 00 c9 38ED E6 D3 OUTPUT TO THE SOLO RESET THE FLAGS oum ds co m UD ps SHORTEN ILLEGAL FUNCTION CALL AND OUTPUT 0 CALL TO CASSETTE 0549 E 47 054A 80 CD oi e i m i 2 o RE co 034B 47 55 054D 05 78 054E F1 cl 154E D3 B7 154F D3 B7 1550 01 C9 Number 18 Dr Dobb s Journal of Computer Calisthenics amp Orthodontia Box E Menlo Park CA 94025 Page 43
16. for the question raised by Larry Leranth about TREK 80 I offer the following LOCATION hex WAS IS 0076 AO 20 0D38 80 00 0D46 80 00 For reference the subroutine in question starts at 0D2D T D T I his was worked out in about 15 minutes using EBUG 8080 by Bay Area Timeshare Inc his is a real time Debug aid assembler and disassemble which very highly recommend to everyone but especially software hackers Computers and the Stock Market This letter is to computer hobbyists who are interested in or have experience speculating in the Stock or Commodities Markets If you are interested in the markets and computers it s only natural to combine the two hobbies in an attempt to maximize profits or more important to minimize losses It also seems that an information exchange program among a small group of dedicated people seeking speculative profits would offer several financial advantages to the members of the group What propose is a nationwide club with a monthly or bi monthly newsletter that allows members to benefit from the combined talents techniques and experiences of the group The newsletter would be generated by the inputs of the members foresee as a minimum the following types of services or technical articles that would be included in the letter TECHNICAL ARTCILES the use of moving averages The application of successful systems with home computers Basic articles on the markets How to
17. get started in commodities with 2 000 The Dow Jones Industrial Averages Trading in Warrants Options and other forms of speculation PROGRAMMING How to program HIGH LOW CLOSE data and retrieval Moving Averages Momentum indexes Advance Decline lines or any other technical indicators ADVERTISING Offerings of books programs systems or equipment for sale loan or swap If making more money in the markets with computers interests you write to me and let me know how you feel about a club as have described Richard T Vannoy LT USN COMSUBRON SIXTEEN c o FLEET POST OFFICE New York New York 09501 Commodities Interested contacting computer oriented individuals who are working on commodity trading systems I ve developed 3 contact Jack Adison 60 East 42nd Street Suite 739 new York NY 10017 212 434 7843 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 230 240 250 PRINT TAB 20 SIMULTANEOUS EQUATIONS 39 PRINT WRITTEN BY BRUCE BARRON T FEB 14 1978 PRINT This program solves N independent linear simultaneous PRINT equations in N unknowns The equations should be of PRINT the form PRINT A 1 1 X 1 A 1 2 X 2 A 1 N X N B 1 PRINT A 2 1 X 1 A 2 2 X 2 A 2 N X N B 2 PRINT ATS o ate E A ORO WE PRINT GV
18. get together I will have about 1500 customer files to access with non sequential customers How can I get to the last file without reading very one in between Happy diodes Martin Hill Jr Aurora Colo Stan The best assembly language programming book that I ve seen is 8080 8085 assembly language programming by Leventhal Osborne amp Associates ROD HALLEN Tombstone AZ 27 28 CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO CACO cAcl CAC2 CAC3 CACA CAC6 CAC7 ES D5 EN 78 E6 7F 47 3A 44 CB SOFTWARE 0010 SOLOS CUSTOM OUTPUT DRIVER TO CREATE 0020 MULTI BLOCK TAPE FILES BYTE ACCESS 0030 FROM NUMBERED OUTPUT AND INPUT LINES 0040 WHILE DISPLAYING NON NUMBERED LINES 0
19. has a working prototype for adding his box and motherboard to the SOL as an expansion acces solved you can t just run a motherboard because of such bus loading not work for others method too how so Ron If anyone has done and of Grand Praire interrupt enab as with the Bill Fuller support the s 100 SOL to Z 80 such work It uses considering the Dutronics adapte couple of ribbon cables out things as noise What works for some boards plugged in out Dutronics adapter b that signal being generated otherwise the P T that signal to make the music sory The problem is not to a transmission delay there it successfully TX le INTE output sur COs We hope anyone r for the SOL reads the hardware review in this and previous issues before making the purchase Anne Weiss of Somerset NJ eliminate interference from SOL on channels 2 and 4 interference problems Some of comes out of the gaps in the SOL AC power cord or so we ve been metal covers of SOL to the chass power line filter 3EF1 will almost a direct replacement for on the back wall of No 1 issue of SOLUS NEWS told help the power supply asked if we know of any device to to a TV in the same house Ham radio operators have had similar the radio frequency interference lot comes out along the Good grounding of both sheet is
20. is being sponsored by AMRAD who held the highly successful AMRAD Computerfest in October 1976 in Vienna Virginia The 1976 test in one day attracted over 1500 people Amateur Computing 78 will be a two day show in a fine new hotel Homebrew Computer Club P O Box 626 Mountain View CA 94042 Dr Dobb s Journal of Computer Calisthenics amp Orthodontia Box E Menlo Park CA 94025 Page 43 This letter was in inspired by the March 78 issue of SOLOS NEWS First I ordered the Vandenberg 16K static RAM board by telephone on 4 January and had it on the 7th It has been in my SOL and working perfectly ever since My computer is built around the SOL PC board The power supply is home brew the keyboard surplus the other memory boards are the ECONORAM II and ECONORAM III I have the Software Technology Music System Percom CI 812 Interface board Peripheral Vision Floppy Dutronics Z 80 conversion kit Teletype Model 43 and the Carterfone Selectric Data Terminal So far the PV floppy will not work with my SOL I can read their disk but can t write one I m going to send it back to then to see if it is the floppy or my machine The Dutronics Z 80 kit is also giving me trouble It works most of the tine but gives me CS errors when running BASIC5 for no reason and it will not even read some ROMs but will read others The Selectric hasn t been interfaced yet It is EBCD and RS 232 and I have a p
21. make this my primary Basic and conver all programs into it For example using the APPEND function I can make existing programs subroutines of other programs without retyping the whole thing I have a bit of memory 20k starting at 0 and another 12k starting at D000 What I did was to enter the old Basic modify the output drivere and then list the program with the ASCII listing writing into high memory The 12k is enough for almost any program Then I from memory can be used incorporating the WRIT modes Both Startrek and Blackjack each use about 10k nter the new Basic with a modified input driver to read If you don t have enough memory a similar method T BYTE and READ BYTE tape The following programs assume that SOLOS is located at C000 and that ram CA00 CA1F and CB00 CB01 are available Write porcedure oad old BASIC Load W Exec old Basic h e turn to SOLOS F Im O JO M BE W N HH nn a A Ou up n u mp CB00 CB01 10 Save D000 CB01 11 Entr CBOO rite program CLOAD first program to be transscribed via Upper Case DEL if necessary CO CA00 SET O 3 EC O LIST Return to SOLOS ASCII listing of the program is now in high memory This is the top end of the program CB00 00 DB 12 Repeat from step 3 entire all program are on tape Read Procedure 37
22. to list a program Has anyone in the club written a software fix for this problem If you are overwhelmed with SOLUS NEWS I might be able to help out with some of it Regards Gerald Harwood I have an insurance agency and am using the Sol to type letters rate policy quotes etc I felt that if I was going to use a computer to address my customers I didn t want them to know it This meant I had to have a solid character printer but I couldn t get myself sold on a selectric conversion becaus they are slow and the mechanics remind me of a corn thrashing machine I wound up with a used GE TermiNet a 30 cps terminal which after 5 months is completely reliable quite and compact Both the Sol and TermiNet seem to think that they are talking to another computer through the serial interface so the Transmitted Data BA and Received Data BB signals must be reversed Also you must change the Request to Send CA and Clear to Send CB lines There has been lots of discussion on tapes Late one night I needed a tape and was out of th xpensive ones I slipped in a cheapie and it worked fine now I buy Radio Shack Concertape three C 30 s for 2 05 My recorder is a Panasonic RQ 309S with automatic record volume setting and it makes a really hot tape I saved enough to buy a Helios Finally can you recommend a text or has anybody written software to index disk data files If and when the Helios and BASIC
23. we can find out originated it Figure 1 shows the memory map of our example in which 32K of RAM is made to look like 40K to the computer Two 4K blocks are addressed in parallel by both 0000H to 1FFFH and 8000H to 9FFFH For software originating at 2000H you have 32K running from 2000H to 9FFFH For software originating at 0000H you have 32K running from 000H to 7FFFH You can switch from one origin to the other on the fly without any change to the boards The two 4K blocks which are parallel addressed are shown by the cross hatching on the figure Other parallel addressing Schemes should also work Figure 2 shows the circuit of our board after the parallel addressing modification has been made For the configuration in our example four 1N34 diodes are required and at least two 10K 1 4 W resistors Figure 2 shows four resistors to allow for other addressing schemes Referring to figure 2 an address input of either OXXXH or 8XXXH will pull down the number 1 chip select line The 4K block of RAM connected to the CS1 line will be activated by either address Similarly 1XXXF and 9XXXH will both activate the 4K block of RAM connected to CS2 In our example the RAM connected to CS3 and CS4 will not respond to parallel addressing To modify the Seattle Computer Products 16K RAM for parallel addressing replace the address selection jumpers with 1N34 diodes for the 4K RAM blocks you want to respond to multiple addressing Make sure the cathode end o
24. with the Extensys memory there because the Extensys memory board didn t work at all in the Altair A few days ago he got around to modifying SOLOS by replacing the Terminal mode command with a disk bootstrap command He then proceeded to try various combinations of things in the SOL What he ended up with as working well is the following set of conditions 1 24K of static memory 2 wait states defeated on all memory and offboard I O 3 8080 CPU Under these conditions the system works reliably for hours at a time The Dutronics board would not work with the Tarbell board in the SOL It seemed to read in one byte from the disk and then either hang up or get lost The lack of a front panel on the SOL makes it very hard to know exactly what is happening Since the author could not get the Extensys board to operate reliably in either of his computers he cannot conclude whether or not the Tarbell board would work with the Extensys board CONCLUSIONS The Tarbell Floppy Disk Interface may be a low cost way for you to get a floppy disk system running on your SOL It takes a little more effort to use it in the SOL than in other S 100 bus systems but it is relatively straightforward Again there may be incompatibility problems when trying to get this board to work with other equipment SOUT SINP 74152 74L520 THIS LINE CAUSES I O WAIT STATE
25. 0 garbage referred to by Mr Barron LOCATION BEFORE CHANGE TO EIEO0 A9 77 E1lE1 DO FE EIE9 01 FC EIEFP 00 FA E1FO E6 2F ElF1 40 E6 E1F2 C9 01 E1F3 CD C9 May I make a suggestion How about including the address of those that write to SOLUS NEWS This would allow those persons desiring information quicker response from other readers Keep up the good work Stan Bill Jones MARION OH Editor Thanks for the info and the suggestion Bill I will gladly print anyone s address if they explicitly say it s okay to print it In general my policy is not to print addresses because of two reasons First I want to encourage open letters among members rather than a lot of side correspondence so we ail can benefit from the information Second the Southern California Computer Society has had a bad experience because members addresses got into the hands of thieves HOW DO YOU LIKE THE NEW FORMAT We realize the new format needs a bit more polishing up and would like to know reader reactions to it Is it too hard to read Is the print too small Did you prefer the old format Is the nuisance a reasonable price to pay for getting twice the information Let us hear from you Write to the editor please 26 Micro Shev Ltd Alon Shvut Gush Etzion Israel Jan 12 1978 Sol User s Group Bill Buras 41 90 Maybell Way Pal
26. 050 SUCH AS COMMANDS LIKE LIST 0060 CR ENDS LINE AND REVERTS TO DISPLAY 0070 LF NULL RUBOUT AND LEADING BLANKS 0080 MAY PRECEDE LINE NUMBER 0090 0100 THIS ALLOWS ANY BASIC OR EDITOR USING 0110 SOLOS SOUT OUTPUT ROUTINE TO MAKE 0120 NON COMPILED ASCII FILES WHICH CAN BE 0130 LOADED BY P T EXTENDED BASIC CORRECT 0140 SYNTAX AFTER LOADING 0150 0160 BY RICHARD GREENLAW OLO 251 COLONY CURT 0180 GAHANNA OHIO 43230 0190 0200 EXAMPLE CONVERT A SOL BASIC5 PROGRAM 0210 TO P T S EXTENDED BASIC 0220 IN SOLOS BASIC5 AND YOUR PROGRAM LOADED 0230 gt SET CO CACO ADDRESS OF THIS DRIVER 0240 gt SET O 3 SELECT THIS DRIVER 0250 gt EX O RUN BASICS 0260 READY FROM BASIC5 0270 HAVE THE TAPE READY TO WRITE THEN TYPE 0280 LIST COULD SPECIFY RANGE 0290 WAIT FOR THE TAPE TO STOP THEN TYPE 0380 DOESN T ECHO 0310 THE AS THE 1ST CHARACTER IN A LINE 0320 CLOSES FILE AND DOES A SET O 0 0330 THIS WRITES THE LAST BUFFER ON TAPE 0340 0350 WHEN EXTENDED BASIC IS LOADED AND RUNNING 0360 YOU CAN LOAD YOUR PROGRAM INTO IT BY 0370 GET BSC5T T OR APPEND BSC5T T 0380 BE SURE TO POSITION THE TAPE BEFORE THE 0390 FIRST TAPE BLOCK OF THE FILE 0400 0410 B CHAR TO OUTPUT 0420 PRESERVES ALL REGISTERS BUT A PSW 0430 ERRORS EXIT TO SOLOS COMMAND LEVEL 0440 AFTER CLOSING THE FILE AND REVERTING 0450 TO THE DISPLAY DRIVER 0460 0470 UNI EQU 1 TAPE UNIT 1 OR 2 0480 CR EQU ODH CARRIAGE RETU
27. AdQ 21691 Bibl 9 304 2019700932 ania SR LO4NI P dasni ind CH ra TUA 3diS 103 40123NNO2 mo I NANI ois LAZVOIMOD FOLIINNO tr Ag SS yw33 02202 d BIS 3 04 02 YOLIINNID em A cm j AVIN IOLPANNOD z INS ANANOG YDOI IOLIINNO 0 JIS XVI NOLIANNOD gt t p 2017 LIBNOALIVOD 30 L29NNO2 SIS HIIN YOL22NNOO MS SUS ANBNOWIOD 202202 zj Ni ATIT TO ied Ate 0 LZS2 My Sol and CP M and a Helios By Ron Parsons Austin Texas One disadvantage of Processor Tech s PTDOS and Helios is the unique format of PTDOS diskettes This was discussed in the articles by Stan Sokolow and myself in the Jan Feb 1978 SOLUS NEWS There is a large amount of CP M software available on standard format soft sectored diskettes Because already had the most expensive part of a CP M disk system the PerSci drive in my Helios I wondered how could I use it with CP M and PTDOS concurrently had several objectives to satisfy a No modification should be needed to any of the Helios hardware or software b Switching between PTDOS and CP M should be under software control and c There must be a way to transfer files from one OS to the other act as a controller for CP M My solution was to use a Tarbell Floppy Disk Interfac
28. George F NGTON SOL hly since th acquainted the group explaining certain featu VDM meetings assembly language demonstrating the EXPANDOR p presenting home brew soft the group is also sponsoring programming techniques ware In workshop includ used in preparing le the development o tters reports second projects star probably use Extended BASI accounting system Anyone a few w C and de in the a ted in participating in any of these acti Jim Logan 6817 Melrose McLean VA 703 356 19 Reeves USERS GROUP FORMS DC area e Fall of 1977 The first meetings with members of res of the SOL system e g rinter with a SOL and addition to these monthly a weekly workshop in the goals of this text processor to be fa etc We expect to get our eeks this project will velop a family financal rea interested in vities may contact Dr 22101 68 SONOMA COUNTY COMPUTER CLUB NEWSLETTER 1 MAR APR 1978 33 THE SONOMA COUNTY COMPUTER CLUB WELCOMES ANYONE NTERESTED IN PERSONAL COMPUTERS THE CLUB WILL HOLD ITS NEXT MONTHLY MEETING ON MONDAY MARCH 27 1978 AT IHE CODDINGTOWN COMMUNITY MEETING ROOM SECOND FLOOR NE AR KPLS RADIO I HE MEETING WILL BEGIN AT 7 30 P M AND THE GUEST S
29. Obr JM TAPE IF NUMERAL NEEDS A UNZERO DISPL XRA A A 0 STA APEF ENSURE TAPE FLAG CLEARED CALL AOUT B TO DRIVER 0 DISPLAY JMP RTN OPEN PUSH B MVI A UNIT LXI H HEADR CALL FOPEN OPEN FILE JC EXIT POP B RE ALSO OUTPUT IT CLOSE MVI A UNIT CALL FCLOS CLOSE FILE EXIT MVI A 0 STA OPORT RESET OUTPUT TO DISPLAY STA TAPEF CLEAR TAPE FLAG STA NWLNF CLEAR NEW LINE FLAG JC SOLOS IF ERROR JMP RTN NWLNF DB 0 NEW LINE FLAG TAPEF DB 0 TAPE FLAG HEADR ASC BSC5T 29 30 CB4B 00 CB4C 4 CB4D AOUT 016 0 CLOSE CB2F 0930 CR 000D 0690 DISPL CB16 0730 EXCLM 0021 0920 EXIT CB33 0800 FCLOS CO0A 1180 FIRST CAF9 0670 FLSTS CB55 0750 FOPEN C007 1120 GOTCR CAF1 0700 HEADR CB46 1110 NWLNF CB44 0650 OPEN CB20 0770 OPORT C807 1200 OUT CAD4 0880 RIN CAFD 1070 RUBOT 007F 0950 SOLOS C004 1230 TAPE CADB 1030 TAPEF CB45 0710 TOUT CACO UNIT 0001 0790 WRBYT C010 0790 AS DUMP CACO CBAC CACO E5 D5 C5 78 CADO OD CA F1 CA CAE0 C8 B7 CC 20 CAF0 C9 3E 01 32 CB00 16 CB FE 7F CB10 CB FE 3A FA CB20 C5 3E 01 21 CB30 CD 0A CO 3E CB40 CO C3 ED CA C1FE ClFE 7F C28B C28B 7F 1290 DB 1300 DB 0 T 80H 1310 REMAINDE 0940 0960 1010 1130 0870 0990 1220 1240 0740 1050 1210 1100 1170 E6 7F 47 3A 44 3A 45 CB B7 CA CB 3E 01 CD 10 44 CB C3 D4 CA CA 16 CB 21 44 DB CA AF 32 45 46 CB CD 07 CO 00 32 07
30. P r td Z 01 16 0A 77 23 03 15 C2 21 36 23 36 El 01 C5 C9 BO 3F LE 98 3F 01 00 20 3C 00 00 00CB 0000 001F CB00 3F98 3F80 0095 LXI B ORIG 0100 MVI D LEN 0105 MOVE DRIVER 0110 NEXT LDAX B 0115 MOV M A 0120 INX H 0125 INX B 0130 DCR D 0135 JNZ NEXT 0140 THIS REPLACES ORIGINAL VALUES IN 0145 LOCATIONS 0001 AND 0002 THIS IS 0150 NECESSARY SINCE THE INITIALIZATION 0155 RUNS A CHECKSUM ON EVERYTHING 0160 LXI H 0001 0165 MVI M 20H 0170 INX H 0175 MVI M 3CH 0180 x 0185 POP H 0190 LXI B 0000 0195 PUSH B 0200 RET 0205 ADDL EQU 00 OW BYTE FOR CO 0210 ADDH EQU OCBH HIGH BYTE FOR Co 0215 NEW EQU OCBOOH FINAL LOCATION FOR 7 0220 ORIG EQU 3FBOH LOCATION OF DRIVER IN T 0225 LEN EQU 1FH ENGTH OF DRIVER 0230 3FBO START OF 1F BYTE LONG DRIVER 0080 0070 0100 0090 0135 0095 ER E HIS PROGRAM 36 CONVERTING TO PTC E BASIC By Bruce Barron Processor Technology s extende Basic is finally here During the 13 months since I ordered it I have written numerous programs in varous other Basics I have had in my Sol 20 including MSA 8k PTC and very heavily modified MITS 8k and MITS Extended Basic Since PTC s has several very useful additions I wanted to
31. PEAKER WILL B STONE CPA MR STONE IS A SANTA ROSA CPA WHO W E WE WESLEY A L L DISCUSS THE MEANING OF ORDINARY AND NECESS BUSINESS HE WILL ALSO DISCUS EXPENSE IHE MARCH 27 MEETING WILL ALSO ARY EXPENSES INCURRED IN A TRADER S HOBBY LOSSES AND EDUCATION INCLUDE THE DEMONSTRATION OF A PERSONAL COMPUTER SYSTEM BY CLUB MEMBER EARL HERR USING THE PROCESSOR TECHNOLOGY SOL 20 COMPUTER AND HEL OS FLOPPY DISC WITH A PRACTICAL AUTOMAT ON IMPACT LINE PR N TER THE SONOMA COUNTY COMPUTER CLU LIZA LOOP AND MARK ROBINSON MEET B WAS STARTED OVER TWO YEARS AGO BY NG AT THE LO OP CENTER IN COTATI WHEN THE LO OP CENTER CLOSED THERE WAS A HALF YEAR LAPSE UNTIL MEETINGS RESUMED AT THE CODDINGTOWN MEETING ROOM IN JANUARY 1978 AT THE FEBRUARY 27 MEETI ELECTED CLUB CHAIRPERSON AND EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF COMMUNITY NG MARK ROBINSON WAS DAVE ANNIE FOX PRESENTED AN COMPUTER ACCESSIB L IY IN THETR MARIN COMPUTER CENTER A BEAUT SKYVIEW TERRACE ROOM 301 SAN CLUB ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW IFUL AND PRACTICAL CENTER AT 76 RAFAEL 94903 SEE MARIN COMPUTER
32. RN 0490 EXCLM EQU 21H EXCLAMATION MARK 0500 RUBOT EQU 7FH RUBOUT 0510 AOUT EQU 0COICH SOLOS OUTPUT SUBR 0520 FOPEN EQU 0C007H SOLOS OPEN SUBR 0530 WRBYT EQU 0CO10H SOLOS WRITE BYTE SUBR 0540 FCLOS EQU OCOOAH SOLOS FILE CLOSE SIR 0550 SOLOS EQU 0C004H SOLOS COMMAND LEVEL 0560 FLSTS EQU 0C855H 7 UNIT 7 FILE STATUS 0570 OPORT EQU 0C807H CURRENT OUT PSEUDO PORT 0580 0590 TOUT PUSH H 0600 PUSH D 0610 PUSH B 0620 MOV A B CHAR OUTPUT 0630 ANI 7FH MUSTN T PUT PARITY INTO BASIC 0640 MOV B A 0650 LDA NWLNF NEWLINE FLAG CACA CACB CACE CACF CAD1 CAD4 CAD7 CAD8 CA CA CA CA B7 C2 78 CA 3A B7 CA CA CA CA CA CA UP JODNE DJ M E Dd Dd Dd Ed d I CAE T trj CAFO CAF1 CAF1 CAF3 CAF6 CAF 9 CAF 9 CAFA CAFA CAFC CAFF CB02 CB04 CB07 CBO7 CBOA CBOC CBOE CB11 CB13 CB16 CB17 CB1A CB1D CB20 CB20 CB21 CB23 CB26 CB29 CB2C CB2D CB2E Tj OQ ww w N HH co Qnin D E gt Pw Hp PJ El Q CB2E CB30 CB33 CB35 CB38 CB3B CB3E CB41 CB44 CB44 CB45 CB46 F9 OD Fl 45 16 45 59 20 01 10 33 01 44 D4 21 16 TE 16 44 00 30 16 3A DB 45 Te ED 01 46 07 33 01 0A 00 07 45 44 04 ED 53 CA CA CB CB CB C8 CB CO
33. S THIS LINE CAUSES MEMORY WAIT STATES a Original Circuit THis JUMPER 5 V SOLDERED TO LC PINS T4LS20 N je ADD 3 WIRES REMOVE US4 BEND PIN IO OUT REINSERT IN SOCKET REMOVE U53 BEND PIN B Our SOLDER Jumper FROM PIN TO 7 REINSERT b Circuit as Modified Figure 1 Changes to SOL 12 74LS32 U30 74L5367 a Original Circuit udi TRACE 7415367 741932 ADD 5 WIRES b Circuit as Modified Figure 2 Tarbell Board Modifications 13 A MINI REVIEW IHE DOS MOVER by Bill Burns Since a large number of Sol owners also own the North Star Micro Disk System SOLUS has been trying to improve the integration of these two units As part of this goal we worked with and encouraged Bruce Kendall in his efforts to make his DOS relocation programs available The standard North Star DOS is located at 2000H which conflicts with long Basic 5 programs or long Music System programs Extended Cassette basic and many other programs which have their origin at 0 Starting with the DOS at 2000H the DOS Mover allows a user to create as many additional versions of DOS as desired and locate them anywhere I have tested it and it worked perfectly It even moved the I O drivers along with the DOS The documentation is extremely well done I recommend this package highly and I will do a full review in the next issue If you don t want to wait you can get the programs on a
34. SOLUS N MOJ o duo 3 SOL Users Society EWS APRIL 1978 Editor Stan Sokolow 1690 Woodside Rd 219 Redwood City CA 94061 Contributing editor Ron Parsons Austin Texas Address newsletter correspondence to the Editor Send all other cor respondence to SOLUS P O Box 23471 San Jose CA 95153 Subscriptions are available by membership in SOLOS Individual dues 10 in U S A Canada Mexico 15 elsewhere Dealer memberships 25 and manufacturer memberships 50 include special services Permission granted to reproduce computer programs herein provided that the source is given credit DUES REMINDER We still have many names on our mailing list the current year s dues We are about to purg who haven t sent in these names from the list If you are one of these folks read this issue If you still feel we are doing something relevant to your needs and deserving of your support send in your dues Remember it s above for foreign and special memberships If this is your LAST To SS Ur Es A 10 in the US See we don t hear from you We also want to remind new members that memberships run on a calendar year Jan thru Dec basis Members who join mid year should receive the current year s issues back to January If you don t let us know Allow about a month for processing we re all doing this in our spare time One l
35. UT IS 100 REM 51216 DECIMAL IHE NUMBER OF NULLS OUT 110 REM PUT CAN BE CHANGED BY THE COMMAND 120 REM 130 REM POKE 51216 N 140 REM 150 REM WHERE N IS THE NUMBER OF NULLS NEEDED 160 REM 170 FOR N 0 TO 4 180 READ D POKE 9840 N D 190 NEXT N 200 REM 210 REM FIND OUT WHERE SOLOS CUTER IS LOCATED 220 REM 230 LET A PEEK 9852 256 240 REM 250 REM CALCULATE ADDRESS OF CRLF IN SOLOS CUTER 260 REM 270 IF PEEK A 0 THEN LET A 49913 ELSE ET A A 834 280 REM 290 REM POKE LOW BYTE OF ADDRESS OF CRLF IN SOLOS CUTER 300 REM THEN POKE HIGH BYTE OF ADDERSS 310 REM 320 POKE 9845 A 256 INT A 256 256 330 POKE 9846 INT A 256 340 END 350 REM 360 REM THE DATA BELOW IS EQUIVALENT TO 370 REM 380 REM XRA A 390 REM STA 286FH 400 REM JMP 410 REM 420 DATA 175 50 111 40 195 430 REM The program above was sent to us by the Processor Technology software support people IL corrects the problem mentioned by Gerald Harwood on page 27 CUTI did memory ER to supply the null characters necessary to kill hard copy terminals return the carriage to column 1 n t do it right Apparently BASIC expected SOLOS time while But BASIC This patch program will modify BASIC in Save th corrected version of BASIC for future use 32 The Atlanta chapter of SOLOS is alive and active first meeting was Friday with about 10 peopl meetings we ve had since then our number has Just We normally meet on the third Thursday o
36. UT ONE IN EVERYTHING AROUND SOL VIDEO MONITOR PRINTER AND DISK conde MI AG s s BILL JONES T A I Eu power supply MARION OHIO AA SINCERELY Caps 02 600v ceramic coils 3 feet of IL ga Wound elo sely ona AX form HAVE NOTED A SPORATIC PROBLEM IN MY SON S SOL 20 AND HAVE HEARD OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SIMILAR PROBLEMS IN OTHER SOLS IN A DISCUSSION WITH A COMPUTER TECHNICIAN PHIL WORKING AT THE SAN RAFAEL BYTE SHOP THE SOL 20 BCB 5 SLOT BACK PLATE BOARD S INSERTED INTO J11 THE S 100 BUS OF THE SOL PC MOTHERBOARD WHEN ATTACHING AND TIGHTENING THE GUSSET AND ANGLE BRACKETS SEE CABINET CHASSIS ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS IN THE SOL SYSTEMS MANUAL SOME BCB PINS MAY LOSE CONTACT WITH THE S 100 BUS IHIS PROBLEM SHOWED ITSELF AS A MERE INABILITY TO USE TWO DIFFERENT MEMORY BOARDS SIMULTANEOUSLY AND WAS CORRECTED BY ENSURING THAT THE BCB WAS PUSHED FIRMLY INTO THE S 100 BUS IHANKS FOR THE GOOD WORK ON SOLUS NEWS P S ENCOLOSED IS A FIRST DRAFT OF SONOMA COUNTY COMPUTER CLUB NEWSLETTER EARL HERR 17 SPRING HILL DRIVE CAZADERO CA 95421 24 Re Sol VDM GraphicAdd
37. and installation of a CORCOM RFI The filter costs about 10 and the normal SOL power cord receptacle the Vol O0 case anda More details are in cover for SOL sold by CURTIS ELECTRODEVICES CA 94040 amateur radio system In the last issue the temporary insanity my SOL goes int running at the same tim Simple volt much Th They make this case and RFI easily and may Processor Tech is looking for such an expansion please let us know the rest of us can give our SOL S some growing room wrote that most Z 80 cpu s do not If converting the to check for music board won t especially is Another solution is a one piece metal Box 4090 Mountain View filter for use in their It costs about 100 asked if anyone knew how to protect aginst to when my washing machine is tage spike protectors don t help Letters section of this issue has a couple of replies 3 22 3 59 00 4SIAYOS AJLHDNYA TOS IIS 3H 2 gt a Ics d 92909 WHL gt som n CE 4 ASE ANA 72 12 I JO s y we 2015 SIHL 43 4 Wad 42d 51 QL Loading EE Ad WS moras SS l rod 3293 AI LE A8 dil tb VOU HLOR a n SENSING WO 53415 SLC m vi KRYJE I L 4 924 7 2 05 inginol 4 2 fos WALDZNNOJ Lx A und 499 21 YIAN BLT 401 TYNOI
38. ast thing Those who sent us 4 dues in response to the erroneous note in Kilobaud please send in the balance of your dues That note was sent to the magazine in 1977 when the dues were 4 but wasn t published until it was outdated NEW FORMAT Take a peek inside and you ll see we are trying a new format for SOLOS NEWS We are trying to pack more into the same number of pages At the same time we are hoping to be able to give more rapid turn around on letters we receive To do this we are reducing the letters and articles we receive to half size They are the actual letters themselves not retyped and only slightly edited with a pair of Scissors Authors should be sure to use a dark ribbon so their letters reproduce well Letters that require retyping will get into print much slower than camera ready ones In the future we may be able to take letters on cassettes and let a word processor do the work but we don t yet have the software for this Anyone interested in working on that should contact the editor 2nd WEST COAST COMPUTER FAI RE As we reported in the last issue SOLOS had a commercial sized booth at the Faire held in San Jose on March 3 thru March 5 Processor Technology donated it to us It was a good way for us to recruit new members the local chapter our other local chapters area s computer show b
39. ding of the head The only problem I encountered with the Tarbell interface was due to an unterminated 100 bus probably from XRDY occasional Persci drive to switch random line 54 external clear Noise ly cleared a latch This caused the ly from disk 1 to 0 Tying this line high with a 2 2k resistor cured the problem Creating and debugging the CBIOS the hardware dependent part of CP M was very easy since it could be assembled and tested under control of PTDOS The STEP output from the 1771 chip was not used Instead stepping pulses under software control were used to take advantage of the fast seek capability of the PerSci drive Since the PTDOS bootstrap uses the first 340H of memory I ve established 400H as the origin of all programs and files to be shared between PTDOS and CP M I also had to write conversion routines for source files as the PTDOS format is text CR while the CP M format is text CR LF Now the world of CP M programs is available to me However because PTDOS is so much more powerful than CP M often find that I transfer files from CP M to PTDOS for processing adapter board the Ext In this month s col Solus Hardware Review by A T Atey umn we shall discuss the Dutronics DZ80 80R Z80 ensys RM64 dynamic memo
40. diskette for 18 78 plus 1 22 tax if you live in California plus 1 00 for shipping to Digital Deli Computer Store 80 West El Camino Real Mountain View CA 94041 PRODUCT REVIEWS IWO INEXPENSIVE 16K STATIC MEMORY BOARDS by Bill Burns using the technical knowledge of Ben Milander and Ron Findlay Since the five empty slots on the Sol 20 are filling up on most of our systems slot conservation is becoming more important One 16K memory board IS better than two 8K boards Our top technical people have convinced us that unless there is a large price difference static memories are preferable to dynamic memories The reasons are 1 greater simplicity and 2 less chance of present or future incompatibility with other boards When we heard of the Vandenberg Data Products Board 330 kit 365 assembled and the Seattle Computer Products Board 325 for 450 nsec chips and 375 for 250 nsec chips assembled but 375 and 425 after May 15 we asked for and received an evaluation board from both companies Both boards were used for several weeks in a Sol 20 with a North Star Microdisk System There were no problems except that each initially had a single bad chip Ihere evidently is no fully effective memory test Both of the bad chips passed most of the memory tests that I have accumulated Both boards require hard wire memory addressi
41. djust special cases as follows ElDF ElE1 FOBB replace DO with high order of ALS8 system E480 replace DS with high order of ALS8 system RAM plus one Instructions at E6A9 and E6C5 these should contain address fields of FFFA which is 6 and must be un relocated manually Similarly the instruction at E4BA should contain FFF9 7 Remember that these go in low high order FA FF and not FF FA Since relocating ALS8 have tried most of the features and all those that I ve tried work the same as they did before The ability constantly open involved Leor Zolman No 7 July Please enter my sub ONE YEAR 12 New Subscription Bill me after fir NAME to work on assembly language and Extended BAS ing up my SOL has been a pleasant A Machine Code Relocator for 1977 pp 92 95 scription to Dr C programming withou the 8080 Dobb s Journal today st issue arrives ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP Visa BankAmericard Master Charge Foreign rates available Card No TWO YEARS 22 Renewal Check is enclosed Expiration date 39 reward for the work BYTE V 2 20 REPRINT E Address Original Change PATCHING MICROSOFT S 4 0 BASIC PARITY STRIPPER FOR CNTL C TEST ON P T s SOL 0551 F5 E6 Dear Dr Dobbs 77 Sept 5 Wee 00 c3 0554 F1 70 Just a quick note to pass along a couple of things First the 0555 C9 06 kudos and brickbats T
42. e Board to The Tarbell controller uses a 1771 LSI disk controller chip for controlling and formatting soft sectored diskettes The board puts the processor in a wait state while waiting for the disk request to complete DMA is not used as in the Helios for controller memory data transfer Thus there is very little time spent in the wait state except during seeks This board has four spare 16 pin IC slots and space for two 50 pin headers for ribbon cable With four additional ICs hex tri state buffers and a few unused gates scattered around the board I installed a multiplexer for the signal lines from the controller now controllers to the PerSci drive The multiplexer state is set by a software command an OUT instruction The signals from the drive to the controllers are not multiplexed The 50 wire cable from the drive connects to the header J1 on the Tarbell board and a short six inch Jumper cable connects the Helios controller to header J2 on the Tarbell board I burned both the PTDOS and CP M bootstraps into my 2708 version of SOLOS in place of TERM and cassette byte routines The CP M boot requires zero wait states This was done by lifting pin U71 11 on the main Sol board I also added a one second one shot timer to the head load circuit so the head remains loaded for one second after the 1771 releases it This eliminates the wear and noise associated repetitive loading and unloa
43. e Extensys board did not operate reliably in his SOL inevitably blow up basic were loaded and a program end up back in SOLOS It appeared to work for short periods Sooner or later For example then loaded when the program was run It but would if a tape of 12K it would blow suddenly was not possible to run CP M for any length of time before unpredictable events occurred Mr his SOL however as Mr MSAI and found not be used with his Wurkz also reports that h that it would work from the front MSA Hartley Wurkz found that the Extensys board worked fine in long as he stuck to the 8080 it did not work with the As previously mentioned Dutronics board floppy disk con Mr Wurkz then tried board in his IMSA DMA controller s Mr his SOL with an 8080 CONCLUSIONS th tried th troller Extensys board wi and found that Ithaca Audio board works fine wii th his t the memory didn t th static memory and the floppy Extensys board in his panel but could which uses DMA Ithaca Audio Z80 work at all The Seymour Bugs found that the Extensys memory would work OK is but not when using the Dutronics board The Extensys RM64 dynamic memory board appears to work well in most standard SOLs reliably in his particular SOL on end with static memory witho
44. e SYMBOL and Please publish that so 16v which are across tried to measure voltage Pin 52 4 HARDWARE NOTES At the February meeting of the S F Peninsula chapter David Fylstra reported on a PC board which has impressed him with its unique features It is a backplane board similar to the Processor Technology makes to plug into the SOL S 100 connector providing daughter board provides the 5 slots on the SOL 20 card rack 10 slots However this in about the same height the front and five on the back doesn t care Forrest Duston fellow also makes a sheet metal Dave is home brewing his own SOL system from It won t fit a SOL 20 case the SOL PC so he IL 60067 The same to support the boards Palatine card cage one which five on but The board also has a regulator circuit to provide the regulated voltages needed by the SOL PC itself 885 Aster Avenue The board is made by and an 8K RAM board Contact him for more info See the illustration in this issue for a sketch of the daughter board Page 4 Ron Parsons wrote I would be interested in being contacted by anyone who has successfully attached an expansion backplane with five or more slots to a SOL 20 We have heard at the 2nd West Computer Faire that an S 100 manufacturer who makes a Coast terminated bus computer
45. en trying to write tapes using the rmore the tapes just written could not be his SOL using an 8080 but This is quite perplexing inasmuch as the D must a SOL wi board has worked quite well in the author s Altair using the controller CONCLUSIONS floppy disk dmit to th the utronics Tarbell While you might be able to get the Dutronics DZ80 80R board to operate properly in your particular SOL we cannot at this If you feel that you want to add the 280 to your SOL Dutronics board is the way to do it be sure to get a memory all parts of your system will work together properly experience great hopefully using sta time give an unqualified recommen and th guaran tic dation at the tee that Based on our it seems likely that just when you think everyth you will get a new board or try something new which a hitherto unknown bug Extensys RM64 ing is reveals The Extensys RM64 memory board is a dynamic memory board designed around Intel 2108 8K dynamic RAM chips impression of being carefully designed We noted tha regulator did not have a heat sink and ran ra 5 volt An was original The board gives us t the T ther hot the O 3 style Extensys RM64 dynamic memory board with 48K of installed memory lly provided to SOLOS by Mr Dan Pichulo of Extensys at the 8 October SOLUS
46. f each month and our meeting place varies from time to time meeting ien doubled 19 to change So you d better announce CHAPTER NEWS January Our in SOLOS 13 an auspicious present In the three about the first Monday and though this is subject NEWS for any interested members to contact me first for current information at 404 436 0718 Our first club project will be the establishment of communication capabilities through the use of modems We are currently testing the modem kit put out by Electronic Systems of Burlingame CA If you d is interested I m sure we can provide you with a cri equipment anyone who has buil PROM programmer tha of Kilobaud soft and ware library would by I personally would b Is there anything that interested i and successfu was written u can do fr am very inter happy to help any way that thought about regional distributio Keep up the good work You ll be fairly regular basis METROPOLI Several SOL Users from the Metropolitan Washington have been meeting mont get few meetings were TAN WASHI tique of this piece of n corresponding with lly implemented the 5204 p in the September issue om afar to help with the ested in this activity can Have you n of the software hearing from me on a Sincerely
47. f the diodes is toward the 74L5138s We suggest you put in all four 10K resistors They mount in the test pads located just to the right of U7 Mount them vertically with their upper ends tied together and then to 5 volts The right side of R7 is 5 Parallel addressing seemed to work fine on our board at room temperature Th scheme does cut down on the noise margins of the circuit a bit and may not work under all temperature and noise environment conditions We assume the same type of scheme will work with board from other manufacturers if they have a chip select circuit similar to ours We consider the modification authorized which means it will not affect the one year warranty on our board We do not however warrant that the modification will work under all conditions we simply have not tested it enough A word of cautions soldering in the modification will void the ten day return privilege on our board So if your decision to keep one of our boards is dependent upon making parallel addressing work you had better try it first with clip leads 16 A A SEATTLE COMPOTER BOARD RAM Buecus t 2 ANY RAM TOTALING 16 W SEATTLE COMPLTER BOARD RAM Buorks BEY SEATILE Compor Bo RD RAM Auocxs 2 FIGURE MEMORY MAP EFFECT OF PARALLEL ARDRESSING Sin Sour COL SELECT 7415135 Uc 74ACS13 U
48. he good guys Dr Dobbs your publication is the most interesting of all the home computing MAIN CHARACTER INPUT ROUTINE publications Xybek and their PROM programming board a 0556 DB CD good product with excellent documentation and people with a 0557 00 1F genuine desire to help their customers Micro Chess a super 0558 E6 CO chess playing program with good documentation and priced 0559 01 CA fairly The bad guys the multitude of manufacturers who have 055A cz 26 promised so much and have delivered so little IMSAL where s Ds ob the 12K BASIC Processor Tech where s the 8K BASIC so long 055D DB 00 overdue 055E 01 00 Attached are the patches I made for a friend so he could use his Altair BASIC on his new Sol I know you would prefer an INPUT TEST assembler listing but I did these patches by hand The program 55 should first be loaded the patches made and a copy of the 060D 00 IP modified program be durnped before running the first time The 060E E CO first column is the old data the second column is the change I 060F 01 00 understand that there may be more than one version of the 0610 CC C4 PATCH extended 4 0 so take care that your version is the same as this 0611 6D 51 ONE 0612 06 05 Thanks for the neat publication I enjoy it from cover to INPUT TEST cover Jack L Calaway 0669 DB CD 165 E Sierra Madre Blvd A o d Sierra Madre CA 91024 SECB 01 es P S This has
49. he printer It seemed like a waste of time to hand load this driver each time I loaded the Basic so I modified the Basic as shown This program can easily be modified to also preload an input To use load the original Basic but do NOT execute it Now load the given program modified with your own driver Then store the entire program on tape and use this Once the program is initiated the Basic is identical to PTC s original driver and custom programs tape for all further work Warning Resetting via UpperCase DEL also resets C0 C1 C0 0000 0010 LOADER FOR PTC EXTENDED BASIC BY B BARRON 0000 0015 THIS PROGRAM MODIFIES EXTENDED BSIC TO LOAD 0000 0020 AN OUTPUT DRIVER INTO MEMORY STARTING AT 0000 0025 LOCATION CB00H 1FH BYTES LONG THE DRIVER 0000 0030 ORIGINALLY RESIDES AT 3FBOH 0000 0035 ORG 0 0000 C3 86 3F 0040 JMP 3F86H 0003 0045 ORG 3F86H 3F86 E5 0050 PUSH H 3F87 11 02 08 0055 LXI D 0802H 3F8A 19 0060 DAD D 3F8B 0065 THIS IS THE SAME AS SET CO 3F8B 36 00 0070 MVI M ADDL 3F8D 23 0075 INX H 3F8E 36 CB 0080 MVI M ADDH 3F90 0085 x ox ox 3F 93 3F96 3F 98 3F 98 3F99 3F9A 3F9B 3F9C 3F9D 3FAO 3FAO 3FA0 3FAO 3FA0 3FA3 3FA5 3FA6 3FA8 3FA8 3FA9 3FAC 3FAD 3FA El 3FA Ld 3FAE 3FA El 3FA E SFAI Gl O Z z p p
50. l system Faire When 32KRA dynamic Ihey haven t a them enough ch r behind but x g PT has provided as a UCSD grad student in ey will receiv that was discussed at They don t know Cost RAM board that has b 7 the por a Helios version of the UC San the 2nd West Coast Computer They n delivered the cassette version tipend and a computer table Pascal project Diego don t know PT has a dvertized it yet becaus lps yet isplay 208x256 points that it will d with memory in and it will al Apparently PTC advertizing un their PT is still working on graphics board for the SOL s graphics expansion p It w to dealers only suppliers can t ship their high density lug Rumors say using a bit mapped technique cluded on the same board ill have B amp W and color low graphics intermixed with regular SOL characters is holding tight to their new pol icy of not til the product is on the shelf Processor Technol to RAM a through DF7F for including BASIC amounts of memor between high and occupy addresses below loads in modified accordi The RELOCATING CASS by John Cs Homewood t addresses hex DF80 System storage Sinc and games loads at y 24K bytes are for low areas To avoid logy s ALS8 package address 0 ETTE ALSS8 udar IL 19
51. ll Bill Burns 13 PRODUCT REVIEWS TWO INEXPENSIVE 16K STATIC MEMORY BOARDS wine SE Sosa BU pedis A MURUS Bill Burns 13 PARALLEL ADDRESSING SAVES ON RAM COST Rod Brock 15 SOFTWARE NOTES A ee g RU E Pas SU CE E UP TR AAA 18 PIC MAY PRODUCE SOL HARDWARE DEBUGGER 1 L8 RUMORS 25 vester eid duse tust decente esie e ie te Me ei val esie te ebe 18 RELOCATING CASSETTE ALS8 John John Osudar 19 REPRINTS PATCHING MICROSOFT S 4 0 BASIC ON PT S SOL 20 CALL FOR PAPERS AMATEUR COMPUTING o o o ooooooooooooo o 21 OUI D AMT 22 SOFTWARE 44945 cote dite eese ens URP P usce RES 28 A PATCH TO EXTENDED CASSETTE BASIC TO PROVIDE NULLS 31 CHAPTER NEWS sas euet e RS luna vede e WI Re P Lar n e pav NT 32 AXIOM PRINTER DRIVER FOR BASIC Bruce Bruce Barron 34 CONVERTING TOUR T C4 BSBAGLIC ite eu a RU Bruce Barron 36 SIMULTANEOUS EQUATIONS er Bruce Barron 39 COMPUTERS AND THE STOCK MARKET Zi ede skr e ecc OmU e 39 COMMODITIES soi i e erre WE septem epe o rete da 39 Solus P O Box 23471 San Jose CA 95133
52. m happy to see new SOLUS chapters forming including two in the C Bb e e D JE hicago area Though Lombard IL is almost as far from Chicago as am from Homewood What is involved in being a local chapter oordinator I might be interested in coordinating south suburban hicago members if there are any if I knew what that might involve oes anyone in SOLUS have a SWTPC PR 40 printer attached to a SOL f so are there any difficulties in interfacing I ve been looking at the PR 40 as a possible addition but need to know what I m getting into Also does anyone have practical information about RCA s Alpha 1 digital tape system used with a SOL I just got my Extended Cassette BASIC this week while it s a little larger than I expected it seems to be quite good I hope PT gets on the ball and gets that promised software done and shipped soon as well as their ACCESS Thank you for taking the time to listen to us far distant members Yours truly John Osudar Homewood IL 25 Another SOLUS member asked in a recent Vol 0 No 3 issue of SOLUS NEWS if anyone had modified PT s ALS 8 to be more compatible with SOL The person asking was Mr Bruce Barron Well YES The following patches were made to the ALS 8 Cassette tape that I received from P T Inclusion of these patches will allow for straight forward SOL use of ALS 8 without regard to P T s change notice 1B or the DF8
53. meeting found it woul Altair it didn t work right more SOLUS meeting and Pichulo arranged the necessary modifications December arrived in early replacement board This particul The author prompt ldn t work there there either y plugged it into his plugged and called it into his SOL found Mr Pichulo to find out lar board had inadvertently been left at the therefor cam with no documentation to replace that original board with one which had and that board The evaluation results pertain serial number 10863 H Mr with documentation to the The author immediately found that the new board wouldn t work in his Altair either This is probably caused by the fact that Extensys uses pin 3 of the S 100 bus to request wait states The Altair as modified per MITS authorization as published in Computer Notes uses pin 3 for the front panel and is always tied to an active tri state driver The transistor on the Extensys board probably can t pull down against the 8T97 on the Altair front panel Unfortunately there is no provision on the board for selecting between pins 3 and 72 The 20 page Extensys User s Manual for the RM64 which lists Schematic diagram problem in detail a price of 10 So it was not on the cover possible to doesn t include a try to understand the The author found that th
54. n the low power consumption of dynamic chip circuitry and the greater simplicity of fully static chips is one on which reasonable and knowledgeable people will differ My personal bias is toward trying to stay with fully static memory to minimize the chances of problems with other boards in the future o d PARALLEL ADDRESSING SAVES ON RAM COST by Rod Brock Seattle Computer Products Inc Would you like to buy 8K more RAM for a couple of bucks Sounds too good to be true It is But in some cases a couple bucks is all it takes to make your system think it has an extra 8K of RAM The problem which many programmers run into is that not all software has its origin at the same address As an example North Star begins its software a 2000H Processor Tech Basic begins at 0000H Do you waste the lower 8K of RAM while running North Star There are several solutions One you can buy 64K of RAM and forget the problem Two you can relocate your RAM whenever you switch software Or three you can use something called parallel addressing Parallel addressing allows you to have the origin of your RAM at one address for one type of software and at another address for another type Th xample we tried with our board in the lab was suggested by Bill Burns of the Sol User s Society He is the one who brought the idea to our attention and as far as
55. ng instead of using DIP switches They both use wire wrap pins on the component side and therefore you must solder or wire wrap each 4K memory block to its starting address This disadvantage can become an advantage by using a parallel addressing scheme We suggested this possibility to both manufacturers and they both independently came up with the same design Rod Brock of Seattle Computer Products responded with a complete article which is printed elsewhere in this issue I am testing this now and so far no problems It even ran well in a short test using Helios DMA The Vandenberg mod is identical except that the resistors are 2 2K ohms 4 watt and the diodes ar ither 1N4148 or 1N914 In both cases the companies said they would consider the modification as authorized for warranty purposes These are both good boards the choice between them depends on how you view the tradeoff between fully static and low power Seattle This board which uses the TMS 4044 chip either the 450 nsc or 250 Sec version is fully static The board is well designed is properly gated for he Sol bidirectional bus and allows a lot of options for atypical systems For he Sol the SINP SOUT and MWRITE signals should be implemented The designers have done several things ct rt 5 14 to minimize nois they have used bus bars and separate regulators for each 4K Also the regulators are on the right which sho
56. o Alto CA 94306 Dear Sir As the SOL dealer assembler and technical support in Israel we have assembled about a dozen SOL s and have a few hints for others 1 If resetting is a problem replace U76 74LS175 with a 54LS175 military version Similar replacements have also been found to help with stubborn CRT driver problems 2 The RS 232 pullup resistor R29 should be disconnected from the 5v supply and reconnected to 12v e g Ql emitter 3 The ALS 8 can be modified to work directly with the SOL ALS driver El EO A9 DO CD A4 DO CA 98 DO DB 01 E6 7F 47 09 DB 00 ElFO E6 40 C9 CD A4 DO CA B8 DO revised ALS driver changes underlined El FO A9 DO CD A4 DO C2 98 DO DB FC E6 7F 47 09 DB FA FIFO E6 C1 C9 F5 CD 54 CO F1 C9 Sincerely Dr Yehuda Cern Ch Eng r MICRO COMPUTER APPLICATIONS D N Harei Hevron 90901 Israel Telephone 02 94 29 73 6 By now you have probably heard that PT inadvertently omitted a means of sending nulls to a printer from Extended Basic I was told that they had planned to let Solos do it but as it turns out EB does not send the proper message to Solos For Diablo owners it means that we have to operate at 300 baud each time we want to use EB for me that is a pain since 90 of my work is with the Electric Pencil at 1200 baud It is possible to include a PAUSE in every other statement line but that does not help if you need
57. per operation of the Tarbell l programs which read or write to disk in no wait state memory FD1771 01 y element of the Tarbell interface is the Western Digital chip and most of the important capabilities and limitations of this interface are those of the 1771 itself This chip allows use of a variety of soft sectored formats allows writing formats and most importantly at the present time supports the IBM 3740 soft sectored format This allows the use of CP M or other operating systems using IBM format compatible disks The controller does not support hard sectoring and is not compatible with controllers such as used in the Helios system of those Figure 1 snows the changes which the author has made to his SOL to defeat memory and offboard I O wait states If you are using a 5204 or 6834 personality module you probably cannot run without the wait state These changes do not require that any lands be cut or that any new IC s be added 10 Figure 2 shows the changes made to the Tarbell board to include PDBIN in the tri state gating logic for the WAIT input port Here one land must be cut but no new IC s are required The author has been running the Tarbell board for almost two months in his Altair with very satisfying results It worked there fine with the Dutronics Z80 board He is using 32K of static memory all 21L02 type He was unable to try it
58. pt 28 Gardena CA 90247 Metropolitan Washington DC Jim Logan 6817 Melfose Dr McLean VA 22101 703 356 1068 Tallahassee FL Mitch McCann Rt 7 Box M L C Tallahassee FL 32301 New York NY Stanley Veit Computer Mart of N Y 118 Madison Avenue New York NY 100th To join a local chapter software contaci chapter is free to organize as its members desir provided so SOLUS members are able to meet face to face tinker with hardware ures from invited speakers t the coordinator directly Each visit local Chapters are trade manufacturers hear lect chapter in your area name the whole list twice a year send SOLUS and address of the coordinator and chapters are encouraged to write doing DOCUMENTAT te your to If you would like chapter area name to publish here updates in each issue us so we can hear what you are to start a and the We ll print Local ON NOTES Here s a potentially dangerous error in the SOL systems manual reported by Warren Harkness description of S 100 pin 2 function is correct wrote 52 NAME should be 16v not no one else assumes pins 2 from each other there one time is correctly designated 16v On W 16v on page AV arren and are the same voltage shorted 2 and 52 16v Page AV 3 appendix the and blew my power supply but th
59. rogram but just haven t gotten around to it yet This letter was written by SOL on the Model 43 using the Electric Pencil by Michael Shrayer This is a fantastic text editor and it comes on a CUTS cassette with a very good manual No changes were required to run it The Model 43 has a TTL interface and the TTL to RS 232 interface converter for 7 00 from Electronic Systems is all I needed to get it up and flying I also had washing machine problems and I installed a surge filter and RF filter but it didn t help I mounted the PC board and power supply in a metal cabinet and grounded everything and I haven t had any more problems My computer and my washing machine are on the same 30 Amp breaker I plan a separate circuit soon That s it for now Stan I m still selling articles all over the place Seventeen since Januarv 1977 Lastly I think that the Teletype Model 43 is the best printer buy on the market For 1050 from the DATA MART in Arlington Heights Illinois it includes a very nice solid state keyboard The paper also much cheaper than the type used on the Axion 800 written up in SOLUS NEWS Sincerely Rod Hallen P S My processor Technology Extended Cassette BASIC just arrived A very long wait but it looks like it was worth it I haven t done much more than load it and play but it has an awful lot of features that I have been waiting for and some that I didn t expect like program renumbering I ll
60. rtens the ground path which minimizes he possibility of ground loops The board can be disabled using the phantom line ut they did not put a pad next to line E7 so the jumper must be soldered to the top of the socket finger Also the data input lines are conditioned but are not buffered So far this has not caused any real problems The board we tested had the 250 nsec chips and it ran with everything that we tried it with interrupts and Ithaca Audio Z 80 Board Imsai Disk System North Star Disk Imsai Helios 11 and a Sol The major concern is power dissipation The board uses 1 7 amps nominal and the specs give 9 0 volts as max for the 8 volt supply Many Sols exceed 9 volts mine is 9 7 V A note on the spec page states The input regulators will handle higher voltages than 9 however special cooling for the regulator heat sinks is required at these higher input voltages The heat sinks are indeed small and ventilation in the memory board area of the Sol is not good The warranty defines unreasonable use as including input voltages exceeding the spec and temperatures exceeding the spec caused by inadequate cooling Therefore many Sol owners would need to make some sort of modification to safely use the Seattl board I have already added a fan on the back of my Sol which blows in over my boards With this extra fan turned on the board runs at about the same temperature as it does with an 8 volt supply in an open cabinet which is abou
61. ry board and also the Tarbell 1011A floppy disk controller board The Dutronics board was supplied to SOLUS cour Extensys board was loa of Extensys The Tarb built up for use mainl tesy of Mr Dave Dutra of Dutronics The ned to SOLUS for evaluation by Mr Dan Pichulo ell board was purchased as a bare board and y in his Altair 8800 colleagues Messers noted that all three o boards and each is un Dutronics DZ80 80R inch circuit board wh additional support chi Socket in place of an instruction set in a s especially attractive S100 bus CPU card whic CPU cards now availabl proves to be quite dif The Dutronics DZSO Evaluations have been performed by the author and two of his Hartley Wurkz and Seymour Bugs It should be f us are using SOLs which were built from iquely packaged and expanded 801 Z80 adapter board is a small 2 75 x 5 5 ich includes a 280 CPU chip and twelve ps It is designed to plug into the forty pin 8080 chip and thus provide the power of the z80 ystem originally designed for the 8080 It is for SOL owners because the SOL does not have an h can be replaced by one of the S100 bus z80 e from several sources Unfortunately it ficult to fool the SOL into thinking that the DZ80 80R is an 8080 Several months ago SOLOS received a prototype DZ280 80R board for evaluation in SOL appl
62. sted in personal computing from viewpoints of users and avid hobbyists Those interested in making a presentation should submit a letter of intent along with a one page abstract or outline by April 15 to John Wall Miller Program Chairman 6921 Pacific Lane Annandale VA 22003 telephone 703 256 5702 Authors presenting papers will be provided with instructions for preparation of camera ready papers which are due by June 1 Areas of interest are personal computing applications of microcomputers home educational uses of computers speech music and graphics standards for hardware software and interfacing to the real world and subjects of interest to beginners Commercial exhibitors will include retail computer stores computer systems ms m an ufacturers computer services computer magazines and others An exhibitor prospectus will be available from Amateur Computing P O Box 682 McLean VA 22101 Amateur Computing 78 will be held in the modern attractive and completely equipped convention facilities of the Sheraton National Motor Hotel which is near the Pentagon and overlooks the monuments of Washington DC Out of town attendees will want to reserve one of the 336 luxuriously appointed rooms at the hotel All requests for rooms should be directed to the hotel at 703 521 1900 not the toll free 800 number mentioning Amateur Computing Or write to the hotel at Columbia Pike amp Washington Blvd Arlington VA 22204 This event
63. t the same as or even perhaps cooler than most other static memory boards Vandenberg This is a very cool running board even without the fan since it has very low power consumption 650 ma at 5V 90 ma at 12V and 16 ma at 5V This is due to the fact that it is not a fully static board The board uses the NEC uPD410 which is an edge triggered memory chip Data storage is completely static and does not require refresh The static storage cell is however combined with dynamic peripheral circuits such as decoders An activation edge must be provided by the system in order for the chip to generate clocks internally An article in the Sept 1977 Electronic Products Magazine goes into more detail The chip has the low power virtues of dynamic memory Unfortunately it also seems to have at least some of the incompatibility vices It worked with Imsai DMA and one Helios but not with another Helios It did not work with a homebrew interrupt system or an Ithaca Audio Z 80 Board Vandenberg said it worked fine with theirs It worked flawlessly during an extended test in a Sol with a North Star Disk The inputs are buffered the read data is properly gated with DBIN for a bi directional bus and the regulators are on the right to shorten the ground path Also the people at Vandenberg have been very pleasant and helpful but they lose two points for advertising their board as static without any qualification Conclusion The tradeoff betwee
64. ut problem very nice looking board seen is sides appeal to you xtrem ty and the first 3 layer S 100 The author does not understand why it fails to overate when he has been able to run for hours Extensys board is a bus board we have The It is about 5 16 inch higher than the standard S 100 board ly densely populated leaving very If the high densit and little space around the Low power consumption of this board we suggest again that you only buy it with a guarantee that it will work properly in your unique system Notes on Using the Tarbell floppy Disk Interface in a SOL The Tarbell Floppy Disk which inc the neces floppy di ludes a Western Dig Interface is a highly versatile board ital FD1771 01 controller chip along with sary interfaces to sk drives It also the S 100 bus and any of several popular includes a bootstrap circuit and ROM which allows easy loading of an operating system like CP M in an Altair or however MSAI environment SOL owners should b Before rushing out and buying one e aware that there are certain aspects of the SOL which make using this interface a little less straightforward that when using it in other S 100 bus computers The standard port addressing on the Tarbell board is F8 through FC That group of addresses is already used by the onboard SOL 1 0 GLE CULES
65. y over 100 peopl We recommend contact in sponsoring a commercial boo We also had a general meeting at the Faire Members of the SOLUS steering committee us ch reported on our general activi chere from members Some sugges ted the local chapters self tutorial casset thru directed at the basics of operating the SOL te tape the steps of getting his SOL the screen P T realizes th computers Some people cam and it made a great hang out for members of this sort of activity for all of If a club booth is not available at your and we ll see if P T is interested which was attended ties and got lots of good feedback that we put on a program at the novice who can t One person s audio recording assembled each of t even understand uggested we develop a that leads the user to talk back to him on Processor Tech s Ralph Palsson told your editor that manual is not good for the 1 and they are considering printing a beginner s guide up to volunteer for various projects 00 novice to Another activity SOLUS engaged in at the Faire was rounding up new products for our Hardware and Software Reviewers on these in the coming months NEW CHAPTERS We ll report Rochester NY Warren Harkness 32 Larchwood Dr Pittsford NY 14534 Gardens CA George Pond 14919 S Normandie Av A

SOLUS NEWS, Vol 1, No 3, April 1978

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